Falling for Romance

A new book, Nora Ephron at the Movies, celebrates the writer/director best known for her iconic rom-coms and strong female characters

- DAVID CHIU

JOURNALIST ILANA KAPLAN REMEMBERS ONE of the first Nora Ephron movies she saw1998's You've Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan-in a theater when she was about 10. To Kaplan, the onscreen romantic chemistry between the two fictitious lead characters, rival booksellers Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly, drew her attention. "I just fawn over the end of the movie, before they actually kiss in the park," Kaplan told Newsweek, "Joe is walking with Kathleen and trying to get her to forgive him for putting her out of business by comparing the situation to her forgiving this guy who 'stood her up.' He goes, 'Oh, how I wish you would.' The way he looks at her and says that lineit just gives me chills every time."

Kaplan's latest book, Nora Ephron at the Movies (Abrams), offers another more methodical appreciation of the late and celebrated writer-director, best known for her other rom-coms When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), as well as such works as Silkwood (1983), My Blue Heaven (1990), This Is My Life (1992) and Julie & Julia (2009). As Kaplan writes about Ephron in the introduction to her book: "She became emblematic of rom-coms, shifting and redefining conversations around the complexities of relationships and the women who have them."