Ilana Kaplan
Appearances
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
I think before When Harry Met Sally, we had gone through years of rom-coms where the female heroines were often very polished and put together and had beautiful, refined outfits. They weren't wearing necessarily like sweaters and jeans.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
Yeah. I'm thinking of like An Affair to Remember. Oh, yeah. You know, Nora saw women in a different way. She applied the female gaze to her characters. When we saw something like When Harry Met Sally, we saw Sally. Sally was messy and outspoken and really anal retentive.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
And at the same time, the conversation about female sexuality, female pleasure wasn't really at the forefront of conversations anymore. And when Nora had this deli scene in When Harry Met Sally, it ignited a conversation. And it's probably opened a lot of doors for the way we talk about sexuality in rom-coms today.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
Yeah. I feel like those quote unquote high maintenance quirks of Sally's, for instance, could be like so annoying, but it's endearing and it makes the character interesting and that she's so particular about the way that she consumes food. And those are the moments that you could really see Nora in the script because she was so particular about food.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
I mean, I think with that, we saw more of like a equal playing field between women and men in her movies. Again, like a lot of women could relate to this as opposed to like the virginal characters that had been so pervasive in the past. I think that seeing Marie from when Harry Met Sally, like, go through her Rolodex of men, like... Really, Marie?
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
Those were real conversations that women might be having with their friends. We were able to see in Nora's work that... Women could enjoy sex. Women could enjoy dating. And they could be powerful on their own. And they weren't just vying for male attention. It could be an addition to their life. It wasn't upending it.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
Because I think after, you know, she had the success of the rom-com trio, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, other directors wanted what she was having, essentially.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
They wanted to craft their own Nora Ephron movies. So, like, for instance, Richard Curtis wanted to follow in her footsteps.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
Yes. And John Turtletaub of While You Were Sleeping really wanted to follow in Nora Ephron's footsteps with— So if you're watching the dinner scene where Sandra Bullock's character goes to Peter's family's dinner, that whole scene could have been in a Nora Ephron movie.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
They're all having different conversations over one another. And the grandma's just being like, oh, the mashed potatoes are so creamy. Or like, it's so familiar to like Nora Ephron territory. And you can see those little quirks.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
Love Her, love The Summer I Turned Pretty, love Axo Kitty. What I loved about To All the Boys I've Loved Before is that it crystallizes the kind of sentiment that, you know, Nora Ephron's movies gave us at the peak of the rom-com. When Lara Jean's sister, Kitty, finds these letters that she's been writing her crushes over the years in a box and then decides to send them out.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
It's very reminiscent of Sleepless in Seattle when Sam's son, Jonah, ends up talking to Annie and kind of meddling in that way.
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No, I'm Cynthia. The epistolary storytelling element of it is very Nora to me.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
We just yearn for this aspirational vision that Nora had of the feeling of fall in New York. I mean, I think that... It's something that a lot of people who live in New York and don't experience that all the time cling to it. Maybe it's one day a year.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
To me, it feels like Nora never left us because every year we all are on social media posting memes about Nora Ephron Fall and Meg Ryan Fall. And it just feels like she's still with us and she's created this... Seasonal holiday for us, essentially, where we're clamoring for fisherman sweaters and tweed blazers and bowler hats. We're nostalgic for that coziness.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
I want to feel like I'm in a Nora Ephron movie. And, like, I feel the same way about Nora Ephron's coziness as I do watching Cameron Diaz in that cottage in The Holiday.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
I mean, I think it's kind of a tale as old as time. Like, it was tough to cut through the boys' club. And, like, she was able to prove with, like, her successful rom-coms that she could – be a powerhouse in Hollywood. I don't think a lot of other directors had that same opportunity. Nora was notoriously known for being a bit tough. And we're often told, like, women are difficult, women are tough.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
And, like, was she actually being difficult or tough? Or was she just trying to get the same respect as men did at that time? Or... Did she have to do that to be heard and be seen? And I think that allowed her to have the career that she has. It's really interesting that only in the past few years, I feel like, have we started to see like female directors that are
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
getting the same kinds of praise that she has been.
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With Greta Gerwig, for instance. Oh, certainly. I just think that there are so many connections to Nora. But I think because the rom-com wasn't prioritized in... Hollywood for so long since the early 2000s I would say Crazy Rich Asians is really when we started to see studios be like oh okay like maybe there's a desire for a rom-com again like it ever left and I feel like
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
Even though Greta Gerwig, for instance, hasn't made exactly rom-coms, they're coming-of-age films that have a strong romantic element to them. And you can see that through line. It's cool to see other people really getting opportunities now and paving their own way.
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
I mean, I think that she probably would have gotten a lot more ubiquitous respect. I think that the one thing about her rom-coms, because it's not just romance, it's friendship. It's about all these complex issues a lot of the time. But I do think that if she were like a horror maven or like a...
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All hail the queen of rom-coms
made incredible historical dramas or action films, I do think that we might be talking about her like we talk about Spielberg. Interesting. That said, I hope that rom-coms continue to get the love that they so much deserve. Like, the biggest mistake was not having the idea of you in theaters. I stand on that hill.