"what happens later" - the aftermath of a nora ephron fall.
The legacy of the Nora Ephron 90's Romcom - When Harry met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and You've got Mail.
There’s nothing like New York, Autumn, Bookstores, Sweaters, New Years Eve, Auld Lang Syne, and Being in Love with your Best Friend/Enemy/Stranger… a ‘Nora Ephron Fall’ promises all of this, charming and witty and just about as cozy as a movie can get.
The Meg Ryan trilogy of When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle, (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998) are Romcom Classics, all written by Nora, with the latter two also directed by, which I’ve binged the past week because I wanted to feel something as August ushers in Fall.
August, which is the best month of the year, has always felt like the beginning of the End to me. It is, the salt air and the rust on your door, Sinatra and Nat King Cole, a prelude to October (the second best month) if you will. And Romcoms (of the 90’s, don’t forget) are just that, the beginning of the End of the life-long pursuit of love with some movie-magicked, Happily Ever After.
“You want to be in love in a movie,” says Annie (Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle)’s best friend Becky (Rosie O’Donnell), and she couldn’t be more right.
Each of the three films reference/pay homage to other film romance classics: Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) watch Casablanca (1942) together but separately, Sleepless is adapted from An Affair to Remember (1957), and Kathleen (Meg Ryan) and Joe (Tom Hanks) of You’ve Got Mail contest how great Pride and Prejudice (the book) and The Godfather (1972) really are.
Movie romances are big, cliche, almost sickly sweet. And as much as people (me, for one) would hate to admit it - movie romances are the things people yearn for. The people yearn for kisses in the rain, mad dashes to the airport, a real life, Mr. Darcy…
But, the Ephron films possess an ordinary familiarity with girl-next-door Meg Ryan. When Harry met Sally is by far my favourite, with the way Harry and Sally fell into the realisation, like a switch had been flicked (real ones know). It is New York and just existing alongside your best friend. I don’t really know how else to describe how magical this little film is.
Sleepless and Mail are a little different, romanticising something that probably would be borderline…stalkerish in real life. But hey, this is Hollywood. I never fail to tear up at the end of You’ve Got Mail when Joe says, “Don’t cry, Shopgirl.” (This man just put her out of business??)
Nora passed in 2012. Meg went into an acting hiatus from 2015. Romcom as a genre was losing the magic that the 90’s held. Everything became a copy of a copy until people were speculating if Romcom as a genre was dead.
8 years after Meg Ryan’s semi-retirement from acting, What Happens Later (2023) was released. The ‘HagRomcom’ as I like to call it (affectionately, it is my favourite kind of romcom), promised a different kind of love story, starring Meg Ryan opposite David Duchovny - one of unassuming regional airports, of later life romance, of magic beyond the happily-ever-after. Of leap days and extra time and a hell on Earth scenario being stuck with not an Ex, but The Ex for a hellish amount of time.
Directed by Meg Ryan herself, the film closes with a ‘For Nora,’ dedication. It felt insulting, when I had first seen it, because it was so far from what I had come to love from a Nora Ephron film. It seemed to me that the muse just couldn’t do it by herself without Ephron’s direction and writing. Going down the checklist of what makes a film really an Ephron film, What Happens Later is not set in New York, nor is it Autumn, with no Bookstore or Sweater in sight, it is not New Years Eve (it is instead February 29th), and Auld Lang Syne does not feature at all.
Ryan instead shows us a never ending argument that is rehashed in a million different ways, until the Truth spills out. And when it does, the romance kicks in. Because the Truth is that they were in Love, like in a Nora Ephron movie.
Even if, 25 years on from the last of the trilogy, and the romance tropes have cemented themselves as over the top, cliche, and cheesy (the familiarity of hands in an airport bar, a whirlwind dance in the empty hall of an airport terminal, or curled up under an airport gate bench ), it don’t stop the real chemistry that Wilhelmenia ‘Willa’ Davis (Meg Ryan) and William ‘Bill’ Davis (David Duchovny) share. It is the same, hopeful message from the original trilogy: that this can be yours too.
They can be transplanted, edited and cut into any of the three Ephron romcoms and they would fit right in (though in my head they are so utterly Harry and Sally that it makes my head hurt), with the kind of chemistry that is undeniable. These are two people who were 23 together.
But in the harsh light of this unnamed airport, it is past the End, past the moment you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. No movie magic here folks, and the film reel sputters out, or whatever an apt movie metaphor is for the cruel realities of love.
It is none of the first few things I mentioned that makes What Happens Later a true legacy of the Nora Ephron Fall, but all of the last. Willa and Bill are each other’s Best Friend and Enemy and Stranger, and their fateful leap day meeting whilst stranded at an unnamed airport stretches time beyond what was supposed to be their story.
What if then, what if you don’t live a real life Nora Ephron Romcom? Is there something other than a When Harry met Sally ending that awaits? If you had asked me even a few months ago, I would probably say no. Nothing other than a ‘New Years Eve party (bonus points if it’s the turn of the Millennium,) with Auld Lang Syne playing in the back’ moment is enough for me!
Ryan’s surprisingly sober take on the Romcom has me coming back for more. At times it’s almost unbearable to watch, but there’s a genuine tenderness between the two that promises that even if the best thing turns out to be the worst, it was the best at some point. And if August feels like the End, October will be better.
Just wait for What Happens Later.
ok so when r u moving to nyc???
AND IF AUGUST FEELS LIKE THE END OCTOBER WILL BE BETTER ARE YOU INSANE