| Vulture put together a list of the 100 greatest screenwriters as voted on by people who actually do the job themselves. There’s plenty to argue over in it.* Do we actually think that George Lucas is a good screenwriter or just a masterful world-builder? What does it say about both the movie industry and the tastes of the people who voted on this list that the people who earned places on it are so overwhelmingly white and male? How do you put Barry Levinson on this list and not talk about the greatness of “Tin Men”? But I wanted to take a second to talk about what made the top-ranked woman on this list, Nora Ephron, such a terrific writer. It wasn’t merely, as Vulture suggests, that her “female characters (usually played by her muse Meg Ryan) got to be as witty, smart, screwed-up, and lovable as their male counterparts,” though of course that didn’t hurt. For me, Ephron’s scripts are so remarkable because they make her female leads feel astonishingly real and grounded. Take Sally Albright (Ryan) in “When Harry Met Sally…” Everyone thinks of the famous diner scene where she fakes an orgasm when they think of that movie, but for me, the scene that defines her character is actually the moment when she gives her order to a diner waitress during the first stop she and Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) make on their cross-country drive together. It’s a hilariously finicky order: “I’d like the chef salad please with oil and vinegar on the side, and the apple pie a la mode,” she explains. “But I’d like the pie heated, and I don’t want the ice cream on top. I want it on the side, and I’d like strawberry instead of vanilla if you have it. If not, then no ice cream, just whipped cream, but only if it’s real. If it’s out of the can, then nothing….just the pie, but then not heated.” The details of the order aren’t important. What matters is that in this area of her life, at least, Sally knows exactly what she wants. And much of the romantic tension that follows in the movie comes from the fact that she’s intensely clear on details like this but takes a long time to realize that when it comes to love, what she really wants is Harry. In “You’ve Got Mail,” which I’ve always thought was an underrated element of Ephron’s ouvre, the two main characters, Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) and Kathleen Kelly (Ryan again) spend much of the movie writing each other emails and instant messages. It’s a device that’s critical to the movie’s plot, but it also required Ephron to stock each of them with a wide arrange of experiences, tastes and ephemera that they can use to talk to each other in light ways. Again, these details — Joe’s fondness for “The Godfather” and the tension between his tough corporate instincts and his whimsical soul, and Kathleen’s deep knowledge of children’s books and sense of being rooted in her neighborhood — are part of the movie’s core inquiry into whether our jobs really define us. You can totally watch a Nora Ephron movie — say, “Sleepless in Seattle” — for the plot. But the thing that made her great, and the quality that makes her movies infinitely rewatchable, was simply the fact that she created people who felt incredibly textured and fun to spend time with. It’s a rare quality, and I miss it, and Ephron, constantly. *Although I want to take a second to say how delighted I am that Elaine May is on the list and that one of the movies she’s singled out for is “Primary Colors.” |
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