The season has changed. The scent of pumpkin spice lattes is in the air and leaves are falling, even here in Southern California. Move over, Brat Summer — it’s time for Nora Ephron Fall.
Whereas the former was all chaos and crop tops, Nora Ephron Fall, depicted memorably in her most popular rom-coms, is a decidedly grown-up affair. It’s turtlenecks and quality sweaters, buying decorative gourds for an evening dinner party and coupling up for cuffing season, if not longer term. “When we watch ‘When Harry Met Sally’ or ‘You’ve Got Mail,’ it distills this sweeping sentiment of being in New York City in the fall and this magical feeling that comes once a year, like Christmas,” “Nora Ephron at the Movies” author Ilana Kaplan says, invoking two signature films that she groups with “Sleepless in Seattle.
” “We search for that feeling every year.” Ephron, who was raised in Los Angeles by screenwriter parents but called New York City home as an adult, is known for films with humorous dialogue, complicated heroines and realistic elements of the city she loved. Manhattan’s Empire State Building notably plays a key role in “Sleepless in Seattle,” an Ephron homage to “An Affair to Remember”; like “When Harry Met Sally” and “You’ve Got Mail,” it stars Meg Ryan.
(Rob Reiner directed “When Harry Met Sally” based on Ephron’s script, while she wrote and directed the other two.) “I feel like the women in her work were always messy and m.
