Sleepless in Seattle

At least six studios turned away Jeff Arch’s original script because its two leads do not meet until the end. David S. Ward rewrote it and made Jonah, not Sam, the one who calls the radio show. Nora Ephron, hired to polish the fifth draft, ended up directing; the credits read screenplay by Ephron, Ward and Arch, story by Arch. What the studios objected to is the design. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan share only two scenes and about two minutes of screen time; the closeness is built through a radio broadcast, a letter and separate rooms. An Affair to Remember, from 1957, is not decoration; Ephron called it a running character, and the Empire State Building appointment comes straight out of it. Bill Pullman has said his part was pitched as a triangle story and that he expected something larger. At the 66th Academy Awards it took two nominations and won neither: screenplay written directly for the screen, and original song, for A Wink and a Smile by Marc Shaiman and Ramsey McLean. A good fit if you treat intimacy built from voices and writing as the structure rather than a shortfall. Not for anyone coming to watch Hanks and Ryan play opposite each other, since those two minutes land at the very end.