"I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night."

Film The Age has the best obituary for Nora Ephron, syndicated from the Washington Post. Given that she co-wrote my favourite film of all time, or at least the film I've chosen to say is my favourite film of all time when people ask me "What's your favourite film of all time?" the news of her death when I woke up this morning didn't really set me up for the most exciting of days and so it's proved with some pottering around on the web, reading another fifty pages of one of the many books I'm struggling through and watching Tony Scott's Unstoppable, throughout which I was distracted by the news broadcasts being framed in the same aspect ratio as the rest of the film, despite everyone within watching the impending disaster on ordinary domestic screens in 16:9.

To make up for the length of that sentence, here are five Nora related memories.

(1)  This quote from When Harry Met Sally (spoiler alert -- it's from right at the end):

"I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."

I continue to aspire to meet someone I wish I could say that sort of thing to.

(2) Sleepless in Seattle was the second film I saw when I went away to university in the mid-90s. The first was The Fugitive. I saw both at The Lounge cinema in Leeds (which closed in 2005 and is now being turned into office space). Still homesick, I decided to cheer myself up with with some chips, bought beforehand from the Chinese take away opposite to take in, but it wasn't until I was sat down I realised that they hadn't put salt and vinegar on so ended up eating them without, a welcome reminder to always have salt and vinegar on chips.  Although the film helped a bit, afterwards when I returned to halls, because I didn't have any friends yet but was desperate for someone to talk, I sat crying my eyes out in a stairwell near a room where I could hear people who'd become fast friends, laughing and listening to music.  I vowed never to do that again.  I'd like to say I still haven't.

(3)  Watching Norah's The South Bank Show in which she mentioned that quote from the top of the obituary of what her Mum said to her on her deathbed:  “Take notes.  Everything is copy.”  It's one of my mantras, my iChing (in the You've Got Mail sense of the word) for writing along with James Blish's question "Who does it hurt?" and the "Time is a great dealer" postcard I have on my wall.  The episode was to promote her film Mixed Nuts, a film to this day I still haven't been able to sit all of the way through because it began Steve Martin's slow decline.

(4)  The unfolding entertainment of the trivia page on the imdb's entry for You've Got Mail which informs us:  "Meg Ryan's character, Kathleen Kelly, uses a Macintosh PowerBook G3 "Kanga", (introduced 11/97), or a Macintosh PowerBook 3400c, (introduced 2/97) in the movie. The exact model she used can't be determined from looking at the outer plastic case, as both machines used the same plastic case. "  That Michael Palin shot scenes for the film which were cut.  A reminder that the massive bookshop that's moving in destroying the little guy is called Fox Books, which now makes it look like an allegory for the entire media/cultural complex of the planet (let alone the book trade)

(5)  The poster for Cookie which Nora co-scripted was ubiquitous on the release of the film in 1989 as was the trailer which featured the instrumental version of Kylie's I Should Be So Lucky incongruously layered on top rendering most of the dialogue inaudible.  Given my worshipping at the alter of Minogue and a desperation to see anything she was even tangentially involved with I had to see this.  Unfortunately for me, the BBFC saw fit to give it a 15 certificate, and I was just slightly too young for the cinema release and still haven't seen it since by the time the video was released I'd moved on to worshipping Debbie Gibson and couldn't care less.