TO THE SUMMIT
She had plenty of help with hilarious orgasm scene
arrogant Leona Helmsley, was serving 18 months for tax evasion. The Queen of Mean relented. By the time Ephron, Hanks and Ryan reunited for “You’ve Got Mail” in 1997, it had the feel of a family reunion. Except Ryan had turned difficult.
“She was just more demanding on that movie!” recalls Delia, Ephron’s sister and co-writer. “She just needed more stuff, and she wasn’t totally happy.”
In “You’ve Got Mail,” Ryan’s character, Kathleen Kelly, owns a beloved children’s bookstore on the Upper West Side. Her outpost is threatened by the huge corporate bookstore plonked down across the street by Joe Fox (Hanks).
He’s her nemesis, except she’s unknowingly falling in love with him online.
It was a perfect Meg Ryan role, but ...
“She was getting to a point, really, where she was beginning to feel ‘I don’t know if I still want to be Meg Ryan,’” says costume designer Albert Wolsky.
Ryan was at the start of a disastrous slide. In 2000, the actress dubbed “America’s Sweetheart” betrayed her ardent fans when she began a passionate affair with Russell Crowe on the set of “Proof of Life.”
Ryan followed the scandal by making grittier choices, like the erotic thriller “In the Cut” and the boxing saga “Against the Ropes.”
Both failed. Fans had turned their backs on the adorable actress.
After “You’ve Got Mail,” Ephron didn’t score again at the box office until “Julie and Julia” in 2009. Her highly anticipated “Bewitched,” starring Nicole Kidman, had moviegoers throwing popcorn at the screen four years earlier.
That same year, Hanks turned her down flat when she approached him with a script based on the life of New York columnist McAlary, who won the Pulitzer Prize shortly before his death from cancer in 1998.
Many saw McAlary’s hardwon expose of the sadistic abuse of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima by cops as heroic. But Hanks just didn’t like the guy.
In 2011, though, Hanks’ feelings changed when he learned Jon Hamm — at the height of “Mad Man” mania — was sniffing around the role.
“Lucky Guy,” starring Hanks, had a hugely successful limited run on Broadway a year after Ephron’s death.
Hanks had kept at Ephron, wanting to know why she was so fascinated by McAlary. She admitted she wasn’t a particular fan of his columns or career.
It was the play’s director, Geoffrey Wolfe, who finally clued Hanks in, sharing Ephron’s reply when he posed the same question.
“This play is about somebody who has more luck than talent,” Ephron explained, implicitly reflecting on her own long string of successes. “And I know something about that.”