Trailer
Plot summary
Jonah Baldwin lives in Seattle with his father, Sam, an architect who moved there from Chicago after the death of his wife, Maggie. More than a year later Sam still grieves and cannot sleep. On Christmas Eve, Jonah phones a national radio talk show and persuades a reluctant Sam to speak about Maggie, whom he calls his soulmate, saying he could not find that kind of love twice. Letters from women around the country arrive for him. One listener is Annie Reed, a Baltimore newspaper reporter engaged to the dependable Walter, though she feels the relationship lacks something. Her friend and editor Becky tells her she wants the kind of romance she has seen in movies. Inspired by An Affair to Remember, Annie drafts a letter proposing a meeting at the Empire State Building.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Empire State Building's management refused to close the observation deck for filming. Nora Ephron, who believed you are two phone calls away from anyone, knew the publicist of owner Leona Helmsley, then in prison for tax evasion; after a jail visit the publicist won six hours of access.
SPOILER
The observation deck where Sam and Annie finally meet is not in New York at all. It is a replica built in Hangar 27 of Seattle's Sand Point Naval Base, with the Empire State Building digitally lit for the shot.- Seattle had no sound stages big enough, so the crew wanted the Sand Point Naval Base, which was about to close. Federal bureaucracy barely answered until Nora Ephron telephoned Republican senator John Warner, a former Secretary of the Navy.
- Rainy Seattle was in a drought while the film shot there, so the crew brought in water trucks to fake the rain scenes. The city was reported to be angry at what it saw as a waste of water.
- Screenwriter Jeff Arch had pictured Kevin Costner as Sam, and once Nora Ephron joined, Julia Roberts, Kim Basinger, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sharon Stone, Jodie Foster, Demi Moore and Madonna all pursued the part of Annie. Ephron would not be moved from Meg Ryan.
- Meg Ryan expected to play opposite her then husband Dennis Quaid, who had been looking for a film they could do together. Ephron decided Quaid was not funny enough for Sam, and the part went to Tom Hanks, who had first turned it down over the earlier script.
- John Barry was to score the film and quit when he was handed a list of twenty songs he had to work in. Marc Shaiman ended up writing the score instead.
- Sony Studios head Peter Guber wanted the Celine Dion and Clive Griffin duet When I Fall in Love over the final scene, but Nora Ephron wanted Jimmy Durante's Make Someone Happy. Rather than ask his permission she tried hers on a test audience, who responded well.
