KULIFE
Wednesday, August 18, 1993
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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
'An Affair to Remember' lives on
Hit 'Sleepless in Seattle' based on classic film
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — So you've seen "Sleepless in Seattle" and you're thinking about checking out "An Affair to Remember," that old Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr movie Meg Ryan and the other women in "Sleepless" keep sobbing over.
A couple of warnings
First of all, better get in line. Block-buster Video, a national chain, says people all over the country are renting it. Also, some scenes have enough saccharin to kill off a pack of laboratory animals. Even world-class weepers may sympathize with the men in "Sleepless" who would just as soon watch "The Dirty Dozen."
"This isn't like 'It Happened One Night,' when you go back to it and you're flabbergasted that every single moment is great, just as you remember it," said "Sleepless" director Nora Ephron. "This is . . . a movie you have memories about."
"Ican usually hang in for a lot longer with romantic movies than a lot of guys. However, I thought it was an incredibly sappy movie," said Jeff Arch, who came up with the story for "Sleepless" and was one of three screenplay writers.
But what was it about this film that made Ryan's character watch it again and again, that drove her into living
out the central plot twist by arranging to meet Tom Hanks on the top of the Empire State Building?
"An Affair to Remember." released in 1957, is actually of interest.
Cary Grant
a vintage classic romantic comedy, "Love Affair." The 1930 film starred Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne as a European playboy and a New York woman who have a shipboard romance and then promise to meet at the top of the Empire State Building.
Boyer arrives on time, but doesn't know Dunnie was hit by a car on her way to see him. Paralyzed from the waist down, she's so afraid of how he'll feel about her she doesn't call, leading him to believe he's been jilted.
The film was a great success and received Academy Award nominations for best picture, best actress and best writing. Sentimentality was relieved by scenes such as the starry night Dunne tells Boyer her father's philosophy: "Just keep on wishing, and cares will go. Dreamers tells us dreams come true." She then paused, and added, "Of course, my father was a drunk."
But director Leo McCarey was a far more serious man when he decided to resurrect "Love Affair" nearly 20 years later. The basic plot is unchanged, but pay close attention: McCarey, who had gone on to make "Gong My Way" and "The Bells of St.
Mary," has a message that gives, new meaning to living happily ever after.
At times, it's subtle, like the way Kerr keeps referring to the Empire State Building as "the nearest thing to
Tom Hanks
heaven" or compare a country villa to the Garden of Eden. At times, you may feel someone spliced in "The 700 Club." Just listen to that children's choir sing "He Knows You Inside Out." Just watch those sweet, young faces warning sinners, "Look out, you may sizzle down below."
"That's the part I sort of fast forward through," Ephron said. "I can't stand any of that stuff."
There is a chapel on the grounds that Kerr enters. She kneels and solemnly bows her head. Grant entrists, knells and bows his head, too. Both are still for a few moments. Kerr then gets up, crosses herself and leaves. Grant gets up, starts to cross himself, but ends up straightening his tie.
Comedy and religion come together most oddly when Kerr joins Grant on a visit to his grandmother. An oddity as well. Grant was 53 in real life; in the film, his grandmother was supposed to be 82.
"An Affair to Remember" was a hit, but critics had mixed reactions. Time magazine called it a "saccharin trifle," while the Los Angeles Times said it was "pleasurable" and "bound to
evoke many tears . . . " McCarey him
self later said he preferred "Love
Affair."
"Everyone believes it's a much better movie," Ephron said of the Boyer-Dume film, "but it doesn't have Cary Grant in it."
In 1909, Arch came up with the story for "Sleepless in Seattle." He imagined a final scene in which Ryan and Hanks meet at the top of the Empire State Building, then realized he had gotten the idea from "An Affair to Remember."
Ephron, who remembered "bubbering and wheezing and whooping" when she first saw "An Affair to Remember," wanted to make another point. She believed the film was a classic women's picture, a shameless romance women fall for even when they know they shouldn't.
"I can watch it over and over and over," Ephron said. "When we were shooting 'Sleepless,' we'd watch the last 10 minutes of the film and within eight minutes everybody would be crying — if they were girls."
And if they were men?
"My husband (writer Nick Pleggi) left the room. Tom Hanks, who could leave the room, made it clear by a number of unbelievably derisive noises what he felt about this," Ephron said.
"It's like a lot of those 1930s movies, not a 1960s movie," Ephron said. "It's a women's weeper that is full of the kind of insane abnegation that makes no sense whatsoever to a modern audience. Why does this woman not call him?" Because it's a masochistic fantasy, that why?
TV now goes wherever the viewer goes
Virtual Vision puts television screen on tip of the nose
The Associated Press
Those days are gone forever. Now the television screen is ON my nose.
What's more, where my nose goes, the television comes with it.
NEW YORK — My mother used to say, "Don't sit there with your nose against the TV screen."
This step forward, if that's what it is, is thanks to the "Sport" system, introduced this summer by Virtual Vision Inc., a new company based in Redmond, Wash.
Here's how the gadget works: A wraparound vork worn like sunglasses houses a thumbnail-size, liquid-crystal display nucked into the frame. This eye wear plugs into a belt-pack worn at the waist, which accommodates a rechargeable battery as well as an antenna. Along with picking up broadcast programs, the Virtual Vision "Sport" can be attached to cable or a videocassette recorder.
what the company calls "personal projection TV."
Ear plugs in, you're experiencing
It's available for about $900 through the Sharper Image and Hammacher Schlemmer catalogs, as well as from specialty retailers in major cities.
Note, this is not "virtual reality," which transports you through sight and sound to another realm. Virtual Vision's rig does the opposite: It drapes nonstop television across the same old realm you've always occupied
As simply as shifting your attention between near and far while wearing bifocals, you see television as you roam the world — and you see the world, too.
1 did.
Standing knee-deep in a river that until Virtual Vision used to be away from it all, I watched children dive off a bank into the current — and at the same time watched a documentary on starving children in Cambodia.
Back in Manhattan, N.Y. I picked up a slice at the corner pizzeria, and picked up "Cheers" while I ate on the run.
In bed, I watched David Letterman, while my wife slept undisturbed. Clearly Virtual Vision could save a
marriage, and break one up, too.
I even tried jogging with the thing, though I don't recommend it, especially during a heat wave.
When the signal was strong, the picture was remarkably clear. I could read on-screen how the Home Shopping Channel's Kanchanaburi sapphire ring could be had for just $299.9 However, I was walking in the countryside at that moment, and I had no cellular phone with which to place my order.
For anyone old enough to remember when a "portable" TV was one a steroid junkie could maybe tote without a hand truck, Virtual Vision's tiny device is truly remarkable for finally setting the couch potato free. Behold the spuds on the run!
But portability isn't really the news. What is most striking about Virtual Vision's breakthrough is the removal of one last distinction between living life and tuning it in. This may be the ultimate integration of video and flesh-and-blood — at least, until science implants televisions in our noggins.
In this state of virtual oneness, you can finally look someone in the eye without missing a moment of Oprah.
"Socialize with people instead of having your eyes glued to a conventional screen," the user's guide said.
But sitting in Central Park, I watched John Chancellor's final "NBC Nightly News" commentary as he spoke of how people are more alienated from one another than they used to be. I realized that, yes, I felt alienated at that moment — and pleasantly so. Except that other people kept looking at me. The Robocop-like visor draws its share of attention.
Alienation and funny looks from strangers are only the beginning. The user's guide includes a long list of precautions. Don't drive a car or operate a skateboard. Don't play contact sports. Take care not to poke others with your antenna.
Though it does not come up in the user's guide, another danger could be that by watching real life and television at the same time, you end up doing neither very well. You see all, but you might see nothing.
"Call me old-fashioned," my friend Roger said, "but I don't want to wear a TV on my head."
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