This weekend's Ad of the Week sent me scrounging for my copy of When Harry Met Sally
. Turns out I don't have one. Bummer. But, Netflix had it in their "Watch Now!" stream-on-demand selection, so I watched now. Happiness.I was a teenager when I first saw that movie. Probably thirteen or fourteen. I followed it. Pretty much. Mostly I was amused with the very 80s-ness of Meg Ryan's wardrobe.
Watching it again this weekend, I have a brand new appreciation for the writing. What I think is really amazing about the writing is that Nora Ephron managed to capture the conversations you have when you're in college and the conversations you have a few years after you were in college. That the dialog stayed true to the characters, and the characters didn't change drastically, they just grew up a little bit.
I don't think I'm properly expressing my awe. Let me put it this way: I was watching the first 15 minutes and I was like this is such a stupid and narrow minded conversation that they're having and then I shook my head but it's exactly the kind of thing you discuss when you're 22 and you think you know everything there is to know. And then I was hooked.
And it got me thinking about the difference between a character changing and a character aging. Because I don't think the characters change as much as they age--aging being a kind of character change that's less drastic, slower ... glacial. And how comparatively difficult aging is to write well without seeming inconsistent.
