When Harry Met Sally influenced Sleepless in Seattle

Nora Ephron wrote the first and wrote and directed the second, four years apart, and the second is where her method hardened into the form the decade then copied. What carries over: a couple kept apart by structure rather than by misunderstanding, documentary-style interludes of other people talking about love, a best friend who exists to be argued with, and an ending staged at a landmark on a date. Sleepless in Seattle then does the harder thing and keeps its leads apart for almost the whole film, which only works because When Harry Met Sally had established that an Ephron audience will wait. Filed MEDIUM: one writer developing her own method.