title: Paul Gauguin

text: At around the same time, Gauguin's health began to deteriorate again, revisited by the same familiar constellation of symptoms involving pain in the legs, heart palpitations, and general debility. The pain in his injured ankle grew insupportable and in July he was obliged to order a trap from Papeete so that he could get about town. By September the pain was so extreme that he resorted to morphine injections. However he was sufficiently concerned by the habit he was developing to turn his syringe set over to a neighbour, relying instead on laudanum. His sight was also beginning to fail him, as attested by the spectacles he wears in his last known self-portrait. This was actually a portrait commenced by his friend Ky Dong that he completed himself, thus accounting for its uncharacteristic style. It shows a man tired and aged, yet not entirely defeated. For a while he considered returning to Europe, to Spain, to get treatment. Monfreid advised him:


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In July 1902, Vaeoho, by then seven months pregnant, left Gauguin to return home to her neighbouring valley of Hekeani to have her baby amongst family and friends. She gave birth in September but did not return. Gauguin did not subsequently take another "vahine". It was at this time that his quarrel with Bishop Martin over missionary schools reached its height. The local gendarme, Désiré Charpillet, at first friendly to Gauguin, wrote a report to the administrator of the island group, who resided on the neighbouring island of Nuku Hiva, criticizing Gauguin for encouraging natives to withdraw their children from school as well as encouraging settlers to withhold payment of their taxes. As luck would have it, the post of administrator had recently been filled by François Picquenot, an old friend of Gauguin's from Tahiti and essentially sympathetic to him. Picquenot advised Charpillet not to take any action over the schools issue, since Gauguin had the law on his side, but authorised Charpillet to seize goods from Gauguin in lieu of payment of taxes if all else failed. Possibly prompted by loneliness, and at times unable to paint, Gauguin took to writing.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In 1901, the manuscript of "Noa Noa" that Gauguin had prepared along with woodcuts during his interlude in France was finally published with Morice's poems in book form in the "La Plume" edition (the manuscript itself is now lodged in the Louvre museum). Sections of it (including his account of Teha'amana) had previously been published without woodcuts in 1897 in "La Revue Blanche", while he himself had published extracts in "Les Guêpes" while he was editor. The "La Plume" edition was planned to include his woodcuts, but he withheld permission to print them on smooth paper as the publishers wished. In truth he had grown uninterested in the venture with Morice and never saw a copy, declining an offer of one hundred complimentary copies. Nevertheless, its publication inspired him to consider writing other books. At the beginning of the year (1902), he had revised an old 1896–97 manuscript, "L'Esprit Moderne et le Catholicisme" ("The Modern Spirit and Catholicism"), on the Roman Catholic Church, adding some twenty pages containing insights gleaned from his dealings with Bishop Martin. He sent this text to Bishop Martin, who responded by sending him an illustrated history of the Church. Gauguin returned the book with critical remarks he later published in his autobiographical reminisces. He next prepared a witty and well-documented essay, "Racontars de Rapin" ("Tales of a Dabbler") on critics and art criticism, which he sent for publication to André Fontainas, art critic at the "Mercure de France" whose favourable review of "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" had done much to restore his reputation. Fontainas, however, replied that he dared not publish it. It was not subsequently published until 1951.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: On 27 May that year, the steamer service, "Croix du Sud," was shipwrecked off the Apataki atoll, and for a period of three months the island was left without mail or supplies. When mail service resumed, Gauguin penned an angry attack on Governor Petit in an open letter, complaining amongst other things about the way they had been abandoned following the shipwreck. The letter was published by "L'Indepéndant", the successor newspaper to "Les Guêpes", that November in Papeete. Petit had in fact followed an independent and pro-native policy, to the disappointment of the Roman Catholic Party, and the newspaper was preparing an attack on him. Gauguin also sent the letter to the "Mercure de France", which published a redacted version of it after his death. He followed this with a private letter to the head of the "gendarmerie" in Papeete, complaining about his own local gendarme Charpillet's excesses in making prisoners labor for him. Danielsson notes that, while these and similar complaints were well-founded, the motivation for them all was wounded vanity and simple animosity. As it happened, the relatively supportive Charpillet was replaced that December by another gendarme, Jean-Paul Claverie, from Tahiti, much less well disposed to Gauguin and who in fact had fined him in his earliest Mataiea days for public indecency, having caught him bathing naked in a local stream following complaints from the missionaries there.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: His health further deteriorated in December to the extent that he was scarcely able to paint. He began an autobiographical memoir he called "Avant et après (Before and After)" (published in translation in the US as "Intimate Journals"), which he completed over the next two months. The title was supposed to reflect his experiences before and after coming to Tahiti and as tribute to his own grandmother's unpublished memoir "Past and Future". His memoir proved to be a fragmented collection of observations about life in Polynesia, his own life, and comments on literature and paintings. He included in it attacks on subjects as diverse as the local "gendarmerie", Bishop Martin, his wife Mette and the Danes in general, and concluded with a description of his personal philosophy conceiving life as an existential struggle to reconcile opposing binaries. Mathews notes two closing remarks as a distillation of his philosophy: He sent the manuscript to Fontainas for editing, but the rights reverted to Mette after Gauguin's death, and it was not published until 1918 (in a facsimile edition); the American translation appearing in 1921.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: At the beginning of 1903, Gauguin engaged in a campaign designed to expose the incompetence of the island's gendarmes, in particular Jean-Paul Claverie, for taking the side of the natives directly in a case involving the alleged drunkenness of a group of them. Claverie, however, escaped censure. At the beginning of February, Gauguin wrote to the administrator, François Picquenot, alleging corruption by one of Claverie's subordinates. Picquenot investigated the allegations but could not substantiate them. Claverie responded by filing a charge against Gauguin of libeling a gendarme. He was subsequently fined 500 francs and sentenced to three months' imprisonment by the local magistrate on 27 March 1903. Gauguin immediately filed an appeal in Papeete and set about raising the funds to travel to Papeete to hear his appeal.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: At this time Gauguin was very weak and in great pain and resorted once again to using morphine. He died suddenly on the morning of 8 May 1903.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Earlier, he had sent for his pastor, Paul Vernier, complaining of fainting fits. They had chatted together, and Vernier had left, believing him in a stable condition. However, Gauguin's neighbour, Tioka, found him dead at 11 o'clock, confirming the fact in the traditional Marquesan way by chewing his head in an attempt to revive him. By his bedside was an empty bottle of laudanum, which has given rise to speculation that he was the victim of an overdose. Vernier believed he died of a heart attack.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin was buried in the Catholic Calvary Cemetery (Cimetière Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva 'Oa, at 2 p.m. the next day. In 1973, a bronze cast of his "Oviri" figure was placed on his grave, as he had indicated was his wish. Ironically, his nearest neighbor in the cemetery is Bishop Martin, his grave surmounted by a large white cross. Vernier wrote an account of Gauguin's last days and burial, reproduced in O'Brien's edition of Gauguin's letters to Monfreid.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Word of Gauguin's death did not reach France (to Monfreid) until 23 August 1903. In the absence of a will, his less valuable effects were auctioned in Atuona while his letters, manuscripts, and paintings were auctioned in Papeete on 5 September 1903. Mathews notes that this speedy dispersal of his effects led to the loss of much valuable information about his later years. Thomson notes that the auction inventory of his effects (some of which were burned as pornography) revealed a life that was not as impoverished or primitive as he had liked to maintain. Mette Gauguin in due course received the proceeds of the auction, some 4,000 francs. One of the paintings auctioned in Papeete was "Maternité II", a smaller version of "Maternité I" in the Hermitage Museum. The original was painted at the time his then "vahine," Pau'ura, in Puna'auia, gave birth to their son Emile. It is not known why he painted the smaller copy. It was sold for 150 francs to a French naval officer, Commandant Cochin, who said that Governor Petit himself had bid up to 135 francs for the painting. It was sold at Sotheby's for US$39,208,000 in 2004.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: The Paul Gauguin Cultural Center at Atuona has a reconstruction of the "Maison du Jouir". The original house stood empty for a few years, the door still carrying Gauguin's carved lintel. This was eventually recovered, four of the five pieces held at the Musée D'Orsay and the fifth at the Paul Gauguin Museum in Tahiti.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In 2014, forensic examination of four teeth found in a glass jar in a well near Gauguin's house threw into question the conventional belief that Gauguin had suffered from syphilis. DNA examination established that the teeth were almost certainly Gauguin's, but no traces were found of the mercury that was used to treat syphilis at the time, suggesting either that Gauguin did not suffer from syphilis or that he was not being treated for it. In 2007, four rotten molars, which may have been Gauguin's, were found by archaeologists at the bottom of a well that he built on the island of Hiva Oa, on the Marquese Islands.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin outlived three of his children; his favorite daughter Aline died of pneumonia, his son Clovis died of a blood infection following a hip operation, and a daughter, whose birth was portrayed in Gauguin's painting of 1896 "Te tamari no atua", the child of Gauguin's young Tahitian mistress, Pau'ura, died only a few days after her birth on Christmas Day 1896. His son, Émile Gauguin, worked as a construction engineer in the U.S. and is buried in Lemon Bay Historical Cemetery, in Florida. Another son, Jean René, became a well-known sculptor and a staunch socialist. He died on 21 April 1961 in Copenhagen. Pola (Paul Rollon) became an artist and art critic and wrote a memoir, "My Father, Paul Gauguin" (1937). Gauguin had several other children by his mistresses: Germaine (born 1891) with Juliette Huais (1866–1955); Émile Marae a Tai (born 1899) with Pau'ura; and a daughter (born 1902) with Vaeoho (Marie-Rose). There is some speculation that the Belgian artist, Germaine Chardon, was Gauguin's daughter. Emile Marae a Tai, illiterate and raised in Tahiti by Pau'ura, was brought to Chicago in 1963 by the French journalist Josette Giraud and was an artist in his own right, his descendants still living in Tahiti as of 2001.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Primitivism was an art movement of late 19th-century painting and sculpture, characterized by exaggerated body proportions, animal totems, geometric designs, and stark contrasts. The first artist to systematically use these effects and achieve broad public success was Paul Gauguin. The European cultural elite, discovering the art of Africa, Micronesia, and Native Americans for the first time, were fascinated, intrigued, and educated by the newness, wildness, and the stark power embodied in the art of those faraway places. Like Pablo Picasso in the early days of the 20th century, Gauguin was inspired and motivated by the raw power and simplicity of the so-called Primitive Art of those foreign cultures.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin is also considered a Post-Impressionist painter. His bold, colourful, and design oriented paintings significantly influenced Modern art. Artists and movements in the early 20th century inspired by him include Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, André Derain, Fauvism, Cubism, and Orphism, among others. Later, he influenced Arthur Frank Mathews and the American Arts and Crafts movement.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: John Rewald, recognized as a foremost authority on late 19th-century art, wrote a series of books about the Post-Impressionist period, including "Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin" (1956) and an essay, "Paul Gauguin: Letters to Ambroise Vollard and André Fontainas" (included in Rewald's "Studies in Post-Impressionism", 1986), discusses Gauguin's years in Tahiti and the struggles of his survival as seen through correspondence with the art dealer Vollard and others.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin's posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1903, and an even larger one in 1906, had a stunning and powerful influence on the French avant-garde and in particular Pablo Picasso's paintings. In the autumn of 1906, Picasso made paintings of oversized nude women and monumental sculptural figures that recalled the work of Paul Gauguin and showed his interest in primitive art. Picasso's paintings of massive figures from 1906 were directly influenced by Gauguin's sculpture, painting, and his writing as well. The power evoked by Gauguin's work led directly to "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" in 1907.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: According to Gauguin biographer, David Sweetman, Picasso, as early as 1902, became a fan of Gauguin's work when he met and befriended the expatriate Spanish sculptor and ceramist Paco Durrio, in Paris. Durrio had several of Gauguin's works on hand because he was a friend of Gauguin's and an unpaid agent of his work. Durrio tried to help his poverty-stricken friend in Tahiti by promoting his oeuvre in Paris. After they met, Durrio introduced Picasso to Gauguin's stoneware, helped Picasso make some ceramic pieces, and gave Picasso a first "La Plume" edition of "Noa Noa: The Tahiti Journal of Paul Gauguin." In addition to seeing Gauguin's work at Durrio's, Picasso also saw the work at Ambroise Vollard's gallery where both he and Gauguin were represented.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Concerning Gauguin's impact on Picasso, John Richardson wrote: The 1906 exhibition of Gauguin's work left Picasso more than ever in this artist's thrall. Gauguin demonstrated the most disparate types of art—not to speak of elements from metaphysics, ethnology, symbolism, the Bible, classical myths, and much else besides—could be combined into a synthesis that was of its time yet timeless. An artist could also confound conventional notions of beauty, he demonstrated, by harnessing his demons to the dark gods (not necessarily Tahitian ones) and tapping a new source of divine energy. If in later years Picasso played down his debt to Gauguin, there is no doubt that between 1905 and 1907 he felt a very close kinship with this other Paul, who prided himself on Spanish genes inherited from his Peruvian grandmother. Had not Picasso signed himself 'Paul' in Gauguin's honor.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Both David Sweetman and John Richardson point to the Gauguin sculpture called "Oviri" (literally meaning 'savage'), the gruesome phallic figure of the Tahitian goddess of life and death that was intended for Gauguin's grave, exhibited in the 1906 retrospective exhibition that even more directly led to "Les Demoiselles." Sweetman writes, "Gauguin's statue "Oviri," which was prominently displayed in 1906, was to stimulate Picasso's interest in both sculpture and ceramics, while the woodcuts would reinforce his interest in print-making, though it was the element of the primitive in all of them which most conditioned the direction that Picasso's art would take. This interest would culminate in the seminal "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon"."


title: Paul Gauguin

text: According to Richardson, Picasso's interest in stoneware was further stimulated by the examples he saw at the 1906 Gauguin retrospective at the Salon d'Automne. The most disturbing of those ceramics (one that Picasso might have already seen at Vollard's) was the gruesome "Oviri." Until 1987, when the Musée d'Orsay acquired this little-known work (exhibited only once since 1906) it had never been recognized as the masterpiece it is, let alone recognized for its relevance to the works leading up to the "Demoiselles." Although just under 30 inches high, "Oviri" has an awesome presence, as befits a monument intended for Gauguin's grave. Picasso was very struck by "Oviri." 50 years later he was delighted when [Douglas] Cooper and I told him that we had come upon this sculpture in a collection that also included the original plaster of his cubist head. Has it been a revelation, like Iberian sculpture? Picasso's shrug was grudgingly affirmative. He was always loath to admit Gauguin's role in setting him on the road to Primitivism.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin's initial artistic guidance was from Pissarro, but the relationship left more of a mark personally than stylistically. Gauguin's masters were Giotto, Raphael, Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, Manet, Degas, and Cézanne. His own beliefs, and in some cases the psychology behind his work, were also influenced by philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and poet Stéphane Mallarmé.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin, like some of his contemporaries such as Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, employed a technique for painting on canvas known as "peinture à l'essence". For this, the oil (binder) is drained from the paint and the remaining sludge of pigment is mixed with turpentine. He may have used a similar technique in preparing his monotypes, using paper instead of metal, as it would absorb oil giving the final images a matte appearance he desired. He also proofed some of his existing drawings with the aid of glass, copying an underneath image onto the glass surface with watercolour or gouache for printing. Gauguin's woodcuts were no less innovative, even to the avant-garde artists responsible for the woodcut revival happening at that time. Instead of incising his blocks with the intent of making a detailed illustration, Gauguin initially chiseled his blocks in a manner similar to wood sculpture, followed by finer tools to create detail and tonality within his bold contours. Many of his tools and techniques were considered experimental. This methodology and use of space ran parallel to his painting of flat, decorative reliefs.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Starting in Martinique, Gauguin began using analogous colours in close proximity to achieve a muted effect. Shortly after this, he also made his breakthroughs in non-representational colour, creating canvases that had an independent existence and vitality all their own. This gap between surface reality and himself displeased Pissarro and quickly led to the end of their relationship. His human figures at this time are also a reminder of his love affair with Japanese prints, particularly gravitating to the naivety of their figures and compositional austerity as an influence on his primitive manifesto. For that very reason, Gauguin was also inspired by folk art. He sought out a bare emotional purity of his subjects conveyed in a straightforward way, emphasizing major forms and upright lines to clearly define shape and contour. Gauguin also used elaborate formal decoration and colouring in patterns of abstraction, attempting to harmonize man and nature. His depictions of the natives in their natural environment are frequently evident of serenity and a self-contained sustainability. This complimented one of Gauguin's favorite themes, which was the intrusion of the supernatural into day-to-day life, in one instance going so far as to recall ancient Egyptian tomb reliefs with "Her Name is Vairaumati" and "Ta Matete".


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In an interview with L'Écho de Paris published on 15 March 1895, Gauguin explains that his developing tactical approach is reaching for synesthesia. He states:


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In an 1888 letter to Schuffenecker, Gauguin explains the enormous step he had taken away from Impressionism and that he was now intent on capturing the soul of nature, the ancient truths and character of its scenery and inhabitants. Gauguin wrote:


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin began making prints in 1889, highlighted by a series of zincographs commissioned by Theo van Gogh known as the "Volpini Suite", which also appeared in the Cafe des Arts show of 1889. Gauguin was not hindered by his printing inexperience, and made a number of provocative and unorthodox choices, such as a zinc plate instead of limestone (lithography), wide margins and large sheets of yellow poster paper. The result was vivid to the point of garish, but foreshadows his more elaborate experiments with colour printing and intent to elevate monochromatic images. His first masterpieces of printing were from the "Noa Noa Suite" of 1893–94 where he was one of a number of artists reinventing the technique of the woodcut, bringing it into the modern era. He started the series shortly after returning from Tahiti, eager to reclaim a leadership position within the avant-garde and share pictures based on his French Polynesia excursion. These woodcuts were shown at his unsuccessful 1893 show at Paul Durand-Ruel's, and most were directly related to paintings of his in which he had revised the original composition. They were shown again at a small show in his studio in 1894, where he garnered rare critical praise for his exceptional painterly and sculptural effects. Gauguin's emerging preference for the woodcut was not only a natural extension of his wood reliefs and sculpture, but may have also been provoked by its historical significance to medieval artisans and the Japanese.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: Gauguin started making watercolour monotypes in 1894, likely overlapping his "Noa Noa" woodcuts, perhaps even serving as a source of inspiration for them. His techniques remained innovative and it was an apt technique for him as it didn't require elaborate equipment, such as a printing press. Despite often being a source of practice for related paintings, sculptures or woodcuts, his monotype innovation offers a distinctly ethereal aesthetic; ghostly afterimages that may express his desire to convey the immemorial truths of nature. His next major woodcut and monotype project was not until 1898–99, known as the "Vollard Suite". He completed this enterprising series of 475 prints from some twenty different compositions and sent them to the dealer Ambroise Vollard, despite not compromising to his request for salable, conformed work. Vollard was unsatisfied and made no effort to sell them. Gauguin's series is starkly unified with black and white aesthetic and may have intended the prints to be similar to a set of myriorama cards, in which they may be laid out in any order to create multiple panoramic landscapes. This activity of arranging and rearranging was similar to his own process of repurposing his images and motifs, as well as a symbolism tendency. He printed the work on tissue-thin Japanese paper and the multiple proofs of gray and black could be arranged on top of one another, each transparency of colour showing through to produce a rich, chiaroscuro effect.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In 1899 he started his radical experiment: oil transfer drawings. Much like his watercolour monotype technique, it was a hybrid of drawing and printmaking. The transfers were the grand culmination of his quest for an aesthetic of primordial suggestion, which seems to be relayed in his results that echo ancient rubbings, worn frescos and cave paintings. Gauguin's technical progress from monotyping to the oil transfers is quite noticeable, advancing from small sketches to ambitiously large, highly finished sheets. With these transfers he created depth and texture by printing multiple layers onto the same sheet, beginning with graphite pencil and black ink for delineation, before moving to blue crayon to reinforce line and add shading. He would often complete the image with a wash of oiled-down olive or brown ink. The practice consumed Gauguin until his death, fueling his imagination and conception of new subjects and themes for his paintings. This collection was also sent to Vollard who remained unimpressed. Gauguin prized oil transfers for the way they transformed the quality of drawn line. His process, nearly alchemical in nature, had elements of chance by which unexpected marks and textures regularly arose, something that fascinated him. In metamorphosing a drawing into a print, Gauguin made a calculated decision of relinquishing legibility in order to gain mystery and abstraction.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: He worked in wood throughout his career, particularly during his most prolific periods, and is known for having achieved radical carving results before doing so with painting. Even in his earliest shows, Gauguin often included wood sculpture in his display, from which he built his reputation as a connoisseur of the so-called primitive. A number of his early carvings appear to be influenced by Gothic and Egyptian art. In correspondence, he also asserts a passion for Cambodian art and the masterful colouring of Persian carpet and Oriental rug.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: The vogue for Gauguin's work started soon after his death. Many of his later paintings were acquired by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin. A substantial part of his collection is displayed in the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage. Gauguin paintings are rarely offered for sale, their prices reaching tens of millions of US dollars in the saleroom when they are offered. His 1892 "Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?)" became the world's third-most expensive artwork when its owner, the family of Rudolf Staechelin, sold it privately for US$210 million in September 2014. The buyer is believed to be the Qatar Museums.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: The Japanese styled Gauguin Museum, opposite the Botanical Gardens of Papeari in Papeari, Tahiti, contains some exhibits, documents, photographs, reproductions and original sketches and block prints of Gauguin and Tahitians. In 2003, the Paul Gauguin Cultural Center opened in Atuona in the Marquesas Islands.


title: Paul Gauguin

text: In 2014 the painting "Fruits on a Table" (1889), with an estimated value of between €10m and €30m (£8.3m to £24.8m), which had been stolen in London in 1970, was discovered in Italy. The painting, together with a work by Pierre Bonnard, had been bought by a Fiat employee in 1975, at a railway lost property sale, for 45,000 lira (about £32).


title: Antimatter

text: In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or "partners") of the corresponding particles in "ordinary" matter. Antimatter occurs in natural processes like cosmic ray collisions and some types of radioactive decay, but only a tiny fraction of these have successfully been bound together in experiments to form antiatoms. Minuscule numbers of antiparticles can be generated at particle accelerators; however, total artificial production has been only a few nanograms. No macroscopic amount of antimatter has ever been assembled due to the extreme cost and difficulty of production and handling.


title: Antimatter

text: Theoretically, a particle and its antiparticle (for example, a proton and an antiproton) have the same mass, but opposite electric charge, and other differences in quantum numbers.


title: Antimatter

text: A collision between any particle and its anti-particle partner leads to their mutual annihilation, giving rise to various proportions of intense photons (gamma rays), neutrinos, and sometimes less-massive particleantiparticle pairs. The majority of the total energy of annihilation emerges in the form of ionizing radiation. If surrounding matter is present, the energy content of this radiation will be absorbed and converted into other forms of energy, such as heat or light. The amount of energy released is usually proportional to the total mass of the collided matter and antimatter, in accordance with the notable mass–energy equivalence equation, .


title: Antimatter

text: Antiparticles bind with each other to form antimatter, just as ordinary particles bind to form normal matter. For example, a positron (the antiparticle of the electron) and an antiproton (the antiparticle of the proton) can form an antihydrogen atom. The nuclei of antihelium have been artificially produced, albeit with difficulty, and are the most complex anti-nuclei so far observed. Physical principles indicate that complex antimatter atomic nuclei are possible, as well as anti-atoms corresponding to the known chemical elements.


title: Antimatter

text: There is strong evidence that the observable universe is composed almost entirely of ordinary matter, as opposed to an equal mixture of matter and antimatter. This asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the great unsolved problems in physics. The process by which this inequality between matter and antimatter particles developed is called baryogenesis.


title: Antimatter

text: Antimatter particles carry the same charge as matter particles, but of opposite sign. That is, an antiproton is negatively charged and an antielectron (positron) is positively charged. Neutrons do not carry a net charge, but their constituent quarks do. Protons and neutrons have a baryon number of +1, while antiprotons and antineutrons have a baryon number of –1. Similarly, electrons have a lepton number of +1, while that of positrons is –1. When a particle and its corresponding antiparticle collide, they are both converted into energy.


title: Antimatter

text: The French term "contra-terrene" led to the initialism "C.T." and the science fiction term "seetee", as used in such novels as "Seetee Ship".


title: Antimatter

text: The idea of negative matter appears in past theories of matter that have now been abandoned. Using the once popular vortex theory of gravity, the possibility of matter with negative gravity was discussed by William Hicks in the 1880s. Between the 1880s and the 1890s, Karl Pearson proposed the existence of "squirts" and sinks of the flow of aether. The squirts represented normal matter and the sinks represented negative matter. Pearson's theory required a fourth dimension for the aether to flow from and into.


title: Antimatter

text: The term antimatter was first used by Arthur Schuster in two rather whimsical letters to "Nature" in 1898, in which he coined the term. He hypothesized antiatoms, as well as whole antimatter solar systems, and discussed the possibility of matter and antimatter annihilating each other. Schuster's ideas were not a serious theoretical proposal, merely speculation, and like the previous ideas, differed from the modern concept of antimatter in that it possessed negative gravity.


title: Antimatter

text: The modern theory of antimatter began in 1928, with a paper by Paul Dirac. Dirac realised that his relativistic version of the Schrödinger wave equation for electrons predicted the possibility of antielectrons. These were discovered by Carl D. Anderson in 1932 and named positrons from "positive electron". Although Dirac did not himself use the term antimatter, its use follows on naturally enough from antielectrons, antiprotons, etc. A complete periodic table of antimatter was envisaged by Charles Janet in 1929.


title: Antimatter

text: The Feynman–Stueckelberg interpretation states that antimatter and antiparticles are regular particles traveling backward in time.


title: Antimatter

text: One way to denote an antiparticle is by adding a bar over the particle's symbol. For example, the proton and antiproton are denoted as and , respectively. The same rule applies if one were to address a particle by its constituent components. A proton is made up of quarks, so an antiproton must therefore be formed from antiquarks. Another convention is to distinguish particles by positive and negative electric charge. Thus, the electron and positron are denoted simply as and respectively. To prevent confusion, however, the two conventions are never mixed.


title: Antimatter

text: Theorized anti-gravitational properties of antimatter are currently being tested at the AEGIS and ALPHA-g experiments at CERN. Antimatter coming in contact with matter will annihilate both while leaving behind pure energy. Research is needed to study the possible gravitational effects between matter and antimatter, and between antimatter and antimatter. However research is difficult considering when the two meet they annihilate, along with the current difficulties of capturing and containing antimatter.


title: Antimatter

text: There are compelling theoretical reasons to believe that, aside from the fact that antiparticles have different signs on all charges (such as electric and baryon charges), matter and antimatter have exactly the same properties. This means a particle and its corresponding antiparticle must have identical masses and decay lifetimes (if unstable). It also implies that, for example, a star made up of antimatter (an "antistar") will shine just like an ordinary star. This idea was tested experimentally in 2016 by the ALPHA experiment, which measured the transition between the two lowest energy states of antihydrogen. The results, which are identical to that of hydrogen, confirmed the validity of quantum mechanics for antimatter.


title: Antimatter

text: Most matter observable from the Earth seems to be made of matter rather than antimatter. If antimatter-dominated regions of space existed, the gamma rays produced in annihilation reactions along the boundary between matter and antimatter regions would be detectable.


title: Antimatter

text: Antiparticles are created everywhere in the universe where high-energy particle collisions take place. High-energy cosmic rays striking Earth's atmosphere (or any other matter in the Solar System) produce minute quantities of antiparticles in the resulting particle jets, which are immediately annihilated by contact with nearby matter. They may similarly be produced in regions like the center of the Milky Way and other galaxies, where very energetic celestial events occur (principally the interaction of relativistic jets with the interstellar medium). The presence of the resulting antimatter is detectable by the two gamma rays produced every time positrons annihilate with nearby matter. The frequency and wavelength of the gamma rays indicate that each carries 511 keV of energy (that is, the rest mass of an electron multiplied by "c").


title: Antimatter

text: Observations by the European Space Agency's INTEGRAL satellite may explain the origin of a giant antimatter cloud surrounding the galactic center. The observations show that the cloud is asymmetrical and matches the pattern of X-ray binaries (binary star systems containing black holes or neutron stars), mostly on one side of the galactic center. While the mechanism is not fully understood, it is likely to involve the production of electron–positron pairs, as ordinary matter gains kinetic energy while falling into a stellar remnant.


title: Antimatter

text: Antimatter may exist in relatively large amounts in far-away galaxies due to cosmic inflation in the primordial time of the universe. Antimatter galaxies, if they exist, are expected to have the same chemistry and absorption and emission spectra as normal-matter galaxies, and their astronomical objects would be observationally identical, making them difficult to distinguish. NASA is trying to determine if such galaxies exist by looking for X-ray and gamma ray signatures of annihilation events in colliding superclusters.


title: Antimatter

text: In October 2017, scientists working on the BASE experiment at CERN reported a measurement of the antiproton magnetic moment to a precision of 1.5 parts per billion. It is consistent with the most precise measurement of the proton magnetic moment (also made by BASE in 2014), which supports the hypothesis of CPT symmetry. This measurement represents the first time that a property of antimatter is known more precisely than the equivalent property in matter.


title: Antimatter

text: Antimatter quantum interferometry has been first demonstrated in the L-NESS Laboratory of R. Ferragut in Como (Italy), by a group led by M. Giammarchi.


title: Antimatter

text: Positrons are produced naturally in β decays of naturally occurring radioactive isotopes (for example, potassium-40) and in interactions of gamma quanta (emitted by radioactive nuclei) with matter. Antineutrinos are another kind of antiparticle created by natural radioactivity (β decay). Many different kinds of antiparticles are also produced by (and contained in) cosmic rays. In January 2011, research by the American Astronomical Society discovered antimatter (positrons) originating above thunderstorm clouds; positrons are produced in terrestrial gamma ray flashes created by electrons accelerated by strong electric fields in the clouds. Antiprotons have also been found to exist in the Van Allen Belts around the Earth by the PAMELA module.


title: Antimatter

text: Antiparticles are also produced in any environment with a sufficiently high temperature (mean particle energy greater than the pair production threshold). It is hypothesized that during the period of baryogenesis, when the universe was extremely hot and dense, matter and antimatter were continually produced and annihilated. The presence of remaining matter, and absence of detectable remaining antimatter, is called baryon asymmetry. The exact mechanism that produced this asymmetry during baryogenesis remains an unsolved problem. One of the necessary conditions for this asymmetry is the violation of CP symmetry, which has been experimentally observed in the weak interaction.


title: Antimatter

text: Recent observations indicate black holes and neutron stars produce vast amounts of positron-electron plasma via the jets.


title: Antimatter

text: Satellite experiments have found evidence of positrons and a few antiprotons in primary cosmic rays, amounting to less than 1% of the particles in primary cosmic rays. This antimatter cannot all have been created in the Big Bang, but is instead attributed to have been produced by cyclic processes at high energies. For instance, electron-positron pairs may be formed in pulsars, as a magnetized neutron star rotation cycle shears electron-positron pairs from the star surface. Therein the antimatter forms a wind that crashes upon the ejecta of the progenitor supernovae. This weathering takes place as "the cold, magnetized relativistic wind launched by the star hits the non-relativistically expanding ejecta, a shock wave system forms in the impact: the outer one propagates in the ejecta, while a reverse shock propagates back towards the star." The former ejection of matter in the outer shock wave and the latter production of antimatter in the reverse shock wave are steps in a space weather cycle.


title: Antimatter

text: Preliminary results from the presently operating Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer ("AMS-02") on board the International Space Station show that positrons in the cosmic rays arrive with no directionality, and with energies that range from 10 GeV to 250 GeV. In September, 2014, new results with almost twice as much data were presented in a talk at CERN and published in Physical Review Letters. A new measurement of positron fraction up to 500 GeV was reported, showing that positron fraction peaks at a maximum of about 16% of total electron+positron events, around an energy of 275 ± 32 GeV. At higher energies, up to 500 GeV, the ratio of positrons to electrons begins to fall again. The absolute flux of positrons also begins to fall before 500 GeV, but peaks at energies far higher than electron energies, which peak about 10 GeV. These results on interpretation have been suggested to be due to positron production in annihilation events of massive dark matter particles.


title: Antimatter

text: Cosmic ray antiprotons also have a much higher energy than their normal-matter counterparts (protons). They arrive at Earth with a characteristic energy maximum of 2 GeV, indicating their production in a fundamentally different process from cosmic ray protons, which on average have only one-sixth of the energy.


title: Antimatter

text: There is an ongoing search for larger antimatter nuclei, such as antihelium nuclei (that is, anti-alpha particles), in cosmic rays. The detection of natural antihelium could imply the existence of large antimatter structures such as an antistar. A prototype of the "AMS-02" designated "AMS-01", was flown into space aboard the on STS-91 in June 1998. By not detecting any antihelium at all, the "AMS-01" established an upper limit of 1.1×10 for the antihelium to helium flux ratio. AMS-02 revealed in December 2016 that it had discovered a few signals consistent with antihelium nuclei amidst several billion helium nuclei. The result remains to be verified, and the team is currently trying to rule out contamination.


title: Antimatter

text: Positrons were reported in November 2008 to have been generated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in larger numbers than by any previous synthetic process. A laser drove electrons through a gold target's nuclei, which caused the incoming electrons to emit energy quanta that decayed into both matter and antimatter. Positrons were detected at a higher rate and in greater density than ever previously detected in a laboratory. Previous experiments made smaller quantities of positrons using lasers and paper-thin targets; newer simulations showed that short bursts of ultra-intense lasers and millimeter-thick gold are a far more effective source.


title: Antimatter

text: The existence of the antiproton was experimentally confirmed in 1955 by University of California, Berkeley physicists Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain, for which they were awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics. An antiproton consists of two up antiquarks and one down antiquark (). The properties of the antiproton that have been measured all match the corresponding properties of the proton, with the exception of the antiproton having opposite electric charge and magnetic moment from the proton. Shortly afterwards, in 1956, the antineutron was discovered in proton–proton collisions at the Bevatron (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) by Bruce Cork and colleagues.


title: Antimatter

text: In addition to antibaryons, anti-nuclei consisting of multiple bound antiprotons and antineutrons have been created. These are typically produced at energies far too high to form antimatter atoms (with bound positrons in place of electrons). In 1965, a group of researchers led by Antonino Zichichi reported production of nuclei of antideuterium at the Proton Synchrotron at CERN. At roughly the same time, observations of antideuterium nuclei were reported by a group of American physicists at the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory.


title: Antimatter

text: In 1995, CERN announced that it had successfully brought into existence nine hot antihydrogen atoms by implementing the SLAC/Fermilab concept during the PS210 experiment. The experiment was performed using the Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR), and was led by Walter Oelert and Mario Macri. Fermilab soon confirmed the CERN findings by producing approximately 100 antihydrogen atoms at their facilities. The antihydrogen atoms created during PS210 and subsequent experiments (at both CERN and Fermilab) were extremely energetic and were not well suited to study. To resolve this hurdle, and to gain a better understanding of antihydrogen, two collaborations were formed in the late 1990s, namely, ATHENA and ATRAP.


title: Antimatter

text: In 1999, CERN activated the Antiproton Decelerator, a device capable of decelerating antiprotons from to  – still too "hot" to produce study-effective antihydrogen, but a huge leap forward. In late 2002 the ATHENA project announced that they had created the world's first "cold" antihydrogen. The ATRAP project released similar results very shortly thereafter. The antiprotons used in these experiments were cooled by decelerating them with the Antiproton Decelerator, passing them through a thin sheet of foil, and finally capturing them in a Penning–Malmberg trap. The overall cooling process is workable, but highly inefficient; approximately 25 million antiprotons leave the Antiproton Decelerator and roughly 25,000 make it to the Penning–Malmberg trap, which is about or 0.1% of the original amount.


title: Antimatter

text: The antiprotons are still hot when initially trapped. To cool them further, they are mixed into an electron plasma. The electrons in this plasma cool via cyclotron radiation, and then sympathetically cool the antiprotons via Coulomb collisions. Eventually, the electrons are removed by the application of short-duration electric fields, leaving the antiprotons with energies less than . While the antiprotons are being cooled in the first trap, a small cloud of positrons is captured from radioactive sodium in a Surko-style positron accumulator. This cloud is then recaptured in a second trap near the antiprotons. Manipulations of the trap electrodes then tip the antiprotons into the positron plasma, where some combine with antiprotons to form antihydrogen. This neutral antihydrogen is unaffected by the electric and magnetic fields used to trap the charged positrons and antiprotons, and within a few microseconds the antihydrogen hits the trap walls, where it annihilates. Some hundreds of millions of antihydrogen atoms have been made in this fashion.


title: Antimatter

text: In 2005, ATHENA disbanded and some of the former members (along with others) formed the ALPHA Collaboration, which is also based at CERN. The ultimate goal of this endeavour is to test CPT symmetry through comparison of the atomic spectra of hydrogen and antihydrogen (see hydrogen spectral series).


title: Antimatter

text: Most of the sought-after high-precision tests of the properties of antihydrogen could only be performed if the antihydrogen were trapped, that is, held in place for a relatively long time. While antihydrogen atoms are electrically neutral, the spins of their component particles produce a magnetic moment. These magnetic moments can interact with an inhomogeneous magnetic field; some of the antihydrogen atoms can be attracted to a magnetic minimum. Such a minimum can be created by a combination of mirror and multipole fields. Antihydrogen can be trapped in such a magnetic minimum (minimum-B) trap; in November 2010, the ALPHA collaboration announced that they had so trapped 38 antihydrogen atoms for about a sixth of a second. This was the first time that neutral antimatter had been trapped.


title: Antimatter

text: On 26 April 2011, ALPHA announced that they had trapped 309 antihydrogen atoms, some for as long as 1,000 seconds (about 17 minutes). This was longer than neutral antimatter had ever been trapped before. ALPHA has used these trapped atoms to initiate research into the spectral properties of the antihydrogen.


title: Antimatter

text: In 2016, a new antiproton decelerator and cooler called ELENA (Extra Low ENergy Antiproton decelerator) was built. It takes the antiprotons from the antiproton decelerator and cools them to 90 keV, which is "cold" enough to study. This machine works by using high energy and accelerating the particles within the chamber. More than one hundred antiprotons can be captured per second, a huge improvement, but it would still take several thousand years to make a nanogram of antimatter.


title: Antimatter

text: The biggest limiting factor in the large-scale production of antimatter is the availability of antiprotons. Recent data released by CERN states that, when fully operational, their facilities are capable of producing ten million antiprotons per minute. Assuming a 100% conversion of antiprotons to antihydrogen, it would take 100 billion years to produce 1 gram or 1 mole of antihydrogen (approximately atoms of anti-hydrogen). However, CERN only produces 1% of the anti-matter Fermilab does, and neither are designed to produce anti-matter. According to Gerald Jackson, using technology already in use today we are capable of producing and capturing 20 grams of anti-matter particles per year at a yearly cost of 670 million dollars per facility.


title: Antimatter

text: Antihelium-3 nuclei () were first observed in the 1970s in proton–nucleus collision experiments at the Institute for High Energy Physics by Y. Prockoshkin's group (Protvino near Moscow, USSR) and later created in nucleus–nucleus collision experiments. Nucleus–nucleus collisions produce antinuclei through the coalescence of antiprotons and antineutrons created in these reactions. In 2011, the STAR detector reported the observation of artificially created antihelium-4 nuclei (anti-alpha particles) () from such collisions.


title: Antimatter

text: The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station has, as of 2021, recorded eight events that seem to indicate the detection of antihelium-3.


title: Antimatter

text: Antimatter cannot be stored in a container made of ordinary matter because antimatter reacts with any matter it touches, annihilating itself and an equal amount of the container. Antimatter in the form of charged particles can be contained by a combination of electric and magnetic fields, in a device called a Penning trap. This device cannot, however, contain antimatter that consists of uncharged particles, for which atomic traps are used. In particular, such a trap may use the dipole moment (electric or magnetic) of the trapped particles. At high vacuum, the matter or antimatter particles can be trapped and cooled with slightly off-resonant laser radiation using a magneto-optical trap or magnetic trap. Small particles can also be suspended with optical tweezers, using a highly focused laser beam.


title: Antimatter

text: In 2011, CERN scientists were able to preserve antihydrogen for approximately 17 minutes. The record for storing antiparticles is currently held by the TRAP experiment at CERN: antiprotons were kept in a Penning trap for 405 days. A proposal was made in 2018 to develop containment technology advanced enough to contain a billion anti-protons in a portable device to be driven to another lab for further experimentation.


title: Antimatter

text: Scientists claim that antimatter is the costliest material to make. In 2006, Gerald Smith estimated $250 million could produce 10 milligrams of positrons (equivalent to $25 billion per gram); in 1999, NASA gave a figure of $62.5 trillion per gram of antihydrogen. This is because production is difficult (only very few antiprotons are produced in reactions in particle accelerators) and because there is higher demand for other uses of particle accelerators. According to CERN, it has cost a few hundred million Swiss francs to produce about 1 billionth of a gram (the amount used so far for particle/antiparticle collisions). In comparison, to produce the first atomic weapon, the cost of the Manhattan Project was estimated at $23 billion with inflation during 2007.


title: Antimatter

text: Several studies funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts are exploring whether it might be possible to use magnetic scoops to collect the antimatter that occurs naturally in the Van Allen belt of the Earth, and ultimately, the belts of gas giants, like Jupiter, hopefully at a lower cost per gram.


title: Antimatter

text: Matter–antimatter reactions have practical applications in medical imaging, such as positron emission tomography (PET). In positive beta decay, a nuclide loses surplus positive charge by emitting a positron (in the same event, a proton becomes a neutron, and a neutrino is also emitted). Nuclides with surplus positive charge are easily made in a cyclotron and are widely generated for medical use. Antiprotons have also been shown within laboratory experiments to have the potential to treat certain cancers, in a similar method currently used for ion (proton) therapy.


title: Antimatter

text: Isolated and stored antimatter could be used as a fuel for interplanetary or interstellar travel as part of an antimatter-catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion or another antimatter rocket. Since the energy density of antimatter is higher than that of conventional fuels, an antimatter-fueled spacecraft would have a higher thrust-to-weight ratio than a conventional spacecraft.


title: Antimatter

text: If matter–antimatter collisions resulted only in photon emission, the entire rest mass of the particles would be converted to kinetic energy. The energy per unit mass () is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energies, and about 3 orders of magnitude greater than the nuclear potential energy that can be liberated, today, using nuclear fission (about per fission reaction or ), and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible results expected from fusion (about for the proton–proton chain). The reaction of of antimatter with of matter would produce (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass–energy equivalence formula, ), or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT – slightly less than the yield of the 27,000 kg Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated.


title: Antimatter

text: Not all of that energy can be utilized by any realistic propulsion technology because of the nature of the annihilation products. While electron–positron reactions result in gamma ray photons, these are difficult to direct and use for thrust. In reactions between protons and antiprotons, their energy is converted largely into relativistic neutral and charged pions. The neutral pions decay almost immediately (with a lifetime of 85 attoseconds) into high-energy photons, but the charged pions decay more slowly (with a lifetime of 26 nanoseconds) and can be deflected magnetically to produce thrust.


title: Antimatter

text: Charged pions ultimately decay into a combination of neutrinos (carrying about 22% of the energy of the charged pions) and unstable charged muons (carrying about 78% of the charged pion energy), with the muons then decaying into a combination of electrons, positrons and neutrinos (cf. muon decay; the neutrinos from this decay carry about 2/3 of the energy of the muons, meaning that from the original charged pions, the total fraction of their energy converted to neutrinos by one route or another would be about ).


title: Antimatter

text: Antimatter has been considered as a trigger mechanism for nuclear weapons. A major obstacle is the difficulty of producing antimatter in large enough quantities, and there is no evidence that it will ever be feasible. Nonetheless, the U.S. Air Force funded studies of the physics of antimatter in the Cold War, and began considering its possible use in weapons, not just as a trigger, but as the explosive itself.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Sleepless in Seattle is a 1993 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Nora Ephron, from a screenplay she wrote with David S. Ward and Jeff Arch. Starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, the film follows a journalist (Ryan) who, despite being newly engaged, becomes enamored with a recently widowed architect (Hanks), when the latter's son calls in to a talk radio program requesting a new partner for his grieving father. In addition to Bill Pullman, Ross Malinger, and Rob Reiner, the film features an ensemble supporting cast also consisting of Rosie O'Donnell, Gaby Hoffman, Victor Garber, Rita Wilson, Barbara Garrick, and Carey Lowell.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Inspired by the romance film "An Affair to Remember" (1957), "Sleepless in Seattle" was conceived as a romantic drama by Arch in 1989. Several studios rejected his script, deterred by the idea that its main couple does not meet for nearly the entire film. Arch submitted his script to producer Gary Foster in 1990. Foster strongly believed in the film's potential but struggled to get it made by TriStar Pictures for several years, finding its emotional script promising but unsophisticated. Ward and Ephron were among several writers hired to re-write the script into a funnier film, with Ephron eventually being promoted to director once Nick Castle departed over disagreeing with her comedic approach. Although both Hanks and Ryan had been favored for the lead roles from the beginning, several other actors expressed interest in both parts, while Hanks often disagreed with Ephron over his character's material. The film was shot mostly in Seattle during the summer of 1992. Several of its most pivotal scenes were filmed on a former naval base due to the city's lack of sound stages, including a recreation of the Empire State Building's observation deck when the New York skyscraper was not available.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: "Sleepless in Seattle" was released on June 25, 1993, to positive reviews, receiving praise for Ephron's writing and direction, as well as Hanks and Ryan's performances. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards at the 1994 ceremony: Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Song. Despite competition from several blockbusters released around that same summer, the film was a surprise commercial success, earning $17 million during its opening weekend (the highest opening for a romantic comedy at the time), and ultimately grossing over $227 million worldwide. It was one of the highest-grossing films of 1993, and remains one of the most successful romantic comedies in box office history. The soundtrack was also successful, peaking at number one on the "Billboard" 200.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Several critics and media publications agree that "Sleepless in Seattle" is one of the greatest romantic comedy films of all-time. The film is also credited with establishing Ephron as a celebrated romantic comedy filmmaker.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Chicago architect Sam Baldwin loses his wife Maggie to cancer, and he and their eight-year-old son Jonah start a new life in Seattle, but they continue to mourn. A year later on Christmas Eve, Jonah calls in to a radio talk show and persuades a reluctant Sam to go on the air to talk about how much he misses Maggie. Thousands of women from around the country hear the program and are touched by the story and write to Sam.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: One of the listeners is Annie Reed, a "Baltimore Sun" reporter who is engaged to Walter, but feels there is something missing from their relationship. After watching the film "An Affair to Remember", Annie writes a letter suggesting that Sam meet her on top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day. She decides not to mail it, but her friend and editor Becky does it for her and later agrees to send Annie to Seattle.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Sam begins dating a co-worker, Victoria, whom Jonah dislikes. When Jonah reads Annie's letter addressed to both of them, he instinctively feels that she could 'be the one,' (it mentions the Baltimore Orioles), but he fails to convince his father to go to New York on Valentine's Day to meet Annie. At the urging of his friend Jessica, Jonah replies to her, agreeing to the New York meeting.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: While dropping Victoria off at the airport for a flight, Sam sees Annie exiting from her plane and is mesmerized by her, although he has no idea who she is. She later secretly watches Sam and Jonah playing on the beach together. The next day she goes again to Sam's houseboat but when she sees Sam's sister Suzy with him, she mistakenly assumes Suzy is his girlfriend. Sam recognizes Annie from the airport and says "hello" but Annie only responds with "hello" before leaving. After returning to Baltimore, Annie goes to New York to meet Walter for Valentine's Day.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: With Jessica's help, Jonah flies to New York and goes to the Empire State Building to find Annie. When Sam discovers this, he grabs a later flight to follow him, and he finds Jonah on the observation deck. Meanwhile, Annie sees the skyscraper from the Rainbow Room where she is dining with Walter and confesses her doubts to him, amicably ending their engagement. She rushes to the Empire State Building and arrives on the observation deck just moments after the doors to the other elevator close with Sam and Jonah inside.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: The observation deck is empty, but Annie discovers Jonah's backpack. As she pulls out his teddy bear from the bag, Sam and Jonah emerge from the elevator to retrieve it, and the three meet. After Sam and Annie stare at each other in recognition, Sam prepares to leave and offers his hand to Annie. A happy Jonah then enters the elevator together with the two as the doors close.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: In 1989, "Sleepless in Seattle" was conceived by Jeff Arch, a struggling writer and former cinematographer who was working as an English and taekwondo teacher at the time. Recalling that the film was largely conceived out of frustration with his career, Arch had experienced little to no success as a writer prior to "Sleepless in Seattle", conceding he simultaneously had little reason to continue writing and little left to lose. Following the birth of his son, Arch convinced himself to write at least three films in one year, the second of which was "Sleepless in Seattle". The story began as a play about two people falling in love over the telephone without meeting in person. Struggling to develop an original love story, Arch initially found most of the reasons he conceived to keep the couple apart unconvincing. He ultimately decided that, unlike typical romance plots in which the main characters bicker for most of the film after they "meet cute", his couple would not meet until the end of the film, feeling unprecedented confidence that "Sleepless in Seattle" would be successful as long as he "got these people to the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day". The writer drew inspiration from several sources, namely the French film "And Now My Love" (1974), and a "Washington Post" article he had read about women hiring private investigators to uncover information about their romantic partners. Arch recounted that the film's remaining ideas formed organically after looking up into a star-lit sky one evening and assuring himself that "for every star in the sky there's a good idea". Arch was also inspired by motivational speaker Tony Robbins, completing the script in early 1990 shortly after attending one of his seminars.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Despite Arch believing in "Sleepless in Seattle"'s success wholeheartedly, several parties warned him about the unlikelihood of the film being made due to the lack of scenes shared by its lead couple. He pitched the film to at least six studios and executives, all of whom rejected it claiming audiences would not be interested in watching a film whose main couple does not meet. Desperate, Arch's agent Dave Warden submitted the spec script to producer Gary Foster in 1990. Although Foster typically discards new scripts that fail to captivate him within its first 25 pages, he claims to have read past the 25th page of Arch's script unnoticed, only to find he was crying by the last page. Immediately noticing the script's potential, Foster hoped "Sleepless in Seattle" would serve as his breakthrough film as a producer (despite having already produced four films by that point), and submitted the script to TriStar Pictures executive Richard Fischoff, whose studio had produced all of his previous films. At first Fischoff ignored Foster's request to read the script himself instead of his staff, who ultimately passed on it. The producer predicted that staff readers would fail to realize that the film worked despite being unconventional. After pleading from Foster, Fischoff eventually relented and read the script, optioning it to TriStar a few days later. After struggling as a writer for several years, "Sleepless in Seattle" was Arch's first script to be optioned as a film.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Eventually TriStar chairman Mike Medavoy was heavily promoting the film, and Foster began interviewing potential directors shortly after. Nick Castle had been slated to write and direct "Hook" (1991), a big-budget adaptation of "Peter Pan" also for TriStar, but he was eventually removed from the film in favor of Steven Spielberg. The studio re-assigned Castle to "Sleepless in Seattle" as a consolation. Garry Marshall had also been considered to direct. While Foster retained sole producer credit, the film was co-executive produced by Lynda Obst and Patrick Crowley. Foster struggled to get the film made over the following two years, claiming that the process of the film getting made contained " its own dramatic twists and turns". After finally agreeing to maintain the idea of keeping the couple separated, TriStar insisted that the "wistful" script be re-written to make the film and each character edgier and quirkier, particularly Sam and Annie. Foster found the script lacked the sophistication and complexity required to elevate an emotional, sentimental story beyond merely treacle. Foster reluctantly informed Arch they were interested in changing writers in order to "sharpen" his script. Although Arch submitted a re-write himself, he soon found he was essentially "kicked off my own movie", and replaced by a writer with whose work he was not pleased, such as relocating the entire film to New York without including the Empire State Building. Arch begged Foster and director Nick Castle to hire a better writer "who's going to take this way up to the next level".


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Several writers and directors were involved with "Sleepless in Seattle" at various stages of development, with Arch's script being re-written approximately five times. Arch's original concept was more akin to a romantic drama than a romantic comedy. Despite already featuring several of the film's major elements, such as a central father-son relationship and references to the romance film "An Affair to Remember" (1957), Arch admitted his script was not funny enough. Dramatist Larry Atlas attempted some revisions, most of which were discarded. Foster interviewed at least 10 potential writers before hiring David S. Ward to re-write Arch's script. Among the most significant changes, Ward decided to have Jonah call the radio station on Sam's behalf. Insisting that no self-respecting man would deliberately call a radio show to share his emotional grievances, Ward suggested that Sam be coerced by Jonah into revealing how he feels about his late wife to several single women throughout the country, including Annie. Arch credits Ward with convincing the studio to not give up on the film, believing the latter's Academy Award for writing "The Sting" (1973) helped them take him seriously as a filmmaker. However, the studio constantly pushed for an edgier and quirkier film. Despite acknowledging Ward's work as "a big step forward for the script", Foster was not entirely satisfied with the revisions and forwarded them to writer Nora Ephron, having been a fan of her work on "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989). Ephron had been Foster's first choice, hoping she could offer the script "a cynical layer to justify the organic sweetness", but she was unavailable when first approached to re-write.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: At least four writers attempted to rework "Sleepless in Seattle" before Ephron was recruited to "polish" the fifth and final draft. Ephron had been searching for script doctoring jobs shortly after her directorial debut "This Is My Life" (1992) proved unprofitable at the box office. Admitting that she never would have conceived the film herself, Ephron initially accepted "Sleepless in Seattle" as a fun, easy writing project from which she could quickly earn money. Although she found Arch's version simple and unfunny, Ephron particularly liked his romantic ending involving the Empire State Building, and was interested in several ideas discussed in Ward's second draft, particularly how movies affect people's perception about romance. Ephron assured Foster that she could re-write the script within three weeks, adapting it into a funnier version of itself without entirely making it a comedy. She specifically improved Annie and Jonah's roles. In an early draft, the character of Annie was in the midst of ending an unhappy relationship; Ephron wrote this out of the film because she found Annie's original backstory inconsequential in comparison to Sam's loss of his wife. Annie was also relocated from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to Baltimore, Maryland, as the character had originally been conceived as a Lancaster-based reporter. Foster credits Ephron with contributing most of the film's dialogue, while de-emphasizing much of Arch's sentimentality. While crediting Ephron with providing her trademark wit and snark the studio felt the original script lacked, Arch does not think all of Ephron's ideas particularly elevated the film. Describing themselves as quite different as writers, Arch likened their working relationship to "a parent and a step-parent of the same kid". However, they shared a strong love for classic films, with Ephron admitting she herself once considered "An Affair to Remember" to be "the greatest movie I'd ever seen". Ephron said the final film turned out funnier than she had imagined.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Castle left the project over disagreements with Ephron's edgier, less sentimental script, accusing her of stripping the film of emotion. Ephron claims virtually everyone liked the final script she submitted, apart from Castle. Impressed by Ephron's swiftness and dedication, Foster invited her to direct. Although Ephron protested the film was not quite ready to be directed, feeling it warranted at least one more rewrite, she eventually accepted and recruited her sister Delia to help improve several scenes. One such moment was the final scene in which Annie meets Sam and Jonah atop the Empire State building; Delia suggested that the father and son should be returning to the observation deck just as Annie is readying to leave, instead of having already exited the building. Despite serving as an associate producer alongside Arch, Delia remains uncredited for her script contributions, although a script dated March 10, 1992 is credited to Arch with re-writes by Nora and Delia Ephron. Ephron considers "Sleepless in Seattle" a "secret present" to their late parents, who were also screenwriters, as well as classic Hollywood movies. As "a movie about love that was also about movies about love", Ephron aimed to direct a "timeless" film audiences could watch for several years, without it feeling like it was made in 1993.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Ephron was also determined to give each character a "moment", such as when the minor mailman character has an inconsequential conversation about hiccups with Sam's son Jonah. At one point, the script mentioned that Sam and Annie had once both lived in Chicago at the same time, but this was edited out of the final film. "Sleepless in Seattle" became Ephron's second directorial effort. "Premiere" reported that, once Ephron became involved, the film "changed ... from a script that almost everyone had turned down into one that almost everyone wanted to be involved with". Although Arch did not necessarily agree that Ephron saved the film, he understood that "sometimes, you're not the star but that if you keep doing your job right, you will be the star", and maintains that several scenes ultimately remained almost exactly how he had envisioned them in his first draft, despite several re-writes.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Ephron promised Foster that her revised screenplay would be deserving of actors Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, the latter with whom Ephron had written the character Annie in mind. While Arch had also written the female role for Ryan due to her performance in "When Harry Met Sally", he had envisioned Kevin Costner in the role of Sam. A different pair of actors had originally been envisioned in the lead roles, but departed because they were deemed not funny enough for Ephron's material. Several actresses pursued the role of Annie once they learned of Ephron's involvement, including Julia Roberts, Kim Basinger, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sharon Stone, Jodie Foster, Demi Moore and Madonna, but Ephron was determined to cast Ryan, having enjoyed working with her on "When Harry Met Sally"... Ryan initially expected to star in the film with her then-husband Dennis Quaid, who had been looking for a film to star in together. The couple had also been close friends with Medavoy at the time. However, Ephron felt Quaid was not funny enough to play Sam, a role she and the studio decided was more suitable for Hanks. Having grown weary of playing goofy, immature characters by this point in his career, Hanks initially turned down the role because he was unhappy with its original script, but was drawn towards Ephron's revisions because he felt her version of Sam was more serious than previous roles he had played. Despite her interest in Hanks, Ephron was not entirely convinced the actor could play a romantic leading man in the vein of Cary Grant until she met him for first time. Hanks and Ryan had previously starred as a couple in the film "Joe Versus the Volcano" (1990). Despite being the film's romantic leads, the co-stars share only two scenes together, approximately two minutes of screen time.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Bill Pullman originally assumed he would have a larger role in the film as Annie's fiancé Walter, since "Sleepless in Seattle" had been pitched to him as a love triangle similar to "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), envisioning himself as the James Stewart character to Hanks' Cary Grant and Ryan's Katharine Hepburn. Nathan Watt was originally cast as Sam's son Jonah, but after working together for a few days, Hanks found the child actor to be disruptive on set while trying to film scenes he was not involved in. Watt was ultimately replaced with Ross Malinger, an actor Ephron remembered from earlier auditions, although Ephron did not like some aspects of his appearance. Jason Schwartzman had also auditioned for the role. Comedian Rosie O'Donnell was cast as Becky, Annie's best friend and coworker. O'Donnell had made her film debut in "A League of Their Own" (1992) the previous year, appearing alongside both Hanks and Pullman. O'Donnell credits Ephron's son Jacob Bernstein with helping her secure the role, as he was a fan of her friend Madonna, with whom the comedian had also starred in "A League of Their Own". Inspired by Whoopie Goldberg's Academy Award-winning performance in "Ghost" (1990), Ephron felt hiring a comedian in a funny supporting role would similarly benefit "Sleepless in Seattle". O'Donnell based her performance on singer and actress Bette Midler, specifically emulating the way she walks and talks in order to convey "the funny, caustic best friend with a heart of gold" role she had wanted to play since deciding to become an actor. O'Donnell had difficulty reciting a lengthy monologue for the film, much to Ephron's annoyance. Eventually reduced from two-pages, the speech was the longest of O'Donnell's career at that point. She eventually read the monologue from a sheet of paper taped to a crewmember's leg, without Ephron's knowledge. She noted her experience was particularly different from "A League of Their Own", which had been largely improvisational compared to Ephron's organized directorial style. O'Donnell and Ephron lived in the same apartment building while filming "Sleepless in Seattle", which Ephron had obtained for her. Hanks' wife Rita Wilson originally auditioned for the role of Becky, but Ephron preferred her for the role of Sam's sister Suzy, which the director found particularly convenient because Wilson was already in Seattle with her husband. Ephron cast Rob Reiner, who directed "When Harry Met Sally"..., as Sam's friend in the film, with Reiner contributing to many of the film's laughs.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: According to some of the main cast, Ephron typically insisted that the actors recite their lines almost exactly as-written, although Ephron herself said she was open to the cast improvising and re-writing dialogue they felt was unfunny. Hanks and Victor Garber improvised the scene in which their characters feign tears while recounting the film "The Dirty Dozen" (1967), mocking Suzy who has been brought to tears by summarizing the plot of "An Affair to Remember". Hanks and Ephron agreed that his character was underwritten. Ephron invited the actor to help rewrite his character, which ultimately resulted in "a grumpier, funnier Sam". Hanks did not truly commit to the role until he, Ephron and Delia reviewed his character scene by scene, ultimately improving his part. Hanks and Ephron sometimes disagreed over his character's actions, with Hanks accusing the director of making Sam too "wimpy" by writing him from a woman's perspective. He also complained that better lines had been written for his character's son, and lobbied for Sam and Jonah's relationship to be more paternal than maternal. In the original screenplay, Sam decides not to spend a weekend away with his new girlfriend Victoria in fear of upsetting Jonah. Hanks found this unconvincing for a grown man, suggesting to Ephron that, despite his son's feelings, his character would most likely be absolutely determined to sleep with Victoria after having been single for several years by that point. Ephron re-wrote the scene so Sam only relents once he learns Jonah has stowed away on a plane to New York. Hanks believes the film's drama ultimately benefited from being rooted in logic and "true, human behaviour". Arch explained that, despite some resistance from the actor, Hanks ultimately "rode that boundary, between being a man and having feelings he's able to express", which was rare for a male character during the 1990s. Ephron described Hanks as "manly in a part that requires him to be tender -and a lot of other things", calling him "one of the few actors around ... who can do tender and irritable and angry all at the same time". She credits Hanks with teaching her that writers should always provide the main actor with something to play off of, so they are never passive or idle during a scene.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Ephron had envisioned the role of Clarisse, Jonah's babysitter, as a Shelley Duvall-type role. They ultimately cast Amanda Maher in the role, a waitress they had discovered at the Gravity Bar in Seattle, citing her as a natural. Ephron herself voices "Disappointed In Denver", a depressed character who calls into the radio show Annie is listening to in the middle of the night. Actress Parker Posey was cast in a minor role that was ultimately cut from the film. The director wrote Posey an apologetic letter assuring her that the removal from the film was not her own fault. Ephron eventually cast her in a larger role in the romantic comedy "You've Got Mail" (1998), also starring Hanks and Ryan. Foster appears as an extra in the restaurant scene, during which Sam and Victoria attend their first date. Hanks accused Foster of being too loud during the scene.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Although Seattle, Washington had always been the film's main setting, the filmmakers only realized how significant the location was upon seeing it for themselves. Arch was inspired to have Sam live in a houseboat upon watching a Seattle-based episode of "This Old House", which featured host Bob Vila visiting a similar home. Ephron initially believed that, during the 1990s, young Americans prioritized their careers over their personal lives. However, upon visiting Seattle, she discovered it as a city where "people have chosen lifestyle over work", and decided to set the film there. Ephron explained that this is one of the reasons why Sam moves to Seattle from the work-focused Chicago. Vancouver, British Columbia, which film studios typically use as an affordable Seattle stand-in, was briefly considered an option, but Foster ultimately found the Canadian city to be less diverse than Seattle, hardly distinguishable from other large cities and too Canadian-looking. Principal photography began in July 1992. Once she submitted the final draft in March 1992, Ephron described the film's filming schedule as almost instant, recalling that they were scouting locations in June and filming by August that same year. The film had a production budget of $25 million, with "The Seattle Times" reporting that the studio spent approximately $4 million on Seattle-based labor, hotels, meals and local vendors. Foster explained that they decided to primarily use resources local to save money on necessities such as crew, import labor and airfare. Specific Seattle landmarks featured in the film include the Pike Place Market, the Sorrento Hotel, Alki Beach, the Fremont Bridge, SeaTac Airport, the Dahlia Lounge, and several 1st Avenue shops.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: The filmmakers could not find a warehouse large enough to host one set, therefore much of the film was shot on the Sand Point Naval Base. Due to the lack of sound stages in Seattle at the time, the filmmakers sought to the base as it was about to be shut down, but received little response from The Federal Bureaucracy until Ephron herself contacted Republican senator John Warner, a former Secretary of the Navy. At times sets and parts of props were shipped between Seattle to Baltimore to ensure sets remained consistent, particularly a door that both Ryan's and Hanks' characters use in separate scenes. Ephron ensured the same door was used to demonstrate the connection between the characters, working with editor Robert M. Reitano to connect their stories via visual parallels, since otherwise the characters hardly share screen time. Because Seattle was experiencing a drought while filming, the filmmakers imported water trucks to simulate the rain scenes. The city was reportedly angry about what they perceived as a waste of water. In addition to Seattle, scenes were shot in Chicago, Illinois; Baltimore, Maryland; and New York City. Ironically, Foster deemed a house located on Queen Anne Hill "Baltimore enough" to serve as the Baltimore-based home of Annie's parents. Ephron intended for the opening shot of the Chicago skyline at Maggie Baldwin's funeral to evoke artist Saul Steinberg's 1976 "The New Yorker" cover "View of the World from 9th Avenue". A set designer reportedly found working with Ephron so difficult that they begged to be fired from the film.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: The studio was initially denied permission to shoot some of the film's final scenes at the Empire State Building, whose management refused to close the observation deck to tourists to allow filming. Ephron strongly believed that "you are two phone-calls away from anyone". Ephron knew the publicist who was representing building owner Leona Helmsley, who was in prison for tax evasion at the time. After discussing the matter with her publicist who visited her in jail, Helmsley granted them permission to use the building for only six hours. This allowed them to film the helicopter shot, Annie's lobby scene, and Jonah searching the observation deck for Annie. The observatory of the Empire State Building on which Sam and Annie finally meet during the film's climax was actually a replica built in Hangar 27 of the Sand Point Naval Base, instead of New York City. The building was digitally lit for the film. Ryan was physically uncomfortable while running towards the Empire State Building in order to meet Sam because her shoes were ill-fitting.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: The film's costumes were designed by Judy Ruskin, who designed most of Ryan's wardrobe. Ruskin was careful to dress Ryan in modest, loose-fitting clothes to demonstrate Annie's "pure heart", as per Ephron's direction. Ephron hired Sven Nykvist as the film's cinematographer, as she was instructed to recruit "the world's best cinematographer". According to Ephron, he was typically able to light scenes in as little as six minutes. Ephron and production designer Jeffrey Townsend deliberately decided not to use the color red during the first hour and a half of "Sleepless in Seattle", first appearing worn by a soccer team once Sam and Annie first pass each other at the airport in Seattle. Red gradually becomes more common throughout the rest of the film, representing the "passion shared by the pair as they finally meet and fall in love". The filmmakers also avoided using blue, a color Ephron particularly dislikes. Arch was surprised to find that certain shots matched what he had envisioned when writing the film, including the use of shooting stars in the title sequence.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: The film was originally to have been scored by John Barry, but when given a list of twenty songs he had to put in the film, he quit. The film was ultimately scored by Marc Shaiman. Peter Guber, head of Sony Studios, wanted to use Celine Dion and Clive Griffin's duet "When I Fall in Love" in the final scene, but Ephron insisted on using "Make Someone Happy" by Jimmy Durante. Instead of seeking Guber's permission, Ephron decided to see how the test audience would react, to which they responded well. In addition to Dion, the soundtrack also included contributions by Nat King Cole, Carly Simon and Harry Connick Jr.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Luchina Fisher of ABC News summarized "Sleepless in Seattle" as "the story of a kid who plays matchmaker between his widower father and a woman having second thoughts about her fiancé". According to "CinemaBlend"'s Jerrica Tisdale, the film discusses themes about taking chances and destiny. Hanks believes falling in love with someone's voice is a relatable catalyst, explaining that "We've all experienced something like that". Although generally associated with Valentine's Day due to its focus on romance, the film also features Christmas and New Years Eve elements.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: "The Baltimore Sun"'s Stephen Hunter described the film as a "shameless romantic fantasy" and its heroine as "a sort of icon of nearly pure '50s innocence", with Ephron herself dressing Ryan's character to resemble a Breck girl. With a self-aware tone considered to be unusual for the time of its release, "Sleepless in Seattle" parodies the romantic comedy genre, despite being a romantic comedy itself. Calling the film "a throwback to the great romantic comedies of the '30s and '40s", Common Sense Media described "Sleepless in Seattle" as "a fairy tale that encourages viewers to believe that true love and destiny will conquer all obstacles""." According to Tyler Coates of "Flavorwire", Ephron uses "An Affair to Remember" to challenge "the cinematic joys that predated her own films", observing that the 1957 film brings at least four female characters to tears throughout "Sleepless in Seattle". Ephron described "An Affair to Remember" as "a running character" throughout film, which Annie routinely refers to as guide about her own love life. Several scenes from "An Affair to Remember" are shown throughout the film, which Annie and Becky constantly watch despite questioning "what something so seemingly shallow and unrealistic could possibly offer them". When Annie finally meets Sam atop the Empire State Building, the theme from "An Affair to Remember" plays. One of the film's major recurring themes is "love in the movies" and cinema's influence over how viewers perceive love, which in turn affects their ideals, goals, and decisions; Annie attempts to recreate the feelings she has seen in films because she has yet to experience them herself. The film also strives to prove that "art imitates life", as opposed to life imitating art. "Vulture"'s Matthew Jacobs said the film "doubles as a comment on the way Hollywood romance has perpetuated fantasies of what love looks like", which the author said is best exemplified by O'Donnell's line "You don't want to be in love; you want to be in love in a movie". Several commentators have referenced this line analyzing the film's themes. Film and media studies professor Michele Schreiber said the quote is "meant to elicit a sense of recognition among "Sleepless in Seattle"'s audience because the text assumes that by nature of the fact that they are watching the film, its spectators must empathize with, if not share, Annie's desire to fall in love in a way that is completely removed from the mundane realities of everyday life" while "assum[ing] that the audience will find equally familiar Becky's pointed critique of Annie's misguided preoccupation". According to However, Decider's Meghan O'Keefe said the film lacks "any real ground-breaking commentary on the state of the human heart".


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: According to a review published by Encyclopedia.com, "Sleepless in Seattle" "explores the differences between men and women when it comes to love and romance". However, Coates noted that, despite its meta commentary about classic Hollywood romances and gender, the film "avoids any of the vulgarities and complications of recent submissions to the romantic comedy genre", while also at times deviating from gender stereotypes. The critic noted that while Annie initially dismisses the concepts of fate and soul mates, trying to convince herself that her relationship with Walter is more practical than romantic, Sam openly likens his feelings for his late wife to magic, which ultimately prompts her "to embark on a philosophical journey of sorts to find out whether attraction is something otherworldly after all". "The A.V. Club"'s Caroline Siede wrote that the film "balances romance and realism by giving its central characters two different but equally pragmatic philosophies on love". While Annie believes "meant-to-be love" is only found in fairy tales, Sam argues that true love exists because he experienced it with his late wife, but believes it can not be experienced more than once in one's lifetime. Siede also said that, due to the focus on Sam and Jonah's relationship, at times the film more-so resembles a "father/son dramedy" occasionally intercut with a serviceable romantic comedy plot, elaborating that for most of the film "only Annie is an active rom-com player while Sam is just obliviously living his life", with much of Sam's comedy stemming from a man starting to date again during "the burgeoning era of third-wave feminism". Ephron believes "Sleepless in Seattle" more-so fits into the romantic comedy genre as opposed to the "women's movies" she pokes fun at in the film, explaining, "We aren't a classic weeper in any sense of the word – although some people cry when they see our movie".


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Rebecca Deczynski of "Good Housekeeping" said the film discusses both the positive and negative aspects of long distance relationships. Distinguished from other romantic comedies because its main couple is separated for most of the film, Ephron identified "the global village" as one of the film's main themes, explaining "we all live in one place ... and it's connected by airplanes, 800-number radio shows, the same jokes and statistics. By the time Tom and Meg are out on their respective piers sitting on their respective benches, you feel like it's a love scene even though they are 3000 miles apart". In an article written in 2018, Corey Chichizola of "CinemaBlend" observed that although the film's plot seemed plausible at the time of its release, "the majority of the film's events and problems could be solved instantly if there were smart phones around", determining that the introduction of various technology since "Sleepless in Seattle" has in term limited storytelling, with writers of future films being required to find logical ways to eliminate smart phones and dating apps in order for certain plots to be plausible. Nicole Sperling of "Vanity Fair" observed that Jessica's use of acronyms and Annie's "journalistic tenacity" pre-date instant messaging and Google search by several years. Agreeing that "Sleepless in Seattle" "has become a journey into nostalgia" in the decades since the film's release, "Elle"'s R. Eric Thomas said "there's something sweet and appealing about the relative simplicity—even simplicity in a film with a plot as complex as this one's. And who amongst us isn't rediscovering the telephone during this time, when even small distances seem yawning? Or the simple pleasure of a mailed letter? (Thank you to all the Post Office employees!) After a grueling three years during which the dark underbelly of nostalgia was used to prop up the worst aspects of this country's history and present, it's particularly heartening to be reminded that sometimes, the hallmarks of the past can continue to help us." O'Donnell theorized that although the film might be received as a story about catfishing in modern times, its setting and innocence harkens "back to a time where everything seemed a little bit simpler".


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Although Foster and Ephron estimate that the studio spent at least $20 million marketing the film, TriStar senior vice president of publicity Ed Russell claims they spent significantly less, despite their admittedly competitive marketing campaign. "Sleepless in Seattle" was heavily advertised during daytime programming to target female viewers, who responded well to its posters and trailers. The film's official theatrical release poster, which depicts Hanks and Ryan gazing into the sky from opposite time zones, features the tag line "What if someone you never met, someone you never saw, someone you never knew was the only someone for you", which was inspired by a line spoken by Ryan's character in the film. Despite its female target audience, trailers and television spots were geared towards men by prominently featuring Hanks and Reiner. A trailer aired during the televised broadcast of President Bill Clinton's inaugural ball in January 1993, five months before its release date, with Clinton's inaugural committee specifically asking TriStar to advertise during the gala. TriStar paid approximately $250,000 for the 30-second commercial. Foster claims advertising during the inaugural ball implied that the studio was warning the film industry to "Watch out, we believe in this movie and we're not afraid to do anything. We're not afraid to spend money". He also maintains that the decision to advertise during the telecast was business-driven as opposed to political, explaining that the studio saw anticipated the gala's expected high ratings would promote "Sleepless in Seattle" to a significantly larger audience.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: The studio also discussed corporate tie-ins with companies such as greeting card companies, teleflorists and Tiffany & Co. for corporate tie-ins. On Valentine's Day 1993, chocolate recreations of the Empire State Building were offered to 200 critics. Test screenings hosted in January were well-received and widely covered by several American magazines, including "Premiere", "Redbook", "Allure" and "Movieline". "Variety" reported that "Sleepless in Seattle" scored 94 out of 100 in at least one of its screenings, encouraging the studio to reschedule the film for a summer release. Senior vice president of publicity Ed Russell arranged several word of mouth screenings for the film, including a conference held for romance novel and magazine editors on May 16, 1993 in San Diego. A benefit premiere was hosted for "Sleepless in Seattle" at the Cinedome in Seattle in June 1993, with proceeds going towards the Pike Place Market Foundation.


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Originally planned to be released in April 1993, "Sleepless in Seattle" was rescheduled for summer 1993 because studio executives predicted it could be a popular summer hit, despite competing with several large-scale blockbusters and action-adventure films at the time, notably "Jurassic Park"," The Firm, Cliffhanger and Last Action Hero." "Sleepless in Seattle" was considered to be one of the year's few "date movies", and was also branded "1993's "When Harry Met Sally ..."". According to Kathy Tyre of "Adweek", TriStar crafted a marketing campaign that branded "Sleepless in Seattle" as the summer's "romantic alternative". Marketing executive Kathy Jones confirmed that the studio would spend significantly more money marketing the film due to its summer relocation but claims they wanted to avoid over-promoting "a lovely, romantic movie". Tri-Star theorized the romantic comedy would attract women who were not particularly interested in watching the year's action films, serving as "counter-programming" to the roster of more traditional summer blockbuster fare. Columbia, TriStar's sister studio, had used the same strategy for "When Harry Met Sally"... four years prior. Rescheduling the film also removed direct competition such "Indecent Proposal" (1993), which was expected to have higher box office returns than "Sleepless in Seattle". However, releasing the film in June also proposed the risk of "Sleepless in Seattle" being overlooked by an estimated 60 films being released that summer, among them "What's Love Got to Do With It" and "The Firm".


title: Sleepless in Seattle

text: Foster believes that had the film been released in April as originally planned, they would have already spent most of their marketing budget by the time the year's blockbusters were released, explaining that "This kind of counterprogramming in the summer seems to work", whereas Ephron felt releasing the film earlier would have forced them to remove the film from theatres in order to make way for the summer blockbuster films. Sneak previews were hosted in 750 theatres the Saturday before the film's release, which were filled to 80% capacity. In addition to much publicity, previews were consistently very well-received by audiences. The film was ultimately released to theatres on June 25, 1993.