# Sleepless in Seattle

Sleepless in Seattle is a 1993 American romantic-comedy film about a recently widowed man whose son calls a radio talk-show in an attempt to find his father a new partner.
    Directed by Nora Ephron. Written by Nora Ephron, David S. Ward, and Jeff Arch.

## Sam Baldwin

* Mommy got sick. And it happened just like that. There was nothing anybody could do. It isn't fair. There's no reason. But if we start asking why, we'll go crazy.
* Move on. Right. That's what I'm going to do. In a few months, I'll be fine, I'll just grow a new heart.
* Look, we had a tough time at first, but we're dealing with it. Jonah and I will get along fine again...as soon as I break his radio.
* Jonah, listen to me. You don't know Victoria. I hardly know her myself. She is a fat mystery to me. She tosses her hair a lot. Why does she do this? I have no idea. Is it a twitch? Does she need a haircut? Should she use a barrette to keep her hair out of her face? These are things I'm willing to get to the bottom of. And that is why... I am DATING her. That's all I'm doing. I'm not living with her. I'm not marrying her. Can you appreciate the difference? This is what single people do. They try other people on and see how they fit. But everybody's an adjustment. Nobody's perfect. There's no such thing as a perfect... [Annie walks in. Sam sees her for the first time, loses his train of thought, and stops talking]

## Annie Reed

* Destiny is something we've invented because we can't stand the fact that everything that happens is accidental.

## Jonah Baldwin

* Shut up, shut up?! Mom never said shut up to me! Mom never yelled at me!

## Becky

* Verbal ability is a highly overrated thing in a guy, and it's our pathetic need for it that gets us into so much trouble.

## Walter

* Look, Annie... I love you. But let's leave that out of this. I don't want to be someone that you're settling for. I don't want to be someone that anyone settles for. Marriage is hard enough without bringing such low expectations into it, isn't it?

## Dialogue

    Co-Worker: It's easier to be killed by a terrorist than it is to find a husband over the age of 40!
    Annie: That statistic is not true!
    Becky: That's right it's not true, but it feels true.
    Barbara: I was in Atlantic City with my family. Cliff was a waiter. He wasn't even supposed to work that night, and suppose he hadn't? He asked me to take a midnight walk on the Steel Pier. I've probably told you this a million times, but I don't care. And then he held my hand. At one point I looked down and I couldn't tell which fingers were his and which were mine. And I knew.
    Annie Reed: What?
    Barbara: You know.
    Annie Reed: What?
    Barbara: Magic. It was magic.
    Annie Reed: Magic.
    Barbara: I knew we would be together forever, and that everything would be wonderful, just the way you feel about Walter. Walter. It's quite a formal name, isn't it?
    Jonah Baldwin: [about Dr. Marcia Fieldstone] Talk to her, dad. She's a doctor.
    Sam Baldwin: Of what? Her first name could be Doctor.
    Dr. Marcia Fieldstone: People who truly loved once are far more likely to love again. Sam, do you think there's someone out there you could love as much as your wife?
    Sam Baldwin: Well, Dr. Marcia Fieldstone, that's hard to imagine.
    Dr. Marcia Fieldstone: What are you going to do?
    Sam Baldwin: Well, I'm gonna get out of bed every morning... breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out... and, then after a while, I won't have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while.
    Dr. Marcia Fieldstone: Tell me what was so special about your wife?
    Sam Baldwin: Well, how long is your program? Well, it was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together... and I knew it. I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home... only to no home I'd ever known... I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car and I knew. It was like... magic.
    Annie Reed: [about An Affair to Remember] Now that was when people KNEW how to be in love. They knew it! Time, distance... nothing could separate them because they knew. It was right. It was real. It was...
    Becky: A movie! That's your problem! You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.
    Sam Baldwin: I'd much rather just see somebody I like, and get a feeling about them, and ask them if they want to have a drink.
    Jonah Baldwin: Or a slice of pizza --
    Sam Baldwin: Not dinner. Not necessarily on the first date because halfway through dinner you could be really sorry you asked them to dinner. Whereas if it's just a drink, if you like them you can always ask them for dinner but if not, you can just say, "Well, that was great," and then you go home. If you see what I mean. [beat] I wonder if it still works this way.
    Jonah Baldwin: It doesn't. They ask you.
    Sam Baldwin: I'm starting to notice that.
    Jay: That's what I'm trying to tell you, what women are looking for: pecs and a cute butt.
    Sam Baldwin: You mean like, "He has the cutest butt"?
    Jay: Yeah.
    Sam Baldwin: Where did I hear that recently?
    Jay: Everywhere. You can't even turn on the news nowadays without hearing about how some babe thought some guy's butt was cute. Who the first woman to say this was, I don't know, but somehow it caught on.
    Sam Baldwin: So how's my butt?
    [Jay stops walking, examines Sam's backside]
    Jay: Not bad.
    Sam Baldwin: Really?
    Jay: Yeah.
    Sam Baldwin: Is it cute, though?
    Jay: I don't know. Are we grading on a curve?
    Jonah Baldwin: If you get a new wife, I guess you'll get to have sex with her, huh?
    Sam Baldwin: I certainly hope so.
    Jonah Baldwin: Will she scratch up your back?
    Sam Baldwin: [shocked] What?
    Jonah Baldwin: In the movies, women are always scratching up the men's back and screaming and stuff when they're having sex.
    Sam Baldwin: How do you know all this?
    Jonah Baldwin: Jessica's got cable.
    Sam Baldwin: Oh.
    Sam Baldwin: [about Annie] She wants to meet me at the top of the Empire State Building. On Valentine's Day.
    Suzy: It's like that movie.
    Sam Baldwin: What movie?
    Suzy: An Affair To Remember. Did you ever see it? Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. She's gonna meet him at the top of the Empire State Building... only she got hit by a taxi. And he waited and waited. And it was raining, I think. And then... she's too proud to tell him... that she's, uh... [starts to cry] crippled. And he's too proud to find out why she doesn't come. But he comes to see her anyway. I forget why, but, oh... Oh, it's so amazing when he comes to see her because... [crying more] he doesn't even notice that she doesn't get up to say hello. And he's very bitter. And you think that he's just gonna walk out the door... and never know why she's just lying there, you know, on the couch... with this blanket over her shriveled little legs. [sobbing]
    Jonah Baldwin: Are you all right?
    Greg: She's fine.
    Suzy: Suddenly he goes, "I already sold the painting." And he like goes to the bedroom... and he looks and he comes out and he looks at her and he kind of just... They know and then they hug. And it's so... [trails off crying]
    Sam Baldwin: Well I'm not looking for a mail-order bride! I just want somebody I can have a decent conversation with over dinner. Without it falling down into weepy tears over some movie!
    Greg: She's, as you just saw, very emotional.
    Sam Baldwin: Although I cried at the end of The Dirty Dozen.
    Greg: Who didn't?
    Sam Baldwin: Jim Brown was throwing these hand grenades down these airshafts. And Richard Jaeckel and Lee Marvin [Begins to cry] were sitting on top of this armored personnel carrier, dressed up like Nazis...
    Greg: [Crying too] Stop, stop!
    Sam Baldwin: And Trini Lopez...
    Greg: Yes, Trini Lopez!
    Sam Baldwin: He busted his neck while they were parachuting down behind the Nazi lines...
    Greg: Stop.
    Sam Baldwin: And Richard Jaeckel - at the beginning he had on this shiny helmet...
    Greg: [Crying harder] Please no more. Oh God! I loved that movie.
    Jonah Baldwin: He's not sane enough to judge anything. Now he's kissing her on the lips. She's a ho! My dad's been captured by a ho! What am I going to do?
    Dr. Marcia Fieldstone: Jonah, calm down. Tomorrow, when you're sitting down to breakfast, tell him how you feel. It's not good to keep your feelings inside you.
    [Jonah hangs up, then screams]
    Sam Baldwin: I'm leaving first thing in the morning, but I'm only gonna be gone one night. Clarisse is gonna be here. So, you'll be able to see plenty of Geraldo and Nightmare on Elm Street, 12 I will never know.
    Jonah Baldwin: Are you going with her?
    Sam Baldwin: I'm going with Victoria. Yes.
    [Jonah heads to his room]
    Sam Baldwin: Don't try anything tricky, understand?
    [Jonah slams his door]
    Jonah Baldwin: [walks to Jonah's room] Don't go rolling in poison ivy as soon as I leave the house. You lock yourself in a closet or do anything, make sure you'll need stitches. If your finger falls off, it's staying off. No one's gonna pack it on ice and take you to the hospital, so you can be a breakthrough in laser surgery. Is this about that woman in Baltimore?
    Jonah Baldwin: Annie.
    [Sam leaves the room and closes the door]
    Jonah Baldwin: I don't care what you do!
    Sam Baldwin: Good! Fine! I'll tell you what I'm doing this weekend, I'm getting laid. It's the 1990's and nobody's getting laid. I'm the only man in America who's getting laid this weekend and I haven't been laid that much. Six girls in college, maybe seven. [sees Jonah standing in the doorway] How long have you been standing there?
    Jonah Baldwin: Forever.
    Sam Baldwin: What did you just hear me say?
    Jonah Baldwin: Six girls in college, maybe seven.
    Sam Baldwin: Seven... EIGHT! Mary Kelly.
    Jonah Baldwin: [holds Annie's letter] This is the one I like!
    Sam Baldwin: Jonah, the fact is, you're not gonna like any woman, because that isn't your mother.
    Jonah Baldwin: How do you know?! What's wrong with Annie?!
    Sam Baldwin: Oh, Jonah, shut up!
    Jonah Baldwin: Shut up? Shut up?! Mom never said "shut up" to me! Mom never yelled at me!
    Sam Baldwin: This conversation is finished.
    Jonah Baldwin: Why can't we go to New York?
    Sam Baldwin: There is no way that we're going on a plane to meet some woman who could be a crazy, sick lunatic! Didn't you see Fatal Attraction?
    Jonah Baldwin: You wouldn't let me!
    Sam Baldwin: Well I saw it and it scared the shit out of me! It scared the shit out of every man in America!
    Jonah Baldwin: I'm not leaving until you say "yes".
    [Sam closes his bedroom door on Jonah]
    Jonah Baldwin: I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!
    Sam Baldwin: That's good, you'll have a lot to tell Oprah how your Dad destroyed your life because he had to go off for a weekend special at the Holiday Inn!

## Taglines

* What if someone you never met, someone you never saw, someone you never knew was the only someone for you?

## Cast

* Tom Hanks - Sam Baldwin
* Meg Ryan - Annie Reed
* Bill Pullman - Walter
* Ross Malinger - Jonah Baldwin
* Rosie O'Donnell - Becky
* Gaby Hoffmann - Jessica
* Victor Garber - Greg
* Rita Wilson - Suzy
* Barbara Garrick - Victoria
* Carey Lowell - Maggie Baldwin
* David Hyde Pierce - Dennis Reed
* Dana Ivey - Claire Bennett
* Rob Reiner - Jay
* Kevin O'Morrison - Cliff Reed
* Caroline Aaron as Dr. Marcia Fieldstone

## External links

* Sleepless in Seattle quotes at the Internet Movie Database