"Sleepless in Seattle" came out in 1993, a big year for Seattle. Grunge was still going and sports was fun to watch (Randy Johnson's pitching, Sonics in the playoffs). Those things ended, but the movie's legacy lives on, through the throngs of tourists who shout ... ("Sleepless in Seattle" 10th anniversary edition DVD)
"There's Tom Hanks' house!" Nineteen years after "Sleepless in Seattle," the famous Lake Union houseboat (left) has become one of Seattle's most famous icons. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer archive).
Houseboats looked charming then, but not everyone loves them since. The city proposed a ban on new houseboats in 2010, because they're believed to harm fish, and it wants to crack down on "houseboat-like boats." (Joshua Trujillo / seattlepi.com)
Seattle's newest floating homes (pictured) look nothing like Tom Hanks' 1978 shake-roof, Cape Cod-inspired house. (It went on the market, by the way, in 2008 with a listing price of $2.5 million). Here's a home at Wards Cove, a community where slips are billed as the last new floating-home spots on Lake Union. (JOSHUA TRUJILLO / seattlepi.com)
The Athenian in the Pike Place Market served as a colorful backdrop for Tom Hanks and Rob Reiner to talk about tiramisu and the anxieties of dating. ("Sleepless in Seattle" screenshot.)
Opened in 1909, the Athenian was once more of a locals' and old-timers' restaurant. Photo: Joey DeVilla, Creative Commons Flickr.
The Athenian is now also a crowded tourist destination, where people come for the great view and glimpse of the barstools where Hanks and Reiner sat. (Mike Urban / Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
The Dahlia Lounge also served as an atmospheric setting for Tom Hanks and his date. But that was when the restaurant was at its old location, at 1904 Fourth Avenue. Photo: angela n., Creative Commons Flickr.
Angela N. via Creative Commons Flickr.
After the movie, the Dahlia Lounge moved to its current location, at 2001 Fourth Avenue. But the remodeled interior (pictured) retains the old place's intimate vibe. (2012 Google Street View )
Here's what 1904 Fourth Avenue looks like today, according to this 2012 Google Street View photo. After Dahlia Lounge moved, it became Toi restaurant. But that closed.
"Sleepless in Seattle" was the eighth top-grossing movie in the country in 1993, with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan ("Sam and Annie") as the year's big romantic movie couple.
Hanks and Ryan reprised their chemistry in 1998's "You've Got Mail." (Warner Bros. / Getty Images)
These days, Seattle-based romances look a bit...different (and the real estate is ritzier too).
Meg Ryan was also "America's sweetheart" in movies in the '90s, especially romantic comedies. ("Sleepless in Seattle" screenshot).
Here's Meg Ryan today. She's appearing in "Half the Sky," a new PBS documentary on gender violence the began airing Monday, Oct. 2. (Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images)
"Sleepless" also captured a more innocent time when you could say goodbye to your loved one at the airport gate. Or, in Tom Hanks' case, catch your first glimpse of your love to be. ("Sleepless in Seattle" screenshot.)
The days of romantic hellos and goodbyes at the gate have long been over, replaced with TSA screeners and machines. (Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
Remember adorable kid Jonah, Tom Hanks' son? What happened to the actor? ("Sleepless in Seattle" screenshot.)
Ross Malinger played precocious Jonah. His IMDb page ends in 2006, with a listing of his appearance in TV show "Without a Trace." Before that, he was "Touched by an Angel" and "Party of Five," in which he's pictured with actress Lacey Chabert in 1998. (FOX)
"Sleepless" was the first of many big roles in the 90s for Tom Hanks, who went on to star in "Philadelphia," "Forrest Gump" and "Apollo 13." He's pictured in 1995 with Jessica Lange after winning a Golden Globe for "Forrest Gump." (AFP/Getty Images)
Tom Hanks today. He's still an A-list actor who's coming off Oscar season with "The Post" where he played Ben Bradlee. (Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)
"Sleepless in Seattle" will always be remembered as one of Nora Ephron's most beloved movies. Ephron, who visited Seattle in 2006 and toured the Central Library (pictured), died in 2012 at age 71. (Scott Eklund / Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Seattle in the '90s was known for many things: the sight from Frasier's apartment on "Frasier;" the grunge wave; Microsoft and the growing tech boom; "Singles," and towards the tail end, "10 Things I Hate About You." But perhaps no Seattle skyline loomed as large as that of "Sleepless in Seattle."
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For starters, the city was right there in the title. It became a status update, of sorts, for people to immediately link to the region; you could buy t-shirts on your way out of Sea-Tac that had the phrase splashed across the front.
And the movie largely occupies a sweet-spot in Seattleites' hearts: You may not love it, but it doesn't do our city dirty, and hey it's Nora Ephron!
So when people come to besmerch it, well, we're going to have a few things to say about it.
Yes, Sleepless In Seattle boasts two of the '90s most talented rom-com thespians, and it was co-written by real life word witch Nora Ephron. All the same, sorry to say, Sleepless In Seattle is the most toxic rom-com ever. It features (in no particular order): an argument being made for treating perfectly nice romantic partners/potential partners like trash; advocating for choosing a voice on the radio instead of the guy you've been in a relationship with for a long time; and, oh yeah, a weirdly supportive attitude toward stalking.
Okay, you got us. We're a city full of people who are so starved to bundle up together (for warmth, but also to afford our rents) that we've taken to endorsing stalking people to find potential mates, which we then discard based on voices we've heard on the radio.
No, of course Bustle didn't mean to indict the whole city; by the end of the article it notes that it's a perfectly fine movie so long as it's not taken as relationship advice. Which is true, but isn't that true of basically every rom-com? And is "Sleepless in Seattle" really the most toxic?
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After all, rom-coms are not exactly the paragon of healthy relationship development.
It's certainly not "While You Were Sleeping" when a woman lies to a whole family about being engaged to a guy she's never met only to fall in love with his brother. "You've Got Mail" doesn't exactly make a compelling case for finding love on the internet, while "She's All That" and "10 Things I Hate About You" shows you can't always trust real life set-ups either.
And that's just from the '90s. ("Love Actually," released in 2001, makes a compelling case, multiple times over for being the most toxic rom-com.) Sam and Annie aren't great to their exes in "Sleepless in Seattle," and their love seems to be built on lingering eye contact, but the movie makes just as compelling a case for a "instantaneous shared attraction" as basically any other rom-com does.
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We might be sleepless in Seattle, but we're not stupid. Rosie O'Donnell's character is there for a reason.
