Heartburn - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Heartburn or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Heartburn

[marc]

This movie was released three years after the novel had been published. Ephron also wrote the script.

[kristen]

Rachel Samstat (Meryl Streep) is a food writer and columnist. According to the June 27, 2012 article about Nora Ephron, by Julia Moskin in the Diner's Journal, the New York Times Blog on Dining Out, "Rachel Samstat, the heroine of 'Heartburn' said she could identify a certain kind of spoiled man in three words: 'Where's the butter?'. Ephron's juicy 1968 essay about the creation of the Time-Life Cookbooks Series at the Four Seasons ("The Food Establishment: Life in the Land of the Rising Souffle - Or Is It the Rising Meringue?") to the pitch-perfect recipes in 'Heartburn' (her autobiographical 1983 "novel with recipes") to the film Julie & Julia (2009) in 2009, food was real, front and center in her work." Also, the Herald said in 1986 of Heartburn (1986), "all of these scenes involve food, and eating is the central metaphor here: the consumption of food and the consumption of love. The motif builds so that the climax, Streep's final gesture of defiance, is much, shall we say, tastier than it otherwise would have been."

[ivan]

In Everything Is Copy (2015), Jacob Bernstein's documentary about his mother Nora Ephron's life and career, he reveals that contentious negotiations over the movie adaptation of her novel "Heartburn" extended his parents' divorce for several years longer than most divorces take. Eventually, their divorce agreement included a stipulation that this movie was not allowed to depict the "Mark Forman" (Carl Bernstein) character as anything but a good, loving, and conscientious father (whatever his failings as a faithful husband were), and Producer and Director Mike Nichols had to be named as a legal signatory to the divorce.

[oscar]

This movie doesn't make this explicit, but in real life, screenwriter Nora Ephron had been so upset by her husband's infidelity that she went into labor prematurely.

[miriam]

Jack Nicholson replaced Mandy Patinkin as Mark Forman. Patinkin was originally cast, but was replaced by Nicholson after two days of shooting when producer and director Mike Nichols realized there was no chemistry between Patinkin and Meryl Streep.

[lonnie]

Debut English language and Hollywood feature film as an actor for Milos Forman (Dmitri).

[violet]

Meryl Streep's daughter Mamie Gummer was used as Annie the baby.

[phyllis]

Debut movie as a composer for Carly Simon, who went on to compose the scores for other Meryl Streep, Nora Ephron, and Mike Nichols movies, such as This Is My Life (1992) (Ephron) and Postcards from the Edge (1990) (Streep, Nichols).

[christina]

Natasha Lyonne's debut.

[francisco]

Of two movies Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson have made together, both received star teaming above-the-title billing. Streep got first billing and Nicholson was second-billed in this movie, whereas in Ironweed (1987) it was the reverse.

[ruby]

According to Jon Danziger at digitallyobsessed.com, "the word back in the day was that Mandy Patinkin was originally slated to play the role of Mark Forman, but somehow got tainted by too much contact with (Carl) Bernstein (Nora Ephron's ex-husband, on whom the character was based), and wanted to make the character more likable. Nichols quickly snuffed that out, and brought in a last minute replacement, his leading man from Carnal Knowledge (1971), Jack Nicholson."

[alyssa]

Irreconcilable Differences (1984), the Ryan O'Neal and Drew Barrymore comedy and Hollywood satire, drew upon several influences. Most notably the Peter Bogdanovich/Cybill Shepherd/Polly Platt love triangle for its inspiration, as many critics including Roger Ebert have noted. It also drew upon Nora Ephron's book "Heartburn" for much of its inspiration. The scorned female writer who writes a bestselling novel about her husband; and then whose career takes off as a result; that is unmistakably based on Nora Ephron. Platt never wrote a bestselling novel about her husband's affair, but Ephron did. It was as if Charles and Nancy Shyers fused the Peter Bogdanovich/Polly Platt/Cybill Shepherd love triangle, and fused it with Nora Ephron's book, "Heartburn", and this became the basis for Irreconcilable Differences (1984).

[carl]

Carly Simon also was a notable contributor to producer and director Mike Nichols' movie Working Girl (1988). "Let the River Run", her award-winning theme song, originally titled "Wall Street Hymn", punches up the long opening shot from a helicopter, following the Staten Island Ferry.

[nicholas]

Italian censorship visa # 81844 delivered on September 27, 1986.

[tom]

This movie represents the only movie credit of the late Mary Streep, who was the mother of Meryl Streep.

[jamie]

This was originally intended to reunite Sophie's Choice (1982) stars Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline.

[carla]

Meryl Streep was pregnant in real life during the making of the movie.

[dustin]

According to Patrick Nash at "threemoviebuffs.com", "the couple played by Richard Masur and Stockard Channing are incredibly similar to the couple played by Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher in Writer Nora Ephron's When Harry Met Sally... (1989).

[clayton]

The movie's name is split into two words "Heart" and "Burn" and separated by a heart symbol in two colors in promotional title logos on DVD covers used for this movie. This symbolizes a broken heart from the movie's infidelity and separation story elements.