Your Favorite Rom-Com is Great -- But It's Not "When Harry Met Sally" (1989)

Nietzsche famously said, "It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages." Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally (1989) is a kind of response to Nietzsche, known for being about whether men and women can really be friends.

The film's success as a balanced romance and comedy comes from Reiner's close collaboration with Nora Ephron, which can be seen in their conversation in this YouTube video. It took years to develop the project that became When Harry Met Sally and during those years Rob Reiner would make Stand By Me (1986) and The Princess Bride (1987). The casting of Billy Crystal, Emmy and Tony Award-winning comedian, balances the casting of Meg Ryan, who would make a career out of featuring in Ephron's romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You've Got Mail (1998), but who was relatively unknown before this break. At every turn the film leans into comedy and romance in equal measure, and this is what makes it the best romantic comedy of all time.

The best evidence of this lies in the film's use of confessionals. Three years before The Real World would popularize the direct-to-camera interviews in reality television, setting a precedent for awards-sweeping comedies like The Office, Modern Family, and Parks and Rec, Reiner used confessionals to control pacing and to deliver jokes, to build audience intimacy, and to reveal truths about romance. This documentary feel was undoubtedly inspired by his success with This Is Spinal Tap (1984), where the direct-to-camera interviews served a similar function. The confessionals break up longer scenes and provide quick punchlines; they make it feel as if characters are confiding in you, and develops a bond between audience and characters.

Reiner knew this and used it to his advantage in this romantic comedy. The motif of the couples allowed Reiner to explore themes like time and attachment. If you don't think the confessionals are important, remember that the first couple interview is the very first scene of the film, and that we see this come full circle with Harry and Sally's interview at the film's close. They are integral to the film's structure. Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron strove to inject as much truth as possible into Harry and Sally's love story; the couple interviews are based on interviews Ephron had with real employees at the production company, just shot with actors instead of their real-life counterparts.

Other than his use of confessionals, another masterful choice Reiner makes is to use the split screen on the four-way phone call after Harry and Sally sleep together. Sally calls Marie while separately Harry calls Jess. The chaotic feeling that Sally and, separately, Harry feels after their confusing consummation is perfectly demonstrated in this aesthetically dynamic shot. The split screen shows action simultaneously and it works because it increases the tension as the audience sees everything unfolding in parallel. Keeping all visible, you can see each character's reactions which adds to the comedic timing and the emotional contrast of the scene. Reiner uses the split screen to compare characters and perspectives. We are able to see similarities, differences, and contrasts among characters in this four-way phone call.

How It Starts

The film opens on a situation that fuses romance and comedy: Sally is waiting for Harry to free himself from his paramour, Amanda, so they might embark on their journey from the University of Chicago to New York. With some well-timed uses of the car horn Sally is able to get the show on the road, and from this point her life is changed. Harry begins as a nuisance to Sally: he doesn't seem interested in the logistics of their trip, he hocks grape seeds at her car window, and he attacks her career plan. But the road trip is just the beginning of a larger journey of friendship between the two, and as Harry and Sally become genuine friends the romantic tension builds. Reiner's rom-com is a masterclass in tension; partly due to the amount of time the film covers, and partly due to the fact that Harry and Sally aren't always as close. as they eventually become. The longitudinal study of characters Harry Burns and Sally Albright makes this film great. It is so rare we get to see characters evolve over 12 years, as in the case of this film. The film opens up four moments in time: 1977, 1982, 1987, and 1989.

The Setup

Harry asks, "Can't a man say a woman is attractive without it being a come-on?" Sally argues that he can't take back his advance towards her, and that all that can be done now is to "let it lie." But Harry can't do this, and asks if Sally wants to spend the night in a motel. Sally responds, "Harry, we are just going to be friends, okay?" This seems to temporarily placate him, but before long Harry returns to the argument.

H: You realize, of course, that we could never be friends.

S: Why not?

H: What I'm saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape, or form - is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.

This is the setup for the rest of the film - this is the argument that we, as the audience, seek to disprove.

"That, my friend, is a dark side"

Early in their 18 hour pilgrimage Sally calls out Harry as having a dark side. He says this is what drew Amanda to him in nearly the same breath that he discounts Sally as being one of those people who "dots their i's with little hearts." To which Sally rebuffs: "I have just as much of a dark side as the next person." Elaborating on his argument, Harry says that when he buys a new book he always reads the last page first so that in the event of his death he knows how the book will end. He says, "That, my friend, is a dark side." And we get one of our first themes which will be revisited later in the story - all people are some ratio of happiness to darkness, or depression.

"It's just so optimistic of you"

Five years after their road trip, Harry runs into Sally on a flight. Having seen her before boarding, he is curious about her relationship with Joe, whom he happens to know because they used to live in the same building. He asks Sally if she plans on marrying Joe, and then shares that he is about to be married. Sally laughs at this and remarks, "It's just so optimistic of you, Harry." The jaded, "dark" Harry is someone Sally never predicted would be capable of falling madly in love. "It's amazing," Sally says at one point, "You look like a normal person but actually you are the Angel of Death." In pledging his love for Helen, Harry has proven himself to be capable of normalcy and of affection. With the declaration of his impending nuptials, Harry the jaded actually becomes Harry the optimist.

"Are we becoming friends?"

After their lunch in 1987 where they reconnect, Sally and Harry are walking together when Harry admits that he didn't like her very much when they first met. Sally reciprocates, saying she didn't care for Harry. He says, "You were just so uptight then, you're much softer now." They bicker, as Sally says that's the kind of remark that sounds like a compliment but really isn't. She confronts him that the real issue upon their first meeting was that she didn't want to sleep with him, which Sally says, he wrote off as a character flaw. Harry asks what the statute of limitations is on apologies, and they make amends. Charmed, Sally asks Harry if he'd like to have dinner some time. Thrown off-guard, Harry asks, "Are we becoming friends now?" Sally hesitates but says yes. Harry thinks this is great, or at least pretends to for her benefit. "You know you may be the first attractive woman I've not wanted to sleep with in my entire life," Harry declares.

"You talk to her about other women?"

Jess, Harry's best friend, and Harry are at the batting cages when Jess admits, "I don't understand this relationship."

J: You enjoy being with her?

H: Yeah.

J: You find her attractive?

H: Yeah.

J: And you're not sleeping with her?

H: No.

Jess makes the comment that Harry isn't allowing himself to be happy. Other than Sally, he's never had a relationship with a woman that he wasn't sleeping with, Harry says, and he wants credit from his friend for what he describes as his growth. Curious, Jess asks if Harry talks to Sally about things he feels he can't talk to Jess about. Harry says it isn't like that, but that she gives him the female perspective. They talk to each other about their dates. This totally throws Jess: "You talk to her about other women?" Harry tells Jess that it's great that he can tell Sally about the women that he's seeing and claims that in a recent conquest he made a woman meow. This is the kind of thing, Harry illustrates, that he can talk to Sally about. "And the great thing is, I don't have to lie because I'm not always thinking about how to get her into bed," he says, "I can just be myself." Still hung up on the fact that his friend made a woman meow, Jess doesn't remark on this last bit that Harry says about his dynamic with Sally.

What's great about this scene and what makes it so necessary to the narrative is that it gives the audience a reference point. It's the equivalent of a Venn diagram of Harry's friendships with those of the same sex and those of the opposite sex. It also confirms Harry's argument from the car ride to New York that men and women can't be friends. Jess's incredulity really sells the scene. To the sharp or quick viewer, Harry's assertion that he doesn't have to lie to Sally immediately juxtaposed with his sex example does seem to indicate that there is a part of him who tells Sally things like that because he is trying to get her in bed.

"Nobody has ever quoted me back to me before!"

At a certain point in their single lives, Harry and Sally try to set each other up with their best friends: Jess with Sally and Marie with Harry. It becomes apparent that Sally isn't really feeling Jess and when the table's conversation comes to a natural lull, Marie ends up quoting Jess. So it seems their plan backfired as their friends hit it off with each other instead. Before dinner we see both Harry and Jess as well as Sally and Marie as they discuss the impending date, Marie's married beau, and what it means when someone describes a date as having a good personality. This is mirrored after dinner when first Marie pulls Sally to the side and then Jess talks with Harry. Marie wants to be sure she isn't hurting Sally if she goes after Jess. "I'm just worried about Harry," Sally says, "He's very sensitive, he's going through a rough period, and I just don't want you to reject him right now." At the same time, Jess is asking Harry for permission to call Marie. Harry gives his blessing but says, "But for tonight you shouldn't. I mean Sally's very vulnerable right now." Harry tells Jess to wait a week. Before long Jess and then Marie are piling into a taxi together, leaving Harry and Sally stumped.

We see that each friend is thinking of the other in this scene. When Marie wants Jess instead of Harry, Sally can't help but be protective and when Jess wants Marie instead of Sally Harry wants to shield her from the rejection. Their care for each other is real, and it is rooted in their friendship.

"Boy, you sound really healthy"

In 1987, Sally tells her two girl friends over lunch that she and Joe have broken up. She seems pretty at peace with the situation, noting that she and Joe had been growing apart for some time and that the clock doesn't really start ticking until you're 36. Elsewhere, at a football game, Harry tells his friend Jess about Helen moving out. This sets the stage for the third encounter between Harry and Sally in a bookstore. Bumping into each other becomes lunch, and Sally actually gives Harry a chance to be a friend. They connect as they commiserate over the endings of their relationships. Sally discusses discovering that she wants a family, only to find that Joe didn't want kids. "Joe and I used to talk about it," Sally says, "and we'd say, 'We're so lucky, we have this wonderful relationship. We can have sex on the kitchen floor and not worry about the kids walking in, and we can fly off to Rome on a moment's notice.'" She realizes her yearning when she takes a friend's daughter to the circus, and she confronts Joe when she gets home. "I said, 'The thing is Joe, we never do fly off to Rome on a moment's notice.'" Sally knows that she got the most she could out of her relationship with Joe once they come to the final understanding about kids, and Harry says, "Boy, you sound really healthy." This is a watershed moment for Sally, and Harry recognizes that.

"Maybe I'm coming down with something"

Some time passes after their meeting in the bookstore, and Harry calls Sally. She's watching Casablanca and he asks her for the channel so he can watch too. He tells her he hasn't been sleeping, and says, "Maybe I'm coming down with something," a line that will come up again in the film. He misses Helen. He adds, "I'm not well." Rather than stay up till 4 in the morning, as Harry describes, Sally says she went to bed at 7:30 last night. Harry remarks, "That's the good thing about depression, you get your rest." She resists the notion that she is depressed over her breakup with Joe. Harry has no problem declaring that he misses Helen. He says he feels weird if even his leg ends up on what used to be her side of the bed. To this, Sally realizes that she misses "the idea" of Joe. This is the first time we see the effective use of the split screen: by the end of the phone call we see Sally's view of Casablanca on the TV on the left, and to the right, Harry's view of the movie. They're watching the last scene of the film together when Harry says, "Ingrid Bergman. Now she's low maintenance."

S: Low maintenance?

H: There are two kinds of women, high maintenance and low maintenance.

S: And Ingrid Bergman is low maintenance?

H: An LM, definitely.

S: Which one am I?

H: You're the worst kind. You're high maintenance but you think you're low maintenance

S: I don't see that.

H: You don't see that? 'Waiter, I'll begin with the house salad but I don't want the regular dressing. I'll have the balsamic vinegar and oil but on the side. And then the salmon with the mustard sauce but I want the mustard sauce on the side.' On the side is a very big thing for you.

S: Well I just want it the way I want it.

H: I know, high maintenance.

The camera alternates from showing their television screens to showing Harry and Sally each laid up separately in their own beds. Opposite their screens, when they are shown on camera Sally appears to the right of the split screen and Harry to the left. We see that Sally has a bedside lamp on and appears to have been reading before getting distracted with TV. Harry lays in the dark. Here, the lighting is symbolic: Sally is meant to be the optimist, Harry the pessimist. The split screen is so effective here because it shows each character in their own bed, just after Harry had been talking about sides of the bed post-breakup. Sally seems more at ease in her environment where Harry seems to be sulking. This represents how they are responding to their individual break-ups.

The next time Harry says, "I think I'm coming down with something," is when Sally simultaneously says, "I think I'm catching a cold," during the four-way phone call the morning after they have sex. This line seems to mean, at least for Harry, that he is feeling depressed. Both Harry and Sally are clearly bothered by their having had sex -- in fact, that was Reiner's entire premise for the film. When he pitched the idea to Ephron, he wanted to make a movie about friends who didn't go to bed together because they knew that would ruin the friendship, but who end up having sex and it ruins their friendship anyway. The first time Harry says he's coming down with something he is mourning the loss of Helen, the second time he says it he seems to be mourning the loss of his purely platonic friendship with Sally.

"You look really good in skirts"

In one scene Harry and Sally are in a museum, and Harry insists that they talk in a funny voice. At first, Sally repeats him when he asks her to go to the movies, but when Harry presses her for an answer she realizes he is serious. She has to tip her hand: she has a date lined up for the evening. "I was going to tell you about it, but I don't know, I just...felt strange about it." It's clear she's wanting to break this news with the most tact that she can, she says, "Because we've been spending so much time together." Harry perkily replies, "I think it's great that you have a date!" A beat passes before Sally asks, "You do?" and when Harry doubles down on his happiness for his friend there's a moment that passes between them. It's as if Sally was waiting for the conversation to take a different turn, but Harry remains steadfast in his friendship -- and there's nothing she can really do.

Harry asks if what she is wearing then is what she plans to wear for her date, and she waffles a bit. He says, "I think you should wear skirts more. You look really good in skirts." For all the sadness or wistfulness that seemed to be on Ryan's face just moments before, at this, her face lights up again. She smiles at the compliment. Harry tries changing the subject back to the hieroglyphics at the museum exhibit, but Sally insists, "You know Harry, I think you should get out there, too." Initially Harry argues that he isn't ready, but when Sally makes the assertion again he says, "I would not be good for anybody right now." Not taking no for an answer, Sally announces: "It's time."

This scene is the first time where the audience is given the indication that Sally may be wanting more from her friendship with Harry. It's all in Meg Ryan's body language and facial expressions. We see the nature of their friendship: it's playful until it isn't. We see also the argument that Harry is too negative of a person, or too depressed. When he says he wouldn't be good for "anybody" he seems to mean it, its the next answer he trots out after saying he isn't ready so it seems he's come to this conclusion before Sally ever broached the subject.

In the next scene, time has passed and they have each gone on a date. They share their war stories as they work to orient a large area rug in Harry's apartment. Sally's date takes one of her hairs and flosses with it. Harry says this is better than his date, who didn't laugh at his jokes and who ultimately caused him to think of Helen and have an anxiety attack in an Ethiopian restaurant. "Harry," Sally concludes, "I think this takes a long time. It might be months before we're actually able to enjoy going out with someone new." Despondent, he agrees. "And maybe longer before we're actually able to go to bed with someone new," Sally adds. Harry openly admits he went to bed with his date, at which Sally is surprised.

"The Surrey With the Fringe On Top" Scene

Time passes and the friends find themselves shopping for Jess and Marie, presumably for a wedding gift. The Sharper Image store offers lots of possibilities, but when Harry sees the karaoke machine he can't help but go for it. He gets Sally to sing a duet with him -- until he spots his ex-wife, Helen in the store with a new man. All while the Rodgers & Hammerstein blares in the background, Helen awkwardly introduces her partner to Harry, and Harry introduces Sally. The exchange is cringey. Harry becomes depressed after this chance encounter, and even though he assures Sally he's alright, secretly he's spinning out. At Jess and Marie's place it spills over: Harry is mourning too much to see how happy his friends are to be living together. Rather than insert himself in an argument for or against a coffee table, as Jess and Marie try cajoling him into, he flies off about how he and Helen had once been happy, had once done the things that come with moving in together. "You know it's funny, we started out like this, Helen and I. We had blank walls, we hung things, we picked out tiles together. Then you know what happens? 6 years later you find yourself singing 'Surrey With the Fringe On Top' in front of Ira!" Harry forewarns Jess and Marie to put their names in their books before they don't know what belongs to who; he says they'll end up going fifteen rounds over who wants the hideous coffee table in divorce proceedings some day and storms out. As if to say "you'll have to excuse him," Sally mentions the chance run-in with Helen.

Joining him outside, Sally says to Harry: "Harry you're going to have to try and find a way of not expressing every feeling that you have every moment that you them." Chastising him for his outburst, she reminds him that this was not the time or place to be airing grievances over his divorce. Harry turns on her and says she never gets upset at anything. They have a real fight for the first time in the movie and the tension is gripping. Harry seems to begrudge Sally for being able to get over Joe so easily. They argue about whether having sex with someone else would substantiate really being over the people that hurt them. After they lash out at each other, Harry apologizes and hugs Sally.

Harry's pain in love is great. When Helen said she didn't know if she'd ever loved him she drove a knife through his heart. Her falling in love with someone else nearly killed him. And when they ran into each other at The Sharper Image all the hurt, all the anger, all the despair came back to Harry. He was burned - and when he was reminded of how much he'd been burned he lost it all over again. If the movie didn't have this scene we would not see Harry's woundedness. We would lose the depth of emotion over the loss of his marriage. From the beginning of the film we've known Harry Burns has a dark side, but this scene makes his hurting justifiable. We would also lose the fight between Sally and Harry, which makes their relationship more real. When Harry's negativity comes crashing down his friend Sally is there with a reality check. Their friendship - and eventually their love - is rooted in the fact that they see both the good and the bad in each other.

The First New Year's Scene

One of the marks of great writing is repetition of meaningful symbols, which can become motifs, and dialogue, and When Harry Met Sally (1989) uses thoughtful repetition. One holiday we see twice in the passage of time in the film is New Year's Eve. Harry and Sally are dancing at a party and she compliments him on his clean-shaven look. "See? Now we can dance cheek to cheek," she says. This is a masterful shot as they dance and we see each of their facial expressions evolve as the dance continues. It seems there's something just beneath the surface of this friendship. At the moment of most tension, when the dancing stops as the countdown to the New Year begins, Harry asks if she wants to get some air. They bypass the tension of a possible kiss by running outside, but they find that they can't escape the landscape of lovers and friends kissing and embracing. They stare at each other for an uncomfortable amount of time and then finally hug and enjoy a chaste peck.

This is the scene where the romance plot starts to become apparent, and where the comedy takes a backseat. Their closeness is nice and intimate, cozy even, until they are confronted with a sexual possibility: the New Years kiss. Yet their closeness also makes them uncomfortable, as when they stare at each other before determining the most polite course of action.

Jess & Marie's Wedding

In a scene not dissimilar to the wedding scene in Season 2 of Bridgerton, Sally avoids making eye contact with Harry while they are each separately at the altar as best man and maid of honor. At the reception, Sally attempts to give Harry the cold shoulder, but he asks if she's been seeing anyone and she tries shutting down the conversation. "Why can't we get past this?" Harry asks, "I mean, are we gonna carry this thing around forever?" He wants a fix for their damaged relationship but Sally isn't budging. "Forever? It just happened," Sally replies. Then, in a reprehensible move, Harry likens Sally to a dog, claiming that time seems to pass differently for her. This really gets Sally going, and she motions Harry away from the happy hubbub of the reception. "I don't see that Harry, if anybody is the dog you are the dog!" Sally growls, "You wanna act like what happened didn't mean anything!" Harry rejects this and says he doesn't understand why it has to mean everything to them. Sally marches off toward the kitchen area as they continue bickering over what a mistake it was for them to have slept together. Harry follows her into the kitchen and wants to get one thing straight: "I did not go over there that night to make love to you, that is not why I went there." But he says she tugged at his heartstrings -- to which Sally solidly slaps him across the face. She doesn't want his pity. But just as Sally rejects Harry, soon, Jess makes a toast about rejecting them both. "To Harry and Sally! If Marie or I had found either of them remotely attractive, we would not be here today."

How It Ends: The 2nd New Years Eve Scene

At first, Harry tries consoling himself at home in front of the TV, curled up with Mallomars and Dick Clark. Then he decides to go for a walk and this actually seems to lift his spirits until he passes the Washington Square Arch, which reminds him of where Sally dropped him off at the end of their long car ride all those years ago. Cue the running. Harry is on fire with the realization that he's in love with Sally, suddenly. Meanwhile, at a party with Jess and Marie, Sally is thinking of leaving because she's depressed at the thought that at midnight she'll have no one to kiss. "I've been doing a lot of thinking," Harry says breathlessly as he approaches Sally, "And the thing is, I love you." Sally stonewalls him: "How do you expect me to respond to this?" Sally threatens to leave as he asks whether what he has said means anything. "I'm sorry, Harry, I know it's New Year's Eve, I know you're feeling lonely, but you just can't show up here, tell me you love me and expect that to make everything alright." They argue over how things should work and then we get it: the iconic line.

H: I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend a day with you I can still smell your perfume on my clothes, and I love that you are the last person I wanna talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you wanna spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

S: You see, that is just like you Harry, you say things like that and you make it impossible for me to hate you. And I hate you Harry. I really hate you. I hate you, Harry.

And they kiss. And the voiceover begins from their confessional, the seventh one in the film.

On Sex, Food & Silence

On the tails of their initial argument about Casablanca, Harry and Sally end up at a diner somewhere on the way to New York. As they enter the diner Harry razzes Sally, saying that he understands her position on Casablanca is based on the fact that she hasn't had great sex. Still standing by the door, Sally announces to the diner that she's had "plenty of good sex," momentarily interrupting the noises of the diner. It is clear in Meg Ryan's body language that this is an embarrassing moment for Sally. In the safety of a booth, Harry asks Sally who she's had this "great" sex with, and at first she refuses to answer. When she gives Harry a name he finds it unsatisfactory. He says: "A Sheldon can do your income taxes. If you need a root canal Sheldon's your man. But humpin' and pumpin' is not Sheldon's strong suit."

This is also when Harry first comes on to Sally. In awe of her unique ordering style and the way she splits the check, he says, "Amanda never said how attractive you were," and determines that Sally is "empirically attractive."

In 1987, the friends are eating at a diner when Sally asks Harry if he just abandons the women he takes to bed. "So what do you do with these women?" Sally wants to know, "You just get up out of bed and leave?" Harry describes making an excuse, anything from an early morning meeting to a squash game, and Sally is aghast that he would take advantage of what the women he sleeps with don't know about him. Harry doesn't play squash. Sally can't stomach this dishonesty. "You know, I'm so glad I never got involved with you," Sally retorts, "I just would've ended up being some woman you had to get up out of bed and leave at 3 o'clock in the morning and go clean your andirons. And you don't even have a fireplace. Not that I would know this." Harry can't understand Sally's becoming bitter: "Why are you getting so upset? This is not about you." At which Sally remarks that he is a human affront to all women, and therefore she is offended. He admits to not feeling great about his system, but Harry says he's never heard any complaints. "Of course not, you're out the door too fast," Sally quips.

This is where the scene takes its iconic turn: Harry insists that the women he sleeps with are satisfied, and Sally wants to know how he knows that. She presses him: "How do you know that they're really," and gestures to mean climaxing. "What are you saying?" Harry is in disbelief, "That they fake orgasms?" Sally argues that Harry can't see the truth because he is a man. "It's just that all men are sure it never happened to them," she argues, "and most women, at one time or another, have done it, so you do the math." Harry remains confident on his point that he would be able to tell the difference between a real and fake orgasm. This is when we see a twinkle in Sally's eye and the rest is film history. She proceeds to moan and cry out till the diner comes to a standstill - much like it did when she insisted she's had great sex in the earlier diner scene.

After Harry and Sally have sex they have dinner together. This dinner is incredibly awkward. When their salads arrive Harry chews loudly, and then remarks, "It is so nice when you can sit with someone and not have to talk." This scene is by far the shortest where the two share a meal and yet it really delivers. We see how difficult it is for them to face each other after they went to bed together. We see the dissolution of the friendship in real time. In comparison with the other food scenes, Sally doesn't bring the room to a hush; the two can't find anything to discuss. This seems to bring a sense of irony to the last meal we see them share on screen. We've seen them talk endlessly before, so what this scene sells is just how uncomfortable they are with having slept with each other. Silence before came at some sort of exclamation about sex from Sally, but here the sex they've had has as much of a deafening affect on their relationship as Sally has on the diners in previous scenes. The irony here is that the more they care for each other the harder it is to talk.

Fun Facts

• In 2022, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

• The famous "I'll have what she's having" line is one of AFI's 100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time.

• The ending was almost different. Neither Ephron nor Reiner initially planned for the "fairy tale" ending, but when Reiner met his second wife he pushed for the two to end up together.

• The soundtrack helped launch Harry Connick, Jr.'s career as he won a Grammy for it.

• The iconic scene with Sally faking an orgasm in the diner, which took place at Katz's Delicatessen, was awkward to film for Ryan because the diner remained open to real customers during filming. It took over a dozen takes and a full day of filming to get just right.

• Crystal helped shape Harry's character, as he improvised many of Harry's one-liners.

• The fake couple interviews were filmed near the end of production to reflect the tone of the finished film.

• Despite their iconic pairing, Ryan and Crystal had very different acting styles. It reportedly took time for them to sync up -- but that tension may have actually helped the slow-burn dynamic feel authentic. They would each win the American Comedy Wards for best actor and actress in a motion picture.