Ephron - When Harry Met Sally

I decided on the former; and we then spent the rest of the lunch talking about ourselves. Well, that isnt entirely true: we spent the rest of the lunch talking about Rob and Andy. Rob was divorced, and Andy was a bachelorand they were both extremely funny and candid about their lives as single men in Los Angeles. When the lunch ended, we still didnt have an idea for a movie; but we decided to meet again the next time they were in New York. And so, a month later, we got together. And threw around some more ideas, none of which I remember.

But finally, Rob said he had an ideahe wanted to make a movie about a man and a woman who become friends, as opposed to lovers; they make a deliberate decision not to have sex because sex ruins everything; and then they have sex and it ruins everything. And I said, lets do it. So we made a deal, and in February, Andy and Rob came back to New York and we sat around for several days and they told me some things. Appalling things. They told me, for instance, that when they finished having sex, they wanted to get up out of bed and go home. (Which became: HARRY: How long do I have to lie here and hold her before I can get up and go home? Is thirty seconds enough? How long do you like to be held afterwards? All night, right? Somewhere between thirty seconds and all night is your problem.

SALLY: I dont have a problem.) They told me about the endless series of excuses they had concocted in order to make a middle-of-the-night getaway. (SALLY: You know, I am so glad I never got involved with you. I just would have ended up being some woman you had to get up out of bed and leave at three oclock in the morning and go clean your andirons. And you dont even have a fireplace. Not that I would know this.) They also told me that the reason they thought men and women couldnt be friends was that a man always wanted to sleep with a woman. (HARRY: No man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive. (HARRY: No man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive.

He always wants to have sex with her. SALLY: So youre saying a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive. HARRY: No. You pretty much want to nail them, too.) I say that these things were appalling, but the truth is that they werent really a surprise; they were sort of my wildest nightmares of what men thought. Rob and Andy and I noodled for hours over the questions raised by friendship, and sex, and life in general; and as we did, I realizedlong before I had any idea of what was actually going to happen in the movie itselfthat I had found a wonderful character in Rob Reiner. Rob is a very strange person.

He is extremely funny, but he is also extremely depressedor at least he was at the time; he talked constantly about how depressed he was. You know how women have a base of makeup, he said to me. I have a base of depression. Sometimes I sink below it. Sometimes I rise above it. This line went right into the first draft of the movie, but somewhere along the line Rob cut it.

A mistake, I think, but never mind. Heres another from Rob on his depression: I think Im not ready for a relationship. When youre as depressed as I am If the depression was lifted, I would be able to be with someone on my level. But its like playing tennis on a windy day with someone whos worse than you are. They can do all right against you, they can win a couple of games, but theres too much wind. You know what I mean? I have no idea what Rob was talking about, but as I wrote those words in my notebook I knew that I would use the lines somehow.

And I did, and they were cut, and it was a mistake, and never mind. The point is that Rob was depressed; but he wasnt at all depressed about being depressed; in fact, he loved his depression. And so does Harry. Harry honestly believes that he is a better person than Sally because he has what Sally generously calls a dark side. Suppose nothing happens to you, he says in the first sequence of the movie. Suppose you live there [New York] your whole life and nothing happens.

You never meet anyone, you never become anything, and finally you die one of those New York deaths where nobody notices for two weeks until the smell drifts out into the hallway. Harry is genuinely proud to have thought of that possibility and to lay it at the feet of this shallow young woman he is stuck in a car with for eighteen hours. He is thrilled to be the prince of darkness, the master of the worst-case scenario, the man who is happy to tell you, as you find yourself in the beginning of a love affair, that what follows lust, inevitably, is post-lust: You take someone to the airport, its clearly the beginning of a relationship. Thats why Ive never taken anyone to the airport at the beginning of a relationship. Because eventually things move on and you dont take someone to the airport, and I never wanted anyone to say to me, How come you never take me to the airport anymore? So I began with a Harry, based on Rob. And because Harry was bleak and depressed, it followed absolutely that Sally would be cheerful and chirpy and relentlessly, pointlessly, unrealistically, idiotically optimistic.

Which is, it turns out, very much like me. Im not precisely chirpy, but I am the sort of person who is fine, Im just fine, everythings fine. I am over him, Sally says, when she isnt over him at all; I have uttered that line far too many times in my life, and far too many times Ive made the mistake of believing it was true. Sally loves controland Im sorry to say that I do too. And inevitably, Sallys need to control her environment is connected to food. I say inevitably because food has always been something I write aboutin part because its the only thing Im an expert on.

But it wasnt my idea to use the way I order food as a character trait for Sally; well along in the processthird or fourth draft or soRob and Andy and I were ordering lunch for the fifth day in a row, and for the fifth day in a row my lunch orderfor an avocado and bacon sandwichconsisted of an endless series of parenthetical remarks. I wanted the mayonnaise on the side. I wanted the bread toasted and slightly burnt. I wanted the bacon crisp. I just like it the way I like it, I said, defensively, when the pattern was pointed out to meand the line went into the script. But all that came much later.

In the beginning, I was more or less alonewith a male character based somewhat on Rob, and a female character based somewhat on me. And a subject. Which was not, by the way, whether men and women could be friends. The movie instead was a way for me to write about being singleabout the difficult, frustrating, awful, funny search for happiness in an American city where the primary emotion is unrequited love. This is from my notes, February 5, 1985, Rob speaking: This is a talk piece. There are no chase scenes.