When Harry Met Sally...: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret stories and little known facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and more. We are your high maintenance host of hilarious histories, your platonic pals of pop culture particulars, your favorite sweet and salty duo just brimming with sexual tension.

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Speaker 2: No, my name is Jordan Roun Tug No no, no request denied.

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Speaker 1: I should have read this close. That's not what the comments say. Nope, Well, today we are along. We are talking about a movie that is near and dear to me as a guy who spent the better part of his life residing in the friend zone just hoping that she would notice me. Oh, this is a movie that always filled my sadly deluded heart with hope. We are talking about When Harry Matt Sally, which turns thirty five this year. This is a movie that examines the complexities of love and relationships, or at least a specific kind of relationship. Rich white cisgender city dwellers during an economic boom time, the likes of which we will never see again. But still good, still good. It follows the ups and downs of Harry Burns and Sally Albright's relationship as they navigate their individual romantic endeavors and personal growth over the course of twelve years. Yes, some of the points are a little cliche these days, and there are parts that maybe didn't age very well, but it is beloved nonetheless because it gave a semi realistic portrayal of modern relationships, and also, more importantly, offered perhaps the most famous depiction of the Battle of the sexes since Billy Jean King took down Bobby Riggs on the tennis court. The movie's iconic line men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way is still debated to this day. Yet the film screenwriter, the legendary Nora Ephron, didn't see that as the focal point of the movie. She said in two thousand and eight, I don't think that the movie's about friendship at all. I think the movie is about men and women and how they see everything, including friendship and sex, from completely different vantage points. Now, Higel and I can't be trusted to have a nuanced discussion about relationships. So today we are thrilled to announce guests we have guests. We've tidied the place up, we have a new recording interface. This is so exciting. We have podcasting Royalty, Brooks, Siffren and Reese, just Kid Moore, Williams of Wonders, Even the Rich, one of the most endlessly addictive biography podcasts on the Internet. Their recent season on Prince Harry was directly responsible for getting me back into the Crown, So thank you for that and all the hours that I lost not doing come back to that.

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Speaker 3: Well, I'm just gonna hit up Netflix. I was just listening to about them on the radio. There was like a news thing about how they're doing so fucked it yeah, and I was like, how are they doing so well? When we all agreed we weren't gonna get subscriptions after they stopped us from password sharing. But apparently I'm the only one doing that.

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Speaker 1: I think everybody caved. That's my guess is that everybody's keeping it did it?

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Speaker 3: And I just click on traveling.

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Speaker 4: I refuse, I've never been penalized still, Like, I haven't even gotten a pop up or anything. So I'm like, I don't know what's happening, but I'm using mine. Well, that's what we have it at this place and this in a second place, so there's other people at different places using it. So I don't know, we're just sliding under the radar, you know, So don't say anything about it.

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Speaker 1: But it's more than just a royal family. You have epic dynastic family scandals, including the Kennedy's chap Equitic incident, Drew Barrymore in her show business family, Patty Hurst's Spaghetti's who we just talked about in the Studio fifty four episode about the guy who got a zeo sliced off? Oh there you go. Oh you just launched a spinoff series, Even the Royals, which again is a must for any Crown devotees. But you also wrapped a season of Even the Rich with Snoop Dog and Martha Stewart, which I did not see coming. How did you land the on that?

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Speaker 4: You know, we didn't see it coming either. We don't have any set.

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Speaker 3: We never see anything coming and we just show it. Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I mean, I was like, oh, okay, this is fun. Like, I mean, who doesn't love Snoop and Martha and their friendship, Like it's so wild. So it's a really fun season because it kind of focuses on both of them separately and then their friendship together at the end. So yeah, it's I don't know how they decided on that, but it's topical now.

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Speaker 1: How I actually, my my first job was at VH one where I think their show was. How did they come together? Was it just a bunch of producers who thought it would be a funny combination.

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Speaker 4: Yeah?

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Speaker 3: I think he was just on her show. Yeah, and they just had really really good chemistry. Yeah, and they're like, we gotta we gotta ride this way passion. Yeah, yeah, we don't have enough money, each of us on our own.

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Speaker 2: I respect I respect Snoop for literally endorsing anything like just whatever it is.

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Speaker 1: He just stamps his name on it and collects the check. And I like that.

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Speaker 2: So I have to think they bonded over like a mutual right, this is going to work? Yeah, you have a towel line. I have a weed line.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. You know that was the most surprising or endearing thing that you learned about about their friendship or relationship?

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Speaker 4: Well, I love I don't know if we learned this during the season, but like, my favorite thing about them, Your favorite story I've heard is during the roast, whatever roast they were, You're right, yeah, and she like got a contact high basically from Snoop or something and like had told that story, and I'm like, I love that so much. Like I just love the idea of Martha Stewart being high, you know, it's just like.

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Speaker 3: Classic She's so I don't know if you guys, like, I don't know what your social media is like, but like common spy CELB will periodically post. It's like this Instagram account where they like post like when comments on things, and I feel like at least once a month we get like a Snoop Dogg comment on a Martha Stewart post or vice versa. So like there was literally just one today, just today where snow had like posted a bunch of libras, which I'm a libra, so I loved it, and Martha was like, don't forget the leos. We're pretty cool too. But it's just like their friendship is so fun and fresh and nobody saw coming, and we just need more of that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't feel stage managed in a way than like a ton of these do.

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Speaker 1: Like I actually can't.

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Speaker 2: I like the idea that you know, I used to work with page six and so, like, I'm familiar with publicists, so.

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Speaker 1: I think we met working at People magazine together. So yeah we yeah.

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Speaker 2: So we've been in that world. But yeah, I can't imagine like a publicist running either of their instagrams and like commenting on each other about if So it's a great Those publicists deserve raises.

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Speaker 1: Yeah right.

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Speaker 4: I also feel like you get to a point in your life and in your career where you're like, I got it from here. I'll say what I want to say.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so established off.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Michael does our friendship field stage managed? It feels podcast managed.

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Speaker 2: That means I don't know. That was just a quip. I didn't have anything behind that, just.

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Speaker 1: Like our relationship. Oh, I was afraid of a junior wolf couple bickering a dinner party. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I'm sorry, thank you later, thank you, thank you. Not in front of it, not in front of the guests. I need some help with the potatoes now.

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Speaker 4: I think you guys seem very authentic in your friendship.

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Speaker 1: Oh, thank you.

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Speaker 3: I assume you guys also have weekly sleepovers like we do, know.

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Speaker 1: On different coasts. Oh yeah, well.

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Speaker 3: There's cameras, there's loom.

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Speaker 1: Right, No, that would be such a terrible sleep. We were in a band together and on tour we were like the Bucket family, like head to foot in beds, we all shared a bed, a couple of rooms, right.

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Speaker 4: Until you guys like Charlie, we walk up factory the grandparents.

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Speaker 1: Well, Brooke, I've been told that you are not a big fan of When Harry Met Sally, and as somebody who wants to be an hospitable host, that horrifies me. But my favorite episodes are the ones where I'm torturing Higel because I make him talk about something he hates. What are your thoughts and when Harry met Sally or what's your beef with when Harry met Sally?

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Speaker 4: Thank you so much for asking, Jordan.

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Speaker 3: We really need to give space for hating, you know, yes, yeah, we need.

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Speaker 4: I Okay, as a rom common general, it's fine, But my biggest problem is that I don't feel the romantic chemistry between the two leads. And that's a big problem I think in around Yeah, that's.

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Speaker 3: One of the important parts.

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Speaker 2: It's funny because I just rewatched it, and it's funny because, like I it's either like comedy has moved so far on from Billy Crystal's whole deal that there's like it's it's scanning as.

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Speaker 1: Undefined as well.

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Speaker 2: I mean like there's a part, you know, like the whole thing right the end after they like have their you know, their their final New Year's Eve kiss, and he just immediately starts riffing.

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Speaker 1: It's like that's that seems so.

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Speaker 2: Like on on I forget what he even is like quipping about like old Lanzi.

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Speaker 1: He's like on the lyrics. Oh yeah, yeah, well he's like riffing on.

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Speaker 2: The lyrics of old lang Sign And it's just like that just seems so scans is so inauthentic. This like you know, these this these decades later, and you know, it's kind of like I think it's a real descendant of like the Groucho Marx movies, where the whole thing just grinds to a halt so that your big, more key name comedian can just do his shtick.

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Speaker 1: Williams. Yeah, that's fair.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's very Robin.

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Speaker 2: And then like yeah, I don't know, I mean, he's it's funny because like watching it, I'm like, oh, I see different versions of myself in each different version of Billy Crystal, but like still throughout the movie, there's so many things to dislike about him.

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Speaker 1: Okay, well, well we'll get to that. About you, where do you fall in this movie?

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Speaker 3: Well, this is what's crazy. I'm like, well known as a romcom officionado. I love rom coms more than several articles about her. Yeah, but I had never seen this movie. I knew about it, but I never watched it. So I watched it for this. I don't like it, Okay, I mean it's it's okay. I think we got some iconic lines that I'd already known about obviously, but I, you know, echoing what Brook said, I didn't. I didn't feel like chemistry. Billy Crystal. I love him. I don't think he's rom com lead material. I think he was. One of my favorite movies that he's in is America's Sweethearts.

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Speaker 1: Oh my God. And I think.

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Speaker 3: He Yeah, I think he wrote it like he had to do with its creation and everyone's googling. Okay, prove me writ or wrong. He had he had it was like his idea or something to make it happens. Chemistry, Yeah, so he wrote it, co wrote it and I feel like he is. He's so funny. I like whenever I watch movies with people, I always like wikipedia them, and he just like looking into him. He just seems like such a wonderful person. He just doesn't give me like rom Com lead. He gives me like rom Com best friend.

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Speaker 2: They solved that in when Harry met Sally by giving him the schlubbiest best friend, like a guy who, respectfully, you cannot imagine in any universe pulling Kerry Fisher.

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Speaker 1: So I want to get that out of the way. Yeah, I just want to say I'm cost playing as Billy Crystal right now. I wore my cable in that sweater like you see in the movin Love It.

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Speaker 4: It's a great sweater, it is.

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Speaker 3: It looks so cozy. Wait where are you are You.

00:11:41
Speaker 1: In New Yors? I'm in New York Yeah, and Alex here in LA. I'm in Berkeley Bay Area. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Okay, okay, okay.

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Speaker 1: Y Well. I like this movie because I saw it when I was young and stupid. That I think is crucial. I was immature. Yeah, I was an immature young man who was constantly falling in love with my female friends and hoping they'd one day wake up and realize that they felt the same about me and that we were perfect together. And this worked out exactly zero times as anybody.

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Speaker 3: Anybody, Sorry, I'm still falling in love with my friends and they're like, who the fuck are you? So I hear that, I get it.

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Speaker 4: They're like, wow, you're really throwing the word friend around a lot, lady.

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Speaker 1: Yep.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm trying to think. I don't think I've ever been really in that situation where I'm like just pining after a friend. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Well, I love that for you. I'm glad, I'm very congratulations.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm always just swatting them away with a bat, you know, like take it.

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Speaker 3: I go.

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Speaker 1: We've all shared.

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Speaker 2: I think I kind of actually only in high school. Yeah, and it was it was probably similar to yours, but.

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Speaker 1: It was not I promise you about that. I wrote play for this girl that.

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Speaker 2: I didn't do that. Max didn't do that. My my biggest simp move was the classic ask for their ask for their locker combination, and I made chocolate covered strawberries for her.

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Speaker 1: I never heard that as a move. That's great, that that's tending. I don't think you could do that in today's climate, they'd be like, do you have a gun? Yeah? Oh I thought you might. Like literally, they would.

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Speaker 2: Analogy that's an unintentionally resonant uh piece of topical humor.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, looks like.

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Speaker 3: Not with global warming. That'll never work, never, never work.

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Speaker 1: Chocolate covered straw in this economy. Well yeah, that's that's the reasons. Well, yeah, that is cute though.

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Speaker 4: That's a nice move.

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Speaker 3: That's a nice move. Yeah. I used to put secret admirer letters in their lockers.

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Speaker 4: Okay, really like you'd slide it through the little yep.

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Speaker 3: And it went terribly because the first time I heard it that everyone knew it was me because I very distincted writing. And then the peanut butter cup resid do on the note, No, there was not. This was before I was super into reces. But then another time I was like, this is going to be great. I'm gonna like send all these anonymous secret admirer letters with different fonts and the names of the spot will spell out my name. That's how they'll know it's me.

00:14:23
Speaker 1: And I stopped. I think on like the sea high concept.

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Speaker 3: It is high concept, and that's a problem is I'm always going after these dumb idiots.

00:14:31
Speaker 1: You gotta read out the I'm gonna be honest like you.

00:14:34
Speaker 3: It worked out really well.

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Speaker 2: I was an English major. I think that one would have gone right over my head. I'm sorry, I'm not I'm.

00:14:39
Speaker 1: Not a puzzle guy.

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Speaker 2: Is that an acrostic or an anti crusus? What's the what's the word play thing that we're talking about?

00:14:46
Speaker 3: Spelling exactly what you said and those things he published in the paper.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a cipher.

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Speaker 4: She was cutting letters out of magazines and they were like, is she fin baby?

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Speaker 3: Honestly, it's a fin line for me.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: Well, to make you all feel better. The young woman I wrote the play for when I was like fifteen, I was on a plane and there was a legitimate engine problem and like one of the engines was smoking, and I thought we were going to crash. I was really scared. And you guys in the air, Yeah, we're in the air, and there was an air sickness bag in front of me, and I wrote a love note to her thinking I don't know what I was thinking. It was just panicked and I thought it would be found on my body, right, Yeah, I don't know. And so we landed obviously, and I was okay, and I landed and I said, oh my god, yeah, this crazy flight, and I, oh my god, I did this crazy thing. I actually wrote to this goofy note on this airsickness bag. And she was like, oh, well, I'd like to see that. You know, why should you have to be dead to tell me how you really feel about me? And so I showed it to her and then it freaked her out and she didn't speak to me for like a year.

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Speaker 3: She's like, maybe you should have been dead then, yeah, yeah.

00:15:57
Speaker 1: It would have. That would have been preferable reading this. Imagine like ninth grade.

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Speaker 2: I imagine like an FTA investigator like sifting through the wreckage and he finds your charred little hand clutching this bag and just goes nerd. Yeah, putting it into a plastic bag. Well, you guys have an idea of the tenor of the show, now, yes.

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Speaker 1: Yes, Well. I don't just love this movie solely because it validates my most pathetic tendencies, of which I have many, But Nora Efron's hilarious script broke new ground in the old tried and true rom com area. Rather than having a villain come between the two star cross lovers or some other contrived misunderstanding between them. The only thing that keeps Harry and Sally apart of their own insecurities in the Roses, which I think makes it very realistic and also moreover, it illustrates the significant role of timing plays and relationships, positing the notion that two people must come together at the right moment in their lives in order to truly connect. And I think that's what makes When Harry Met Sally one of the more relatable and realistic wrong coms. Yeah, I just like for me too.

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Speaker 2: I also really I'm so tired of like the grade shot on digital like content slop and slurry, that we're all just being forced onto it at every moment every day that I just like, I see something that was like shot on film and like on location and somebody worked on the script. It doesn't read like it was written by chat GPT or someone without health insurance, and you're just like, this is just a work of.

00:17:31
Speaker 1: Art, you know, like the real.

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Speaker 4: You know what, That's a really good point because like a reason I always talk about how rom coms today don't feel the way that romcoms used to feel, and that might be a big part of it, honestly, Like you may have nailed one of the bigger issues there.

00:17:46
Speaker 2: I think a lot of it also can come down to the fact that, like the filtering system for those casting in those things has like shifted to social media, like you have TikTok influencers and like Instagram influencers, comedians who were getting like shuffled into these roles, and like, I'm sorry respectfully to her, but like Addison Ray doesn't have like Addison comic chops that Meg Ryan does, and no one like you know, get us started insert well, I mean, like insert male figure like in that same situation has not come up in the same like circles that you know, Billy Crystal has. So there's just like they're just not equipped to do any kind of actual movie work.

00:18:21
Speaker 1: You know.

00:18:22
Speaker 2: So you see people who do it and you're like, Wow, what a treat when things were actually made.

00:18:26
Speaker 1: Well, we used to be a proper.

00:18:28
Speaker 4: Country, Yeah right, we used to be a guy.

00:18:32
Speaker 1: I love your hot takes. I did not think I get a rom com hot take out of you. I mean, I'm a big Rob Reiner guy too.

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Speaker 2: I think this is like part of his like Imperial era too, when he was just knocking out of the park at every at bat. You know, because this especially this is like close to misery too, which is a different kind of different kind of com.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a little bit. Yeah, We're going to have so much fun on this. I can't wait. Let's dive in from the Bazar, the film screenwriter played in Watergate, and the Presidential Kid who played a bit part to the time Tom Hanks and Molly Ringwold nearly played the titular characters, and the long lost bummer ending the surprise genesis of the famous deli scene, the struggle to come up with the title, and the beloved British royal who couldn't get enough of this film. Here's everything you didn't know about when Harry Met Sally? All right, So, in a sense, When Harry Met Sally's loosely based on a true story. The characters of Harry and Sally are basically the alter egos of director Rob Reiner and writer Nora Ephron. By the mid eighties, Reiner was floundering and single theom following his divorce from fellow seventies sitcom Royalty termed beloved eighties director Penny Marshall and Shirley Big It's like, it's kind of crazy how their paths diverged but remains parallel.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure, hell.

00:19:58
Speaker 1: Of a couple. Oh yeah. Ryner had just completed this as spinal Tap and was pitching newly buzzy screenwriter Nora Efron movie ideas over lunch at New York's Russian Tea Room one day in nineteen eighty four. As she recalled, his ideas were bad and she rejected them immediately, which was quote very embarrassing because we hadn't even ordered lunch yet, which is a perfect Nora Efron line. Yeah. Efron was also newly single, as we'll discuss in a moment, and the pair spent the rest of the meal discussing the different ways that men and women view sex, love, and relationships. Gradually, the bare bones of a movie took shape, as Ephron remembered it. Ryaner summed up the plot as two people become friends after the end of their first major relationship in each of their lives, and they make a decision not to have sex because it'll ruin the friendship, And then they have sex and it ruins the friendship. Nora agreed to write a script based loosely on Rhiner's dating experiences, which Efron deemed horrifying but not surprising, which I take to mean offensive and deeply misogynistic.

00:21:00
Speaker 3: Probably fair, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:02
Speaker 1: Writer later told the AV Club, I'd been married for ten years and I'd been single for ten years. And during that time when I was single, I kept being in and out of different relationships and they didn't go so good, and I kept getting confused. How do you make friendships if you have sex? Does that ruin the friendship? All those questions that are brought up in the film. I said, this has got to be the basis for something here. So I went to Nora and I told her about it, and she said, I like that idea, and she started interviewing me. She was like a reporter, and I told her all these stories of different things I'd been through, and from these stories she crafted the character of Harry Burns. And she would later say in a DVD featurette for the twentieth anniversary of the movie, he's basically Rob Ryaner. He's neurotic and in love with his neuroses. Who among us is not in love with their neurosis?

00:21:49
Speaker 4: I mean, you got to be you know, you got to tolerate yourself somehow.

00:21:52
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, that's a very generous read on that. I want to write that one down therapy. Yeah, I'm like, okay. Many of the lines from the movie came directly from their conversations. Ryaner like Harry had a tendency to overshare, and Ephron like Sally call him out on that, telling him, you know, you don't have to tell everybody everything that's going on the moment it's going on. Uh okay. We sort of talked about this top of the episode. Do we think Harry is a likable character.

00:22:25
Speaker 4: I think he has likable some likable qualities. Yeah, you know, I think he doesn't start off great, you know, but I think that's also kind of I think his arc as the years go on. You know, he's like this young kid who's like driving a college girl. It's like, you know, he's kind of a pain in the ass, but then he starts to get more likable. I think as time goes on, as he grows up.

00:22:47
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know what about Rob.

00:22:51
Speaker 4: I'll be honest, I don't know a lot about Rob Reiner.

00:22:54
Speaker 1: I've realized he looks like.

00:22:56
Speaker 2: David Crosby when he was young, and he yeah yeah, and he made you know, a lot of good movies. And more importantly for Jordan, who's like a big sitcom guy, he was in All in the Family first.

00:23:07
Speaker 1: So okay, beathead, Yeah, I love this. One of Nora Efron's slightly more endearing qualities that she commandeered for Sally was I guess she was a very uh particular eater, i'll say by her witnessed her ordering food in a very precise way, and they decided to add it to the script, and Laura even incorporated her own defensive line, I just like it the way I like it, which fine, fair, Yeah.

00:23:37
Speaker 3: I gotta say, as having worked in the industry before the hospitality industry, it makes you want to strangle her like I was just about your house. Okay, come fine.

00:23:51
Speaker 2: That's the dividing line too, because I was just about to ask Jordan, like, have you worked were you front of house or back of house?

00:23:57
Speaker 1: About I was? I was a dishwasher, which I don't know where that puts me in the what was that? What was that face?

00:24:03
Speaker 2: No, I've said, you've done your time, but you're not involved in this conversation.

00:24:08
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, okay, look, and I don't want to like, I'm not coming for people that are like, oh, like I have a gluten allergy or like I don't eat cheese, and like is it possible to like get a side salad instead of fries? But like when you're like I want it at this temperature and I want that, and it's like no, no, no, no, no, no, this is not You're not the queen, like you're I'm making minimum wage. Go make it at home.

00:24:30
Speaker 2: I did not love it, especially in like a roadside diner, like where are they in that first stop?

00:24:35
Speaker 4: Like, come on, so Alex and Risha, how are your tips really you and your dumb ass order?

00:24:45
Speaker 3: No, you could complain about it. You'll do it, but you could complain.

00:24:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:24:50
Speaker 2: I was a line cook, so I was I was allowed to curse them out when the order came through the line, to the front of house person when they came back in the kitchen, but they had to go out and smile.

00:25:00
Speaker 1: And I didn't. Uh.

00:25:01
Speaker 2: In the Hershey country club actually, and in Delhi when I was in college, oh my god, I.

00:25:05
Speaker 3: Worked in a country club too. I was a country club very.

00:25:09
Speaker 1: Solidarity short amount of time.

00:25:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was rough. That's where you get a lot of requests and it's like, just because you're paying twenty five thousand dollars a year, I will cut you. Jesus who knows what it is now it's obscene just to play Goblin way more.

00:25:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, whatever, I think I would. I would forgive Nora Efron for doing that, though, I mean when you have her, forgive Nora Efron for anything, you know. Apparently she was on a plane once and she ordered something in a really particular way, and I guess the person taking an order didn't recognize hers. Have you ever seen the movie when Harry met Right? Yeah?

00:25:45
Speaker 4: God, remember I used to eat on planes.

00:25:47
Speaker 3: I didn't want a plane in Love to London.

00:25:49
Speaker 4: It was delightful, but like just general flights used to have food, right, like just random flights, Like you didn't have to be in first class, you didn't have to be flying overseas.

00:26:00
Speaker 3: Now you just get peanuts if you're lucky.

00:26:02
Speaker 4: I know, it's like we used to do whatever we wanted.

00:26:05
Speaker 1: The only thing I eat on flights are edibles in adavan.

00:26:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's I'm so scared to get higher to be a first class for that. I'm like, it's worried my brain will just explode. It won't be able to process that, yep. And I'm like, I can't. I'm already neurotic enough on the ground.

00:26:21
Speaker 1: Sometimes that's preferable.

00:26:23
Speaker 3: I'll be the next viral plane video of like going instde and I.

00:26:27
Speaker 1: Don't need that, trust fingers, I don't need that.

00:26:30
Speaker 3: No, uncross your fingers.

00:26:32
Speaker 1: Podcaster goes on lizard person rant.

00:26:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, we got to get in the new Sumhow this is it.

00:26:40
Speaker 1: The more nervous I am, the more I feel like I need to be like one hundred and ten percent on as opposed to doing what I probably should do is just have something to take the edge off, because like if I'm not on, then it'll get me. Yeah you know yeah, as if that would be able to be helpful, that's fair six miles.

00:26:57
Speaker 4: Up, especially at a higher elevation, like you're gonna feel more high, So it's exactly fair.

00:27:03
Speaker 3: Like getting like I said, and like a mimosa. I'm like, I had one mosa and I was like, oh, it was like I can't, I can't.

00:27:11
Speaker 4: Be You're like whatever, a something happens and I have to fly the plane.

00:27:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I never drunk fly a plane. That's a rookie mistake. And I could take it, couldn't. I could totally.

00:27:22
Speaker 1: Feel plane trauma.

00:27:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, think of the genius play you could write stoned out of your mind on a flight though.

00:27:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've actually flown a plane, so I like flown. So my dad was like a small plane planot small plane pilot. That's impossible to say small plane pilot. And I got a group of like years later and like where you like you like tandem fly with like somebody. So I'm like flying a plane and then the pilot's like behind me. I was like, I don't. I would rather fly a commercial jet. So I'm gonna see if Southwest puts up one of those groupons and I can do it for them.

00:27:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you.

00:27:59
Speaker 2: Get thoughts like as you're passing over anything in particular, like this is my moment?

00:28:06
Speaker 3: Weirdly, it wasn't. It was more an interest of thought of like this could be the end of us. All that got my hands. But that was just like I can't wait to be back in the crowd. And I don't mind flying. I actually enjoy flying. But in the small plane where you feel everything. I was like, I can't believe my dad willingly did this for fun? Yeah, can you do well?

00:28:29
Speaker 4: Also, person, do you have to be to agree to be the pilot in that situation? Like, yeah, I'll hand them this money hungry idiot who got a group on and see if they.

00:28:39
Speaker 1: Don't kill ups?

00:28:43
Speaker 3: Whoa Yeah, there was no like background check? What if? I was like some cycle. I'm just thinking about this.

00:28:51
Speaker 1: What I was like against that pilot? Yes, yeah, which honestly panic button that just like cuts off control of the yoke or something.

00:28:59
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like when you get like a sun drive.

00:29:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, stunt gun. It was just like enough of this.

00:29:08
Speaker 3: And we all go down to counter.

00:29:11
Speaker 2: You probably signed it away in the group on at this point. I mean, I just don't trust on any of those things.

00:29:15
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, a time.

00:29:20
Speaker 1: This is a very Harry Burns thought. Here is Harry Burns has he has He has a dark side. He talks about his dark side. I think about death for hours. Yeah exactly.

00:29:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, poor Jordan having to steer this conversation back on track. I feel we should.

00:29:34
Speaker 3: See how wild we can get as even and final way to bring it back challenge accepted.

00:29:38
Speaker 2: That is my goal every episode that is, Yeah, sometimes I just see what's in the news.

00:29:47
Speaker 1: Well. An ingenious device that Efron uses in this movie are the talking head segments with older couples sharing how they met, which I thought was a cute touch. And these scenes were taken pretty much verbatim from interviews that she'd done with real life couples who were the film's production company. And I love how at the very end of the movie Harry and Sally have their talking moments. Is just one of the many brilliant improvised performances by Meg Ryan and really Crystal, which we'll talk about later.

00:30:13
Speaker 2: I do have to say that one couple where they're just talking over each other, I was like gritting my teeth through that because it's like, really, yeah, I don't find that so cute.

00:30:24
Speaker 3: It felt like a trope, like a felt like it felt like what you would expect of like a very old couple. For some reason, I felt like they were in New York City, they've lived there in like Brooklyn for fifty years or something. Just felt very much like I've seen this these two characters before.

00:30:41
Speaker 1: They should have had. Marty Scorsese's mom, well, my grandparents were hearing impaired, and so they would have like conversations that were like parallel. They each thought they were having a conversation that wasn't actually occurring, and so I think I was That's kind of how I saw it.

00:30:55
Speaker 4: That's like having a conversation at a club with someone you just met.

00:30:59
Speaker 1: You can't hear each other.

00:31:00
Speaker 3: You're just like, yeah, that was me today with that woman at the pool, at the in the locker room. Who this is so unnecessary to bring up on this podcast.

00:31:08
Speaker 4: Bring I was telling you go around from this. Someone stuck a finger and Reash's butt.

00:31:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, bring it back. Yeah, this old woman Jordan a few weeks ago, she like put her finger in my She was trying to point out a tear in my bathing suit. And she's an older woman. But I had a new bathing suit on and I was like, yeah, I've got a new bathing suit on. And I was having this conversation. She's like, Oh, I don't have my hearing aids and I can't hear anything you're saying. I was like, you could have said that five minutes ago. I could be swimming right now knowing you're not listening to anything I'm saying. Yeah, that was anyway worse bringing that back. Yeah, that was the worst part.

00:31:40
Speaker 1: She's very oh yeah, actually does that.

00:31:48
Speaker 3: She's also the one that she was like the first time I like interacted with her. Of course she's fully naked. This is the locker room at the y and she's telling me how I don't hate saying this word. She's like, she's like, when you get older, you're a pussy. Just drops and I unsolicited content like I did not doctor, I did not ask her about it.

00:32:10
Speaker 1: Equations.

00:32:10
Speaker 3: I don't even know her name yet.

00:32:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, so had you seen them before? Like it was this first time.

00:32:18
Speaker 3: I've seen her in like the ether because there's a there's an aerobics class before I have my I do my swimming, so all these older women come in as I'm like changing and going out into the pool. So it's like I see her through that, but I wouldn't pick her out of a lineup. I could now, but before I couldn't.

00:32:34
Speaker 2: Now which part of her her finger that was up my butt commercial break break. It's good to know that that that that weird trope of like of people like old people getting that up in your in the locker room transcends gender.

00:32:49
Speaker 1: Too, because yeah, oh yeh, that's never happened to me. Well, I've been saying up for a long time. Not the first people to tell me to spend more time, not for them in.

00:33:01
Speaker 3: The locker room.

00:33:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really just the locker room. That's what we're here. I change in the bathroom stall like like a normal but the repressed New England boy.

00:33:11
Speaker 3: I am see, I don't I am such a la would I literally like, when I get out of the pool, I take off my babysuit and I just walk neck it all over the locker room. I'm like everyone else is doing it, was shouldn't I? And it's great.

00:33:22
Speaker 1: I love it, But I also Catholic.

00:33:25
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna jump off a bridge. How are they going to get to the bridge?

00:33:28
Speaker 4: Well, assuming lessons will come in handy.

00:33:30
Speaker 3: There aren't allowed to drive, so many of them talk about they can't.

00:33:32
Speaker 1: Drive, which why is this?

00:33:35
Speaker 3: It's in North Hollywood. It's I go in the middle of the day, which okay, Yeah, I liked it, so that's like, and I love it. I love being around older people. Actually, it's just a nice vibe and it's like nice and break from all the idiots here at all you would. Oh, that's gonna get me canceled. I love Hollywood.

00:33:52
Speaker 2: Wait let me see, wait, wait, let me see if I can, let me see if I can save this. Speaking of non idiots.

00:33:58
Speaker 1: I love it.

00:33:59
Speaker 3: And that's what we call.

00:34:00
Speaker 2: Talk about the amazing life and work of the legendary Nora Ephron.

00:34:05
Speaker 1: How did I do? Jordan's I do? Okay, that's short on time. Okay, okay, okay.

00:34:11
Speaker 2: She had literary and cinematic greatness in her blood. She was born to parents, Henry and Phoebe Ephron, who wrote and produced movies like There's No Business Like Show Business, starring Marilyn Monroe, the film adaptation of Roger and Hammerstein's Carousel, among many others. They named their daughter Nora after the protagonist in Heinrich Ibsen's A Doll's House, which is kind of a weird thing to do for your daughter, and, as Jordan is contractually obligated to add at all times, was the original working title of the Beatles White Album, because it gets shoehorned into every single.

00:34:45
Speaker 1: I gotta have a Beatles fact. Yeah, I love it, I love it, I love it.

00:34:49
Speaker 4: I'm a big Beatles fan.

00:34:51
Speaker 3: Beatles and I do.

00:34:53
Speaker 4: Yeah you ever heard no, where are you at on? Chris Evans?

00:34:57
Speaker 1: Okay, this is really strange. His dad is my dad, his neighbor. His dad is in Massachusetts.

00:35:02
Speaker 3: Wow, are you break up a marriage?

00:35:06
Speaker 1: Didn't they?

00:35:06
Speaker 3: Yeah?

00:35:06
Speaker 1: They just got married.

00:35:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's time for you to step up, Jordan, go home and visit your dad, dad, and just be like, you know, your son needs to be in love for real. And I know just the person she swims. She's a podcaster, and she's a podcaster.

00:35:27
Speaker 1: It's on a lake.

00:35:28
Speaker 4: She's got holes in her bathing suit. Crazy for a new one? Okay, yeahs.

00:35:35
Speaker 3: Oh no, Yeah, speaking.

00:35:37
Speaker 1: Of easy access.

00:35:43
Speaker 2: Page, everyone worked at JFK's White House as an ooh that has an unintended double meaning. Now I feel really bad for nothing happened between her and JFK.

00:35:54
Speaker 1: I assume she.

00:35:55
Speaker 2: Applied to work at Newsweek in nineteen sixty two to get started on her writing career, and and the folks at Newsweek only offered her a job in the mailroom because it was nineteen sixty two out of national media publication. Not much has changed, I assume As a result, nor Efron joined a class action lawsuit against the magazine suing them for gender discrimination. This was eventually adopted into the Amazon series Good Girl's Revolt. Efron later took a job as a reporter at the New York Post, actually one of my former employers, where she broke the news that Bob Dylan had gotten married in nineteen sixty six, and the reporting bit has further legs. In nineteen seventy six, she married Carl Bernstein of Woodward and Bernstein. Yeah, all the President's men, et cetera, nineteen seventies belt Way and so forth. Nixon, Attica, Attica, It ended poorly.

00:36:47
Speaker 1: He cheated on.

00:36:48
Speaker 2: Her, oh, while she was was pregnant with their second son. And who did he cheat on her? Cheat on her with? You might ask, the daughter of then Britain Prime Minister James Callahan. That'sn't even the rich esque story.

00:37:05
Speaker 3: A brand hed a British girl with an accent, just qualifying.

00:37:11
Speaker 1: Did she have an accent? I don't know.

00:37:15
Speaker 3: Is a prime minister she might have been.

00:37:17
Speaker 2: She might have been born here, maybe Jordan, talk about accents for a while, talk about so it gets better or worse, depending on how much of a fiend for drama you are. We're quoting directly from Wikipedia here. For many years, Nora Efrom was one of the very few people who knew the identity of Deep Throat, the anonymous informer. For articles written by her ex husband Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward uncovering the Watergate scandal, Efron read Bernstein's notes, which referred to deep Throat as MF. Bernstein said it stood for my friend, which it sure doesn't mean on Twitter anymore, but Efron correctly guessed it stood for Mark Feldt, the former Associate director of the FBI. After Ephron's marriage with Bernstein ended, she would then go on to reveal the identity of Deep Throat, not only to her son, Jacob, but to anyone else who asked. She once said, I would give speeches to five hundred people and someone would say, do you know who deep Throat is? And I would say it's Mark felt Wow. Clustmates of her son at the Dalton School and Vassar werecalling, revealing to numerous people via his mom the identity of the most famous government informer in history. This revelation attracted little media attention, and Efron said, no one apart from my son's believed me.

00:38:39
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:38:40
Speaker 4: I need someone like Nora to get a job at Area fifty one.

00:38:43
Speaker 2: And just yeah, you said another of Jordan's fixations. You've activated him. He's a sleeper agent.

00:38:49
Speaker 3: Oh, no, sleeper agent.

00:38:51
Speaker 1: I got sent by People magazine to cover the storming of Area fifty one, which was and I went to like the edge and saw all the like why trucks up on the hill and everything. Did you see it was? Were there? No?

00:39:05
Speaker 4: I got I wish, God, I wish I was not there.

00:39:08
Speaker 1: It was what I wrote, like a thirty five page like amazing cultural history of Area fifty one. Yeah, it's I think it. Somebody told me it was the longest thing that People dot com has ever published.

00:39:19
Speaker 2: And I edited and I cut out so many days before the other editor.

00:39:23
Speaker 1: Got to it.

00:39:23
Speaker 3: Still so long?

00:39:25
Speaker 1: Would I pay youl? Yeah? Beer pizza?

00:39:32
Speaker 2: Uh, this is a great PostScript. Though Nora is revenge on Karl Bernstein was not yet over his affair inspired her to write her novel Heartburn, which was then made into a nineteen eighty six Mike Nichols film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. In the book, Efron wrote of a fictional husband, clearly Bernstein who was quote capable of having sex with a Venetian blind and then she wrote that the character of Thelma, based on the woman who had the affair with her husband, looked like a giraffe with big feet. Bernstein threatened to sue over the movie and film, but never did, and Nora spent her Latin years as one half of screenwriting's biggest power couple. She was married to Goodfellas and Casino writer Nick Poleggi from nineteen eighty seven until her death in twenty twelve.

00:40:16
Speaker 1: Wow, she is.

00:40:17
Speaker 3: An inspiration more than I realized. Yeah, I know, I this is the kind of that's so petty I aspire to.

00:40:26
Speaker 1: Oh, my god, that could bring down two governments, the British government the American government.

00:40:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, god, I love it. Oh that's so inspiring, Choles. I gotta get married real quick so I can pull something like this off.

00:40:40
Speaker 1: My god, Yeah, I love it.

00:40:44
Speaker 2: As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages.

00:40:56
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:41:03
Speaker 1: Well. Between first conceiving of the When Harry met Sally I did with Rob Reiner and turning in the final draft, Nora Efron spent over four years working on the script for when Harry met Sally. While le Fron was You're finding the script, ryaner busied himself directing back to back classics stand By Me and Princess Bride, which are the subject of two equally classic TMI episodes. Stand By Me kills Me every time.

00:41:25
Speaker 3: I know stand By Me, I haven't seen it in a very long time, But Princess by haven't always be like I like watch it probably like once a year at this point, and it's just such a n The Sicilian is like my favorite part of the movie. I just love it. I quote that all the time.

00:41:43
Speaker 2: Is that an amazing quote from I think It's My Dinner with Andre with where Wallace Sean is. Like when I was twenty five, all I used to think about was art and music. Now I'm thirty five and all I think about is money. I look, I'm the green ch Action. I don't find stand By Me that I'm not really into stand By Me. I don't know to corny.

00:42:03
Speaker 1: I wasn't part of it, did I wasn't part of a cool and kids die?

00:42:07
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, get cornier than that.

00:42:09
Speaker 4: Yeah that's pretty corny.

00:42:11
Speaker 1: I just I don't know a bunch of.

00:42:12
Speaker 2: Kids in like like golly, gee, golly, g golly, Whillakers fifty kids like walking down at the fifties.

00:42:18
Speaker 1: Hate God, I sure do.

00:42:19
Speaker 2: I can't see through the Jordan's thing is fifties. My thing is sixties, and to a lesser extent, the seventies.

00:42:24
Speaker 1: So I love them both. Really, your thing is not the sixties. My thing is the sixties. Also, you can.

00:42:29
Speaker 3: Both have the sixties as your things.

00:42:34
Speaker 1: I don't you take the first half.

00:42:36
Speaker 2: Just watching those kids roll down the railroad tracks and singing the Lollipop song just pisses me off.

00:42:42
Speaker 1: Ever, I just with them. It's about the death of innocence. Heigel.

00:42:48
Speaker 3: Yeahless time for that girl.

00:42:55
Speaker 1: Nobody made a movie about mine.

00:42:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:42:59
Speaker 1: I had to write my own and perform in front of my school for my crush. Moving on your crush, did you did you reserve? Did you?

00:43:10
Speaker 3: No?

00:43:10
Speaker 1: No? No, no no no?

00:43:12
Speaker 3: Uh?

00:43:12
Speaker 2: Did you did you reserve the seat for her? And she never showed up?

00:43:18
Speaker 1: Oh no, she showed up?

00:43:23
Speaker 3: Oh she?

00:43:23
Speaker 1: I didn't perform all right? Sorry, Speaking of well, a better piece of writing was When Harry Met Sally. An early version of Nora's script was called Scenes from a Friendship, which is a riff On mar Burgin seminal scenes from a marriage And I think that's a good title because it reminds me of my favorite Billy Joel song, Scenes from an Italian restaurant. Another early title was How They Met. Nobody really liked this either. The production team really struggled to come up with what they thought was a workable title. In fact, they had such a hard time coming up with a halfway d his name that Rob Ryder instituted a title contest, promising to red the best pitch with a case of champagne. Because choices for consideration were just friends, Harry, this is Sally. It had to be you, boy meets girl playing melancholy baby.

00:44:22
Speaker 3: Wait wait wait, blue Moon playing melancholy baby.

00:44:26
Speaker 2: I mean at least yeah that one just friends? Uh, And it had to be you or all like Great American songbooks, standard song.

00:44:33
Speaker 3: Yeah playing melancholy.

00:44:35
Speaker 2: Blue Moon too early, the dorky rock and roll on the boo. That one that's not Americ, great American.

00:44:44
Speaker 1: Son was that? Wait? I didn't hear that? That one?

00:44:50
Speaker 3: Right? Well done? Oh that's blank you okay, melancholy baby? And I was like, I did not.

00:44:56
Speaker 1: Know that's what men Memmo men right, got it? Yeah? Yeah? The Words of Love was another title. Do we have? What do we think of these? I assume big, big thumbs down for all these.

00:45:14
Speaker 4: I think they should have had a contest to find some chemistry in this movie. Maybe instead of worrying about the stupid ass title.

00:45:20
Speaker 1: Got their asses, got them.

00:45:23
Speaker 3: I don't hate it rolling over in her grave right now?

00:45:28
Speaker 4: I mean, listen, I said what I said. I don't hate it had to be you. I think that's a fine title, but there's there's not enough. There's not enough love and romance in this movie for that title. I don't think.

00:45:43
Speaker 1: Speaking of casting, yes, okay, so damn alex is on it. Chemistry and fire, thank you. One of the top picks to play Harry initially was America's Sweetheart Tom Hanks, and he would have just been coming off comedies like nineteen eighty six is the Money Pit in nineteen eighty the Yates, bigs, and reasons have been suggested why.

00:46:05
Speaker 3: Maybe I didn't see that one. I saw Big.

00:46:10
Speaker 1: Hard the sequel Big two A Good Day to Big, Big Big. This is one of our favorite recurring bits, is just making sequels with the same sequel format. Exact same construction, BIG's Secret of the use BIG's Big back in the habit. See we even the same order.

00:46:32
Speaker 3: Yesius, Have they reached out to you guys yet?

00:46:34
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'm sure Big too Furious would be Oh no, nope, nope, that's phrasing.

00:46:39
Speaker 1: No, we can't do that. Well. Do you know what's actually.

00:46:41
Speaker 2: Funny about about the Fast and Furious sequel is that they that that was a Roger Corman movie from like the fifties, like a cheapy exploitation one. And the reason that they have to change the title every time is because they only paid him to use the phrase the Fast and the Furious. So if they keep using that and call it Fast and Furious two or the Fast and Furious three, they would have.

00:46:59
Speaker 1: To pay him over again.

00:47:01
Speaker 2: And rather than do that, they have decided to just give everyone a different and dumb, increasingly dumber title construction.

00:47:09
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah right again. Yeah, come on, money they.

00:47:13
Speaker 3: Bring in, they can spring to pick a guy for.

00:47:17
Speaker 2: It's all got to go to digitally sweetened Vin Diesel's whole thing.

00:47:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really does.

00:47:25
Speaker 1: So Tom Hanks? Oh yeah, so Tom Hanks, how do we like Tom Hanks for that?

00:47:28
Speaker 4: I mean, I love Tom Hanks.

00:47:30
Speaker 3: This was before You've Got Mail, right, mm hmmm. I thought they have good chemistry in that, so I think he would have been great good.

00:47:36
Speaker 1: Chemistry and sleep with in Seattle too.

00:47:39
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I like that one less.

00:47:40
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I don't like when.

00:47:42
Speaker 3: They're far apart. I need like in personal chemistry. They spend too much time not being together.

00:47:50
Speaker 4: But I I don't like Tom Hanks is like the original Golden Retriever. And I don't think. I don't know that he could be a I don't well, like this is kind of an ass when you've got mail, Yeah, a little.

00:48:03
Speaker 1: Bit, but he's a corporate dick. I just don't know if I can see it.

00:48:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.

00:48:09
Speaker 4: I just I don't know if I could see this.

00:48:11
Speaker 3: Could you see it better than Billy Crystal?

00:48:13
Speaker 4: No, not necessarily.

00:48:16
Speaker 1: I don't think it could sell hite, you know.

00:48:19
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:48:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, there's multiple reasons why he passed that have been offered. Uh oh, hang on, they're come up for me because I added an S to big because you said something bad about Tom Hanks. Yeah, how dare you the like we're on it yet? Neutralizing There's one theory that Tom Hanks felt that the material for When Harry Met Sally was too lightweight, which I don't think is true because instead of making When Harry Met Sally, he made Turner and Hooch, in which he started opposite a French mastiff.

00:48:54
Speaker 3: I mean he also did toy story. How light hearted he got, right, Yeah, played a dull which I love.

00:49:03
Speaker 4: That's yeah, but that neighbor kid was dark mind.

00:49:07
Speaker 3: That guy is in a four by five cell right now, guarantee absolutely absolutely yeah.

00:49:14
Speaker 1: What is his Victorian England?

00:49:16
Speaker 2: Is that like the psychiatric measurements of a psychiatric cell?

00:49:21
Speaker 1: For sure? Four by five is like a dog crak.

00:49:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what he deserves.

00:49:26
Speaker 1: That's blown out. Yeah, I'll be generous, Okay, thank you. But the more realistic stop at Heigel, I love you. Uh. The more realistic reason that Tom Hanks passed on this role was apparently that he had just gotten divorced himself, and he didn't connect with the deeply depressed, divorced Harry because he felt liberated by his own divorce. This is according to his current wife, Rita Wilson, who explos on an episode of the Table for Two podcasts in twenty twenty three. That Tom quote was happy not to be married and could not really understand a person going through a divorce that would feel anything other than like, I'm so happy. That seems like a weirdly myopic view of divorce.

00:50:20
Speaker 3: I would really want to hear that from the actual person who went through the divorce, not his new wife.

00:50:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.

00:50:27
Speaker 4: Gonna be like, yeah, loves marriage now.

00:50:31
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:50:32
Speaker 1: But he did end up teaming up with Nora Ephron on Seapless in Seattle a few years after when Harry met Sally and You Got Mail. Yes classic. So once Hank said no, Rob Ryaner looked to other big actors working at the time. One of these was Albert Brooks. Could Albert Brooks ever get it? I got to look him up.

00:50:57
Speaker 3: I can't remember it.

00:50:57
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a possibility.

00:50:59
Speaker 3: I always mixed him and Albert.

00:51:00
Speaker 1: He's the bad guy.

00:51:01
Speaker 2: He's like the Oh well, Albert Brooks is like the bad guy in Drive who spoiler alert kills Brian Kranston in the garage.

00:51:10
Speaker 3: I was gonna watch that time.

00:51:12
Speaker 1: That was too much information. Finally, you've done. She got us got our those words on this show like in context. Oh, he's kind of quietly, soulful. He's got thet this sort of schlubby. Can I put this in the chat? Can I put this? Do you guys? You guys want to google Albert Brooks.

00:51:29
Speaker 3: I'm looking at him right now.

00:51:31
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, okay, okay, yeah, he's got the little nebi she kind of I need.

00:51:35
Speaker 3: To look at him. What year was this movie that it cut out?

00:51:40
Speaker 1: That's good. That's a good point. That's a good point. I'm gonna look to him just to be part of the group.

00:51:43
Speaker 3: I'm gonna look to We've got to Okay, Oh god, who did he just remind me of somebody?

00:51:52
Speaker 1: Gutenberg? Steve Steve Guttenberg. Yeah, we've been together too.

00:51:56
Speaker 3: You could join we have broo. Can I have a group called the Curly Headed? And he could join it?

00:52:04
Speaker 1: Put my hat back on f O S or f u c K f.

00:52:09
Speaker 3: U c K S curly headed fox, silver curly hair.

00:52:15
Speaker 1: You know?

00:52:17
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah.

00:52:19
Speaker 1: Well, Albert Brooks passed on the role because he thought it was too much like a knockoff Woody Allen movie, which I kind of see.

00:52:26
Speaker 3: Uh.

00:52:27
Speaker 1: He also turned down roles in Big and Pretty Women. So I'm just gonna say that maybe his taste just sucks or he has bad managers. Other actors up for consideration for the part of Harry Burns and When Harry met Sally include Michael Keaton, Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Jeff Bridges, and Bill Murray. Huh, Harrison would.

00:52:49
Speaker 3: If Carrie Fisher was in it and Harrison Ford, that'd be mind.

00:52:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could see Michael Keaton.

00:52:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:53:00
Speaker 3: Capturing Michael Keaton would be really good actually, because he does kind of have He's got comedy chops. He famously had a guest spot on Frasier and I think he's actually really funny and I feel like.

00:53:12
Speaker 1: Like mister in the series.

00:53:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, my god, I forgot about maybe already done Batman or would this be before.

00:53:21
Speaker 1: Like the same year, same year? Yeah, yeah, eighty nine.

00:53:25
Speaker 3: And then a round com Wow that maybe.

00:53:28
Speaker 2: It's a good thing that didn't happen. He would have been too powerful Batman and when Harry met Sally in the same year.

00:53:34
Speaker 4: I mean Batman doesn't have any power, let's be honest. He's just yeah, but like back in the day, he doesn't have a superpower. Okay, he's the stupidest superhero.

00:53:42
Speaker 1: Alex absolutely I just our band was called the world's greatest superhero after Batman. Heigel's a big Batman fan. He's showing you his bat tattoo right now.

00:53:54
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm a family of Batman fans.

00:53:56
Speaker 2: But no, I mean I I just mean, like in nineteen eighty nine, like this stranglehold that movie had on pop culture. It was like this, and when Harry met Sally like we would have we'd be having like the conversation that we have about like I don't know, uh.

00:54:09
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks, that we will be having this about Michael Keaton.

00:54:11
Speaker 2: We'd be like, Yeah, Michael Keaton, biggest star in the world, America's sweetheart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I try to every day.

00:54:21
Speaker 1: Jordan, you gotta Jordan bud so well. Robert he said that the film was self financed, so they could pretty much cast whoever they wanted, and I got no seg Rob Reiner was so despondent.

00:54:40
Speaker 3: What a dream to be able to self finance anything, to be able to be like, I haven't left money, but I'll just do whatever the I want with this movie. It's impressive.

00:54:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could sell finance podcast.

00:54:54
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:54:55
Speaker 1: In fact, I am out well, I'm actually doing this at my.

00:55:01
Speaker 2: Day job while I'm logged onto my day job, so I'm technically stealing from one company to do it, which makes me like Robin.

00:55:07
Speaker 1: Hood too nice.

00:55:09
Speaker 4: I love that, speaking of Rob Reiner, speaking of.

00:55:14
Speaker 1: Speaking of Robin Hood, Robinhood was so despondent.

00:55:18
Speaker 2: About never mind, it's gonna say something about the hot foxes from the Disney one. But responding about to cast he was hot, they should have cast the.

00:55:27
Speaker 1: Fox in when Harry met Sally was hot.

00:55:32
Speaker 3: God man, and he would have been a curly headed fox. That was a birth of a lot of furries in this country. Hey, on both sides, we all know it's true. In fact, I talked to a furry who said that was his like his for maid marry any sexual awakening.

00:55:48
Speaker 4: Yes.

00:55:50
Speaker 3: I was like, I mean I was into the fox, but I was furry sexual awakening. He was like, that's how I became a furry. This guy was picture of furry. That's that's you're picturing him. I mean, he wasn't in a costume at the time that this is a party. But he was like, yeah, that was what.

00:56:03
Speaker 1: Was his first SONA for sona. Oh. I love that. That's the officially.

00:56:08
Speaker 3: Appect don't know if he told us something furry, wow clever, I want.

00:56:14
Speaker 1: To say, because he I hope it was a fox.

00:56:16
Speaker 3: No, I don't think it was a fox. I want to say it was like maybe a Teddy bear or like a bear. I don't know. I mean, he wasn't in his costume or anything. And it was one of those things where he says it and we're all like oh, but then he like really gets into the details of it and like the conventions he goes are there conventions? I guess there has to be. It's a fascinating culture.

00:56:34
Speaker 2: Cool speak, yeah, segue Rob Reiner. Rob Reiner was so despondent about who to cast that he briefly considered playing the part of Harry Burns himself. Then his thoughts turned to his best friend Billy Crystal. Actually, just like the plot of the movie, mister Wright was there all along masquerading as his friend. Crystal was actually very far down the list, which is weird considering the Nora Efron based parts of Harry and Sally's friendship in the movie. On Rob Reiner's friendship with Billy Crystal that's so adorable that they turned to bromance into one of the defining cinematic cists relationships of all time. They would actually do the cosa Blanca thing where they would watch Casa Blanca together, and I guess back in the day you wouldn't call it live tweeting. You would just call it having a phone conversation. But they would live tweet it to one another. Many of the scenes in which Harry talks to his best friend Jess played by Bruno Kirby, took inspiration from Billy and Robb's private chats about relationships gross The pair had met in nineteen seventy five when Billy had a guest spot on All in the Family, the sitcom that launched Reiner to stardom. Billy Crystal was cast as the best friend of Reiner's character, and they became best friends irl shortly thereafter. Billy obviously knew that his buddy Rob was looking for the male lead in his new movie, and was slightly miffed that he hadn't been considered first, to which I say, be more self aware of Billy Crystal wrote in his memoir, I knew from agents and managers that Rob had met with almost every male actor my age except me. Rob can be forgiven at this point, though, because Crystal was not a big on the he was what generously a C lister. Yeah, and the last movie that he'd been in was Prince's Bride, where he was dressed up like a very old grandpa, very old warlock. Yes right, famously one of the most sexually magnetic fantasy archetypes. And Crystal was also said he was nervous about working a Reiner said he was nervous that about working with someone who he had an irl friendship with, and his fears ironically echoed the central question of the movie. Rob Reiner would say, the fear I had was what if you worked with a friend and it doesn't work out? Are we going to destroy a friendship? I had no reservations about him playing the part. I just wanted to make sure their close bond did make Billy Crystal the ideal person to play Rob's alter ego. I'd like to turn it over to our guests. If you, guys, were a fantasy casting the story of your podcast and friendship and eventual marriage to one another or from person or possibly a furry who would you cast?

00:59:02
Speaker 4: Oh my god, why am I blanking? Where you should you go? I? Have someone I can't think of her name right now?

00:59:10
Speaker 3: Am I cat casting for like for brook and me or just yourself?

00:59:15
Speaker 2: Well, actually you can cast yourself ahead your character and your and.

00:59:21
Speaker 1: And the other. M hmm.

00:59:24
Speaker 3: This is a lot of pressure.

00:59:26
Speaker 1: And I know I mean cast Christopher Walking play, I'll cast Jack Antonof to play. You all get it? Does he act?

00:59:41
Speaker 2: No, it's just one of that one of our coworkers that I looked like Jack Antonoff and it's kind of haunted me ever since.

00:59:48
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I was like Taylor Swift's Jack Antonof, right, I don't know he was.

00:59:53
Speaker 1: Now it's Margaret Qualley's Jack Antonoff.

00:59:54
Speaker 3: But yeah, right right, she's a no name, so I can't use that as my reference unfortunately. Oh marsh, No, nothing against Margaret Margaret is that her name?

01:00:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's she's who she she's any McDowell's kid. She looks just like any McDowell from Uh she's got the billowie.

01:00:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, long hair in the face.

01:00:18
Speaker 3: And Andy McDowell has like a series on Hallmark like Where the Heart Is or Where the Heart Grows or something. It keeps saying ads for it. That's really good.

01:00:26
Speaker 4: And Michael, okay, play us Jesus Christ. I would say I got somebody, okay, Christian Bell and Maya Rudolph.

01:00:35
Speaker 1: Oh that's cute.

01:00:36
Speaker 3: I would watch that movie okay, okay.

01:00:41
Speaker 4: Or even maybe Amy Polar and They've got great.

01:00:44
Speaker 3: Yeah. I would go with either Amy Polar or Kristin Wig.

01:00:49
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm.

01:00:51
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:00:52
Speaker 1: And Maya Rudolph.

01:00:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I could. I could settle for Mile Ruda.

01:00:57
Speaker 1: Okay.

01:00:58
Speaker 3: I was also thinking, weirdly Sandra Bullock.

01:01:02
Speaker 4: Oh, oh the heat.

01:01:06
Speaker 3: Just I was thinking of the heat.

01:01:08
Speaker 1: But like, obviously it's so.

01:01:11
Speaker 3: Started to watch it.

01:01:13
Speaker 1: I love Sandy.

01:01:17
Speaker 3: She is America's sweetheart.

01:01:18
Speaker 4: She has and Chris Evans is at our house when I met her.

01:01:21
Speaker 1: He's America's sweetheart.

01:01:24
Speaker 3: He's dead to me. He's also Captain America. Yeah, well he's dead to me until Jordan talks to his dad and the right. Yeah, thank you, thank you.

01:01:35
Speaker 1: This is not even an intentional segue. This is my honest thought. I feel like Sandra Bullock would have been a really good Sally in this.

01:01:41
Speaker 4: I was thinking that too.

01:01:42
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, well, especially because I'm thinking of Sandra Bullock back then. Yeah, so I'm thinking of like while you were sleeping Sandy and I think she would be really good in this role. Yeah, Sandy's good except for what's it? The one movie she's not good in What about Steve or something where she's the crossword puzzle creator with Bradley Cooper's Yeah.

01:02:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh that like deeply offensive weird? Yeah that yeah, and then yeah.

01:02:12
Speaker 4: She's good at everything she yeah, everything else, but yeah yeah.

01:02:17
Speaker 1: Well.

01:02:18
Speaker 2: Speaking of bestie's and friendship, the character of Marie Sally's best friend of the movie is played by Carrie Fisher, who is irl best friend with Reiner's ex Penny Marshall. Could have made things onward.

01:02:28
Speaker 1: Do we think Carrie.

01:02:29
Speaker 2: Fisher she was in her script doctor phase? Do you think she did any uncredited work on this?

01:02:32
Speaker 1: Oh? Man, I ignra Fron would need that though, you know that's true.

01:02:36
Speaker 2: That's true. I like to imagine a world where they like fought it out, they like hashed it out in the trailer.

01:02:43
Speaker 1: It got ugly anyway.

01:02:48
Speaker 2: Billy Crystal was supposed to be playing a depressed single dude, so to offset his on set camaraderie wordplay Thanks Jordan with Rob Reiner, he deliberately avoided hanging out with the cast and crew and spent most of his time alone in a ho teil room to get into the isolated mindset of a recent divorcee.

01:03:04
Speaker 1: It's just called acting. Billy. Try it, Billy Crystal. I don't know.

01:03:09
Speaker 3: It's the perfect excuse if you're like, sorry, I am you getting my craft perfected? Right?

01:03:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, you guys should try it sometime instead of partying.

01:03:17
Speaker 3: Give me room service and do not disturb door sign.

01:03:22
Speaker 2: Billy Crystal has been married for fifty three years to a woman named Janice Goldfinger, which sounds like something someone would throw out an improv.

01:03:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, that definitely sounds like a fake name.

01:03:34
Speaker 1: He was taught at NYU by Marty Jordan. You verify this for me?

01:03:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wrote it Marty McFly. Yeah, he time traveled and taught him at NYU and.

01:03:45
Speaker 2: By Marty McFly and Marty nickname in quotes McFly.

01:03:49
Speaker 3: Scorsese, that's what you're talking about, got it.

01:03:57
Speaker 1: My, that's my Marty. Yeah.

01:03:58
Speaker 3: Uh.

01:04:00
Speaker 1: Jordan segue I tried with the Sandra Bullock and then and then it didn't follow everyone really well. Sandra Bullock was not on the short list to play Sally. Rob Ryder's first choice was Susan Day of the Partridge Family and La Law, which intristic.

01:04:19
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:04:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a hard time picturing eighties. Yeah, Susan Day after her on like the flower Bus. I can kind of see it. Yeah, this is crazy.

01:04:33
Speaker 2: I just put Susan Day into Google Images and instead of writing nineteen eighty nine, I just put nine to eight nine, like a common type of that anyone would make. And that changed my Google results from like Wikipedia and eBay and all the normal image results that you come up for nine to eight nine, the top one, two, three, four results have suddenly become wiki feet.

01:04:53
Speaker 4: Oh you should look at mine. I have like a rating on there. Oh my gosh, congratulations, thank you so much.

01:04:59
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:05:00
Speaker 4: I found that one day and I was like, wow, I'm really making it.

01:05:04
Speaker 1: Finally, what a Susan Day has?

01:05:05
Speaker 3: Someone was like, do you know Brooke has a Wiki feet?

01:05:07
Speaker 4: And I was like, someone said that it was yeah, I do remember that Susan.

01:05:11
Speaker 1: Day is close to five.

01:05:13
Speaker 2: I regret to inform you she has like a looks like a like a four point nine.

01:05:18
Speaker 1: Wow.

01:05:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, so is that if you just only want to look at people's feet? Absolutely, just put nine eight nine. I don't know a secret.

01:05:26
Speaker 2: I don't know let's see if it works with the Market of Feet, if it works with Sandra Bullock.

01:05:34
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't, might just be on my phone, might just speak. Yeah, I was in sad.

01:05:38
Speaker 2: I mean I have a couple of pictures saved, but just yeah, uh it did not. So maybe that's just a Susan Day thing everyone tried out at home. I promise I'm not crazy.

01:05:47
Speaker 4: I personally, I will say to bring it back since somebody has to clearly wrangle this in. I can't see Susan Day playing Sally like.

01:05:55
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think that works for me at all. Like looking at the point, how do you feel about Elizabeth McGovern, Elizabeth Perkins, or Molly Ringwalls.

01:06:03
Speaker 4: I could see maybe Elizabeth McGovern of those three, but you guys also have Elizabeth Shoe here, and I could definitely see Elizabeth Shoe.

01:06:11
Speaker 1: That was my like fantasy cast. Yeah, I feel like that would fit it. Elizabeth McGovern is the.

01:06:19
Speaker 3: I cannot see Elizabeth McGovern.

01:06:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe an eighty nine. She just looks like Carla Gagino. To me, I literally thought they were the same woman, which is.

01:06:30
Speaker 3: Gay.

01:06:30
Speaker 4: I don't know.

01:06:32
Speaker 3: I also couldn't see Molly Ringwall. Now it's just because she's so like entrenched in like pretty and pink sixteen k women. Yeah, yeah, I can't. I cannot marry that.

01:06:46
Speaker 1: Well, we have no yea.

01:06:48
Speaker 4: The silence as we all google right.

01:06:53
Speaker 3: Translate for audio, it's perfect, just a bunch of silence.

01:07:01
Speaker 1: Do you guys want to listen to us breathe? While we started the internet? Everyone, get really close up on your mics. We're gonna pivot.

01:07:10
Speaker 2: I'm pivoting this into ASMR. The feet thing didn't work out, so now we're just doing live ASMR.

01:07:16
Speaker 4: We're gonna find a curve that loves this somewhere.

01:07:21
Speaker 1: Time Watergate Factory. Yeah, ASMR list, speaking of perverts.

01:07:27
Speaker 2: Speaking of perverts, Rob Reiner was constantly getting petitioned by Meg Ryan, who had fallen in love with the script.

01:07:33
Speaker 1: She would later say, I remember reading the script in like forty minutes. It's a fast, funny, hilarious read and there's a type of music to it. As Ryner would recall, Meg Ryan was not a big name at the time, with her biggest role to date being a bit part in Top Gun. She'd auditioned to play the part of Billy Crystal's girlfriend in nineteen eighty seven's Throw Mama from the Train, which also co starred rob Ryiner, but she didn't get the part. Great movie even so, she and Billy had a great audition together, and presumably he encouraged yin Or to consider casting her once she auditioned with Billy. The chemistry, according to them, elected was obvious.

01:08:13
Speaker 3: I'd love to see those teaps me too, And I'd love to get some toxicology reports on the people's that look and said the chemistry is good. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna use my time machine for.

01:08:27
Speaker 4: But then if two people kissing a movie and I don't feel a tingle in my vagina, there's no chemistry. I'm just gonna say it. Okay, someone has to say it. It's the truth, that sensation.

01:08:38
Speaker 1: But you know you're brave enough. I wish we could have full quotes for episodes.

01:08:44
Speaker 3: Got it about it?

01:08:45
Speaker 2: I'd like to dig in deeper to this chemistry thing. One half of you is firmly anti that this pairing. Do we have a rebuttal? Could you play Devil's advocate? Or are you just both not feeling it at all?

01:08:57
Speaker 3: I can just like wonder he forcing us to fight, I can say they're wondering. It was like, we want you guys to disagree on things, and we're like, but we know there's a.

01:09:05
Speaker 1: Couple of things we'll find out.

01:09:07
Speaker 4: I mean, there was like one, maybe one moment where I was like, Okay, I feel a little bit of chemistry. I think maybe it was like the New Year's Eve kiss.

01:09:15
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, seventeen a back exactly.

01:09:18
Speaker 4: I mean, that's as much as I can play Devil's advocate of the chemistry.

01:09:24
Speaker 1: Well, Billy Crystal felt that chemistry. At least, as Billy told The Entertainment Weekly in twenty nineteen, Meg came in and we didn't even read a scene. We all knew it was her. It was just one of those indefinable things that when we started talking, we were them already, you know. And Meg also proved to be very good at improvising, which, as we'll discuss, was crucial to the production of this movie. In order to take the role of Sally, Meg Ryan was forced to drop out of Steel Magnolia's with a role going to Julia Roberts. But this was another sort of sliding door moment for two rom com queens because Meg Ryan passed on the lead role in Pretty Woman, which went to Julia Roberts. Okay, I know we're not doing alternate casting anymore, and I know we're on the clock, but Dolly Parton in When Harry Met Sally interesting. I'm just saying, just chew on that for a while and then sorry, got back ye sorry, No, that's good. Julie Roberts also turned down the Meg Ryan part and You've got mail, so it kind of oh even yeah. One element of the production of When Harry Met Sally that makes me sad is that Meg Ryan would later say that it was kind of a boys club and she initially felt the odd woman out due to the tight knit friendship between Rob Ryder and Billy Crystal. As she told the La Times, they were very conscientious about making sure I felt okay because it was very much like a prefab relationship that I'd come into. Usually everyone comes in and negotiates their respective positions on a movie. That didn't happen on this one. While one crew member described the early days of filming is very, very awkward. In the making of book, all have what she's having, they also added that Ryan was quote pretty at home with things by the end of productuction. She also formed close friendships with Nora and Carrie Fisher, which lasted until their deaths, which I think is lovely, except for the death part.

01:11:10
Speaker 2: Speaking of death, no, I mean to say that, let's get the elephant in the room out of the way. There was a concern in during production about what you charitably describe as the beauty discrepancy between Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, which Hollywood solved in the time honored way of sticking some glasses on Meg.

01:11:32
Speaker 1: I gotta say the glasses work for me.

01:11:35
Speaker 2: Everyron supposedly said, well, we have to have glasses for the character because Meg's a lot more attractive than Billy is, and then proceeded to have her try on between two and six hundred pairs of eyeglasses. And this occurred at Starry Eyes Optical Service Optician to the Stars. I added that question mark, it's a prop glass play, as I'm guessing, I think, na. It was during this process that Meg ultimately found a pair of vintage, one of a kind Robert Laroche frames that she deemed suitable. Not only were these big honkin' Sally Jesse Raphael frames valued at five grand in eighty nine dollars or twelve grand today, but Meg, a woman after my own heart, tried to steal them before learning that they actually belonged to the shop's owner. Ultimately, they made twenty some replicas for production. Jordan, while I read this next part, you want to google and see if there are any up for sale at Julian's or anything. Yes, this movie, also in the casting department, features a first kid. And no, I'm not talking about the movie that stars some interchangeable brunette moppet from the nineteen nineties. And I want to say Sindbad, I mean an illiteral offspring of the president. A few people remember Sally's pre hairy boyfriend Joe, described as a tall set surfboard of a man. He's played by Stephen Ford, son of our equally forgettable president Gerald Ford. Stephen was a male model before getting into politics. Insert Zoolander quote. This casting is hilarious because Steve Ford was originally cast to play an almost identical role, the blandly attractive boyfriend that the heroin dates prior to winding up with the leading man she was always supposed to be with in Greece. He was cast to play Sandy's boyfriend Tom before backing out due to supposedly stage fright.

01:13:33
Speaker 1: A coke addiction.

01:13:34
Speaker 2: I'd be yeah maybe. Thankfully he got his second chance and when Harry met Sally. And would go on to appear in films such as Our Beloved Armageddon, Blackhawk Down and Transformers, A big fan of the Military Industrial Complex and Michael Bay and he is the President's son, Yeah, and he plays He plays a secret service agent in Escape from New York from Old Johnny Carpenter. Steve Ford is also involved in one of your favorite presidential stories of all time in the Summer of nineteen which I would now read in the instead of You. And in the summer of nineteen seventy four, soon after his father inherited the presidency from Richard Nixon, a then eighteen year old Steve Ford and a friend took his stereo to the White House roof and played led Zeppelin four technically known as Untitled but or the Runes album so loud it could be heard across Pennsylvania Avenue.

01:14:28
Speaker 1: Jordan.

01:14:29
Speaker 2: If you had access to the White House roof, which song would you blast? Would it be something lame like the Beach Boys, or would it be something bitchin like led Zeppelin.

01:14:35
Speaker 1: I'd say, who's next, I'd say, God, yeah, we wouldn't get fulled again, or Baba Oriley from the White House would slap right.

01:14:43
Speaker 2: I would say war pigs by Black Sabbath, just for the cognitive disstance, but actually kind of want to give it to Kate Bush. We're gonna put on Hounds of Love, side A and B, as she intended for the record to be heard anyway. Post nine to eleven, the roof was actually transformed into a sniper's nest, and access for non security purposes became impossible. Steve Ford would later say, I feel sorry for Obama and the Bush Girls. They never got a chance to drag their stereos.

01:15:15
Speaker 1: Up to the roof. Well said Steve Well on the topic of actors with famous parents, when Harry Matt Sally has more than its fair share. At least five of the film's cast members and creators came from show business families, most well known, of course, as Carrie Fisher, whose parents were Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Rob Reiner's father was comedy legend Carl Reiner, and his mother, Estelle Reiner, had been an accomplished jazz singer. Laura E. Fron's parents we mentioned, Henry and Phoebe Fhron, were highly successful Hollywood screenwriters and producers. Bruno Kirby had also followed in the footsteps of his character actor dad Bruce Kirby. He'd had a bit part as the storekeeper in Rob Reiner's Stand By Me and Billy Crystal's father and uncle were both prominent in the record industreet working closely with legends like Billie Holiday. Do you know that I did not. Yeah, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. Hello, folks, it's Jordan breaking the fourth wall for a change. I got a level with you. We spend so much time talking about feet and furries and ASMR and locker rooms and plane crashes and Chris Evans and my pathetic love life that our guests needed to step out for a minute and attend to some business. Don't worry, they'll be back by the end of the episode. But for now, you're stuck with Heigel Nio. All Right, we're moving on to the production principal photography for When Harry Met Sally began on August twenty ninth, nineteen eighty eight, with a budget of fourteen point five million, which is thirty six million dollars today, pretty cheap, less than half of what the other big comedy of nineteen eighty nine, Ghostbusters Too, cost to produce. Rob Ryder and Nora Ephron wanted many of the scenes to be set against some of New York City's most beautiful locations to highlight the lead character's complete lack of awareness. In other words, there was blind to the love growing between them as they are to the romance of their surroundings. That's fascinating, man.

01:17:24
Speaker 2: I love that, Like just consciously putting them in New York's most beautiful locations and having them not address it at all.

01:17:31
Speaker 1: Address it. Yeah, that's amazing, really galaxy brain stuff. Yeah. I mean the perfect example of this is when Harry moves into his new apartment. There are these huge bay windows that overlook the Empire State Building, and it could be viewed as either the greatest view in the world or the loneliest. Shooting took place on location in various New York City locales, including Central Park and the Low Boat House, where Sally's Lunch with Marie and Alice was filmed the Puck Building, which served us a location for the two New York parties, and also Marie in Jess's wedding, Giants Stadium, a loft and Soho which stood in for Harry's apartment, and Katz's Delhi on the Lower East Side, which we will talk more about in a moment. But for all the location shooting, the most difficult scene was pretty mundane, or at least appeared so on the screen. It's the four way telephone call after Harry and Sally first sleep with each other and call their friends played by Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby, at exactly the same time. Carrie and Bruno's characters are in bed together, so as a three way split screen. Through the movie, Rob Reiner uses split screen to show characters talking on the phone, which is an old classic cinematic device inspired by the nineteen fifty nine Rock Hutsondris Day romcom Pillow Talk. But the scene when Harry met Sally was significantly more complicated this three way split call, Rob Reiner told USA Today in twenty nineteen, it's like doing a magic trick. No one sees the trick because it doesn't look like anything, but technical people have always asked me, how did you do that shot? To get their conversation synchronized the two sets of conversations, the crew used three cameras to film the four actors on three different sets that were connected by a real telephone line to get the timing just right. So, in other words, you had Billy Crystal and Harry's bedroom set, Meg Ryan and Sally's bedroom set, and Carrie Fishow and Bruno Kirby in the middle in their bedroom set, all talking on the phone for real, and it was all one continuous take. So if one person screwed up even a single line in the I think it was like four pages of rapid fire dialogue, he had to start all over again. And as a result, they spent an entire day shooting sixty one takes of this scene until they nailed it one earlier take. Rob Bryner estimates that it would have been in the low fifties. Went perfectly, but as the cast celebrated, a sound technician informed them that birds wrestling in the studio rafters had ruined us. So the birds were shoot out of the studio and take fifty six seemed like it would have been fallowless, with each character hanging up the phone in order, and then Bruno Kirby blew the very last line of the scene, resimber the hit. They all threw pillows at him or something, and then they finally nailed it five takes later, for take sixty one. This is Bruno.

01:20:13
Speaker 2: Why don't I like that guy? He was in Yeah, Godfather and Part two, and he was in Good Morning Vietnam.

01:20:22
Speaker 1: He's the station manager, scrawny station manager that is out to get Robin Williams. Uh oh. He's the limo driver in spinal Tap. That's why. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah that you know.

01:20:34
Speaker 2: What that biography should be called? Yes I can if Frank Sinatra says, it's okay. The telephone scene was obviously meticulously scripted, but Ryner encouraged improvising on the set. Many of the most beloved moments in the film were made up on the fly. One of these little moments occurred in the scene where we first meet Harry's he embarks in a road trip with Sally at the beginning of the movie. The bit where Harry eats grapes and spits one of them directly into a closed window. Uh was on the script bit Reiner said, I wanted to make Harry a little bit rougher around the edges to start, so we came up with this idea of him eating the grapes. Billy said, I can just be spitting the seeds out the window. That's what gave Harry a little bit more abruptness. Billy and I came up with that on the set as we were doing it. I found it so disgusting how he just rolls down the winner window with it still on there. Another scene that was partially ad libbed is when Harry starts speaking in the goofy voice at the Met Museum, Part product of Part take of Your Pecan Pie and so forth.

01:21:28
Speaker 1: Always bothered me. Yeah, it's dumb.

01:21:30
Speaker 2: It's in one of those moments I was talking about earlier where they were like, yeah, just give it to Crystal.

01:21:33
Speaker 1: Throw to Crystal. Oh yeah.

01:21:35
Speaker 2: Midway through the scene, you can see Meg Ryan actually breaking character with a laugh. She looks off camera to Rhiner, though, who indicated that she should keep going, and she jumps back into it. Spontaneity was so great that they left the take in breaking all Meg Ryan also showed off her improv skills during the Pictionary wind Loser draw scene, when she's frantically trying to get everyone to guess the phrase baby talk. According to Rhiner, he didn't direct Meg I want to sketch. He just gave her the phrase to draw and she went for it, which led to the other actors spewing out hilarious non scripted guesses, including Bruno Kirby's immortal baby fish mouth. That's a great lot so they used to call me in college.

01:22:14
Speaker 1: But the Crowning achieved it. Of beg Ryan's improv skills is the infamous Deli scene. The scene came out of a conversation between Nora and Reiner, where he basically said, Okay, I've told you all sorts of guy secrets. What about the stuff that women do that men don't know about. Her response was Sally's revelation. Writer's response was basically identical to Harry's. He was so shocked to hear that women fake it that he apparently called six different women at his production company into his office and asked them to confirm that this was a thing, a move that he would later admit should have gotten him sued. And or canceled. I don't like this, it's gross. Yeah. Yeah. Initially the scene was just supposed to be a conversation about whether or not women fake sexual pleasure, but during a readthrough, Meg Ryan said, well, why don't I just do it? And it was Billy Crystal's idea for the scene to be set in a crowded restaurant. Rob Reiner wanted the Carnegie Deli, but ultimately they went for Katz's Deli opened since eighteen eighty eight, for reasons that I assume either involved permits or Pastrami preference. In what I have to imagine as an example of mansplaining that will be taught in universities until the end of time, rob Ryder ended up acting out exactly what he wanted Ryan to do. Her first few takes an image that will never leave my head in front of the entire casting crew. He felt that her performance initially was quote very tepid. His attempt to yielded around of applause from all the extras, which famously included his own mother. Rob Reiner talked about his big moment in an interview with The Daily Beast. He said, I sat down opposite Billy and I acted it out. I pounded the table again and again, going yes, yes, yes, And when we were done, I turned to Billy and I said, uh, oh, I just realized I had a huge orgasm in front of my mother, A phrase I never thought i'd say, this is Billy, I'm mortified.

01:24:16
Speaker 2: I was going to say, we should have talked about this scene with the guests on, but I don't think either of us would have survived it.

01:24:22
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I'm kind of actually secretly glad that we're doing this about them. Billy joked that it was like being on a date with Sebastian Cabot, which is mean but accurate. And then Meg Ryan sat down and did the scene better than anyone could have done it. The Revron noticed an interesting response to the scene when she went to a test screening to this movie in Las Vegas, specifically, the males in the audience, who, she said, remained silent. They didn't get it, she said. The women did. However, they laughed, and their laughter became infectious until one by one the men joined in. Ephron wasn't sure whether the women had in effect given the men permission to laugh, or whether some of the men were quote being told that something up on the screen was funny and they'd better laugh or look stupid.

01:25:07
Speaker 2: She had a low opinion of us as a as a sex Huh.

01:25:10
Speaker 1: I mean we haven't. We didn't do much to really earn it from her. Did very true. Yeah. The scene has obviously been enshrined in the pantheon of classic movie moments. Katz's Deli is very proud of its place in Hollywood history and has placed a sign marking the table where Meg Ryan sat. They also staged and all have what She's having contest where an enthusiastic participants can perform. They want to see who can perform the best. The deli's owner chooses five winners judged on points including enthusiasm and commitment, and the prize package is worth one hundred and thirty five dollars, including a T shirt, tote bag, pins, and all the ingredients to make the sandwich that both Harry and Sally are eating during the scene. The scene, sort of predictably, has led to some awkward moments between Meg Ryan and her children. Speaking to our former colleagues at People Magazine, Ryan recall the time when then fiance John Mellencamp decided it would be a good idea to let their fourteen year old daughter watch the movie. Ryan said, I'm walking around the house doing other stuff. I can hear baby fish mouth, I hear the orgasm scene, and then there's a silence from the room they're watching in my daughter's fourteen and John goes, Meg, I'm not explaining this. What a piece.

01:26:29
Speaker 2: I'm going out for a smoke. I'm gonna go into my painting room. Honey, you handle this.

01:26:34
Speaker 1: He was the grumpiest man I've ever interviewed, by the way, So I'm glad that story's out there. But at least Meg Ryan didn't have to perform that scene in front of her mother, which is what Rob Ryner had to do when he was demonstrating. Higel tell us about Rob Ryaner's mother a Stelle.

01:26:48
Speaker 2: His mother is Stelle, one of the most famous go to answers in all of trivia history.

01:26:53
Speaker 1: I guarantee you if.

01:26:54
Speaker 2: You throw a you know what's the proverbial phrase, You can't swing a cat in a room, a dead cat in a room without hitting somebody who knows that. That's Rob Bryner's mom. The classic I'll have what she's having line. Rob originally called his mom and asked if she would come in for one line that, for all he knew, may have ended up on the cutting room floor. She replied, I don't care, as long as I get to spend the day with my son. I'll come and I'll have a hot dog. And she nailed it in two takes. I could have done it in one with I'll have what she's having A Billy Crystal ad lib ranking thirty three on the American Film Institute's list of top one hundred movie quotations. Upon her death in two thousand and eight at the age of ninety four, The New York Times referred to Stelle Reiner in its obituary as the woman who delivered one of the most memorably funny lines in movie history. But this is not the only family connection in the film. For Rob Reiner. There's a scene where Harry and Sally are in new relationships. Harry has begun dating a woman named Emily. Portraying Emily in the scene is actually Ryner's twenty four year old daughter, Tracy. Billy Crystal noted that the casting choice made things slightly awkward because he knew her since she was a little girl, Racy Ryan, We're going to play Betty spaghetti Horn in her mom Penny Marshall's film A League of Their Own and also the wife of astronaut Fred Hayes in Apollo thirteen. And Rob Reiner himself lastly has a cameo in the film. During the New Year's Eve party scene. His voice can be heard off camera saying, Hey, everybody, ten seconds until New Year.

01:28:19
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're all gonna get latet. Yeah. Right.

01:28:23
Speaker 2: We mentioned earlier that Harry riffs about obnoxiously about what old lang Zion actually means. It's Robert Burns, you createn, It's Scottish. Years earlier, Rob Ryner had a similar line of dogog when he was playing Mike Stivick in the TV show All in the Family. For an added dose of authenticity, the New Year's Eve scene where Harry professes his love to Sally was reportedly filmed on an actual New Year's Eve in New York City. Like he did for so much of the movie, Billy Crystal improvised a lot of the New Year's Eve confessional scene, including the sweet line where he tells Sally, I love the way your nose crinkles, and Also, when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. Probably the other most iconic line from the film great line in saying Yah'd lived that.

01:29:10
Speaker 1: Uh. Probably a little late to say spoiler alert, but the film's happy ending very nearly didn't happen. Originally, the movie was going to have Harry and Sally stay separated, only to bump into each other five years later on the street before walking off in separate directions, leaving viewers to wonder whether or not they'd reunite romantically. And this was largely due to the fact that, originally, you remember, the characters were based on Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron, who apparently were not a love match. Nora later said in a DVD featurette, those types of people don't get together, which is a revelation that kind of crushed me. Test audiences, however, were not fans of this more truthful ending. Ryder decided to give the characters a happy ending after he had one for himself. While he was making When Harry met Sally, he met his future wife, photographer Michelle Singer. He later said I fell in love, and I said, I see how this works. The two were originally introduced by the film cinematographer and Future Men and Black director Barry Somnenfeld. Ryner apparently had heard that Michelle Pfeiffer was getting divorced and jokingly, I Hope told somon Feld that he was going to call Pfeiffer, presumably trying to save Rob Ryder from a brutal rejection. Sonefeld responded, You're not gonna call her. You're going to marry my friend Michelle Singer, and that's exactly what he did. They were introduced soon after, and they were married in nineteen eighty nine, the year when Harry Met Sally was released, and they're still together today. They have three children and by my count, five grandchildren. So they got their happy ending, and so did Harry and Sally, who ended the movie on the couch talking about their origin story. Like all the other couples we've seen thus far in the movie.

01:30:51
Speaker 2: In my ending, the final date card comes up to the film September eleventh, two thousand and one.

01:31:01
Speaker 1: Sorry, well, there's no real good spot to put this in, especially after what Heigel just said, But the movie gets so much of his New York loungey wooty Allen knockoff feel from the piano standards played by mister Harry Connick Junior.

01:31:16
Speaker 2: Babies and gentlemen, Mister Harry Connick Junior one of.

01:31:20
Speaker 1: The happiest people have ever interviewed, and he won his first ever Grammy for Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance for this soundtrack, catapulting the twenty two year old into the limelight. The album went double platinum in the US and hit number one on the Billboard Traditional Jazz Charts. I don't have much to say that's interesting about Harry Connick Jr. Except for the fact that he's a piano prodigy, which is interesting. And also his dad was the DA of New Orleans for thirty years, which is kind of badass. It's kind of bad.

01:31:50
Speaker 2: But also in No Orleans is like one of the most corrupt places of the past fifty years. Like their major scandal the ninety was the fact that their narcotics department of the NPD was running a narcotics ring. But no, I'm just contractly obligated. Every time Harry comes up to mention that clip of him. Have you seen the clip of him? Where he turns the crowd around on the beat.

01:32:14
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing. Everyone should go google this.

01:32:17
Speaker 2: There's a you know, the whole thing about white people not being able to clap on the two and the four of the back beat. They just always no matter how the song starts, they end up clapping on the wrong beat. So Harry's solution he's taking an unaccompanied piano solo, is he throws in an extra beat and I think, I mean he's playing eighth notes right, so he literally just yeah, I mean, he just throws in like a little he plays one bar five four is what I mean to say, instead of the four four that he's playing in And this has the effect of successfully flipping the crowd's wrong beat back around to two and four. And it's really without them even realizing it. You kind of hear them, like you kind of watch and hear them go way eight.

01:33:00
Speaker 1: Something feels better now.

01:33:02
Speaker 2: But it's like it's one of the most incredible pieces of like musical live music, like magic that you'll ever see. I implore everyone to go check it out. It's amazing. So Harry gets a pass in my book.

01:33:13
Speaker 1: Well, both Rob Reiner and Billy Crystal had low hopes for the movie, but it was released on July fourteenth, nineteen eighty nine. It was competing against summer blockbusters like Your Beloved Batman and Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, My Beloved Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, so they figured that this relatively small comedy was going to get crushed. Afron later explained that the studio was afraid of it because, quote, it has no safety net. It entirely depends on you're caring about these two people. There's no real plot, and as a way to combat the competition and also the huge marketing budgets of their competition, the studio released the film in just a few theaters in its first week about ninety in an effort to allow positive word of mouth to spread. This tactic paid off when when Harry met Sally raked in nearly ninety three million dollars at the box off, making it the eleventh highest grossing movie of the year. Ryner later told People magazine, you'd never know. You make a movie and hopefully you like it, and hopefully other people do too. You have no idea if it'll stand the test of time, and it's kind of cool that it did, but in keeping with a TMI tradition, When Harry Met Sally is another beloved classic that was trashed by the critics upon its release. Writing in The New York Times, Karen James called it quote an often funny, but amazingly hollow film that quote romanticized lives of intelligent, successful, neurotic New Yorkers. She went on to dismiss it as a Witty Allen ripoff, citing everything from its white on black credits to its classic jazz influence score to his obsessive conversations about love, sex, and death. When Harry Met Sally's the most blatant bow from one director to another since Witty Allen imitated Igmar Bergmann in Interiors. The review reads. Rog Reebert was more muted, calling it most conventional in terms of structure and the way it fulfills her expectation. So the critics didn't really like When Harry Met Sally. But you know who did one of my favorite royals, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand did Duke's Countess Royalty.

01:35:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, because wasn't Philip Wasn't wasn't the crypt keeper uh old Scratch?

01:35:19
Speaker 1: He married into it. Wasn't he the Duke of Edinburgh or something? Yeah, but I kind of him is having married into it. You know, sure, God, he's in hell. Got he's in hell. There's no I hope he's in hell.

01:35:34
Speaker 2: Uh, yes, Jordan, that's correct. Princess Diana. Uh she you say Princess Diana. I can literally hear the bile rising in your throat.

01:35:47
Speaker 1: I say it. I like Princess Diana.

01:35:50
Speaker 2: If she was the pizzels she was, Yes, she was the people's princess. And she threw a giant, as they would say, spanner to the works, a wobbler. A wobbler's a fit though, right, like a tantrum. Threw a wobbley.

01:36:07
Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't know that. I thought that was just like anything that doesn't go according to plan. Now I think throw a spanner into the works? Is it because the tool that doctor who has and is called like the interdimensional spanner or something. So it's a wrench. It's a British word for a wrench, right.

01:36:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, So she threw a spanner into the work. Look, anything that makes the actual royals unhappy, I'm one hundred percent on board for so good for good for Princess Die Less. Good for her was that she was seated next to Billy Crystal at the UK premiere of the film, and God, can you imagine being a statuesque royal seated next to the most thirstily always be closing comic. How much do you think he was just riffing to her about like Yorkshire pudding or something that time.

01:36:54
Speaker 1: She was so tall, she was like five foot She's like my heights, she's like five to eleven. Yeah, yeah, sure, I'm sure that did it for him.

01:37:02
Speaker 2: Uh as Billy Crystal, We're just fucking wailing on Billy Crystal.

01:37:07
Speaker 1: It's like the Simpsons gift, like, leave him alone. He's dead, already.

01:37:12
Speaker 2: Flogging his corpse. As he recalled in his book, I'll have what she's having. When the orgasm scene starts, Diana was laughing so hard, just belching it out. She had the kind of laugh where if you were on a date, you'd never want to see her again. Then she grabbed my hand and said, so naughty. Yeah, all right, buddy, dial it back. You think that's true?

01:37:38
Speaker 1: No, so naughty's a little on the nose, it's a little awest some.

01:37:41
Speaker 2: Powers, Yeah, grabbing his hand like there weren't like seven British snipers like sas guys in the back of the theater waiting for her to take her out if she did something that so bold. Reiner Rob Ryner, who was nervous about how Princess Di would take the scene, remembered her leaning over to Billy and whispering, I'd laughing a lot more, but I know everyone's watching me, which backs up exactly what I just said. According to Ryer, she had a copy of the film sent to Kensington Palace so she could watch it with her friends. In addition to getting the Royal Seal of Approval, when Harry met Sally got something that's even more rare for a rom com Oscar recognition. Nora Efron received an Oscar Nod for Best Writing, but the trophy ultimately went to Dead Poet Society.

01:38:25
Speaker 1: Yeah that scans.

01:38:26
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:38:27
Speaker 1: A sweeter tribute.

01:38:27
Speaker 2: Would come almost thirty years later, though, from Meg Ryan's son Jack the twenty something revealed on a panel in twenty eighteen that he had recently watched when Harry met Sally for the first time. He explained the delay by saying, guys, when your mother has one of the most famous orgasm scenes of all time.

01:38:42
Speaker 1: You do not jump on the film.

01:38:43
Speaker 2: Okay, I saw it because I was filming a rom com and that's like the rom com. I watched it, and then afterwards I cried for so long because I was so proud of her. And I immediately called her and I'm like, I'm so sorry I missed this movie. She's like, I've only seen it one time.

01:38:57
Speaker 1: Anyway.

01:38:58
Speaker 2: That's my favorite of hers. And most importantly, in twenty twenty two, when Harry mitt Sally was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, I made sure to add that for you. Thank you, thank you. You know, it's deeply important to me.

01:39:13
Speaker 1: I love when famous actors admit that they have not seen one of the most iconic movies, either at all or since the premiere. I feel like it happens a lot.

01:39:23
Speaker 2: I feel like most actors have been through filmed so many movies that they thought were good based on their scenes or there or the script, and then have been burned by finding out what a piece of dog it was in the final product. That it's quite understandable they would shy away from it.

01:39:38
Speaker 1: That's that's true. Yeah, Well, was there that Gwyneth Paltrow clip that went viral a couple of years ago where she was like, wait, I was in like one of the Marvel movies and she was I think she was either doing a podcast or I think her.

01:39:48
Speaker 2: Daughter or someone else reminded her like you were in Iron Man three something.

01:39:53
Speaker 1: Wasn't it, Like what do you mean? It's like, no, yeah, you were love that and hate that two things gonna meet you at the same time. I'm learning to hold tension and hold space for conflicting emotions. When Harry met Sally was later adopted into a stage show that premiered in London's West End in two thousand and four. Harry and Sally were played respectably by Luke Perry Rip and Alison Hannigan, the latter of whom kind of makes sense to me because of how I met your mother. That whole connection that kind of makes sense. The actors were later replaced by Michael Lanz, who I was not familiar with until I looked him up and I realized that he played Kevin Arnold's rival for the hand of Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years And therefore you hate him, yeah, basically and Molly Ringwald, who was also an early pick to play Sally in the movie. So the order of the universe, according to Rob Reiner, has been restored. Good and all was well So I mean my vitamin C supplements, Oh good.

01:41:00
Speaker 2: Good, No, when Harry met Sally with a launching pad for Meg Ryan as a rom com queen, she would go on to star and three more projects penned by Nora Efron nineteen ninety three, Sleepless in Seattle nineteen ninety eights, You've Got Mail, and a third film that doesn't exist two thousands hanging up.

01:41:22
Speaker 1: Two out of three ain't bad, Meg, Nora. I think it was Walter Mathow's last movie. That's the only reason why it holds any space for me. Depressing Wait, yes, Nora Fron movie. Oh no, that was Walter Landau's last movie. Was Edward martin Landau. Martin Landau. But I get it. Kind of tall, lanky, weird face. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. We regret back there, but I understand too much information regrets the air.

01:41:54
Speaker 2: Fittingly, it was the scene shot when Harry and Sally run into each other in the Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore that actually inspired Nora Efron to write, You've got mail. Inspiration struck her when the location of that bookstore chain is it a chain or just the look.

01:42:08
Speaker 1: Uh local chain. There's like a couple of them. I think it's one of friends too. Actually, you didn't need to know that so now.

01:42:17
Speaker 2: Inspiration struck Nora when the Shakespeare in Co location from a film closed down shortly after Barnes and Noble opened up nearby, which became the subplot of the movie When Harry met saliol So teasday future Rob Ryner project, Harry can be seen reading Stephen King's Misery, which Reiner would make the following year, starring James Kahn and Kathy Bates. As I said earlier, a very different kind of rom com.

01:42:40
Speaker 1: I can't tell, well, I can't tell if it was just a visual joke because Harry's reading it alone. The paperwork must have been in place for that. Come on, it's Stephen King. But it's a good bit because he's alone in his apartment and he's newly divorced, and he's just reading a giant book that says misery on it. It's pretty good. Two things get with you at the same time.

01:43:00
Speaker 2: Too much information, Two things can be true. At the same time, Ryner also included a conspicuously placed copy of VHS copy of When Harry Met Sally during a scene in Misery set in a video rental store, which is very funny.

01:43:16
Speaker 1: Well mercifully. Rob Ryder never wanted to revisit When Harry Met Sally, and nor did Nora Ephron or Billy Crystal or Meg Ryan. Billy Crystal later told Variety, as we get older, what would the movie be about when Harry left Sally, when Sally got sick?

01:43:32
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I know, I know, I know.

01:43:36
Speaker 1: Just let them be happy and where everybody wants them to be, for all of us who believe in happily ever after, that's where they are. They're in hell. Rob Ryiner weighed in on the thirtieth anniversary of the film in twenty nineteen, when speaking on a panel at the Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival. He said that the pair were indeed still together. That doesn't mean they have had tremendous ups and downs or a bit on the verge of divorce and got back together, just like any relationship. But I do think they're still together. And finally, I guess this leads us to the central question of the film, can men and women just be friends? The two leads more or less took the point of view of their characters. Meg Ryan gave her opinion to USA Today, Yes, men and women can just be friends. I have a lot of platonic male friends, and sex doesn't get in the way. Billy Crystal, on the other hand, said, I'm a little more optimistic than Harry, but I think it's difficult. Men basically act like stray dogs in front of a supermarket. I do platonic female friends, but not best best friends.

01:44:40
Speaker 2: Hmmmm, I'm going to google. Do you think he's talking about Rob Renner?

01:44:43
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think they're still tight Billy Crystal friends. You're gonna get a guest appearance on Friends.

01:44:54
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, that's true, Billy Yeah. Oh well, Robin Williams apparently Billy Crystal women friends. No, that's just that's just clips. Is Billy Crystal.

01:45:14
Speaker 1: A good person? Friends with a woman? Still nothing? Still nothing?

01:45:23
Speaker 2: If you were a loved one, identify as female and our friends with Billy Crystal, please get in touch by Twitter and we'll.

01:45:31
Speaker 1: Venmo you five bucks.

01:45:34
Speaker 2: Actually, I already transferred my bank at my Venmo balance this week, Jordan, that's on you, buddy, all right, I got you.

01:45:41
Speaker 1: Well. Before we wrap it up today, we got to give the final word to our guests and hear their thoughts on a When Harry Met Sally sequel. Okay, picture me as a sleazy executive. You guys are pitching When Harry Met Sally two? Meat harder.

01:45:58
Speaker 3: What do you got who to play emmy? A T or E E E T.

01:46:02
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's up to you or the creatives. I'm just the money man.

01:46:06
Speaker 3: Okay, what are you? What do you want from us to tell you what it's going to be about?

01:46:09
Speaker 1: An outline? A pitch? Pitch me impress, wow me right.

01:46:15
Speaker 3: Me.

01:46:16
Speaker 4: No one had to do that for the first film, so why do we have to do that for the second.

01:46:19
Speaker 1: The patriarchy, I don't know.

01:46:21
Speaker 3: They got to make it themselves. Uh, I don't know. They they're broken up. They're both separated.

01:46:31
Speaker 4: They been separated, an alter for like ten years or something. Was it wasn't there what you said? An alternate ending?

01:46:39
Speaker 3: What was that?

01:46:39
Speaker 4: Wasn't it like something where.

01:46:40
Speaker 1: They like the original ending was gonna be that they break up and then they meet on the street and then they they literally go in opposite a breakup.

01:46:48
Speaker 3: That's literally the end of the day.

01:46:50
Speaker 1: I thought you were talking about this and Vince Vaughan, which was.

01:46:53
Speaker 3: An alternate ending from the original one that they had.

01:46:56
Speaker 1: Oh, they were going to get together, and the original.

01:46:59
Speaker 3: One was they were The original one was they were both like with other people, and I think of the actual ending, only one of them was or Sea. Yeah, so in the original one they were both with people, and apparently focus groups were like never but they tolerated them just running into each other on the street.

01:47:17
Speaker 2: They should have done the ending from Meet Joe Black, where they look at each other a couple of times and they miss each other and then he walks out in the street and gets bounced around by a taxi cab.

01:47:24
Speaker 3: That's truly ed.

01:47:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, is that the ending you had, buddy? Come on, you're on Twitter. You had to have seen that.

01:47:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen it. I didn't know that was the ending.

01:47:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well for him just almost wasn't there, just like a little bit after, because it was like, now he's dead. That was a lot, you know what.

01:47:43
Speaker 2: Actually, the only reason that's on my mind is because I saw the part of him doing the Jamaican accent from from that movie.

01:47:51
Speaker 3: Little Kidding.

01:47:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jordan, Uh.

01:47:56
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, so okay, so exactly, we have thirty seconds in the elevator. Here's what it's gonna be. You gotta green light it. They broke up. It's been ten years, okay, and they both have lived their lives and they run into each other in New York City of course.

01:48:14
Speaker 4: Okay. They both have kids from donors. They and their kids are dating.

01:48:28
Speaker 1: This is their friends.

01:48:32
Speaker 4: I don't know, Okay, I wasn't prepared.

01:48:35
Speaker 1: I mean, their kids are like thirty. Now, there you go.

01:48:39
Speaker 3: They met in a support So it's when Harry's kids meet Sally's kids. That's the title. It really rolls off the tongue.

01:48:46
Speaker 1: Cheaper by this. Sally Nope, okay, okay.

01:48:52
Speaker 3: Harry and Sally's kids are all right, Sally less in Seattle.

01:48:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. I think I'd like to petition one of them dies. Who one of the kids.

01:49:04
Speaker 3: Turns out they had a twin. Wait, no, one of Sally or Harry dies. One of them they had a twin they didn't know about.

01:49:09
Speaker 2: Probably Harry, like statistically, because he's the man, right, how it works Statistically, men die way earlier.

01:49:16
Speaker 4: Oh I thought even men are more likely to have a twin.

01:49:20
Speaker 1: I can't back that up.

01:49:24
Speaker 3: That would be insane.

01:49:25
Speaker 2: Is it like a Weekend Bernie's situation where they have to like pretend that they're together to get like the inheritance or something. Is it like a kind of con comedy angle here, or it's just that she then falls in love with a twin.

01:49:36
Speaker 4: Or does she fall and his friends are holding him up pretending like he's real, just.

01:49:42
Speaker 1: Like Weekended Harry's har.

01:49:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, Actually, okay, race everything I've just said, Okay, don't spend ten years, fifteen years whatever. They have no children, they've broken up, and it's they're at a new they happen to see each.

01:49:56
Speaker 4: Other at a New Year's Eve party, oh another and they're like, okay.

01:49:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you've got to tie it somehow to the first. And then it's just kind of like, okay, are we've like kind of lived our lives. We're in like later stages. It's like that, what's that stupid movie that I hate to turn it off? It was so bad. No, I love that movie. That's how Molly in it.

01:50:17
Speaker 1: It does.

01:50:18
Speaker 3: Smallville supermand it's i can't remember, but it's a uh, it's some Jack Nicholson's.

01:50:25
Speaker 2: In it, the sweetest thing.

01:50:28
Speaker 1: Something, Something's gonna get, Something's gonna give it.

01:50:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, no matter as good as it gets. Where it's like, is that the one Dinana.

01:50:34
Speaker 1: Keaton I think Something's gotta give is with Doan Kings. I guess when he is sorry.

01:50:38
Speaker 4: We've reached my floor, so I don't have ti to hear this anymore.

01:50:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, this pitch is exactly how my pitch is normally. Okay, I'm not pitching it anymore. This idea is gold. I'm gonna take it any Yeah.

01:51:00
Speaker 1: A show that we wanted to pitch, which was just every episode as we take a movie and spend the entire episode just spitballing sequels, and I really I do want to do that. We should do this.

01:51:10
Speaker 4: This has proved anything, It's that it's great.

01:51:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean in mind, I think I think Sally Goes is putting witness protection because of her role in Watergate.

01:51:20
Speaker 1: Comes out and Harry has Remember he.

01:51:24
Speaker 2: Was an attorney, so he's now transitioned into doing uh because he was consulting I think for the no business consultant. Anyway, he's transitioned into working with the government now, and he actually finds Hair Sally's cover. And then Chris Evans and Sandra Bullock come in as opposing agents from Russia and the Secret Service or another government wing, and they are both trying to find Sally first, and Harry is in there too, and Addison Ray is in there and she's yeah.

01:51:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, And who else is hot right now?

01:52:00
Speaker 3: Now?

01:52:01
Speaker 1: Uh? Sally Cross with mister and missus Smith. No, because now you're making it plausible, and I just want to make it weird.

01:52:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, like maybe she's like Sally's on the run and Harry's like, I got a helper.

01:52:14
Speaker 3: We used to be in love.

01:52:15
Speaker 1: And when Thelma met Louise and Harry.

01:52:19
Speaker 4: Was there too, and he stopped the car from going off the cliff.

01:52:23
Speaker 3: Audiences love long titles.

01:52:25
Speaker 1: They do. Plays Melancholy Baby.

01:52:28
Speaker 3: I hear about them.

01:52:30
Speaker 2: When Harry met Sally again and they're old. Plays melancholy Baby.

01:52:34
Speaker 1: That's that's my title, okayutes five minutes? Final thoughts should we do it?

01:52:40
Speaker 4: Final thoughts for you guys like Jerry Springer.

01:52:43
Speaker 1: Jerry Springer, Jerry Springer, Final thoughts.

01:52:46
Speaker 4: You know, in a world without chemistry, right, he died.

01:52:51
Speaker 1: He did die. Oh yeah, we did an episode on him. You know, he was a mayor of Cincinnati for a brief til he lived a life just in pie. Wait is he can you? I don't know. We did this. We we did this. We did this The Death of the Boomer Dream.

01:53:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did this whole episode about how on him, and I I kind of thought that, like, you know, he was like more or less like an idealistic young guy who then became like the most parasitic, lowest common denominator, feeding the worst impulses of the country, like TV jerk for just like.

01:53:29
Speaker 1: Miles, sitting on piles and piles of his money. So I don't know.

01:53:34
Speaker 3: Final thoughts anyway, all right, Yeah, final thought is, thank god Jerry's dead did not have to hear this.

01:53:41
Speaker 1: I'll say to his face, like I did up his grain. Got a board in the Connecticut.

01:53:49
Speaker 3: Have Harry and Sally animate his corps so I can tell him you just like the Jerry met Sally.

01:53:57
Speaker 4: Do we need final thoughts after that?

01:53:59
Speaker 1: Oh? Well, that that's our pitch. This is okay.

01:54:03
Speaker 3: I do have a legitimate final thought. Okay, as much as I was not into the lack of chemistry. I will say this movie gives you like some of the classic rom com tropes that we like crave, like the scene which I think was on the cover if I remember seeing the DVD and Blockbuster with like the leaves, the Beautiful fall Leaves, and like New York City. I'm sorry, New York City is a character.

01:54:31
Speaker 1: It is the main character.

01:54:32
Speaker 3: It's one of the lead character. It should be credited, it should be starring New York City.

01:54:41
Speaker 4: I don't see New York City and hear a little bit of New Jazz. I'm not in Okay, I'm out getting out of here.

01:54:48
Speaker 3: This it's not a roma.

01:54:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you guys are both writers. Like do you actually like like the repartee in this movie? Do you think it qualifies as like a classic of the genre, yeah, said said.

01:55:02
Speaker 3: Think back to it. Yeah. I also, I will say, like, I think one of the things that kind of holds me back from loving this movie is that they spend so little time being attracted to each other, Like so much of it is just thumbing friends, which I understand is like the premise, but like comes it's like guy meets girl. The whole movie is like them like trying to figure out how to be in a relationship or whatever, and so I think that kind of threw me off. But I think, I mean, Billy Crystal has that kind of like kind of like Vince Vannie of like this always has like something to say, like I feel like he's Vince Bond before Vince von was around.

01:55:37
Speaker 4: But yes, yeah, there's not enough tension in the build up.

01:55:41
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, I would actually agree with that. There's no there's just no heat in there. You don't see them like making eyes at each other or kind of like elevatorizing each.

01:55:50
Speaker 4: Other game night, the game night scene, there's like a little bit of that, like they're like I always brings.

01:55:55
Speaker 3: It out in the breakup they had a game.

01:55:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, Okay, we solved that breakup is just a rip.

01:56:05
Speaker 1: Off now it is.

01:56:07
Speaker 3: It really is just copy and paste in the script.

01:56:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's our final thought. Yeah. Perfect, you guys. I'm so sorry, Thank you guys both.

01:56:18
Speaker 2: This has been so much fun on this has been well folks. Thank you for listening to too much information. Special guest edition with Brooke Siffern and Arisha Skidmore Williams of podcast Even the Rich.

01:56:31
Speaker 1: Be sure to check it out and.

01:56:35
Speaker 2: Plays melancholy for baby, I'm really still Harry Connock Jr. Ladies and gentlemen, Harry Connick Journey to play us out, and.

01:56:50
Speaker 1: My name is Harry Connick Jr. We'll get you next time. Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog. The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

01:57:07
Speaker 2: The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan Runtog and Alex Heigel.

01:57:11
Speaker 1: With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,