Blank Check with Griffin & David - When Harry Met Sally... with Dana Stevens

Episode Date: June 7, 2020

It laid the groundwork for her entire film career. It set the mold for every rom-com that followed. Though it wasn’t her directorial debut, you just don’t do Nora Ephron without covering When Harry Met Sally. We invited Slate critic and podcast host Dana Stevens (Culture Gabfest, Flashback) to discuss the 1989 classic and ask the big questions. How is Billy Crystal so damn charming? Which Meg Ryan hairstyle is best? And most importantly...can men and women be friends???

blank check with griffin and david blank check with griffin and david don't know what to say or to expect all you need to know is that the name of the show is blank check look i came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your podcast with somebody you you want the rest of your podcast to start as soon as possible you know he's not that jewish even though he's still very jewish you know what i mean i can't do it i know i know i was veering a little too much into mike wazowski yes and when you watch monsters inc it's easy to sometimes think, oh, Billy Crystal's doing himself. But then you watch like video footage of him doing the vocal performance. He's bringing it up. You realize Mike Wazowski is Billy Crystal with 80 percent more borscht belt.

Right. Right. He's like, come on, Sally. You know, I can't even do it. I can't even do it. I picked that line because the quotes page for When Harry Met Sally is roughly 80 pages long. It comprises almost the entire script. And most of it is the back and forth rat-a-tat dialogue. And I couldn't find another good quote that didn't involve you having to say six separate lines to lead into it. Yeah, she spreads everything out evenly it's the back and forth yeah uh can i say something controversial just right off the bat i might get canceled but i just want to say this yeah go ahead this script is pretty good

yeah this movie this movie is a pretty good script it's almost like it's sort of been endlessly copied basically all the way until the present day yeah like emulated but never replicated right right griffin you and i were also saying last night re-watching it that we had the same strange sensation that even though we hadn't seen the movie in years in your case you said maybe 20 years i think it was 20 years you felt like you were anticipating every line before it was delivered absolutely and the more i water there were certain scenes where i would not have any memory of them but then there are other scenes where i would remember every single detail and then you know what the line's gonna be but then they say it and you're like oh yeah that still gets you still gets you i was surprised like particularly the opening stretch the like drive

back from college whatever that is like 10 minutes. Sure. All of that was just burned into my brain. And you were saying, Dana, like part of it is it's such an endless cable movie. I probably watch parts of it over and over again. I've seen it in circulation. But I also just I think I've only watched it one time all the way through. And it was when I was very young. How come you've seen it so little if you if you like the movie so much? Why did it not become a go back to movie? I don't know. It's very young. How come you've seen it so little if you like the movie so much? Why did it not become a go back to movie? I don't know. It's very bizarre. There's certain movies like

that, like even Silence of the Lambs, which we covered on this podcast earlier this year, was like, I saw it one time when I was in high school, was completely blown away with it and never watched it again but that one is is taxing and demanding and scary i can see why you would resist it whereas this movie goes down so easy i mean my history with it honestly is that i sort of resisted it when it first came out well you guys were fetuses when it first came out if that but i was just a young enough adult to be a snob about things that were too popular right and what i thought about at the time were what some of the critics who i now see as the most wrong thought about it at the time.

Like Karen James for the New York Times, I think wrote about it at the time that it was kind of ersatz Woody Allen, basically. And I think that was how it struck me too. And you have to remember where Woody Allen was at in the late eighties, right? Like hitting this great career high. That was the year Crimes and Misdemeanors came out.

And it was shortly after Hannah and Her Sisters. Hannah and Her Sisters, right. And so to me, it sort of seemed like, eh, this is some watered down woody allen but it's likable that was the thing i think i would have said at the time was like sure fine the performances are great it's full of funny lines it's kind of irresistible but ultimately it's kind of hollow trash that's what i would have said as a snobby 22 year old you would have said likable backhandedly right i think that was part of the hit on it at the time. It's like, well, yeah, where's the edge here? It's cute, it's sweet,

but then when you watch a few decades of rom-coms and see how hard it is to do something that is cute and sweet, but also has heart and has chemistry between the leads, right? I mean, you start to realize this movie is a small miracle. Right, and the same thing we found going through

reviews for Sleepless in Seattle at the time, where everyone's kind of backhanded about it. And they're like, yeah, it works. It's really effective. You can hear the critics rolling their eyes, but it's so undeniable. It's held up as a high watermark. Everyone tries to replicate it. And in both of these cases, she got the Oscar nomination for the screenplay. she got the Oscar nomination for the screenplay. Can I say, though, this movie has something going for it that Sleepless does not have at all. Sorry to talk over you, Griffin. No, no. That's usually my move. The leads are together the whole time. I mean, Sleepless has that narrative block, right?

And of course, that's where the romantic tension comes from, that they're in a different place. But it means that you don't get a lot of snappy banter between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. They're snappily bantering with their friends, and then they finally come together at the end. Here, you have so much time for that crackle to happen. Well, Sleepless is extremely high concept and this movie is insanely low concept. Like this movie is literally just like, what if two people were kind of like friends and they kind of argue about it and like, know eventually they hook up like there's just no um you know sleepless is all like these convoluted like oh high high wire plotting

and this this is the opposite sleepless also feels like the five obstructions like sleepless feels like a dare where it's like you want to make a rom-com you have to make a rom-com where they don't talk until the last 90 seconds like see if you can make tension from that, which is part of what's impressive about it. But yes, watching this, it is so satisfying to just watch a movie that is like 60% two-hander. Like 60% of this movie is just the two of them in scenes. And then there's the other two-hander of Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher, which they could have their own series of movies and I would be thrilled. Having Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby as your backup, just better than clean up.

I would watch When Marie Met Jess or whatever. They wanted to just do that. I'd watch it. Well, I guess they can't do both of them are not with us anymore, right? Bruno Kirby also passed away. I'd watch a prequel about when he buys the wagon wheel coffee table.

I got a thing to say about the wagon wheel coffee table in a second but our listener at home might be going wait a second I'm confused I know this is the start of a new miniseries are we launching into Rob Reiner are we about to go through many months of Reiner and why are they starting

four movies in the answer is no this is a miniseries on the films of Nora Ephron. It's called You've Got Podcast. And we're doing something a little off tradition here. We're starting with a film made by a different filmmaker that Nora Ephron only wrote because it feels so important to the development of everything she does as a director, more so than the other films she did as a writer before this point um and then we're going straight into nora so we're sort of doing a bonus episode first rather than last because also the only other films she'd done with uh were both

mike nichols movies right she did two nichols nichols is a candidate to cover at some point but as we've talked about many times on this podcast aside from rob reiner seven film miracle run of this is spinal tap uh what's it called uh the sure thing uh stand by me princess bride when harry met sally uh misery a few good men uh the rest of his filmography is not super worth covering if it ended ended with North, it would be interesting. And even if the rest of his career were things at the level of a few good, not a few good men, American President, Mississippi, Bernie, that would be interesting.

The rest of the filmography is not really worth covering. And I would feel weird just arbitrarily going, we're only doing the movies that exist. We're ignoring the last 15 years of his career. It's kind of a weird cutoff as opposed to the cleaner demarcations we had for Spielberg and for Verhoeven. Yes, so we're doing a Rob Reiner movie,

but this is certainly a Nora Ephron movie. It's as much a part of her canon as anything. And introduce our guests. And then I want to talk about this year's academy award for best original screenplay category which might be the most loaded category in like oscar history and yet the craziest thing won i suppose i quickly there's a way through the kind of logic we're applying here that we could end up covering a lot of those other rob reiner movies in other miniseries. Sure.

Like, if we ever did Christopher Guest, we could do Spinal Tap as a bonus. Right. If he makes six more movies, or we did an Aaron Sorkin writer series, we could put in those two. Right. Listen, folks, it's Blank Check,

a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers and give a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want. Sometimes those checks clear, and sometimes they bounce baby. And this is a director who is in blank check mode. And this film is such a success. It's such a clear that it's screenwriter then gets to have her own career as a director as well. That's what we're really looking at here. This film is a guarantor for a directing career for its screenwriter, which is

pretty wild. Not something that never happens, but something that doesn't happen super often. Look how many times it took for Aaron Sorkin to get to direct his own movie. Much longer. But our guest today is the great from Slate

and the Flashback podcast, Dana Stevens. Hello! So happy to be back. Oh wait, and the Flashback podcast, Dana Stevens. Hello. So happy to be back. Oh, wait, and the Slate Culture Gab Fest podcast. Slate Culture Gab Fest. I got to plug us because we just, guys, we just went biweekly after having been weekly for 12 years.

I saw that. It's tough times for Slate right now. So I got to mention my podcast and hope that somebody will come to it from here. And become a Slate Plus member, you know, and listen to all the nice podcasts. And listen to Flashback is only for Slate Plus, correct? Yep. It's only behind the paywall,

but we make it worth your while. That one is me and K. Austin Collins from Vanity Fair, who I think you guys have had, right? Several times. Which was just on for the second time. Yeah. What did he do? He did Witches of Eastwick.

Nice. Oh, I got to hear that. Yeah. But definitely not for Slate Plus. Things are bad right now. Things are generally really bad right now. What a nice time to watch When Harry Met Sally. But guys, guys, listen

to this. Okay, there were five nominees for Best Original Screenplay 1989 at the Oscars. Yeah. Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, which might be his, I i think i would argue is maybe his best screenplay it's up there it's very yes that's a that's a very solid argument nora affron when harry met sally steven soderbergh for sexualizing videotape wow spike lee for do the

right thing which is i would say the inarguable winner, you kind of can't argue with that. Like that's just an incredible piece of writing. And then the winner was Dead Poets Society. Tom Shulman's Dead Poets Society. Like it's crazy that they were presented with those options. I know Dead Poets Society was a big hit and whatever, but like, and that they went for Dead Poets Society. That is so Oscars. I mean, if you ever need to explain the oscars sensibility to an alien just whip out those stats right there

right and then and then driving miss daisy wins best picture yeah uh it's that's so crazy you also think like there's a correct oscar timeline in which spike lee gets his screenplay win then, which probably means that Black Klansman wins picture or director. Sure. I get what you mean. Right? Like by that point, it was like,

we're going to give it the one screenplay award because Spike finally needs to win an Oscar. If he had won screenplay 20 whatever years earlier, I think they might've given him best picture at that point. Was Do The Right Thing nominated for any category? It was nominated for Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Danny Aiello, and that's it.

That's it. And once again, the winner for Best Picture was Driving Miss Daisy. Driving Miss Daisy, which also won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy over When Harry Met Sally. And we never stopped laughing. Driving Miss Daisy is not that funny.

I mean, have you seen Driving Miss Daisy in any kind of recent memory, Dana? I don't even think I saw it back then. I've never seen it. That was the ultimate movie to be a snob about. Yeah, exactly. I was fully in snob mode. I didn't see Titanic until like five years ago. I mean, almost all of the huge monster hits of the 90s i snubbed because i was you know i was like reading existentialist poetry

or something well that's you gotta do that but dana you gotta admit titanic fully slaps right that movie oh yeah oh my god oh yeah i i should have come to it at the time it's like i was so much older than i'm younger than that now that's my relation to that movie. I'm now teenager enough to appreciate it. I had the same thing. I didn't see it when it came out. When I was a teenager, I viewed it very derisively. And then years later, I watched it on cable. And I was like, this movie sucks until they hit the iceberg.

The only stuff that's good is the Cameron-y showcase stuff. And it was only in the last five years that i was like no this movie's like top to bottom the best griffin were you like me and just mostly looked forward to the guy hitting the propeller and then totally spinning all the way down yes that was my favorite that's my favorite part right i was like this movie does not work for me emotionally at all i just like the sort of showcase technical bravura stuff but i also was only watching it like full screen standard def tv and it was when i finally when they re-released it in 3d and i went to see it from the opening moments i was like oh this thing's a masterpiece whereas this this is a very pretty movie it's

shot by barry sonnenfeld um and it has all his trademark like he loves the camera low to the ground he loves big you know autumnal photography um but this is a movie that kills on cable because you can enjoy it on the tiniest screen like you know the dialogue is always going to be good like this is the wildest thing for me is like so i saw this movie i think when i was 10 or 11 i saw it very young because the AFI had done their like 100 years, 100 laughs lists, or as Mike Ryan calls it, funny times for funny people. Right. Of the 100 funniest movies of all time. And as a comedy nerd, I was like so obsessed with it. And Blockbuster gave out a little foldable checklist. And I compulsively wanted to see the hundred funniest movies of all time.

So I started watching a lot of movies that were maybe a couple years beyond my age, um, because I felt like I had to see all of them. And a lot of them, because it was an AFI list, were not like laugh out loud, like crowd pleasers. They were movies that were kind of like, chuckle to yourself kind of comedies. So I'd watch them and I'd be like, why was this so high rated? And Harry Met Sally was one of the ones that I watched. And I was like, I totally get this. This is totally funny. This totally works for me.

It's so entertaining. And then I weirdly never watched it again in full, had watched it the one time, probably on VHS, and then watched this on Blu-ray last night. And it looks so goddamn good oh it's a good looking movie because it is a movie that played so well on cable for so long you don't realize how well shot it is a question is this movie set in new york city ben not only is this movie set in new york city but you could argue it should be called When Harry Met Sally Met New York

because New York is almost like a character in this movie. Yeah, I kind of felt that way too, watching it again. I kind of felt like above the title, it should say Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, and New York. It's funny considering it begins in Chicago. It's got that nice shot of the university of Chicago campus. Well, and parts of it were filmed in Hollywood when you look at the end at the

location, right? So they went and did some exterior shots in New York and then they were just on sound stages, which is, which is strange to think of, but it is like, it shows you the importance.

And a thing that I don't think movies like this do anymore when movies like this still rarely exist is like, we have to go film in New York for like 10 days. We have to go film in New York and make it count and go to Cats' Deli and walk through Central Park. We can fake the rest of it on soundstages, but you need enough stuff that is undeniably New York to make it feel like New York. And now this type of movie gets shot entirely in Vancouver. And they're like, yeah, this is New York. This is New York and now this type of movie gets shot entirely in Vancouver and they're like yeah this is New York this is New York sure I would actually say it's less true now I think now you can shoot it there was that period where New York it was tough to shoot him but then New York became so

willing to allow you know yeah uh you know they had all the tax breaks and all that I still feel like people cheap out yeah sure let. Let's talk a little bit. Let's zoom out a little bit and talk about Nora Ephron, because it's an interesting career and a different one than we've covered so far in this podcast, because she already had a career of some renown before she even got into movies in any capacity. Oh, certainly.

I mean, do you know the Nora Eph affront story dana no tell me the nora front story i mean i assume at this point she was a columnist and journalist mainly right she was like sally in the movie yeah right she's the she's the um the daughter of of um henry and phoebe affront who were both screenwriters right playwrights and screenwriters and humorous um and so she you know she grew up in that and they were both you know east coast folks you know she's a new yorker you know all that um she's named after the protagonist in a doll's house i did not know that wow um and i feel like she you know right like this sort of it's been talked about more now because Amazon even made a show about it, but she worked at Newsweek when she was right out of college and accepted her positions.

A male girl wasn't being allowed to write and was part of that famous class action suit against the magazine for sexual discrimination where women were literally just not allowed to write at Newsweek. Who played her on that TV show? Girls Revolt. That's what the show was called at newsweek who played her on that tv good girls revolve that's what the show was called yeah who played her on that tv show uh who played her on that tv show grace gummer one of the one of the street children that's pretty wild yes uh and then yeah i feel like right she was like she she had a column at esquire and um she worked uh i don't know she worked she married carl bernstein obviously and she had published a successful novel by this point right because heartburn was a novel before it was screenplay so then that's her big transition point i mean i was trying to think of like who a modern day equivalent to her would be pre film career.

And it's almost someone like, like Gia Tolentino or someone, you know, it's someone, you know, even more fit, but yes, totally.

But I was just like, I'm, I was trying to come up with some vague analogy where it's like, here's someone who does a lot of short form work in like very high profile publications and platforms that like has a lot of renown, a lot of circulation. Then she goes on to writing her own book. And then Mike Nichols buys that book, adapts it with two of the biggest movie stars and hires her to write her own screenplay and i watched heartburn last night for the first time ever or yesterday afternoon for the first time ever and another thing i was

like sort of processing about heartburn is in real life that story was so publicized because nora effron was so well known because car because Carl Bernstein was even more well-known. Right, it was such a chattering classes piece of gossip. Right, and the affair was with, like, the daughter of the prime minister, that, like, here's this, like, very sort of, like, tawdry tabloid tale about, like, the New York intellectual scene, you know,

or I guess they were in Washington, D.C. at the time. Then she adapts it into, you know, a lightly fictionalized novel, which becomes a bestseller. And then it gets turned into a movie with these two massive movie stars and this major, major director. But the movie got bad reviews at the time and was seen as a disappointment.

Yeah, have you seen Heartburn, Dana? Do you have Heartburn takes? Not in a while, but I kind of agree it's a little bit limp. I mean, it has a problem that some Mike Nichols movies have where everything in it is perfectly well done and perfectly agreeable. All the moving parts are in place, but it doesn't spark the way this movie sparks. No, and it also, I mean, it's a thing.

We're recording this main series wildly out of order for a bunch of reasons, including the pandemic. But it's a thing that Dave and I keep on coming back to, which is like, she has a caustic side, Nora Ephron, and then she has this sort of souffle side. And in her humor, in her short form writing, up until this point, she mostly made her success off of the caustic side.

And when she moves into movies, disproportionately her souffle films do really well made her success off of the caustic side. And when she moves into movies, disproportionately, her souffle films do really well and her caustic movies kind of bomb or always seen as high-profile disappointments. She never figured out how to totally make the caustic stuff work in films, but she figured out how to do the souffle

better than almost anyone. And Heartburn is kind of that thing where it's a little too angry, it's a little too angry. It's a little too sad. I like the movie. The other problem with it, and this is something out of their control, is that it gets so thrown off by it being Jack Nicholson. Because it was supposed to be Mandy Patinkin, and Patinkin gets fired like a week into the movie, and Jack Nicholson jumped on to save it from getting shut down and when you have jack nicholson as a movie star presence it like changes the entire chemistry of the thing especially combined with that caustic tone you're talking about right because there's

no menschiness there's not a single bit of menschiness in that character part of which is the writing and it's her ex and she's it's a revenge piece right right but jack nicholson does not add to the to the sweetness of the souffle no no and someone like mandy patinkin can play like a snob who's also like a womanizing asshole and it can play a little bit more like a comedic device whereas jack nicholson it's always that thing of like satan seducing you well that's that's the thing about harper and his thinking was trying to play him sweet and nichols was like you don't get it you're fired like that is not what i'm going for this is not going to be a sweet movie and the movie is admirably unsweet like you know it certainly is but like that's why it's not

particularly surprising that it was not a hit because it's it's a it's it's a tough movie to love like it is it is pretty resistant to you embracing it. But Efron and Nichols clearly spark and Nichols hires her to do the script for Silkwood as well. And then this is the real breakthrough moment because this is the first time that Nora Efron writes a movie

that sort of establishes what the Nora Efron directed films are going to be like. Can I just throw in there that Silkwood still rocks and is an incredibly well done movie. I've never seen it. I need to see it. Silkwood is like, what a true story. Like that's, it's a great template for like a based on a true story, you know, type movie, I would say. Like, it's pretty unsparing. Everyone in it is so good. Oh, and it has this completely matter of fact, lesbian love affair, right? Or domestic situation. And which at the time I remember thinking like, is this possible? Cher and Meryl Streep just live together? You know, I mean, that just,

that wasn't happening in mainstream movies. Cher is so good in it. Oh, so good. So sexy. Yeah. I feel like I've always dismissed it for that reason. And we've covered a couple of these on the podcast recently, like Philadelphia and Lorenzozo's oil that are movies that are easy to just sort of cite on scene and go like is that some like oscar baity thing like the premise is so dramatic you know and like heavy-handed and issue-driven is there any way that movie still holds up but i i need to watch silkwood um but then this is i was watching uh a bunch of the special features on the When Harry Met Sally Blu-ray that Shout Factory just put out. Free plug, Shout Factory very nicely just sent me a bunch of Blu-rays.

They have people at their label who listen to this podcast and they asked me what movies I wanted. And I picked this because I knew we were going to be covering it. wanted and i picked this because i knew we were going to be covering it um but their new blu-ray is incredibly good for when harry met sally and has this like 45 minute talk between uh rob reiner and billy crystal that was filmed in the last year that's really really good um but this movie really springs out of uh rob reiner's romantic frustration post-Penny Marshall divorce, which is a weird thing to think about. And he wanted to make a movie about trying to figure out how to date again and just sort of like elementally the relationship between men and women and all of that.

But a lot of what he was pulling from was very autobiographical. And he very wisely said, I should get a female writer because I understand the male perspective and I'm the one directing this. I should find a female writer who can add, uh, a lot of perspectives that I don't understand to this rather than me trying to tackle everything myself. Um, so I think he just reaches out to Efron and hires her off the strength of her previous work. Pretty much, yeah. Griffin, something about that collaborative relationship, which I'm sure you know if you just watched all these extras, they must talk about it. But I was really struck reading about this movie, how much it sprung out of a collaboration among all of these people on a personal level, right? So Billy Crystal and Rob Reiner were really old friends at the time. Very good friends, right? Crystal and Rob Reiner were really old friends at the time.

Very good friends. Right. So the character Billy plays is based on Rob. And there were a lot of interviews with Rob Reiner that Nora Ephron did to essentially lift dialogue from him. Right. And something that really strikes me watching this. I mean, people always talk about can men write women. I think this is a great job of a woman writing male characters.

Right. The batting cage scenes, you know, the wave at the football game, like all these ridiculous masculine rituals that she nails. And I think a lot of that comes out of her interviewing Rob Reiner at length. And apparently also on set, there was a huge amount of, you know, collaboration, for example. We'll get to it. But the orgasm at Katz's scene was something that came out of they wanted to do something about a fake orgasm. They couldn't decide how to turn it into a joke. Meg Ryan had the idea of her faking it.

Rob Reiner had the idea that it would be in a public place. And Billy Crystal came up with the line, I'll have what she's having. Yes. Which Rob Reiner's mom, of course, delivers.

Right. The more I dug into the special features, the more every story was like that. It was like a perfect confluence of everyone adding stuff.

And as Rob Reiner pointed out in his like very menschy way, he was like, look at how many directors came out of that movie like Billy Crystal goes on to write films and then direct films Barry Sonnenfeld goes on to become a major director Nora Ephraim goes on to become a major director and Meg Ryan even directs a film later so he was like it would have been dumb of me to not recognize and accept the collaboration of all these people on set who

clearly had so much to contribute. You had all these people who were able to provide more than the job they were ostensibly hired to do. And like Nora Ephron is a producer in this film, in addition to being a writer. And I think that title reflects the fact that like she was on set every day. I mean, it was constantly this sort of brain trust of it. Billy Crystal told this story about how like he had heard that Reiner was starting to meet with different actors to play Harry. And he hadn't been called in for a meeting yet. And he viewed it as like, look, we're obviously very good friends. obviously very good friends. They became friends when Billy Crystal did a one episode appearance on All in the Family and hit it off so much that they continued working together in everything.

And Billy Crystal has his tiny role in Spinal Tap and the larger role in Princess Bride. I mean, they continue to do like little things together. But Reiner said his big fear was, I don't want to embark on that heavy of a collaboration with a guy who I consider one of my best friends because you're putting a friendship at risk. Sure. And so he sort of tried to avoid, is there a way to not hire Billy to play Harry for a while? And Billy Crystal very magnanimously said, like, he knows what I can do. We're friends. If he thinks I'm the right guy for the job, he'll hire me. And if he doesn't, then he has his reasons. And I trust him enough as a friend and respect him enough as a director that I won't question that. So he never campaigned for the part until Rob Reiner came around to him

and said, you know, I'd made the calculation that I think our friendship can survive this. But he said, on top of as an actor, that I thought he could do it. And the fact that he knew me so well, and the part was so autobiographical, that I knew he would get it. I also knew he was a writer on top of it, he would be able to add all these other things with his brain comedically on the set every day. And Nora Ephron was the same thing, hire her as a writer, have her work on the script, but also that's getting her on set every day working on all of this. Can I just say, I love how that hesitation between these two best friends as to whether they'd make a movie recapitulates the story of when Harry met Sally. It's like consummating their relationship.

Absolutely. And the other thing they talked about is a lot of the scenes between Harry and Sally in this movie are scenes of things that happen between Rob Reiner and Billy Crystal. Like talking on the phone at night, right? They used to call each other and watch TV together over the phone, which is so sweet. That's directly lifted, right, from their relationship. They loved each other so much as guys, you know, as friends and as people who respect each other's creativity that they pulled, like Nora Ephron here are things that we did 10 years ago when we were both miserable you know so you put those things into the script and like everyone's calling from their experiences here in the way that like Harry is very much a Rob Reiner surrogate and I think Sally is very much a Nora Ephron surrogate and

then the relationship is sort of an exploration of uh their friendship crystal and like rob right like there's such an interesting four square yes going on there i will say it is also funny to think about billy crystal's career he's not been in a lot of movies he's at this point obviously he's very famous saturday night live he was on soap he's hosted award show you know like it's not like... Right. Soap, he plays the first gay character on network television and it's a hit and it's a breakout performance.

So that brought, it brings him a lot of attention. After being a stand-up and doing a period... Then he does the one season of SNL. Right. But then he'll drop in. Right.

But it's that one season that's the all-star season, which I kind of wish they would try to do again at some point. Who was in the all-star season, which I kind of wish they would try to do again at some point. Who was in the all-star season? That was when I wasn't watching the show much. It was the brink of cancellation, and Eddie Murphy had left, and Dick Ebersole said, what if instead of doing the way that SNL always works, where you try to find people on the verge of breaking out,

you get like six people who are already really established but you only sign them up for one season so i'll agree to do it so it was billy crystal christopher guest martin short uh harry shearer uh jim belushi was already on the show at that point was julia louis dreyfus still on louis dreyfus martin short pamela steven, Rich Hall. Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of big shots and they're all gone by the next year. The next year is the famous Robert Downey Jr., Joan Cusack, where they hire a bunch of children. Right, that's Lorne Michaels comes back

and tries to get Brat Pack people. Yeah, right. But that was the year. It was the big thing of like, we're going to spend more money to get Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer. Like a blood transfusion for the show. Right. And these guys have been doing

sketch TV. They've been doing comedy for so long, we know they're going to hit from the first episode. Here's what Billy Crystal's been in, in terms of movies. He's been in the Joan Rivers directed Rabbit Test back in the 70s. That's his first lead role. That's a movie about a man getting pregnant. Oh, I remember the movie poster with great pain.

Right, where she's pointing at his baby bump. Profile of Billy's baby bump. Yes, exactly. It's one of those movies where you're like, why would you call it that? Like, I'm sure it's explained within the film. Yeah, it's a weird, weird title. Yes.

And, you know, he has little roles in like, this is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride. But his only other big movies are Running Scared, which we have covered on this podcast. Which he's really good in and weirdly hot in he's very hot his buddy cop chicago comedy with uh gregory hines and then throw mama from the train that the davida movie yeah um and memories of me which he wrote as well which i've never seen which is like i don't know sort of a forgotten billy crystal project i don't know i i don't know if anyone's ever seen mr

saturday night prequel that's that's coming out soon you know city slickers is coming like people like his 90s run is on its way yes right come on that's a great movie sure i mean i haven't seen in years i'm glad they made a sequel but that's when he becomes the main creative force behind his movies yes he's top build, right? You know, but like, it's sort of funny to think about Billy Crystal as movie star. Totally. Like, it's something. Especially romantic lead, right?

Which he really never was before and really not since. But like, feel free to weigh in, Dana. It never worked as well. But he tried again. He tried again with like, Forget Paris or, right? Like, i feel like there's another one i'm forgetting where he's like an absolute well maybe it's just forget paris i think that's about it he's romantic in the princess bride oh he's well he's he's very sexual

in princess bride um but uh dana i mean weigh in uh, I guess father's day. That's the other one. Wait, what am I weighing in on? Whether Billy Crystal is hot? Yes, Billy Crystal hot? Like, cause I think Billy Crystal is hot in this movie.

Oh yeah, definitely. He's, he's the funny Jewish guy. I mean, that was, that is and was my type. In fact,

I'm now married to one, like the short, funny Jewish guy. It's irresistible. Dana, humble brag. Um, I like him with the beard in this i know he's sort of transitions out of the beard but that's the through line with running scared in this he's

weirdly hot and he's got the beard and then once he shaves it he does have an odd face he is not an unhandsome man but he has odd features and he has such weird hair. He's always had the odd hair. His hair's only gotten odder, but it's always been that shape. Yes. The beard is when it's working best, but like the charm he exudes when he's singing Oklahoma, it's too much. But there's something, the big dick energy he's got during the college section of this movie that's what i'm saying he's coming into the car he's with meg ryan who obviously is a very beautiful actress who's like i think at this point better known as like you know what she's like absolutely

not absolutely not it's top gun this is her first real leading role yeah no that's what i'm saying she's i'm not saying she's better known than him. I'm saying she's better known. She's not known as a comedy figure at all. She's like a beautiful young actress. Yes. Um, and he's the one who's like,

eh, well, all right, you know, whatever. You probably haven't even had good sex yet. Like I'm cock of the walk over here. Like he,

he's all alpha energy and it's not what you'd expect. You'd expect him to be the nebbishy kind of funny guy. I'm just thinking of his delivery of the line, ride me big Sheldon. Yes. But that's the thing. You're like in the, immediately you're like,

I can't believe Billy Crystal is pulling this off. You know, like you could not predict that he, and I guess Rob Reiner could because he knew him all enough, but that he would have the capacity to actually play someone sort of that arrogant and that macho successfully and somewhat charmingly. And the weird thing is, if you looked at this poster at the time, I have to imagine it must have felt like a late period Adam Sandler movie where it's like, this guy is not sexy and somehow improbably he has a very pretty young actress fall for him. And I imagine they don't have any chemistry and the movie is

totally one-sided. And then you watch this film and like, they're both on the exact same level. Yes. How to define, they have great chemistry because they do feel like they just like know each other really well. Like, and it's partly the structure of the movie that has the two false starts to their relationship before they're actually friends so it kind of like they kind of get being young idiots out of the way but like most of the scenes which are just like them talking like the scene where they argue in on the stoop yeah and then immediately kind of diffuse it and hug like you can't fake that that's it's it's very impressive friend chemistry on top of romantic chemistry totally and it's interesting that then tom hanks is the guy who she keeps making movies with but i i think

almost you you couldn't replicate this like you couldn't go back to the well again in the way that you could with hanks because he's a little more versatile you can fuck with that dynamic a little more successfully but dana i feel like you don't like the hanks movies like well you guys asked me to do sleepless in seattle with you no no you got mail you got mail switch you onto this because i know you don't like this one well i mean i just i don't want to do a movie that i have to sort of bag on its basic premise with you guys that seems ungenerous spirited you can find other people who love right you've got mail and there's something very basic just about the i love my corporate raider sort of premise of you've got i mean it's very 90s it's it's it is of its time yes but of course

i mean tom hanks i think at the time people would sort of say that tom hanks and meg ryan were you know he was he was the male meg ryan and vice versa yes and so they more have that classic hollywood match and of course what makes when harry met sally work so well is that they don't have that classic match right you know there are these odd balls that don't seem like they would belong together and yet they do and you have to attribute so much of that to Nora's writing as well. Absolutely. You know, talking about why they work so well together, in our Sleepless episode,

which we've already recorded, David, you talk about the weird sort of sing-songy quality to how Meg Ryan delivers dialogue. Yes, she gets, that's exactly what I was about to talk about. Yes. There's some weird melody that she finds and i think she finds it particularly well with nora efron but it's it's sort of her very nature especially with comedy and then billy crystal is such a sort of musical actor in that he's so

timed to kind of classic borscht belt rhythms yeah he's such a vaudevillian like in a great way right he's this neo borscht belt guy like he was somehow this 20 something guy you know 30 something guy in the 70s and 80s who felt like henny youngman and somehow made it feel a little modern and a little cool for a pocket there and then efron writes so musically it's so much about the rhythms and the rat-a-tat and rob reiner said that was the main thing he was going for on this movie. And most of the sequences and even when he cuts and when he doesn't cut is designed around trying to capture that rhythm. I think it's why it works so well, because literally they're just two actors who figure out

how to find the same tempo. You know, I think that's what the X factor in their chemistry, aside from them being good actors and probably getting along well offset is that they both are able to find the right beat to work off of and that makes it feel so magical because it's like you're watching i don't know an acapella group i don't know what were you gonna say david oh just yeah just that that she she has this take on effron's dialogue that's sort of like she trails off in these really sort of enchanting ways and it's it's exactly it's the sort of flibber to jibbit thing that that she's particularly good at occupying and like sally is a little different from the sleepless in seattle character who's a little different from the you've got male character but

they they do all have that kind of like you know i don't know sort of genius scatterbrain thing going on and billy's on a different clip because billy's like a fucking jazz drum like he's just like relentless like to the rhythm and then watching this thing on the blu-ray it's like right billy crystal and carl and and rob reiner still just talk like that all the time as they were telling anecdotes about making the movie. Like everything they do, it's like this. You know, I say to the girl, what are you talking about?

You know? Yep. The rhythm that I'm thinking of with the two guys talking is the scene of doing the wave, which I love so much. Never fails to charm me. And the way they do the wave

right as he's about to sit down and say the line, you telling me that Mr. Zero knew a week before you knew? And the way Crystal says, Mr. Zero knew. It's so good. Mr. Zero. Don't fuck with Mr. Zero. Wouldn't you say that some of it feels very sketch comedy adjacent? Okay, so this is what I was going to say.

That wave sequence. That feels like a sketch. That is a rejected SNL sketch that Billy Crystal wrote. They had the dialogue of that scene and it was boring because it was just like, what do you do? You put this in a diner? It's the two guys talking about it. It needs to be the introduction of those.

They're dynamic, but it felt like there wasn't anything active happening. Billy Crystal came to Rob Reiner and was like, I had this sketch I wanted to do that was a guy goes to a ball game with his therapist and every time he has a breakthrough, the wave comes around.

That's a great premise. They just mapped it on. They took the dialogue that was already there and they just mapped it on there. But that's another example of like, that scene is based around rhythm so much. You know, it's so musical. Even like another thing in sketch comedy writing you end a

scene with a button yes all the scenes just have a button like an outline that's just perfect like bruno kirby having the walking out with the wagon wheel like there's always like that right like it's like great and we're out and the audience is gonna laugh right yeah but that's like that's like child of carl reiner shit you know it's like my dad told me you always leave him on a laugh it reminds me to have it also sets the scene it establishes the like many elements of new york another thing i like is when he's telling his friend like oh you know that's why it didn't work out with me and sally that's why it was awkward at one point they're on a jog in Central Park.

And then the next time they're still continuing the conversation. It's like downpouring and like Midtown. Yeah, something this movie does really well is that rom-com thing of montaging a conversation or an emotional state over various moments. Right. And there's the classic to the point of being now boring and cliched montage near the end, right? In the last quarter of a rom-com where the two people are separated and you follow them each doing their separate thing and there's music on the soundtrack or something. But in this movie, it's done in such an original way. And I believe it's that there's answering machine messages, right? Isn't it that you're seeing them doing their separate things while he's leaving the fruitless but ever more funny answering machine messages?

leaving the fruitless but ever more funny answering machine messages and going back to your your observation about low concept david what's so great about that is that there's not some elaborate obstacle thrown in their way right i mean there's not there's not another person that one of them is in love with it's not like one of them is overseas hiding some secret family or something it's just like they had a fight you know like people do it's amazing how many rom-coms like feel like they have to have what you're talking about where it's like, yes. Oh, the boyfriend is,

they is going to come back or like, and says like the, you know, he's, he's always pretended to be a, you know, flight attendant, but actually he's a butcher.

Like, I don't know. Like there's like, there's some like end of the second act reveal. And then she's going to be like, I just, it's not even that you're a butcher. It's that you lied

to me like there has to be that scene and then they're not you know six months later whereas this feels so natural they like they only care about each other like for real when they are starting to um you know when they're single and they're miserable. Yeah. And they're a little less attached when they're not, anytime that they're not. Which is, you know, that's an honest depiction of, like, that kind of a friendship. Like, especially if you're going to talk about male-female friendship. Well, that's the thing. Reiner kept on talking about, like, the thing he wanted to do his entire idea for this movie is, I want to just make a movie.

The concept is, make a movie about the dynamic between men and women you know um you know a very heteronormative perception of relationships and obviously specific to a certain oh yeah i mean you can never do this now like because the big hook here is like can a man and woman be friends oh my god and now it would be like let's stop talking about men and women in general so like but you know whatever it's but the way he puts it is that like let's stop talking about men and women in general so like but you know whatever it's but the way he puts it is that like the thing he was really trying to latch on to is that a man and a woman in a relationship it's about a man coming to understand how a woman thinks and a woman coming to understand how a man thinks the relationships that work they over time

gain some sort of understanding of how the other works. And if you end up being more charmed by it than annoyed by it, that's a relationship that potentially has a future. And the thing that's so great about this movie is, as you said, David, the only conflict in it is them getting in the way, right? It's the thing that is the hardest to pull off but the most satisfying of. The only conflict is internal. Nothing. There are no outside conflicts interrupting. It is just these two people getting in the way of their own happiness.

And it's hard to do that in a way where it doesn't feel manipulative or the characters become too self-destructive. But it is one of those things where, like, in the opening of the movie, they completely identify each other. Like, they completely identify what other like they completely identify what is annoying about the other one and they are correct and those attributes carry through till the end of the movie the only thing that changes is they come to have affection for those things and they also figure out how to work in a way to complement those and they figure out what they want in from them totally their own lives you know totally but but it's pretty wild that that's all the movie is doing and another thing that blew my fucking mind is that this movie is 95 minutes long i think about it as being long

for a rom-com because it spans so much time that in my mind's eye, I'm like, that thing's probably like an Apatow length, right? It's probably like 2.5, 2.10. And then you watch it and it's just like, no, there's like no fat. It is so lean. It is so economic. They sleep together like an hour in, you know, they get to present day, like half an hour in. It ends at 90 minutes. And then they're five minutes of credits with Harry Connick Jr. Just charming our pants off. Griffin, that's exactly what I texted David on Wednesday.

I said, first, is this the best movie we've ever covered? And then I was just like, there's no fat. It's so lean. And every scene is just tight. You know what it's like? It's like a lean cut of deli meat at Kansas.

Can I float a big conceptual question before we get into some smaller nitty gritty things? This was probably been another thing that annoyed 22 year old me when I saw it about this movie. And it goes to what you were just talking about, Griffin, about its whole premise of can a man and woman be friends? I think that I didn't like that they ended up together. And of course, I watched it last night and I'm weeping in the bathtub at how perfectly happy I am that they're kissing at the New Year's party. But both Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner

thought that they should not end up together, which I was shocked to read. It was like a mutual agreement that this movie should not affirm that men and women have to have a sexual relationship and they should end up as platonic friends. And I couldn't quite figure out why they didn't accept that it was just simply

studio demands and we need a happy ending. But what would this movie have been like if they had not ended up together? I think their hope was, oh, can we make a movie that ends like Annie Hall or like broadcast news where it's more about the period

that these two people spent together and less about it being destined for each other. But I think it's a weird case where like, I fundamentally agree with you. The entire time I was sitting there and I was like,

They don't need to end up together. And I was like, I should be pissed off that this movie ends up agreeing with his most arrogant thesis that a man and a woman can't be friends

because I fundamentally disagree with that. Right. And the premise is presented as sexist during the car ride from Chicago, right? It's the thing he says when he is the biggest asshole. Which again, I would say-

It shouldn't be proven correct. As Dana said, that is the Nora Ephron magic. She can actually write him very unsympathetically, which I feel like a lot of writers wouldn't dare have him be such a, he is a pain in the ass in the Chicago, like, you know, as a 21-year-old. And Billy, as an actor, to his credit, because I feel like Billy Crystal is so usually defined by wanting everyone to love him.

He's a jerk, spitting out the grapes. But I'm saying Billy Crystal in general is, please love me. You know, the fact that he was like, I'll spend the first 10 minutes of this movie being wildly unpleasant. Right. Is something I didn't think he had in him. wildly unpleasant. Right. It's something I didn't think he had in him.

But I think this is just one of those like force majeure cases where you look at the footage and you're like, audiences are going to hate it if they don't end up together. Fundamentally,

you want to see them end up together even if it proves him right. I wonder if it's also just because you never really see anyone else that matches their rapport. Like if there were like partners for either of them,

like, maybe you would be happier with it, but... It's so true. All the partners you do see them with, she only has kind of generic Ken doll guys, right? Right, there's Shmoe. And all of his other women we see him on dates with just seem like complete empty-headed bimbos, right? I think that's a great point, Ange,

is, like, this movie is 90% those four main actors. You so rarely see anyone else, and if you do, they are of so little consequence, and they tend to be kind of stupid and put in only for a quick gag, you know? So everyone else is so kind of unpleasant or boring or dumb or whatever in the movie.

Even when you see Helen at the sharper image, you think that was it? That's what you're pointing for? Right, and what's his name? or boring or dumb or whatever in the movie. Even when you see Helen at the sharper image, you think that was it? That's what you're pointing for? Right, and what's his name? Jim, Meg Ryan's previous? Ira. Right, like all of those.

Ira is Helen's new guy. But is Jim the Meg Ryan's previous boyfriend? Joe. Joe. Right. And I know that because of the way she says it on the phone when he says who got married and she goes, Joe! Yes. I know that because of the way she says it on the phone when he says who got married and she goes, Joe.

Yes. But yes, I think that's part of why, because as she says, like she didn't want to be with Joe. Just why didn't Joe want to be with her? It's offensive. Totally. And then the only other people in the movie who are as charming as our leads are Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby, who obviously should be together. So you come away from it feeling like by the very structure of the movie, well, they need to end up together because there's no one else in the world who is as charming as these two leads.

The other thing I'd say is by the time they get together, they're in their 30s. They've had a few relationships. They know they like each other. It's like's like yeah get together like i feel like that's why so many not to be a cynic i know this is a uh rom-com that people worship at the feet of but like you know people end up just sort of being like well all right sure i guess i'll get married like you know i'm in my 30s now as a friend of mine once said at weddings you should say not i do but you'll do is your friend billy crystal that sounds like and julia roberts said to lyle love it not i'll do you'll do anyway our nominees this year are bugsy um bugsy bugsy no i was gonna say i think the other x factor there is rob reiner still very bitter post-divorce this movie comes out of a similar depression to Harry of, I don't think I'll ever fall in love again, playing the field, having meaningless affairs, relationships that break his heart, what have you. movie, Barry Sonnenfeld sets Rob Reiner up on a date with his wife's friend, who then becomes Rob Reiner's wife, who he's still married to, to this day.

Yes, they got married in 1989. But I think that's one of the reasons it works that they end up together, even though philosophically I tend to prefer rom-coms where the characters don't end up together. Because the movie starts out being directed by a far more cynical Rob Reiner. And in the process of making it, he is once again believing in like true love. So I think there's like an honesty to the way they get together at the end rather than a lot of movies where it's like, I don't know, it has to happen. rather than a lot of movies where it's like, I don't know, it has to happen.

And the final monologue that Billy Crystal gives when he runs to her at the party, because that wasn't in the script, because that wasn't planned, is like improvised by Billy Crystal. And that was the first- That was improvised on set? Yes, and that was the first take, you know? I think he might've like-

You gotta be kidding me. I'm not, that might've been like, Billy sort of gave him like bullet points of what he was going to try to say. Right. But Rob Reiner talks about like as he was saying each thing to her, when he says like that crinkle you get in your forehead, like he was like going like like pumping his fist going like Billy's doing it. He's nailing it. Oh, my God. That's incredible.

But he must have at least had as a landing point the line when you want to spend the rest of your life with someone you want that life to start as soon as possible that's you can't just come up with that on the spot i think i think nora gave certain points and i think um meg ryan's response because meg ryan was obviously less comfortable with improv the i hate you thing that was pre-planned out but part of the thing was like billy i want to see what you come up with like just try to like so it has the energy of even though billy crystal is better at speaking than most of us it has the energy of the type of speech that someone makes if they're actually struggling to come up with the words rather than the very written version of this that you usually get at the end of these movies

and yet i feel like this speech is so copied and is totally worshipped by screenwriters who want to make these kind of rom-coms right and worshipped by people probably in the wrong way where who expect like oh why can't the person i like just show up and make a speech that like you know explains everything that's so great about me can i just say think of all the awkward moments that have been created by people in real life trying to do something like that. Yeah, do a grand romantic speech. And it flops. And it's just really, really awkward.

The Griffin Newman story. This is one of those movies that definitely like watching it, not having seen it since I was 10 or 11, I was like, oh, this is one of the movies that fucked me up. This is one of the movies, because I'm like a broken brain person who only understands things through movies, as a young child growing up in New York, I was like- This is how you do it. Totally. Like, this was like my fantasy was just like, you meet a nice girl, you're friends for 10 years, and then at some point it becomes more. You know, I'm a short Jewish guy, And eventually she comes to realize, Oh my, my Prince charming was right next to me the whole time. Like I could give that kind of monologue at the end.

I'll storm the New Year's Eve party. Um, I totally fell for it. What points are we, do we want to hit? I feel like there's some moments that we haven't. Yeah. We just have to talk about some of the big moments. I feel like we also have to talk about the couples.

Yeah. Yeah. Like I want to talk about the crisscross, the blind date. I would love to talk about the threesome friendship among Lisa Jane Persky, Carrie Fisher, and Meg Ryan. Let's go through it in order. As Ben said, it really is a sketch movie. And a thing I thought about is it's movies like this. I'm not saying all movies should be like this but movies like this are

almost this is the type of structure that is most conducive to good film acting because the whole thing that's weird about filmmaking is that it's like what's the thing that steven soderbergh says it's like pointillism under a microscope like with a a magnifying glass, and then you have to step back and hope that the whole thing makes sense. Because you're dealing with everything in such small pieces out of order, it's so hard to track that thing in your head. And the hardest, not the hardest, but one of the hardest things to do as an actor is continuous action. When things are split up, when they're done out of order, when they might be weeks apart, when the exterior and the interior might be happening in different states, in different

cities, in different countries. Like that stuff is so hard. And there's something to the fact that this movie is like these kind of clean, isolated segments. You know, for the first half hour, it's like these time jumps that are longer. And then even once it moves to all being present day, you very rarely have continuous action in this movie. There's almost always a little break between scenes where your brain can fill in the gaps. It slows down. Totally. And that makes it so that these four actors in the movie can really just only worry about getting this scene perfect. You know, like you can treat each scene like a little short film rather than having to

do the math of, OK, we shot the other scene when I'm walking into the restaurant so that I was doing this. And how do I match the energy of what I was doing there? Right. They spent two weeks rehearsing it. You know, those rehearsals were probably like a play and then the way they shoot the movie you can kind of isolate it where like each day or every two days is like one little piece like this but yet it doesn't feel like one of those snl sketch movies

that has no narrative coherence it's not a night at the roxbury or whatever no because the thematic tie between all those sketches is their relationship and there is an arc to it so it does feel organic and not piecemeal right i think there's a natural build between both of them where you can see parts where sally's leaning toward like she kind of has a crush on him a little bit and then he'll say something about just being friends or she does something extremely charming and you just like watch billy crystal like fall in love a little bit like the uh is it the museum of natural history yeah no it's at the met they're at the met the met that that his space the papakash might be like my favorite uh one more thing we i want to mention is we got to talk about harry connick jr and just in general not just him

but the soundtrack and the presence of old jazz and stuff like that it's so good but again Ursatz Woody Allen alright we'll talk about it no no

I want to talk about that because I do feel like you do get the Ursatz diet Woody Allen thing but then I watch this and I'm like even putting aside

personal life this just ages better than Woody Allen. That's what I want to talk about. Like, I mean, I want to revisit my, you know, snobby 80s self who was sort of saying like, ah, but Woody Allen is the true artist. And like, look what's happened. Look what has lasted over the years. Yeah. just doing the Harry Connick and not, you know, the slight change in font style and all that sort of stuff feels so much less precious than the opening credits of any Woody Allen movie now,

you know? And I don't know if it's just that he replicated himself so many times that it just feels like so hollow now, even when you watch the earlier films. But there's something about this. It feels so much more organic and earned. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think a huge part of that is just like the women are much better written in their real characters, you know? I mean, with the exception of maybe Diane Keaton and Annie Hall,

who obviously has a huge influence on Sally, right? Right. There's a lot of Diane Keaton elements in this performance. And there's that one outfit when they're walking through Central Park that is so Annie Hall. I was just going to look up who did the costumes for this, because I think part of what annoyed me at the time is that I worshiped

Diane Keaton as my personal style icon and still do. And a part of me thought just like, they're just doing a fake Annie Hall, but let me see who did the costumes. It's Gloria Gresham is the costume designer. No, neither do I. Just seems like a pretty,

like worked on a lot of Rob Reiner movies, like a pretty, just sort of like journeyman, Hollywood costume designer. Okay, I know her name now, but yeah, okay. Let's talk a little bit about Meg's costumes and her hair. Oh God, her hair. I mean, her hair is a character in itself, just like New York City.

And I also think, Dana, like there's something about her outfits in the movie. Maybe it's not the first, but this might be the perfection of the wave of rom-com heroine that is defined by her layers, you know? Well, the Diane Keatney outfit that you're talking about i'm assuming is the one with the sort of wide-brimmed hat yes well she has derby hats she wears these almost chaplain style derby hats yeah right and then she wears baggy pants men's shoes she's got gloves

she's got a sweater she's got a you know sports coat over it like yeah her character is almost defined by costumes in a somewhat silent movie-ish way right there's like a silhouette to meg's outfits totally that really sets her apart and makes her sort of old-fashioned like a screwball queen or something like that whereas billy crystal's outfits are very 1989 right very much of his time and like that classic thing of like where men just stop uh changing their fashion sense right you know like this is what what Billy Crystal will always look like from now. Like this is it. He's figured it out and that's what he'll do.

Right. Unless he's a tiny green monster. Right. Who is always in the nude. This almost becomes like the new uniform for the working woman in comedy. You know, like you move past the like his girl friday where like you know the woman in the office place who doesn't take any guff has to be wearing like a very very constricting edith head-esque ensemble and you move to like the way you show a woman who like

is all about her her career and just wants to figure out how to get her life together is like the sort of effortless, but somehow meticulous layering of the shirt and the sweater and the scarf and the accoutrements, you know, the sort of like somehow perfect, I don't know, I just threw this on as I was leaving the house, like that kind of look, which this movie has so down.

Her hair also goes on a journey. Can we just do a quick tour through her hair journey? So as they're doing the drive from Chicago, she's got pharaoh wings, basically, right? She's got these curled, frosted wings, which makes her look younger just by virtue of wearing

this really dated haircut. And he's got those weird bangs. Oh, yeah. Well, trying to make him have a normal hairline is just hopeless. He can't do it. The sideburns. The extreme sideburns.

Right, right. The sideburns. Yeah, you have to make a big jump to assume that they both just graduated from college. I guess maybe it's grad school, right? Maybe they're 23 or something at that point. I think that they sit there just regular college because then they meet again. I think they're supposed to be 22, 21, 22. Right, right, right, right.

Yeah, because then 12 years elapse afterwards. But wait, just to continue her hair journey. Then he sees her in the airport. And there's that scene where she thinks he doesn't recognize her, but he does. And her hair is this very 80s. Yeah, it's like the mushroom blow-dried. She's sort of, you know, there she's sort of working girl. She has the bow, the big red bow.

She kind of looks like a flight attendant like it's a crazy look yeah that's telegraphing that she's this yuppie the guy she's with is a yuppie she's trying to fit into this kind of professional you know this upscale world that doesn't suit her free-spirited style but then as the movie goes on and we start to get to know her and her actual charlie chaplin hats and her cute outfits in her real self, her hair gets curlier and curlier, right? Less and less style. And if you notice the night that she calls him weeping because Joe got

married and he comes over and they have sex, her hair is just like a curly mop that she's done nothing to. Right? No, as someone with very curly hair, it's very satisfying to see Meg Ryan's hair like that. It's like, there's so many,

I think like Nicole Kidman, similar where like they had such good curls. to see Meg Ryan's hair like that. It's like there's so many, I think like Nicole Kidman's similar, where like they had such good curls. And I think every rom-com after this, she kind of had that like straight look. So I'm glad we have like this in a little time capsule. Oh yeah, I know. As someone with like three strands

of perfectly straight hair who's always wanted anybody whatsoever, I can't believe anybody would blow dry a curl. It's crazy. But yeah, that's just, that's such a great way for the costumer and the makeup designer to decide to show her evolution, right? Through her hair. Yeah, because after Sleepless in Seattle,

she veers pretty quickly into the pixie cut, which she still rocks somewhat to this day. And you've got mail that's very sharp and straightened of the time. Right, it's either that or it's the kind of curly pixie cut, but she never really lets it grow past the ears again for a while well and in the cut she has the clute hairstyle though it goes right the ears thing because she looks like um and the bangs

yeah very straight uh jane fonda aesthetically i like hairspray and i know it's bad for the world oh my god the bit of business with the hairspray ben the bit of business with the hairspray, Ben, the bit of business with the hairspray in the car where she makes her point decisively by doing this big aerosol spritz. It's so funny. And it's like, it's that thing where like pay phones in movies, it's the same thing.

Like I just love a spray from a bottle onto the hair to punctuate what you're saying. Yeah. Um, all right, wait. So what are some other big things we need to hit i'm trying to think of um okay can we talk about the lunch and they and and they pull out the

rolodex yes i was just thinking of that when they when she's 32 and they're like oh you're basically fucked get your shit together right god that's insane that that was a thing. That's the lunch with Carrie Fisher and Lisa Ann Persky. That's the sort of like, I broke up with Joe. Get out. Dana's showing off her Rolodex. That rules. Is it still updated, Dana? With the important addresses, like the ones that really aren't going to change, they go in the Rolodex.

I used to have a Rolodex. I'm going to get one. You know what? I'm writing it down. Go on eBay. They're cheap as hell alright is that the first scene with Carrie Fisher

yes I believe that's the introduction of Carrie Fisher you're never gonna leave her who just like maybe one of the

Mount Rushmore on screen best friends like for someone who is so defined by being Princess Leia obviously right and then secondarily like her personal life her lineage the ups and downs of her like mental health and

everything i feel like she doesn't get enough credit for how good she was at being an on-screen best friend well she's able to do that side of nora efron that you were saying doesn't work in heartburn right i mean the really caustic lines get offloaded onto her. Right, right. And then in This Is My Life, Nora's first proper film, she does all the caustic stuff, but she does it as an agent, right? Or a manager. Yes, she's also in that. Yeah, sure.

She works with Dana Eckert. Hannah and her sister, she's the best friend who kind of fucks you over. Like, she's the annoying, like, Rose Byrne and Bridesmaids best friend who kind of fucks you over. She's the annoying Rose Byrne and Bridesmaids best friend. She's pretty great in that. She can do any type of friend role. She was so fucking good at that. God, I just like... Carrie Fisher was the fucking best.

Post this is when she's basically done. She stops acting. She writes postcards from the edge the next year in the movie. And then she just starts doing so much script doctoring. right she pops into things like drop dead fred or soap dish whatever but like really she's more of a writer throughout the 90s but drop dead fred she's doing the best friend thing again like she'll do a couple of those and then of course her best role of the late 90s uh dr evil's therapist yes in awesome powers international man of mystery i think genuinely

a very funny performance she's very funny she's always funny she is an excellent and compelling screen presence i know so good um the the paprikash scene uh well i think i mean the paprikash scene fits in with the suri and the fringe on top scene in that there's these sticky moments from Billy Crystal that are also they're like acts of seduction right I mean

it's him doing shtick and voices and things like that as his way of spreading his peacock tail and kind of showing off and the crazy thing

is it completely works like he is never hotter than when he's doing the Paprikash voice in the Temple of Dendorsi right right I mean and also the Paprikash scene

is his prelude to him asking her out like he in the voice says like do you want to go see a movie and this is a no bits podcast it's a no bits podcast but that's that's a good bit okay and i appreciate just a dumb voice yeah no but i don't know i appreciate that billy's like sense of humor he's doing these act outs and these bits throughout i agree with you this is no bits podcast but that is a very very good bit I have to give some respect and comedy points and also I hope paprikash guy does not zoom bomb us with an ad read what I was going to say what I was going to say is that and this is like another example of just like Rob Reiner's

instincts as a director being so weirdly on point at this point in his career. In like the constant development of it, Reiner working with Efron and generating new ideas, and Crystal and Reiner working together and generating new ideas. They're constantly writing new stuff during production as they start to see what's working and other things they want to represent. Crystal at some point says to Reiner, you know what's like a real threshold of intimacy is when you develop a funny voice with someone. Like every couple has some funny voice that they do with each other. And it's one of those things where I'm like, well, I of course think, of course I do that because I'm a dumb comedy person.

But I do think that's kind of true, that pretty much every single couple at some point has some voice that is only funny to each other, that they say certain things and that doesn't make sense to anyone on the outside. And you won't reveal it. Like, if it's ever seen by other people, it's sort of like, Jesus, I mean, I'm sorry. You know, like. So this is where rob reiner's really smart billy crystal says that to him right and he's like that's a really good idea let's do that in the um the the met scene we have this amazing location that scene isn't that interesting right now the the narrative weight that needs to be carried in that scene is you finally casually ask

her out. But otherwise, that scene doesn't have much going on. Do the voice there. Let's prep something. We're not going to tell Meg Ryan about it. So she has no idea that he's going to do the voice and that bit in that scene. Oh, my God, that makes her performance all the more incredible right i mean just her her version of the voice which is so different and kind of wrong but all the funnier because she's not getting it right there's literally a moment when he starts doing the voice i think it's the first time they cut to her reaction where she looks and she goes like oh my god what and then he says another thing and she has to respond to it directly. And that was her looking off camera to Rob Reiner

being like, we're not going to keep filming, right? Like thinking she was getting pranked mid-scene and Rob Reiner saying like, keep going. And that was the first take too? Yes, it's one of those insane things. Like so many rom-com moments are like that. Like Richard Gere snapping the box on Juliaia roberts you know and pretty woman where it's literally she's breaking character she like is reacting honestly to something that takes her so by surprise and it

ends up working as character in the movie and then the harsh turn to asking her on the date is when she kind of has to get serious. It's so good. But then also the sharper image sequence, right? Where he's deflated. Is that improvised too or are they, I don't know. A little bit. And they said that came out of Rob Reiner and Billy Crystal going to sharper image a lot together. Can we do a sharper image corner? And they cut to the establishing shot outside the sharper image.

And that specific sharper image and that specific sharper image location which i feel like was maybe their flagship the soho one no i think that's the one that was near trump tower right am i wrong about that it looks like the fifth avenue one uptown yeah do you think the soho one was more the soho one was bigger certainly i guess i just think of sharper images being in soho because that was the one that i saw the most but so much of the movie is downtown right washington square park and the arch play a big part and at the end he seems to be running across downtown right he see he sees the arch and then that's what inspires him to go lower east side obviously that one looked like

the fifth avenue one to me but but when when that establishing shot comes up at the outside of that sharper image, I gasped. I just went like, oh. Like, I held my heart. The nostalgia for that kind of retail store. I was like, I didn't know I missed that. And something about- The idea of like, we're definitely going to have brick and mortar stores for this. We need plenty.

But also that sharper image felt like such a unique thing at the time. And I remember that feeling like an activity as a child. When my dad, we would like be running errands and we'd walk by a sharper image location. I'd be like, please can we go in?

Please. Well, because it was an interactive store. You get to try out all this shit. But the concept is it's like as seen on tv merchandise but it's just a little nicer and it's stuff where you're like does that actually work you know like i would get the catalog and circle all these things and my dad would be like that doesn't work it's not gonna work we're not gonna buy that we don't need that do we remember the massaging chair where you could

put your legs into the ottoman yeah yeah then you'd like pretend to get trapped and like it looks it looks like the chair they used to capture james bond and put the laser on him i always played with like the sand on the display it was sand and then you also just went straight for like the back massagers this might come as a surprise but i've been kicked out of a sharper image before this This is a sharper image, sir. Well, another thing, another technological note about the sharper image scene is that karaoke in the US

seems to be a relatively new thing. They never use the word, right? And he says, hey, look at this thing. It plays a background and you can sing. I mean, now that's so much part of our lives. Right, yeah. And of course, the callback that later on when he calls her on the answering machine he's bought

the karaoke machine right when he's leaving his message at the end but it's one of those things where like every scene like mapped out in the script in terms of here's what needs to happen at this point he needs to run into his ex-wife or he needs to finally ask her out you know or they need to have a conversation about the fake orgasm or whatever. It's like, as a director, Rob Reiner always finds a way to make it a little more interesting than just the text of what they're talking about. By putting it in a very specific location, by adding some other activity to it, like them trying out the karaoke machine, or doing the wave at Giant Stadium, or whatever it is, you know? It's like, and that's such a good rom-com thing, because rom-coms are, I feel like,

A, so behavioral. What really makes you fall for characters are the little nuances and quirks of how they behave. And that can't be too tied to the heavy lifting of the plot. But also, it's so much about environments and places. And this movie just like always keeps that in mind. There's always some other thing going on, you know?

And doesn't that feel true of relationships in that? I have memories of going out and doing activities like in this movie, more so than like sitting kind of around and just having a conversation over dinner per se. And I feel like you have those conversations where you like, or you think back at the end of a relationship

about like the biggest moments and they always have some other weird X factor to them. You're like, oh right, that happened at a costume party. We were both dressed up like that. Or when this happened, it was like raining and we couldn't find a cab. Like there's always like something like that

that was happening simultaneously along with this conversation that will forever be burned in your mind for either a good or bad reason. Right. Well, to go back to the New York setting, Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron are so good at using the landscape around them as part of what makes those scenes memorable. Right. Whether it's even walking back from the disastrous double date where Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher meet. Right. And there's that moment that the men are walking a little ahead and carrie has this line that i'll never forget i've been looking for a red suede pump right and they start window shopping as an excuse to have their private conversation just the way that the terrain of new york works into all of these behavioral shifts that are happening and that's a carrie fisher ad-lib

there's the red suede pump is an ad-lib? It is an ad-lib. That's a Carrie Fisher. And speaking about someone else on the movie who became a screenwriter and a filmmaker themselves, you had so many people who were able to generate in addition to the job that they were ostensibly supposed to be doing.

But yes, I mean, it's just like what you were saying, every scene having a button. The fucking turnaround of the two separate conversations cross- cut where they're both mirroring the same concerns of like, of course, I'm not offended, but don't do it too fast. She's too vulnerable. You don't want to hurt her feelings. And then just the immediate like fucking Abbott and Costello turn. No, but it's a perfect New York City hookup joke. It is that whole then like and Bruno bruno kirby going on about jimmy

breslin like you know he's he's like the sort of like sexy version of george costanza you know what i mean like he's the same kind of like you know he's like the kind of white ethnic guy who loves sports like really cares about him you know like you know like the thing where she starts quoting his own pieces oh man he's so turned on he's just like i wrote i swear to god i wrote that well of course as a writer that is the most romantic come on you can imagine right right yeah your words spoke to me so much i'm quoting them to who i think is a stranger oh the kissing david were you losing your freaking mind well i mean and we talk about this with sleepless in seattle i feel like as well like this is i feel like something she uh

picks up from this movie like long takes yes uh oneers and then like kissing like long take right you know like right not not cutting much at all and like just letting everyone sort of like you know own the screen whenever there's a lot of making out, not just, not just Harry and Sally are making out, but we kick off the movie with Billy Crystal, just having a total face mash with his initial girlfriend. Right.

And we see her making out in the airport. Just everybody is constantly snogging. Yeah. Her making out in the airport and crystal just sort of waiting for them to be done so that he can say hi no one would do that you would just move on and then be like maybe i'll just sort of like you know do a circuit and see if they're not kissing like in five minutes that he both does that and then also pretends that he doesn't recognize her like he's so clearly the move you realize he's doing later is he's waiting for her to say

that she remembers him and then when an hour and a half later she doesn't he finally breaks the ice on the plane i disagree i think he remembers her but he can't place her and then he remembers on the plane he remembers her name when he pops up which initially oh his timing by the way his timing when his head pops up behind her on the airplane seat. So good. Just the use of that surface. And then the guy switches. He recognizes her when she's doing the convoluted order. That's when he picks it up. Yeah.

He is a genuine cad because he asks publicly, like, did we ever? Right. And then he does like a fist. Right. And it's sort of like, Jesus, Billy. But the other X factor is once he places her for the rest of the movie, he so many times directly quotes things she said in that car ride back. There's the scene where he's talking about the high maintenance, low maintenance thing with her. And he jokes about the insane order she makes at the diner with the chef salad and the pie a la mode.

And he remembers it almost verbatim. So there's that thing of like him being like, I don't remember, did we stop? But then he remembers everything about her a la mode order. Like even if it was buried deep somewhere in his subconscious, that night clearly made an impact on him. I think he liked her from the jump and then he wasn't mature enough. Or to be vulnerable with her.

He thinks the only way to be with a woman is to be the alpha asshole. Thinking about that airplane scene, their energy throughout the movie, it's like the world around them doesn't exist. Yes. And they're talking so loud and they're doing bits and it just feels very true again

to having this deep connection with someone where it's like you're not even aware of really the people around you necessarily. That's so true. And then it's sharper image. They, until Helen and Ira come along, they don't care that they're singing an Oklahoma song in the middle of a store.

Of course, that's part of what the sharper image was all about, but you're right that they have this sense that when they're together, they're almost on a private stage that only they can see, which is, which is like very subtly powerful filmmaking from Rob Reiner. That the way he shoots and edits the movie and the way he sort of often is using pretty shallow focus. So all the people in the background are not really visible.

He's making that feeling of when you have great chemistry with someone, whether it's your best friend or the person you're going to marry, that everyone else sort of disappears a little bit. And I also feel like it feels like, this movie feels so much like a play with only four actors. You could see that airplane scene playing out

where they literally are just two people on two chairs in the middle of a black box theater and they're pretending that they're talking to a flight attendant to swap seats well it was done as a play right wasn't it done as a play with luke perry i can't remember who the woman was later in allison hannigan and i believe that was on the stage so bizarre i mean that lond London had this post This Is Our Youth, which was done on the West End with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hayden Christensen and Anna Paquin. Yeah.

London had this boom of like, what's a movie that we can just put some stars in like a stage version of it as quick as possible? Right, because the graduate production happens. The graduate, yes. There's a bunch of them and that that is one of the oddest ones luke perry and alice and hannigan those are people who are sort of from separate generations uh as tv stars as well like they're kind of sort of 10 years apart uh but i i mean i did not see it but i don't see him doing the ethnic New York guy thing.

No. Absolutely not. Allison Hannigan would be a better Billy than Luke Perry. Yeah, she'd probably be a pretty good Billy. She could do it. She has the neuroses to her. Talking about that AFI 100 funniest list, it's one of those things where, like, with my little checklist, the movies that I prioritized wanting to watch after that were the movies

like those AFI specials were like playing tiny little excerpts of the movies intercut with talking heads of people going like that movie changed everything, you know, either other filmmakers or actors or the people who worked on the movie. And I remember the line that just absolutely killed me where I like turned to my mom and I was like, Harry Met Sally, am I allowed to rent that movie? Am I old enough to rent that movie? Like that's going to the top of my list. It's such a Griffin joke. But after they sleep together, when she goes to the kitchen and he finds her box with all the index cards, with her vhs's alphabetized which i just found so funny

as a joke and his delivery of that of like do you alphabetize your entire vhs collection on index cards and she's like yeah of course it's such a specific feeling of like when you start to discover the first embarrassing thing about someone after you slept with them well her apartment her whole apartment is kind of crazy right the stuffed penguins on her headboard right i couldn't stand the wicker there's just something that's really little girly about her exactly and it's like that's such a weird thing like to what to what end do you put your movies on index cards in a little box so that if someone comes over and they ask what you have to watch they can file through the cards rather than look wherever your vhs's are like everything about

that is so strange but it's so telling to her personality and it goes with the apple pie a la mode order right and all of her all of her ocd traits right right absolutely it's like he knew that about her from the moment he met her. That was forefronted. But it's this one example that like isn't a red flag but is deeply uncool. Where if you discover that the moment after you sleep with someone, you immediately

have that like, was this a mistake kind of thing. Yeah, weirdos have movie collections. How dare you. Okay, well actually you know what? Shut the fuck up. Like physical movie collections? Okay, actually Ben, shut the fuck up. Okay, wow well actually you know what shut the fuck up like physical movie collections okay actually ben shut the fuck up okay you know what you would have liked a letterbox yes her system would make sense now right her system her system would make sense to organize your digital media totally let's talk about since you since you got to that scene of the morning after of the night they sleep together and then maybe we can backtrack to when they

actually start kissing but the morning after is a tour de force on many levels, right? And part of it is just the framing, that really close two shot where you see the two of them lying in post-coital bliss for her. And just, I don't even know what to name his emotional state,

like terror, dread. One foot out on the floor, like one foot ready out the door. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah and just the dramatic irony of that right like we see them both but they don't see each other and so we see the complete contrast between their emotional states because of that framing it is just so good if i can correct you on one tiny thing dana and it's the thing that i think makes it so transcendent most movies do the morning after it's like they cut straight from them falling into bed

to ostensibly eight hours later and the guy looking panicked like that or the woman looking oh yeah but this is just a few minutes later exactly it's just post-sex it's still dark outside it's still night they later cut to the following morning and he still looks freaked out but that first time jump is however long their first sex lasted. Right. You're right. And that makes it a callback to his earlier thing on the plane about, oh, we're just men are just lying there thinking about how long we have to hold you before we can go home. It's so good.

And then that leads into the index cards and everything. And then the next morning is like the further level of him trying to figure out how do I do damage control on this. Right, already getting dressed and then they make the calls to their friends at the same time. Oh, the split screen stuff is so effective and amazing. So that was all done on sound stages. They were three different stages,

but they shot it all live with three separate cameras because the timing had to be so specific. So they all had earpieces in so they could hear what was happening on the other stage and they could time it. And they spent the entire day just on that one sequence filming the three cameras simultaneously. And it took 61 times to get it. Wow. But it was one of those things where like Reiner was like, if you're going to do it, you have to do it this way. Well, the timing is incredibly hard to get it wow but it was one of those things where like reiner was like if you're gonna do it you have to do it this way well the timing is incredibly hard to get right because the exposition happens ade like the exposition happens with both of them speaking at once and having to leave space for the other to speak while having a plausible conversation with their friend that they don't

know the other person's there it's very like pillow talk it's very like rom-coms oh yeah carrie and bruno also like kind of making up excuses or like examples of what is on in the background while the other like it's just so cool it's brian gumbel right like billy crystal was like that's the most difficult scene i've ever had to do in my life but it was like exciting how difficult it was because so often your cues for dialogue are not lines being said to you. Like my cue I had to pick up was something that Meg Ryan sang to Carrie Fisher, which I, as an actor, am not supposed to be hearing. Like as a character, that's outside of my purview, even though I have to hear it because

I'm waiting for that to cue me. So you have to look like you're still in the scene and not just passively waiting because you're on camera the whole time. You're not going to cut, even though you're waiting for your moment to say you're perfectly timed thing. And he was like, it was 61 takes at take 40. They finally got a perfect one. And then when everyone hangs up the phone and Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher

have those three final lines to each other, Bruno Kirby blew his line. Oh, wow. And Rob reiner was like i i are we ever gonna get it like am i fucked is this too big a check i wrote for myself and he like belligerently barrels through does 20 more takes the 60th take is perfect and he's like let's do one more just to see now that we got a perfect one and the 61st is terrible again and he's like yeah no push my luck it's done that's it that's it that's amazing i'll never see that scene the same way again it's incredible it's fucking incredible i mean talking about uh uh framing dana and you are such an authority on uh silent film comedy but there's that thing i think chaplin always said that like like drama is a close-up comedy is a

wide shot that is so often forgotten today but this movie is such a good example of that and I think Nora really learns from seeing it work so well in this movie and Mike Nichols was really good at that too I mean the fact that these were the first two directors who worked with her screenplays I think she really borrowed from that and then develops her two directors who worked with her screenplays. I think she really borrowed from that and then develops her own really good style with oners and long takes and all that sort of stuff, two shots. Because it is like, the reason Chaplin was saying that was that comedy at that time was so much about physicality, whereas drama was about the close-ups, the emotions of the actors. And comedy was about actors interacting in the space, watching the stunts and the pratfalls and all their interactions with their environments

and other people and whatever that needs to play in a wide shot. Because you need to see everything happening in the same frame to get a sense of tension and layout and reaction and action in the same moment and all that sort of stuff. And then that tends to go by the wayside over time as comedies progressively become more and more like sitcoms where it's like shot, reverse shot and people just covering it too much and editing too much. But I think Reiner realized and Efron realized that in a modern, very dialogue comedy, it's still as important to have things play out in wide shots as much as possible because the magic trick isn't, you know, Keaton landing on the grill of an airplane, of a train and dropping the log right onto the tracks at the perfect moment.

The magic is seeing Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan deliver all that dialogue without a cut, you know? It's the same kind of like bravura act of performance which immediately gets deflated if you cut to a close-up so you you have to cut to a close-up only if it really matters if there's a very specific reason to do it and otherwise it's better to do 60 takes in order to get the perfect like composite shot it's it's just like a crazy well-directed i think it's good to talk about this because this is seen as a fluffy movie especially at the time and like you know there's there's good cinema here like you're like you're saying yeah just

something we haven't mentioned at all that's a really key structuring element to this movie is the interviews with the fake old couples and can we talk about that and maybe griffin you know something about the gen Genesis of that idea. Cause those are, those are actors, correct? It's based, based in inner actual interviews done with couples,

but they hired actors to make it more, you know, professional. So Alan Horn, who was Rob Reiner's partner in Castle Rock. Am I getting that right? Is now the head of Disney pictures after being the head of warner brothers andrew scheinman is the i'm talking about alan horn so i'm sorry alan horn is a castle rock guy

yes right alan horn came out of castle rock uh he was one of the founders of castle rock at this period of time and one of the people who made so much money off of seinfeld but then later becomes the head of warner brothers and then the head of dis Brothers and then the head of Disney on the film side. When they're in pre-production on this movie, he goes out to dinner with a whole group of people, including Alan Horn and Alan Horn's parents who were in town. clearly having a hard time finding an end in the conversation. No one's talking to them. They don't know how to really interact and engage. And Rob Reiner, being such a mensch, is like, I'm going to talk to Alan Horn's parents.

I want to make them feel included in the conversation. So he, as Smalltalk, asks them, how did you meet? And they tell the story that is, I think, the first story in the movie. I was with my third wife. I see this woman. I tell myself, this is the woman I'm going to marry. And three weeks later, we were married. We'd been married for 55 years.

And Rob Reiner is so blown away by that story that he's like, we need some of that in the movie. So he finds a bunch of older couples and films them telling their stories. And he's like, and they just they weren't good on camera. You know, people who aren't actors, they talk on and on and on too much and all these details. They don't have to tell a story. So they filmed the real people

telling their real stories and then hired real actors, had them look at the footage, cut down the dialogue, you know, had Nora tighten it a little bit, but it's essentially

reenactments of the actual stories from real couples. The best one is the couple where they keep finishing each other's things. It is amazing. Another perfectly executed scene. Those two actors kill it. But it's both real stories and actors taking their cues from the way the real people told their stories.

You know, there's a key to the fact that those stories were filmed with the non-actors first. So they had that as reference material. I also like the one where the woman, the like tiny old woman, just like gives her whole spiel. And then the guy, what's his line? Is that he just like, he introduces himself.

Oh yeah. His first line was, I'm Ben Small of the Coney Island Smalls. Oh yeah. And then they go go and that was it i knew uh but yeah no the the sentence finishing couple that's the one where they're like he lived on 183rd street i lived on fordham road we never met you know like where they keep elaborating on this like we never met in new york we were in the ambassador hotel in chicago

right the third floor on the 12th floor. Nine extra floors. I mean, like, again, in such a low concept movie, it is a funny bit of like slight high concept where it's like, yeah, what you're watching is just another one of those crazy stories that you never would believe. It reminds me of U2.

Of U2? Griffin and Dave, you're always finishing each other's sentences talking about some weird movie stuff sure i mean david and i are the modern harry and sally i thought you were talking about bono and the edge another harry and sally they had to meet cute for sure yeah the thing it makes me think of is of the mockumentary style of spinal tap right something that reiner had already proved he was good at these kind of moments that seem like they couldn't possibly be scripted, but they somehow are. that project demanded, you know? I think that was what blew people away so much at the time was just like, every film this guy makes is like a different genre

and he's like doing all of them well. And it's because he didn't have a super defining style other than his sense of humor, which then starts to become less relevant as he does like Misery and A Few Good Men. What he was good at was this sort of like old studio filmmaker thing of just like, and how do you make a Western? And how do you make a screwball comedy? You know, what do you do for this? And sort of just the problem solving of

like, you do the couples having the stories. That's a nice way to fill in the gaps. You know, like all of that kind of stuff is just, I think the kind of things you do if you're keeping yourself open to, I need to just figure out what works best for this movie. And even just he talks about, I forget what it was, but they had a different title for the script that was bad. It's a when we, how they met, something like that. How they met. That's bad. Right. And on, on, uh, during production on set, he would would say like there's a contest any crew member

can pitch me a new title and if you get the right title i'll pay you two hundred dollars you know i thought it was a case it was a case of champagne that he promised who ever named the movie it was a case of champagne do you know who was that finally picked the title i don't that's a good question um they need to come forward yeah their champagne. You know, you have to be very lacking in ego in a way that makes sense. But so if you filmmakers or directors are to just be like, I am willing to concede that anyone might have a better idea than I do. You know that it could come from a PA, that it could come from the catering guy. And I'll listen to that and consider it. It is a wonderful title.

And it's wonderful because it's so specific. I mean, a joke I feel like the film critics are always saying about specifically rom-com titles is how interchangeable they are. Something's gotta give. It's just always right. It's always some sort of a, I don't know, just sort of a vaguely familiar grouping of words

that's sort of a saying. And it's not associated at all with the specific characters or world of that movie. The Patton Oswalt joke is feeling kind of sort of. But as Rob Reiner said, the thing that makes the title work is the dot, dot, dot. Because when Harry met Sally is the opening sentence of the movie, they don't get along. But what it's about is the dot, dot, dot. What is the long-term ripple effect of these two people meeting? It's funny because in Katz's,

the sign says, where Harry met Sally, which of course it should say that. I get that you want to communicate this quickly, but very, very inaccurate. They did not meet them. It's also a wild thing that like, and most people don't know this,

you know, it's a very New York-y thing to know, but Katz's famously is a restaurant where you pretty much go to the actual counter where someone is preparing the food with your ticket. That you don't have sort of waiter service traditionally in this kind of way. But they understood that the button was so good that it's like, have the waiter come around, you know? Katz's is more busboys and then someone dropping off your dish. But it's like, you get like, it feels like a commissary. You get like a meal ticket and you go up to the guy at the grill and go like, I want like bratwurst.

And then they write it on your ticket. And then when you leave, you have to pay $18 for a sandwich. They don't let you through the turnstile until you pay. Is Katz also ever that quiet to have a conversation like that? Absolutely not. Or is it also just not quiet because of when Harry met Sally? Totally. No, it's like they're really fucking with the rules of how Katz's actually functions.

And yet it's the most iconic Katz's scene of all time. But she could not have faked the orgasm in the line waiting for the ticket at Katz's, right? No. That was effective. There's no table to slam down on. No, and the joke doesn't work unless a waiter is coming and asking, you know, so what are you having? Well, I'm looking at the other Sallys. Elizabeth Perkins, Susan Day, Elizabeth McGovern, Molly Ringwald.

Like these were all people who were going to be Sally. All good actresses, not the same movie. No, well, no, definitely not. I mean, like this is the beginning of a like big star career. So it's hard to imagine anyone else in the role. I just cannot even imagine. I wish I could have seen this movie first run to hear the response that I'll have what she's having. Right, because now, of course,

it's like the freaking shower scene in Psycho or whatever. It's just, I mean, like, of course it can still be funny and it can still have an impact, but right. I mean, you learn about it in freaking grade school practically. But that's like getting a bucket from the other side of the court. That is just such a perfect joke at the end of a scene. I mean, they talk about when they screened it, people just losing their fucking minds

that you still couldn't hear the following scene after that. I think also because the orgasm is long enough that people are probably starting to shift in their seats. Totally. The tension builds up. Especially in the 80s. And you just think there's no way they're going gonna end this scene with a release valve that strong there's no way they can actually do it well i mean what was it like seeing in theaters dana like even

as someone who was a little resistant to the movie at the time people were just losing their fucking minds i don't remember i mean i remember in general that the movie went over huge you know and that that was a scene everyone loved. I just, I can't remember specifically. But I think that the scene builds in, we should take a peek at what happens after, because I think you're right that the laugh continues after the scene, but

I think that there might actually be a vaudevillian moment that they build in some quiet to the beginning of the next scene, knowing that the laugh would be that big. We should check that to see. Absolutely. It's totally conscious. I forget what it is, but whatever they cut to next, the first 15 to 20 seconds are not super important.

I think it's also interesting as it's probably the longest Billy Crystal goes without talking. It's a very humbling moment for Harry. We're going from there, right? Because I think he, obviously, at the start of the movie he's the alpha he's so confident and that's the first time she really knocks him down several pegs and it's very satisfying and then they're kind of more on equal footing and it's also that thing of like when someone makes a joke about them having sex the weird level of intimacy the conversation then has after it

because it's like oh i'm now thinking about you as a sexual person you force that into my brain and her having to perform an orgasm in front of him is like the most heightened version of that and like orgasms aren't a thing that are even being discussed in movies, let alone like mainstream rom-coms at this point in time in America, you know? Right, now it feels straight, but then of course. Right, like if this is being discussed as a topic, it is so much more obliquely. It is like the contest in Seinfeld. And to have a scene where like it starts and you think, oh, are they not allowed to say the word? And then he finally goes like, the orgasm, they don they don't yeah he had the orgasms you know well that's a moment where i think you see

something that sets this apart from the woody allen movie that at the time i would lamely have thought it was just a bad imitation of right and where you see that it was written by a woman is that it's total one-upmanship on her part right i mean what she does is is win that argument by kind of pulling the card of her part, right? I mean, what she does is win that argument by kind of pulling the card of her womanhood and her experience as a woman. And so it's not only incredibly funny, but it's really brave of her to do that, you know?

I mean, it's really sort of like throwing away her social capital to totally embarrass herself at Katz's because it's important for her to make that point, you know, and to make billy crystal laugh so that's a moment where her character has so much more agency and humor than any female woody allen character is ever allowed totally and that's that's because of norah affron like reiner said like i never would have written that scene i never would have had the courage to

write that scene i never would have even thought of it as a scene i didn't even really understand that that was a thing. You know? Like, that's the thing you only get by having a movie with multiple perspectives in it rather than a movie that is solely based around

the fetishes of one man who refuses to change, you know, in any way in relation to culture. But then the sweetness of having his mom be the one who delivers

that line of, I'll have what she's having, right? So it's not dirty. It takes it back into this sort of family friendly realm right and Reiner knew he was like there has to be some button there has to be some blow at the end of the scene I don't know what it is Billy was the one who finally came up with I'll have what she's having which makes sense because it's such a fucking Billy Crystal joke. Is it the best button on, like, any scene? I can't think of any other close-up. I think it's just the most successful. Right.

And so much because of the wind-up and how much Meg Ryan nails the performance of the orgasm itself. But the fact that, like, he wants his mom to be the one who delivers it. They don't know what it is. Billy comes up with it very late in the game. And then Billy Crystal was like, well, I'm sitting there at Katz's and she's at the table. it they don't know what it is billy comes up with it very late in the game and then billy crystal

was like well i'm sitting there at cats's and she's at the table i can like feel the heat emanating off of her her nerves understanding how much the scene now relies on her ability to land this line or not like he was like you could feel your mom shaking hoping that she wasn't gonna fuck the scene up because rob reiner was like, look, mom, I love you. But if you don't nail the scene, I'm going to have to cut you. I know the scene's kind of like was saying it to her on set in that way. The other thing they said was that Meg Ryan was understandably pretty sheepish about doing it, especially a scene where they have like so many extras on set, you know, and so many uh that she was doing a couple takes kind of timid and then rob reiner was like make make make make stand up let me sit in the chair for a second

and rob reiner essentially gave her a line reading of the entire i wish i could see i was gonna say i wish the footage existed a he was like i want to show you how big you need to go. Right? Right. Don't be afraid to be really big. You'll make it your own. Throw your head back. You'll draw from your own personal experience.

But B, he now sort of broke the ceiling of embarrassment. Because now all the extras have seen this fat, sweaty, bald Jew do it. You know, I say with all love. So that's like Meg Ryan is never going to be more embarrassing than that. She's now suddenly in a safe space where she can't be embarrassed by doing it. And I'm sure just like having off camera, not rolling, all the extras probably laughing at Rob Reiner trying to do this made her just feel like, okay, I'm safe now. Like they're not going to giggle that much at me. They're not going to judge me. You know, it's another really smart piece of directing on his

point. He also said this thing about like, because this movie is so based in the music of it, he would try to give Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan line readings a lot. And also, obviously, Rob Reiner had a lot of experience as an actor. And he said, like, the best actors I ever worked with, the ones who were the most selfless, would take line readings because they knew, I don't want you to actually just imitate what I said. I want you to identify some specific thing I'm getting at, usually based in rhythm and you're going to have the confidence to not take that as a backhanded kind of thing

and also of course make it your own and he was like Nicholson was like that in A Few Good Men like Billy and Meg were like that on this where he could say like you got to say the line like da-da-da-da-da like it has to be the da-da and then he was like and then when you said it it was totally different.

You turned into something different, but you were able to extrapolate the one specific thing I needed you to get, which I never would have been able to get at by describing it. Yes. I want to talk about, I'm trying to think of other things we need to talk about.

The music, the Mark Shaman, Harry Connick Jr. music. Man, Harry Connick Jr. That guy is really an aphrodisiac. Just like hearing him sing, I was like, oh baby, Harry.

And it's just that this is the time for that sort of, I think we talk about it on a future episode, but that sort of great American songbook type piano bar vibe is like cool again. That's sort of like comes back in the 80s. Also, I love the way that the content of the Harry Connick Jr. songs, or sometimes it's actually Sinatra or Bing.

There's some real old school singers on the soundtrack as well. But the content of the old standard will match up with what's happening in a kind of subtle way on screen. So for example, when she's at the new year's dance by herself at the end, it's that great song. Don't get around much anymore. Right. Which is about missing your ex.

I missed the Saturday dance. Heard they crowded the floor. Awful lonesome without you. Don't get around much anymore. Just the lyrical content almost always has something to do with where Harry and Sally are at. There's some sort of mirroring. God,

like this is just one of those movies that is kind of perfect. Like, everything about it just sort of perfectly works in relation to itself. I forgot we didn't talk about how there's two New Year's parties in this. Well, there's the seasonal structure.

After the two five-year jumps are over and we're in the present day, it's basically a Christmas movie, right? A sort of end-of-the-year Christmas to New Year we're in the present day it's basically a christmas movie right a sort of end of the year christmas to new year's movie because there's this structural seasonal thing going on where you see them at the new year's dance making the promise that if they don't have a date they'll go to the next new year's dance and i believe there's just supposed to have been one year that elapses right between those two and during that year is when they have sex regret it right jesson jesson and bruno get sorry what's

his name jesson jess and uh oh boy uh marie yeah right but like them buying the christmas tree together yeah and it feels so new york specific of just her struggling with the tree being defeated when she gets into her apartment he he's like leaving the message. Yeah, everything's mirrored, right? The stuff he saw them do together, she has to do alone. But that's like, I mean, any good rom-com has some degree of mirroring,

but also kind of needs to end on a callback, right? Like every good rom-com ends with some sort of callback to show how the characters have grown or changed or really internalized something so you have to like recall something that made an impact earlier in the film and i think about a movie that i think is perfectly charming i know david you like even more than me uh what what did it end up even being called the the one with uh zoe kazan and daniel radcliffe where they changed the title in america it's called what if fucking elsewhere it's called

the f word right um great movie but recently re-watched it still good i i enjoy it you like it a lot more than i do but it is a movie where they do that thing with the fried gold sandwich where that's supposed to be like the callback that he he brings the sandwich or she brings the sandwich or whatever but it's one of those things where when they set up the sandwich in the movie you're like i get it you know it's gonna come right you identify it as like that's the thing that's gonna come back and the this movie has the confidence to make the callbacks very small and subtle i mean the callback is the year between these two parties you know it's the environment. It's the passage of time.

It's that feeling that happens on New Year's Eve. And the kiss they share on the first New Year's is very kind of like, oh, we're outside and we're making eye contact. Like, we're just going for it. We're friends. And then, yeah, how much changes in that year so it's so organic and earned but it's also just that like new year's eve is the time where you go like oh geez where was i a year ago and two years ago and three years ago where you really start to chart like the passage of time and what's mattered to you and what hasn't and they also just do that super elegant montage of uh all the the the quick shots of their various moments. When he's in Washington Square Park.

Yeah. Which I grew up right by Washington Square Park. A big running theme. Downtown Griffey Nooms. Throughout Downtown Griffey Nooms. A big running theme of this Nora Ephron miniseries is seeing New York depicted on film and me crying

because I no longer can go to the locations of the city I still live in. I think the saddest pandemic flashback moment for me was when the three friends, Lisa Jane Persky, Carrie Fisher, Meg Ryan are having drinks at the, I guess it's the lake on Central Park, right? I don't even know if that cafe still exists, but there's just this great New York moment of just hanging out with your friends, talking you know your messed up relationships and drinking wine and it was just nostalgia for carrie fisher you know but also nostalgia for just new york and socializing it's hard to not be not not be nostalgic for socializing right i know that the uh the the arch in washington square park was like

what i saw outside my bedroom window and it's like humble brag but it is one of those things that like is such a point of nostalgia and retrospection for me because I've seen it at like every different point in my life even though I don't live near there anymore whenever I go by there I have that same flood of emotions and the fact that in this movie that is the visual trigger for him and it's once again a very subtle callback. It's just like, they make a point of really framing it clearly when he gets out of the car after the drive, but it doesn't feel like they're underlining it. It feels like, well, it's a beautiful thing. You just got to frame it. But it means that at the end of the film, when he walks by it again and the framing is replicated, suddenly you have that New Year's

Eve feeling of, oh, think about how far we've come and the framing is replicated. Suddenly you have that New Year's Eve feeling of, oh, think about how far we've come in the last 90 minutes. Also that montage. That montage feels like having memories of your relationship. It just feels so real to me. It feels like how memories play in your mind.

It made me cry really hard that moment. I totally cried. I had forgotten he saw the couple too he sees them kissing outside and then it cuts to his face and you know

just in that moment he's like I wish I was with Sally right now and that calls back to what she said when she tells him about her breakup

with Joe remember when she talks about taking the cab ride with the little girl and they say I spy a family and she starts to cry what a good

goddamn movie is there anything else we need to talk about? I'm trying to think. I don't think so. I think we've done a good job. I just wanted to say the wedding dress is the worst. It's not great. You mean Carrie's dress?

Yeah. I think it's a fun 80s dress. It's like princess sleeves and just this weird pattern on the front. It is super 80s. I will say that what struck me in that scene, and it doesn't go with what I was generally gushing about with the costume design, is that it doesn't seem like I don't think that Jess and Marie would have that

wedding. They seem too offbeat and too New York. They do. You know? And too Jewish. I just don't think that they would have such a princess-y wedding with the dad giving her away and maybe that's just a hollywood thing that that's just how you did weddings and movies then i think it's a little bit of a hollywood thing of like we need to communicate this as quickly as possible but i think reiner also is even more of like a sentimental

softy than nora efron totally yeah i mean in that scene what stands out to me is just when she's describing harry's date as thin pretty big, big tits, your perfect nightmare. I mean, it's a perfect line. That's a great line. And the bit of business where Sally gets the hors d'oeuvre that's a shrimp with a peapod wrapped around it, also very 80s. And she just uses it fantastically in that scene. She gestures with it. She twiddles with it. She never eats it. And then she gets so mad that she just throws it on the ground and stomps away. I was talking with

my sister, Romley, who will never be a guest on the show again, about Nora Ephron being a sort of underrated food filmmaker. Julia. Well, right. So her final film is the one that is explicitly about

food but so many of her movies so many of the most iconic moments happen in restaurants have food items around them and she's the thing i think she's particularly well tapped into is the relationship between food as a form of socialization, you know? What it means when you make a meal for someone, when you share a meal with someone, what it means to go out to a restaurant, the difference between a high-class restaurant and places like Katz's, and doing it in a group versus doing it on a date,

and all these things. It's like food is always really important in her movies, but it's never food porn, despite her showcasing a lot of great food, even like the carbonara in bed and heartburn. Like she's just very attuned and she was a great appreciator of food. She cooked a lot in her real life.

She's very attuned to the role that food has in our lives and in forming relationships, I think. Well, and Billy Crystal's observations about the Malamar being the great cookie, which we hear in voiceover. I also love how that voiceover, I usually can't stand the use of voiceover in movies. There's rare exceptions. It's hard to do well. And I especially don't like when voiceover is randomly introduced late in a movie when

it hasn't been established. And yet, in this movie, it works perfectly. Absolutely. It defies all logic. It's another one ofies all logic it's another one of those things where it's just like i don't know why that works it's a bizarre thing to introduce so late in a movie that's very formally sort of concise like it has not been doing stuff like that is it's just after they sleep together and then back to the food thing they they're like

oh we'll get dinner tonight and then that's when they both kind of like oh it was oh the awkward salad crunching the sad awkward salad crunching. The sad, awkward salad crunching scene. And him being like, you know, it's great that we don't have to say anything to each other. That's so good. Another good button, right? Because then the scene just awkwardly ends.

And not to like refer everything back to the one guy I usually try to avoid referring to, but you compare that one usage of voiceover for his internal monologue to like manhattan which is so overrun with that you know woody allen really leans on voiceover too right and the final example of it which is like you know when he's sort of like narrating it starts i guess as a therapy session but then cuts to the montage, very similar to this movie, where he's thinking about all the different moments with Mariel Hemingway. And you're like, he's literally using the romantic jazz music and the internal monologue to normalize his relationship with a high school student, you know, in a movie that is like laying way too much

track of too much voiceover of him fetishizing everything he likes. And then this movie just drops it in one scene with a similar montage, and I would argue executes both better. Yeah. One last food thing is they're doing Pictionary or something. There's that scene. Oh, yeah.

Which is another just perfect like sketch kind of scene. Yeah, but Carrie Fisher makes coffee with like a Zabar's like of scene. Yeah. But Carrie Fisher makes coffee with a Zabar's coffee bag. Yeah. And I just immediately got so nostalgic and wanted to go there. But I ended up ordering stuff from them online for Mother's Day. Okay, this is what I want to say. If I can get a little political here for a second. Oh, boy.

I'm joking. If I can get a little political here for a second. Oh, boy. I'm joking. The American delicatessen has already become a little bit of an endangered species. And watching this movie, which is so New York and so Jewish in so many ways, and has this famous Katz's Deli scene, I ordered delivery from a local delicatessen near me.

A lot of them have closed down nationwide, but particularly in New York in the last five or six years. There's a documentary that's not particularly good, but very entertaining called Deli Man from earlier this decade. I just want to say during the pandemic, during this time when a lot of restaurants are in danger, if you have a local deli that you can order from, maybe throw them a little bit of business i know russ and daughters is shipping boxes because that's the other thing i was gonna say my mom got me a box from them for my birthday it was very nice a lot of these delis i think cats does this too sarge's russ and daughters you can order stuff shipped to you anywhere uh nationwide so if you are a fan of

delicatessen you want to keep them alive in this country because we're talking about one of the great delicatessen movies of all time think about doing a little online search get some pastram come on now get some smoked fish baby if you want to have what she's having consider sending a salami to your boy in the army wait what is she actually having actually she's not having a pastrami sandwich she seems to be stacking turkey great her bread. I'm going to Google this right now while we do the box office game. Something with sauce on the side. Yeah, what was Sally having?

It looks like she was having maybe a deli mustard on sort of a white meat. I also wanted to confirm it's the sharper image on 57th between 5th and 6th. I know. That was my favorite one. the soho one was bigger but something about that one felt fancier because it was near like all right you know this avenue central park everything okay this film platformed in the summer which you would never do now wow uh like it opened its first weekend it opened on like less than a thousand screens to like one million dollars and it yet it makes

92 million dollars you know it was a huge hit it like multiplied really well i mean big word of mouth hit i'm sorry what was the final total 92 wow um so but so yeah so its first weekend is limited um but it opened in the summer july 14th which again is kind of funny you'd think this would open in the fall just because that's it's sort of vibe it's an autumnal movie it is

but a lot of these Efron movies open in the summer as we've been finding out like she you know that's back

comedies would play in the summer with these I'm still searching for an answer he's obviously eating a pastrami all it mentions

is that she's eating coleslaw because the main thing you see her eating is forkfuls of coleslaw i'm still trying to figure out what sandwich she was having well after the orgasm ends and she looks at him with that smug expression she has this very triumphant bite of coleslaw that's another example of meg ryan's just incredible use of props and business it is turkey it's turkey with deli mustard i one final moment of very rob reiner timing i want to say before we go back to the box office because I just remembered this. The scene where Bruno Kirby and Billy Crystal are in the batting cages. Yeah. is he asked Billy Crystal to bat left-handed so that it would work from both sides. So Billy

Crystal is batting with his non-dominant side, which he learned how to do after 700 Sundays. I mean, the guy put in the work, studying the old great American pastime. But also, rather than it being a pitching machine, he had like grips on set pitching the balls because Rob Reiner wanted the baseballs timed very specifically and comedically. So there's the moment. What is it that Billy Crystal says? He makes some reference to something he did to a woman in bed. She meowed. He made her meow. He made her meow. And then Bruno Kirbyby is like mind blown drops his bat turns around looks to billy crystal's like she meowed that you can do that that happened and then three balls five past bruno kirby quickly while he's not paying attention also the button to that scene is

perfect where he's like i'm like something to the effect of i'm mature now and then he yells at a kid yes it's perfect also cages are cool I love a cage of course you do okay box office the movie comes out in the middle of the summer was it open out again David

a million dollars it's opening limited I mean semi-limited it opened on 700 screens wow I mean the days when you could open to a million

and make it to 92 yeah exactly that's what I'm yeah that's what's crazy in the middle of the summer but number one of the box office big action

sequel 17 million dollars in its second week lethal weapon two that's right i always guess one of the lethal weapons when you say action sequel i mean there's actually yeah that's a fair point uh there's not a lot of action sequence right yeah it's a safe guess it's a good starting guess uh number two is the wait david are you telling me that this weekend at the box office, the magic was back? The magic was back. And then, of course, released The Weapon 3, it was back again. Because they couldn't think of a better tagline. Yep.

I have broken down the absolutely demented Lethal Weapon 3 poster on this podcast before. I can't remember when or where. Riggs and Murtaugh were the Siegfried and Roy of 80s cinema. They were the ultimate magicians and the magic was back. It kept coming back. Uh, all right. Number two,

the box office is the biggest movie of the year. It's 1989. It's the film called bit man, Batman, Bart man. Uh, yes. Bart man.

Yeah. So that would be the Michael Keaton Batman. That's the Michael Keaton, Tim Burton, Batman. Did you see that in theaters? Dana, if we're talking about sort of

snobby young Dana. I'm sure I must have. I know I saw Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Sure. Yeah. I think I probably would have seen Batman. I'm not sure. The 89 classic. Great year. 1989. That's another example of just like, Dana, can you imagine how quickly

critics would run to bow at the altar of a modern superhero movie with the aesthetics of the cabinet of dr caligari like if a superhero movie looked like that and had that tone today people would be like where did this come from right and like rightfully so understandably so in 1989 people were like sheesh i know and people were like, here's another movie that's going to ruin Hollywood, which it kind of did. Like it was another Jaws, Star Wars inflection point

where everyone took the wrong lessons away from it and it killed many genres and many budgets, sizes in the process. And in 89, it's the birth of the superhero thing. And it's the birth of American indie movies, sex, lies, and videotape. Mystery Train is this year. It's a lot of drugstore cowboy. movie sex lies and videotape mystery train is this year like you know it's a lot of drugstore cowboy just do the right thing opening the same thing

100 but that's a huge shift is like the fact that you have sex lies and videotapes and uh mystery train and those other movies starting to make an impact made independently means that within a couple years universal would never make do the right thing again Like that movie does not get made in a studio system. It gets made from independent financing and goes to a film festival. All right. Number three at the box office. It's a kid's comedy.

I definitely saw it. Not in theaters. I think I would have been too young. Very high concept. Very high concept. Star-driven or is the star the concept? Has a star. Has a serious, I would say, a comedy star of the star that has a star has a serious i would say a comedy star of

the era but not animated not animated but very visual effects heavy is it a robin williams movie no is it who killed roger rabbit no these are all good guesses that's 87 right okay sure we'll be covering soon um it was like it's a it's a disney movie it was a surprise success i don't think it was expected to be this huge but it was huge it's not splash but it's one of those it's one of those disney out of nowhere huge is kind of a giveaway oh it's honey i shrunk the kids honey i shrunk the kids yeah great movie was their highest grossing live action film for a long time it made like 200 million dollars a huge thing it's got big bugs like everything's big in it yeah it's crazy do you guys know that movie that movie was written by and developed to be directed by

stewart gordon the director of reanimator yeah and castle freak and uh also the guy who was the first person to ever stage a mammoth play in chicago came out of the chicago theater um and that was supposed to be his big studio breakthrough and the reason he didn't direct the movie do you know this uh i don't know he quit on the grounds that they would not let him give the film his original intended title oh i do know this which i believe was what could have been better honey i shrunk the kids teeny weenies dana he decided to die on the hill of teeny weenies that movie would not have been a hit if it was not called honey i shrunk the kids the title is half the gross like i mean it's three quarters of the gross like that's the entire success of that movie the movie is

surprisingly good but the success is that the poster had that title and you went i get it i understand well and i'm just saying then it opens the way to the sequel honey we shrunk ourselves which has a whole new it opens up a whole new well and in between there's three movies you also have honey we blew up the kid honey i blew up the kid and then honey we shrunk ourselves i mean it's perfect honey i blank is so evocative i just love that he was like i will be proven correct history is written by the renners watch this movie fail when it is titled honey Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. And I will be able to sit back and tell myself it should have been called Teeny Weenies. All right, Griffin, number four at the box office is another action sequel, much longer running franchise.

A much longer running franchise. It's new at the box office this week. It's a flop. This movie is sort of a famous flop. Wow. So is this the end of the franchise? No, but it's the end of a section of the franchise interesting is there a recasting after this point there's a recasting after this yeah so is this the last roger moore no is it is it the last timothy dalton correct correct so it's for your eyes only no the living daylights no that's the first dalton

what's license to kill okay uh the the weirdly dark bond movie that includes an exploding head wow i've never seen a lot of uh it's very miami vicey because miami vice was cool so it has like um latin drug lords it has benicio del toro like it's weird and the tone is off nobody some people appreciate it but it was not popular um i've never seen uh either um yeah we should do some bond things i i'm not i mean it's interesting because i mean she comes up in the sleepless in seattle episode obviously but the weird kind of career pocket that carrie lowell carrie lowell is the bond girl where she was in so many culturally important things without ever really

breaking out as a star she was in law and order that's what i'm saying like early seasons law and order she was a bond girl but at the wrong point you know she's she has more screen time with tom hanks in sleepless in seattle than Meg Ryan does, yet Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks become the pair. Well, sure. She's dead in Sleepless in Seattle. It all makes sense. I'm just saying it's interesting how she was there at so many different

formative moments. Number five, let's just wrap this up because we've been talking for a while, is a movie that is in its 1,902nd week in the box office. Literally? wrap this up because we've been talking for for a while um is a movie that is in its uh 1902nd week in the box office literally that is what the numbers is putting it out i'm sure this is a re-release of a children's classic is it so it's a disney re-release a disney re-release

fuck so this is when i was a kid this is how i saw a lot of those disney movies like the jungle book or whatever you know they would put them back out. Well, that was the first movie I ever saw was The Jungle Book re-release. I saw it at the Quad. But that was a year or two after this. So I know it's not The Jungle Book. It's not The Jungle Book. And they tend to cycle them.

Is it Dumbo? It's not Dumbo. Is it Pinocchio? It's a 50s Disney. No, that's also funny. Is it 101 Dalmatians? No, although that's a great movie. See, I'm trying to think because 89 is the year I'm born.

Humble brag. So I'm trying to think of which ones I saw the re-releases within my childhood because that's the process of elimination of what it couldn't be. So it's not Cinderella. No. Is it a princess? No.

It's not Bambi? No movie all 40s not Dumbo not Bambi Fantasia no that's 40s as well 50s guys Disney in the 50s 50s is this the cats when they eat the pasta that's I believe the 60s oh you're thinking of Lady and the Tramp. Lady and the Tramp, but it wasn't that. Oh, the cat, the dog's eating the pasta. No, it's not Lady and the Tramp. There's racist cats in both of those movies. That's true. Oh, God. In Lady and the Tramp, there were more severe racist cats.

Okay, wait. Rescuers is 70s. It's not a princess movie. You guys are missing an obvious one, and I understand why. This movie is weirdly forgotten sometimes, even though it's hugely culturally important. Oh. Is it? The Wizard? Is it The King? king no not sword in the stone is it is the title the character's name yes it's a big movie guys big one

i'm running our listeners are like screaming right now i'm running through in my head working at the disney store and looking at the wall of plush and i'm trying to remember which plush i have not this is disney doesn't own this this is public domain anyone can make a movie of this it's not it's not winnie the pooh no but it's public domain but there is there's so many movie versions of this there's so many peter pan it's peter pan i got it damn it that was a big one to miss which is it is i feel like even though it's universally culturally you know like everyone remembers like eight things from peter pan yes it does sort of get forgotten in the disney canon because it lacks a princess and because it's been done in so many versions but but still i think so many of the visual tropes we associate with

peter pan now come from that and when you Wish Upon a Star is like one of the most important Disney songs. It's in the damn logo. And Tinkerbell is like one of the five most important Disney characters. She's in every Disney movie. But also just- She flies over the castle. Yeah, but as someone who was given

all the internal memos that are very important sent to part-time cast members at the Disney store, it was like, this is one of the pillars of our company right you know it was like we sell poo to like a certain age we sell like tinkerbell to like this certain thing huge i think she's the highest selling female character disney merchandise um yeah so peter pan well uh that's that's it that's the box office um you got a lot of sequels as well you got a last crusade. It got ghostbusters to do the right thing is in the top 10 along with weekend at Bernie's.

So two pillars of 1989. This is a Bernie's is such a good movie. This is like the first really modern box office summer where it's like ghostbusters to lethal weapon to big tentpole type movieapon 2, Batman, Indy, Indy 3. Because I think Batman becomes the biggest opening weekend of all time and then Ghostbusters immediately

dethrones it or vice versa. Something like that. The record is broken two consecutive weekends in a row. Alright. We gotta wrap it up. 89 feels to me like a very pivotal movie year. if you guys ever focus on a year you should do an 89 it's an underratedly important because of the amount of indie movies that are breaking out like you know that sort of mix of blockbusters and the

amount of blockbusters and franchises and and there's another huge industry redefining release of 1989 disney the little mermaid downtown griffin nooms oh sure and downtown and also you have like that's when henry changes the industry forever that's when branna sort of revives the shakespeare movie with henry v like you know that's when al pacino comes back with sea of love like al pacino had been gone like that's when tom cruise becomes a serious actor with born and then all after all of that hollywood is like oh god this is a lot let's just pick driving miss daisy as best picture like let's not wade into this there's an argument for the nine year often being the most important

within a given decade and also that being the year where the academy kind of fucks it up like you think about like 99 being so historic and it goes to American beauty. I feel like 2019 was a big year and it goes to green book or that. No, I'm sorry. That was, uh,

this was a good year. Actually. This is a parasite. No, but yeah, 2018 green book. I mean, obviously right.

Uh, the Bonnie and Clyde year where they, they don't have the guts. So they go for in the heat of the night. Right. That was 69, right? 68 or I can't remember.

Something like that. But Parasite still goes to your theory that the nine year is a pivotal year. Nine years seem to be pivotal. Maybe you guys should do a series where you go

through some decades and grab all the nine years. Well, you know, we every year do a Blankies episode where we give out our awards for the best in film

of the year and who knows how possible that is next year depending on what babies do so there's a chance we might have to do like a 1999 what we would have given the awards episode or something like that um but yeah wow 89 is an interesting year dana thank you so much for being on the show really quick yeah just because like dana i know you're you know a lot about silent film yeah trying to i got this idea yeah maybe i don't know i don't want to like chalk it up to like the next evolution of cinema oh boy how do you feel about loud movies

loud movies everything's loud screaming loud sound effects the music's too loud i mean the sassy brothers did one last year right that's loud sound effects. The music's too loud. I mean, the Sassy Brothers did one last year, right? That's loud cinema. Yeah, it was Ben's favorite movie of the year. Yeah, that movie is someone constantly in your ear going like, more of that, please. My whole reaction to that movie is like,

congratulations, I'm agitated for the rest of the day. Right, right. You accomplished that. And Ben was like bopping along with it. Hell yeah. Ben isn't satisfied with a talkie. He wants a screamy. Instead of it's the train, it should be the crane.

The crane coming into the station? Coming at you? Yeah. Let's bring this train to the station. But it actually drives to the screen and kills everyone in the theater right arrival of the crane at Lacroix station

Dana thank you so much for being on the show you're one of the best it's such a pleasure I love this show I love the freewheeling ness of it I love that there's not

the sense as on the other podcasts I do at Slate that my stupid stuff is going to be cut out my stupid stuff is just going to be love it's going to be held up.

We're loosey-goosey here, baby. Yes, we are. But you're one of the best. People should always read whatever you're posting on Slate and listen to both of your podcasts, Slate Plus. It's a time to support the things you care about. If you have any disposable incomes, and I understand many do not at this point in time,

this is a really good time to put your money towards maintaining the survival of the things you love whether they're the outlets you love in terms of writing or the delicatessens you love in terms of deli meat and if i could just point out the slate plus subscription for the first year is really freaking cheap compared to most of the things out there it's a bit less than a dime a day and i'm telling you a lot of content and this there. It's less than a dime a day to get a lot of content. And I'm telling you, and this guy Trump,

he's telling me the economy's gonna come back better than ever next year. So you just gotta do one year at the low rate and then next year you'll be a billionaire.

Next year everyone's gonna be a billionaire. He promises it. That 100% is gonna be his campaign platform for re-election, right? Just you wait.

I know the economy collapsed but I swear to God I literally promise everyone's gonna be a billionaire next year uh fuck the world everything's bad oh come on thank you for being on the show when harry met sally is good flashback is good slate culture gab fest is good uh and nora effron's good i'm excited to do this mini series we've recorded a good chunk of them now. And boy, are these movies a good solve for the time we're living in. Nice bomb. Great for rewatching. Very nice bomb.

So tune in next week for This Is My Life. That's right. Our first- Special guest, Michelle Collins. The great Michelle Collins. Great stand-up. Talking about a movie that most people have not seen that quietly fucks so goddamn hard. Oh, this is the Julie Kavner as a comedian?

It's so good. Oh, I love it. Oh, I love it. Now I wish I were doing that one. Okay, I'll listen. It's so good. Everyone tune in. It's a great episode.

Michelle's a great guest. I think we got good guests for this whole miniseries. I think it's going to be a really fun one. Oh, yeah. So please continue listening, and thank you, and please remember to rate review subscribe go to red.blanktech.com for some real nerdy shit go to patreon.com backslash blink check for special features where i think we're finally we're filling up finishing up toy story now starting yeah yeah we're in the middle of that we're almost transitioning into some

mission impossible into some impossible missions um and thanks to and for gudo for our social media and also for co-producing this show rachel jacobs for her editing help and lean mccormick for a theme song joe bone and pat reynolds for our artwork and and thank you all for being you in a time like this. There's nobody like you. I don't know what I'm saying. All right. Come on. And as always,

and as always, Billy Crystal can get it as long as he has a beard. Sure. Griffin, are you just going to reenact the fake orgasm scene? Is that what you're going to do? Is that how you're going to start us off? It feels too dangerous.

It feels too risky.