The 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally is one of the best movies of all time, certainly one of the best romantic comedies, anyway. It set the bar for a generation of rom-coms that were always trying to find that perfect balance of storytelling, chemistry, and comedy that made this movie one of the greats. But it turns out that the original idea for the film included a completely different ending, one that saw the two stars parting ways at the end instead of the happy ending we know.
Director Rob Reiner recently sat down with CNN’s Chris Wallace to talk about the film, and he explained that Harry and Sally originally didn’t end up together, saying:
“Harry and Sally didn’t get together. Because I had been married for ten years, I had been single for ten years and I couldn’t figure out how I was ever going to be with anybody, and that gave birth to When Harry Met Sally. And I hadn’t met anybody, and so it was gonna be the two of them seeing each other after years, talking, and then walking away from each other.”
Before filming the movie, Reiner had been married from 1971-1981 to fellow director Penny Marshall, but as he mentioned, he’d been alone for quite some time before taking on the romantic story, and his outlook was fairly bleak. Reiner previously talked about making the movie with writer Nora Ephron in an interview with AV Club, explaining how the story was based on their own experiences:
“It was totally based on us, yeah. I mean, it started with me. Before she came aboard, I was thinking about how I’d been single—I’d been married for 10 years and I’d been single for 10 years. And during that time when I was single, I kept being in and out of different relationships, and they didn’t go so good. And I kept getting confused. How do you make friendships? If you have sex, does that ruin the friendship? All those questions that are brought up in the film, I said, ‘This has got to be the basis for something here.’ So I went to Nora and I told her about it, and she said, ‘I like that idea,’ and so she interviewed me. She was like a reporter, and I told her all these stories of different things that I had been through. And she wrote this stuff down, and she injected her own experiences. One day, we were eating lunch, and she’s ordering, ‘This is on the side, this that,’ and I said, ‘This has to be in a movie!’ I mean, it was crazy the way you’re ordering this food. So we put that in as a character trait for Sally.”
They say to write what you know, and maybe that’s why the movie turned out the way it did. Reiner went on in the original interview to reveal the reason why we got the picture perfect movie ending we know and love, simply saying:
“I met my wife Michele, who I have been married to now 35 years, I met her while making the film. And I changed the ending.”
It’s a good thing Reiner’s heart was softened and he was able to believe in love again. It gave us a great movie, and some classic quotes to last a lifetime. “I’ll have what she’s having.”
via: CinemaBlend
