More of What Endures

 

I'll Have What She's Having

Retriever with warm wet fuzzy chew-toy in jaw, I continue my serial attack on The Essence of Enduring Romantic Comedy with a fond look at the entire film career (a little under 17 seconds, total, in a single movie scene) of Estelle Reiner.

Mrs. "My Son the Director" Reiner is one of the only non-actors to be as famous, for her one-liner's worth of cinematic history, as the two movie stars in her movie.  She's the embodiment of the joke's topper, which shares equal billing with the joke itself in people's memories.  But before we examine her immortal pay-off, let us savor a few of the many pleasures to be had along the way to it, in some four minutes of  rom-com tour de farce.

#1.  The andirons

Don't know about you, but I didn't really remember what they called those utilitarian thinga-ma-whoosies until I heard Sally's wonderfully disparaging harangue, which is actually the catalyst, the comedic inciting incident for the scene:

You know, I am so glad I never got involved with you.  I just would've ended up being some woman you had to get up out of bed and leave at three o'clock in the morning and go clean your andirons.  And you don't even have a fireplace.  Not that I would know this.

Rom-com dialogue writers may note the rhythm and cadence that became, whether we like it or not, the voice of Today's Woman in romantic comedy of the '90s (Ephron is in a sense, in this her best work, the rosetta stone of even more recent TV rom-com repartee; see Sex and the City, et al).  But what I've always loved is those andirons.  It's such a genius bit of specificity, simply a gorgeous and memorable word to utter, and gotten-away-with via being rooted in character (Sally, we believe, is a woman who would have a working knowledge of andirons).

#2.  Billy's hand gesture

Hary and Sally get into a hand-gesture thing when they're trying not to say the word "come" in their ostensibly civil conversation.  Harry knows he's made his women happy, "Because they...?" Sally asks, making a little circle in the air.  "Yes, because they..." Harry affirms, imitating her gesture.  "How do you know they're really..."  She makes the same gesture.  And here, Billy Crystal adds what's clearly his own bit of business, as he accompanies his retort, "What are you saying, that they fake orgasm?" with improvised fake-sign language, as if spelling out the question.  It's so perfectly playfully mean that it cracks people up, every time.

#3. The waiter and company

The credible context for this fake orgasm stunt is a New York deli -- in itself a brilliant, necessary choice, in obeying the genre's exploit-all-reversals edict: the original scene was written for an apartment, and according to Ephron it was Ryan who wisely suggested it going public.  Rom-com humor's well-spring is embarrassment: things private going public is one of the genre's fundamental comedic reversals.

But we'll have to credit director Reiner and his team for having assembled the classic, picture-perfect set of  uber-New Yorkers who populate this deli scene.  First there's the waiter, deadpan, balding, all middle-age paunch in a powder-blue jacket, and as the scene progresses, the out-of- focus guy in a baseball cap over Meg Ryan's shoulder who turns to watch her get off.  Estelle is established at her separate table, a poster-matron for I've already seen everything, whaddya showing me now? NYC skepticism, and then we get a 1-2 comic punch of reaction shots from a pudgy turtle-necked Jewish student and the thin black woman at the table behind him -- topped by the dour, long-lined incredulous face of the cash register guy.

As Meg's hitting her peak, Reiner returns to the wide two-shot side view of Sally and Harry, and we get a little background reinforcement -- business as usual back at the counter and kitchen, while to the sides of our couple, there's the palpable quiet of "good free show with lunch!" going on, which leads me back to...

#4. How to be a straight man

It has taken me something like 123 viewings of the two-shot in this scene (I've been using the clip in various classes and seminars for a decade) to forcefully ignore Meg Ryan having an orgasm and turn my attention to Billy Crystal's side of the frame.  Try it some time.  In the last run of it, he quietly absorbs Ryan's table-poundings and cries of faked ecstasy with the look of man being repeatedly pummeled in the face by a big wet fish -- sits there and takes it like a man, in other words, while his body makes the uneasy twitches of someone who knows he's being beaten good and proper... by a woman.  It really is a thing of beauty.

Crystal also contributes some excellent Expressive Chewing, earlier on, along with some very well-played Looks of Abject Humiliation right (all under control here, folks!) and left (don't actually know her!).  But let's face it -- to finally get to the main event -- the scene ultimately belongs to Ryan's face.

#5.  That smile

Finally we must give props to Meg's mug, a versatile instrument, more Les Paul guitar than say, Meryl Streep's Stradivarius, but nonetheless formidable.  In this scene, she offers up a kind of comedic concerto of facial gestures, and orgasm high point aside, many a moment in the prep rewards examination.

A few of my personal extra-orgasmic faves happen before The Big Fake: her brisk, downward nod after Harry claims "he knows" no woman has ever faked it with him, which gives a grandeur to the note of disdainful dismissal in her retort, "Right, I forgot -- you're a man," and the splendid upward tilt of her chin at Harry in the two-shot when he says "You don't think I can tell the difference?" which is followed, in the beginning of her aria-like close-up, by that delicious moment where we see Sally a) get the idea of how to prove him wrong, and b) start to slip into character as a woman on the verge.

But the winner, no contest, of the Defining Face Moment here has to be that smug little smile she allows herself after she's silenced the restaurant in coming, when she's won -- dropping character, coolly en route to taking another bite of cole slaw.  Ah, that quiet smile to herself, a soul-of-wit tight-lipped bitty thing that says "...so, fuck you!" to Harry. 

It's the perfect set-up of course, for Estelle's topper (I'll have what she's having), a line that according to Ephron was supplied, with a former Borscht Belter's unerring sense of the absurdist understatement, by Crystal.

But all of this is praise of the scene's execution.  Now to the point of the discourse.  Screenwriter MaryAn Batchellor and I have been trying to define the tenets of what makes a rom-com work and withstand the test of time.  She came up with three principles:

Story first, romance second (Ted Elliot)

Same but different (Billy Mernit)

Play to the majority (Terry Rossio)

To this I'd like to add: Make it be about something. 

Yes, it's true that the orgasm-in-a-deli gag stands up on its own -- you don't have to have seen When Harry to enjoy it, but finally what gives the thing its power is, in actuality, a substantive dose of theme.  The movie is about the differences between men and women.  Not so much, can they be friends? as one dutifully quotes the movie itself, but how men are one way and women another.  And the path to true love is ultimately defined, by the movie's own happy ending standards, as vive le difference!  Appreciate the differences, and you'll be good to go, happily (albeit arguing) ever after.

You hear the "difference" theme sounded, with increasing vehemence, throughout the deli scene as it builds.  It starts with Sally's incredulity that Harry could have sex with a random woman and then flee.  We hear it again in passing, mid-argument ("You're a human affront to all women") and when Sally makes the afore-mentioned comment re: Harry's arrogance about his sexual performance ("I forgot, you're a man").  The faux-orgasm itself is a blatant axiomatic truth writ spray-paint large across the screen: this is what we can do that you can't, says the woman, and it fools you every time, you testosterone-blinded idiot called man.

In the context of the story, beginning at the mathematical midpoint of When Harry Met Sally, the scene signals the first time Sally has ever won an argument with Harry, and more importantly, the first time he's ever really been exposed to her as a sexual being.  The effect is transformative for them both; the midpoint section ends, after a seemingly pointless montage of NYC as winter wonderland (it's actually there, in part, to create enough time for audiences to stop laughing and collect themselves), with a brief scene where Harry and Sally have to share a Happy New Year kiss... and it's really awkward for the friends, for the first time.

But this is the brilliance of When Harry, an often underrated and maligned film that stubbornly holds its place in the top half dozen or so of the rom-com pantheon: its jokes are rooted in what the movie is about.  Each gem-like scene speaks to theme, in one way or another.

Some people don't respond to the movie because they don't love one or both of  the leads, but to those who think the script "too easy" or trivial, I say: you try it, buster (no American romantic comedy since has pulled off a success this dialogue-driven and small-plotted, and in this, it's the exception that proves Mr. Elliot's rule above, while supporting Mr. Rossio's). Men like When Harry because it so accurately articulates the male point of view; women respond to it because it does the same for them.  The movie has endured because it so ceaselessly worries at this theme of difference, yielding laughs that are laughs of recognition.

Finally, I think that this is what we want from romantic comedies (and from movies in general): we want to see us -- we want to understand us.  So it stands to reason that the handful of romantic comedies that really last are ones that speak to truths about men and women.  And these truths are usually born of a writer's personal exploration -- another way of saying make it be about something is: make it personal.  Because when a writer is most passionately involved in trying to figure something out that's important to them (e.g. how can such different species as men and women ever get along?), is when a story most often speaks to something universal.

A farce like Tootsie is about how no man (especially when he becomes a woman) is an island.  Annie Hall, with Alvy ("I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member") Singer and "I have no idea what club I could ever belong to" Annie, is about dueling self-esteem issues.  Groundhog's Day defines selfless love as the means of enlightenment...   

Not to get too pretentious about the old meet-lose-get show, but check out the romantic comedies you remember, and I'll wager there's a core insight embodied beneath all the high jinks ensuing, some kernel of informing truth that both justifies and secretly fuels all the fussing and fighting.  In an enduring romantic comedy, we have met the problem and recognized it is as us. 

Then again, maybe all this analysis is for naught, and "what works" is still a mysterious ineffable -- you just know it when you see it.  It's like the elderly woman from one of the mock-documentary couples that pepper When Harry says, explaining that when her husband first introduced himself to her ("I'm Ben Small of the Coney Island Smalls"), she knew: "I knew the way you know about a good melon..."

Comments

[christina]

I can watch When Harry Met Sally over and over again. My favorite bit is the fight (between Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby) over the wagon wheel coffee table. Now that was genuis.

I once analyzed Annie Hall and decided it was a Pygmalion story. Now I can't remember why.

French Kiss is another one of my favorite rom coms. The A story is Meg Ryan's character pursuing a love that got away and Kevin Kline's character helping her until they fall in love with each other.

[E.C. Henry]

You sold me on "When Harry Meet Sally" Billy. Had a ho-hum opinion of the film, but after reading your book, writing in the genre myself, and annalyzing what Rob Reiner, Nora Ephron and crew did in this film. I now like it.

Still not the biggest Billy Crystall fan, but I've always loved Meg Ryan.

Never really broke down films to know why what makes one memorable and what makes others fail. I look for "magic." The what is it about this film that TRANSENDS it about the normal riff-raff. I'm of the mindset that truely special films are unique, different, and leave the viewership scratching their head in wonderment, "Wow, where'd that come from." I think that overannalyzing the clasics, from writers especially, leads to unoriginality and conformitdy. Why do what's already been done?

BUT I do love a good story like you and others, AND I respect those who have been at for a while and are considered masters of the trade.

- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

[Write Procrastinator]

As "Seinfeld" was one of the last great sitcoms, "When Harry" is one of the last great rom-coms.

Besides the great dialogue, great situations, great use of life's ugly realities (like the discomfort of not hitting it off and running into exes), it had perfect dialogue exchanges.

Both the male and female actors had balance, won and lost points, and the banter was perfect in terms of pacing.

I really haven't seen a picture since then that can match it in terms of back and forth banter, maybe "Something's Got To Give" which I loved more for it's balance, than as a movie overall.

[mernitman]

Christina, that wagon wheel is priceless. And Annie Hall IS a Pygmalion story (with Allen as the unlikely Professor Higgins). And French Kiss is... a hoot.

WritePro: balance, yes -- which you only get when BOTH lead characters are fully formed and compelling (something many a rom-com forgets, see Elizabethtown, etc.)...

[chesher cat]

The two things that make the fake orgasm scene brilliant are the public place (courtesy of Meg Ryan) and the "I'll have what she's having" line (courtesy of Billy Crystal).

Nora Ephron should have cast them in Bewitched.

[Duncan]

One of my favorite scenes too. :)

[Daniel W.]

Billy, I love the andirons, Billy Crystal’s reaction, and Meg’s smirk as she puts that last forkful of food in her mouth, but I think Estelle’s line is essential to the audience’s full enjoyment of the scene. All of the stuff before her line is a build-up, the tension increasing faster and faster until the last line allows the audience to have their own nervous release.

I’ve been in theaters where comedic sequences ended limply, and the result is an uncomfortable reaction of laughter that ebbs, flows, and fizzles without ever reaching the point of laughter the audience wants to go to. Ending a scene on something as strong as “I’ll have what she’s having” allows for the laughter to erupt from the audience.

Thinking back on some of my favorite comedy bits, they all end on the strongest image or line of the piece. In Some Like It Hot, the twin dates progress on the boat and on the land, getting more and more absurd, until the final image where “Daphne” dips Osgood in front of the blindfolded Cuban band… and then it’s next morning, and the dates are over. In It Happened One Night, Clark Gable goes through a series of increasingly ridiculous attempts to hitch a ride, and it’s all very funny, but the end comes with the best joke of the sequence as Claudette Colbert shows some of her leg and suddenly the wheels of a car are shown screeching to a halt.

Or consider a classic piece of comedy: the pie fight. Pies fly fast and furious, but the one person that the audience most wants to see nailed (think Tony Curtis in The Great Race) remains untouched right up until the last pie hits that person hardest of all. If Curtis had been drenched in custard at the beginning of the pie fight, there’d be no way end to the scene and no way for the audience to know when they can finally let go and laugh.

If there hadn’t been such a strong ending to the deli scene in When Harry Met Sally, I don’t think it would have been as effective. In fact, I think we’d be a little uncomfortable watching the scene, with the thought of “did I just see sweet Meg Ryan fake an orgasm” holding back some of our laughter. Estelle’s topper is a joke that releases all of that uncomfortable feeling from us.

All this means for me, of course, is that in my own script I’m going to have to rewrite that f---ing shooting range scene again to put the premature ejaculation joke at the end.

Sorry about the length of this post.

[alisa kwitney]

The great thing about When Harry Met Sally, IMO, is that aside from the orgasm, nothing is faked. None of the comic business is forced in just to jolly things up, and nothing romantic is slapped together because now is when hero and heroine ought to get together. The movie allows for a fair bit of angst and darkness and betrayal. These days, only the indies seem to recall that romcom can be dark -- the last film I saw that really moved me was Dirty, Filthy Love, about an OCD hero.

[Simon Young]

Thanks Billy for these last two posts - and for your blog generally. I'm writing my first screenplay, a rom-com, and loving the very specific advice you give.

Many thanks. I'm going to add Harry and Sally to my "must watch" list now.

[mernitman]

Welcome, Duncan!

Daniel W, nice comment, couldn't agree with you more; as I always tell my comedy screenwriting students: leave no gag un-topped.

That the deli-orgasm topper is its biggest, climactic laugh is the given, here. My analysis is simply saying, yes, that's the great line everyone remembers, but let's look for a moment at all the canny good work that leads up to it.

Very true, Alicia. And now I have to go get Dirty and Filthy...

Welcome, Simon! Glad to be of service.

[shecanfilmit]

Thank you for acknowledging that Annie Hall is a Pygmalion story. I have gotten in many arguments and near fights over that claim.

[JJ]

Maybe that's the problem with the RomComs coming out today. They seem to be about the paycheck.

[MaryAn]

You are my hero. Okay, no you're not, but you would be if I actually believed in heros.

[mernitman]

SheCan, send 'em to me and I'll put up my dukes.

Sad but true, JJ...

And to cop a JJ-ism in answering MaryAn, I say: Um... (looks at shoes, blushing).

[Ann Wesley Hardin]

Was out blog hopping this morning and found this older post through MaryAn's blog.

Wow! Thanks for giving us this. It'll really help me take my romcoms to the next level. Absolutely brilliant.

One thing I'd like to add (even though I know no one but you will read it) is the utter brilliance of having a 60-something woman deliver the "I'll have what she's having" line. If a twenty-year-old babe had said it...meh. But coming from a woman you KNOW HASN'T had what she's having for a very long time is one of the things that catapulted that scene into the legendary.

Again, great post, and wonderful comments!