[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David, what's a sale to expect? All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check I was veering a little too much into Mike Wazowski
[00:00:40] And when you watch Monsters Inc, it's easy to sometimes think, oh Billy Crystal is 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% more borscht belt Right
[00:00:57] He's like, ah come on Sally! 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 ratatat dialogue
[00:01:14] 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's like, you know, she spreads everything out evenly It's the back and forth
[00:01:27] 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 is a pretty good script
[00:01:38] 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 Griffin, you and I were also saying last night rewatching it that we had this same strange sensation
[00:01:51] 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
[00:02:00] And the more I water shot, 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
[00:02:08] And then you know what the line's going to be but then they say it and you're like, ah, yeah That's pretty good It still gets you It still gets you I was surprised like particularly the opening stretch, the like drive back from college
[00:02:19] Whatever that is, like 10 minutes, 12 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 in circulation
[00:02:34] 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 like the movie so much? Why did it not become a go back to movie?
[00:02:46] I don't know, it's very bizarre There are 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, it was completely blown away with it
[00:03:01] And never watched it again But that one 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
[00:03:12] Well you guys were fetuses when it first came out in that But I was just a young enough adult to be a snob about things that were too popular
[00:03:20] And what I thought about it 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
[00:03:28] 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 80s Like hitting this great career high
[00:03:38] That was the year crimes and misdemeanors came out And it was shortly after Hannah and her sisters And so to me it sort of seemed like Eh, this is some watered down Woody Allen but it's likable
[00:03:47] That was the thing I think I would have said at the time was like 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
[00:03:56] Is a snobby 22 year old or something when it came out You would have said likable backhandedly Yeah, I think that was part of the hit on it at the time It's like well yeah like where's the edge here It's cute, it's sweet
[00:04:07] But then when you watch a few decades of Rome comes 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
[00:04:19] 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
[00:04:35] 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 Can I say though this movie has something going forward That Sleepless does not have at all Sorry to talk over you Griffin
[00:04:48] 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
[00:05:00] 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
[00:05:15] 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 you know eventually they hook up Like there's just no You know Sleepless is all like these convoluted High wire plotting
[00:05:31] And this is the opposite But Sleepless also feels like the five obstructions Like Sleepless feels like a dare 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
[00:05:46] 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
[00:06:02] Which could have they could have their own series of movies And I would be thrilled Having Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby As your backup just bowing clean up I would watch when Marie met Jess or whatever Like they wanted to just do that
[00:06:14] I'd watch it and 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
[00:06:26] In a second But our listener, our listener 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
[00:06:38] 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
[00:06:57] 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 And then we're going straight into Nora So we're sort of doing a bonus episode first rather than last
[00:07:11] Because it's important for the chronology The only other films she'd done with 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's seven film miracle run
[00:07:26] Of this is Spinal Tap What's it called The Sure Thing Stand By Me When Princess Bride, when Harry Met Sally At Misery, A Few Good Men The rest of his filmography is not super worth covering If it ended with North it would be interesting
[00:07:46] And even if the rest of his career were things at the level of A few good men, not a few good men American President, Mrs. Spidberney Burning, that would be interesting The rest of the filmography is not really worth covering And I would feel weird just arbitrarily going
[00:08:01] We're only doing the movies that exist We're ignoring the last 15 years of his career It's kind of a weird cut off as opposed to The cleaner demarcations we had for Spielberg And for Verhoeven Yes, so we're doing a Rob Reiner movie
[00:08:15] 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
[00:08:30] In like Oscar history and yet the craziest thing one I suppose like 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
[00:08:46] We could do Spinal Tap as a bonus If he makes six more movies Or we did an Aaron Sorkin writer series We could put in those two Listen, folks, it's Blank Check Podcast about filmographies Directors with massive success early on in their careers
[00:08:59] And I 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 its screenwriter
[00:09:13] 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
[00:09:28] I mean, look how many times it took for Aaron Sorkin To get to direct his own movie Yeah, for sure Much longer But our guest today is the great from Slate And the flashback podcast Dana Stevens Hello So happy to be back
[00:09:45] Oh wait, and the Slate Culture Gapfest podcast Slate Culture Gapfest I gotta plug us because we just Guys, we just went bi-weekly After having been weekly for 12 years I saw that It's tough times for Slate right now So I gotta mention my podcast and hope that somebody
[00:09:58] Will come to it from you Become a Slate Plus member You know, listen to all the nice podcasts And listen to flashback is only for Slate Plus, correct? Yeah, it's only behind the paywall But we make it worth your while That one is me and K. Austin Collins
[00:10:12] 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 gotta hear that Yeah But definitely not for Slate Plus Things are bad right now
[00:10:26] 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 Okay For best original screenplay, 1989 Okay The Oscars Yeah Woody Allen's Crime and Mr. Mainers Wow Which might be his, I think
[00:10:44] I would argue is maybe his best screenplay It's up there It's very, yes That's a very solid argument Nora Afron When Harry Met Sally Steven Soderbergh for Sex, Lies and Video Tape Wow Spike Lee for Do the Right Thing I would say the inarguable winner
[00:11:01] 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 Jeez Tom Shulman's Dead Poets Society Like it's crazy that they were presented With those options I know Dead Poets Society
[00:11:17] Was a big hit and you know whatever But like, and that they went 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
[00:11:30] And then driving Miss Daisy Wynn's best picture Yeah 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 Klan has been Wynn's Picture or director Sure I get what you mean Right?
[00:11:52] Like by that point it was like We're gonna give it the one screenplay award Because Spike finally needs to win an Oscar If he had one screenplay 20 Whatever years earlier I think they might have given him best picture At that point
[00:12:04] Was Do the Right Thing nominated for any category It was nominated for screenplay And best supporting actor for Danny Ielo And that's it That's it And once again The winner The best picture was driving Miss Daisy Driving Miss Daisy Which also won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy
[00:12:22] Over when Harry Mith Selling 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
[00:12:36] I was fully in the mode 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
[00:12:50] Well that's you gotta do that But Dana you gotta admit Titanic fully slaps right That movie Oh my god Yeah 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
[00:13:04] I'm now teenager enough to appreciate it I had the same thing I wouldn't 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
[00:13:16] They hit the iceberg The only stuff that's good is the Camerony showcase stuff And it was only in the last five years That I was like no this movie is like top to bottom The best Griffin were you like me and just mostly
[00:13:28] Looked forward to the guy hitting the propeller Totally And then spinning all the way down Yes that was my favorite moment 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 beaver stuff
[00:13:41] But I also was only watching it Like full screen standard deaf 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 is a very pretty movie
[00:13:56] Shot by Barry Sonnenfeld And it has all his trademark Like he loves the camera low to the ground He loves big you know autumnal photography But this is a movie that kills on cable Because you can enjoy it on the tiniest screen
[00:14:12] Like you know the dialogue is always going to be good Like short But this is the wildest thing for me is like So I saw this movie I think when I was Ten or eleven I saw it very young Cause the AFI had done their like
[00:14:26] Hundred years, hundred laughs lists Or as Mike Ryan calls it funny times for funny people Right Of the hundred 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
[00:14:40] 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 Because I felt like I had to see all of them
[00:14:53] 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
[00:15:07] 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
[00:15:18] Had watched it the one time probably on VHS And then watched this on Blu-ray last night And it looks so god damn good Oh it's a good looking movie Because it is a movie that played so well on cable
[00:15:31] For so long you don't realize how well shot it is Question is this movie set in New York City? Ben not only is this movie set in New York City But you can argue it should be called when Harry Met Sally met New York
[00:15:46] 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
[00:16:01] It's got that nice shot of the University of Chicago campus Well in parts of it were filmed in Hollywood When you look at the location right? They went and did some exterior shots in New York And then they were just on sound stages
[00:16:13] Which is strange to think of But 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
[00:16:27] We have to go film in New York and make it count And go to Cassis Deli and walk through Central Park We can fake the rest of it on sound stages But you need enough stuff that is undeniably New York To make it feel like New York
[00:16:40] 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 that's less true now I think now you can shoot it
[00:16:51] There was that period where New York it was tough to shoot him But then New York became so willing to allow They had all the tax breaks and all that I still feel like people cheap out Yeah sure Let's talk a little bit
[00:17:05] Let's zoom out a little bit and talk about Norah Fram 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
[00:17:22] I mean do you know the Norah Fram story Dana? No tell me the Norah Fram 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 daughter of Henry and Phoebe Efron
[00:17:37] Who were both screenwriters right Playwrights and screenwriters and humorists And so she grew up in that And they were both east coast folks She's a New Yorker all that She's named after the protagonist in a dolls house I did not know that Wow
[00:17:56] 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 like she worked at Newsweek When she was right out of college And accepted her positions
[00:18:11] Like a male girl wasn't being allowed to write And was part of that famous class action suit You know against the magazine for sexual discrimination Where they were like women were literally Just not allowed to write at Newsweek Who played her on that TV show
[00:18:25] Good girls revolved that's what the show was called Who played her on that TV show Who played her on that TV show Grace Gummer one of the street children That's pretty wild Yes And then yeah I feel like right She was like she had a column at Esquire
[00:18:45] And she worked she married Carl Bernstein obviously And she had published a successful novel by this point right Because Hartburn was a novel before it was screenplay So then that's her big transition point I mean I was trying to think of like
[00:19:01] 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 Sure You know Like even more fit but yes Totally but I was just like I was trying to come up with some vague analogy
[00:19:19] 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
[00:19:37] Adapts it with two of the biggest movie stars And hires her to write her own screenplay And I watched Hartburn 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 Hartburn is
[00:19:55] In real life that story was so publicized Because Nora Ephraim was so well known Because Carl Bernstein was even more well known It was such a chattering classes piece of gossip And the affair was with like the daughter of the Prime Minister
[00:20:11] That like here's this like very sort of like Todry tabloid tale about like the New York intellectual scene You know or I guess they were in Washington DC at the time Then she adapts it into a you know a lightly fictionalized novel Which becomes a bestseller
[00:20:28] And then it gets turned into a movie With these two massive movie stars And this like major major director But the movie got bad reviews at the time And it was a disappointment Yeah have you seen Hartburn Dana do you have Hartburn tapes?
[00:20:41] 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
[00:20:53] But it doesn't spark the way this movie sparks No and it also I mean it's a thing We're recording this major's wildly out of order For a bunch of reasons including the pandemic And it's a thing that Dave and I keep on coming back to
[00:21:05] Which is like she has a caustic side Nor Efron 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
[00:21:26] 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
[00:21:41] And Hartburn is kind of that thing where it's like 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
[00:21:54] Because it was supposed to be Mandy Patenkin And Patenkin 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
[00:22:10] Especially combined with that caustic tone you're talking about 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 it's a revenge piece But Jack Nicholson does not add to the sweetness of the souffle
[00:22:24] No, no And someone like Mandy Patenkin 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 is always that thing of like Satan seducing you
[00:22:38] That's the thing about Harper and is Patenkin 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 gonna be a sweet movie And the movie is admirably unsweet
[00:22:50] 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 a tough movie to love Like, it is pretty resistant to you embracing it But Efron and Nichols clearly spar
[00:23:07] 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 gonna be like
[00:23:23] Can I just throw in though 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 a great template for like a based on a true story type movie
[00:23:38] 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 Which at the time I remember thinking like Is this possible? Cher and Meryl Streep just live together?
[00:23:51] You know, that wasn't happening in mainstream movies Cher is so good in it So good, so sexy 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 Lorenzo's Oil
[00:24:05] That are movies that are easy to just sort of sight on scene go Like is that some Oscar Bady thing? Like the premise is so dramatic And heavy handed and issue driven Is there any way that movie still holds up I need to watch Silkwood
[00:24:21] But then this is, I was watching a bunch of the special features On the Wyn-Harry Metz Alley Blu-ray The Shout Factory just put out a 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
[00:24:38] And they ask me what movies I wanted And I picked this because I knew we were going to be covering it But their new Blu-ray is incredibly good for Wyn-Harry Metz Alley And has this like 45 minute talk between Rob Reiner and Billy Crystal
[00:24:52] That was filmed in the last year That's really, really good But this movie really springs out of 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 forget
[00:25:13] That had 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
[00:25:29] And I'm the one directing this I should find a female writer who can add A lot of perspectives that I don't understand to this Rather than me trying to tackle everything myself So I think he just reaches out to Efron and hires her
[00:25:43] 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
[00:25:54] How much it sprung out of a collaboration among All of these people on a personal level So Billy Crystal and Rob Reiner were Really old friends at the time Very good friends, right? So the character Billy plays is based on Rob
[00:26:06] And there were a lot of interviews with Rob Reiner That Nora Efron 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
[00:26:15] I think this is a great job of a woman writing male characters Absolutely And 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
[00:26:27] 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 Yes Was something that came out of They wanted to do something about a fake orgasm
[00:26:40] They couldn't decide how to turn it into a joke Meg Ryan had the idea of her faking it Yeah 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, classic punch
[00:26:51] 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 men-chee way
[00:27:03] 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 Ephrom goes on to become a major director
[00:27:14] 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
[00:27:30] Able to provide more than the job They were ostensibly hired to do And Nora Ephron is a producer in this film In addition to being a writer And I think that title reflects the fact That she was on set every day
[00:27:42] It was constantly this sort of brain trust of it Billy Crystal told this story about how 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
[00:27:58] Look, we're 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 and everything And Billy Crystal has his tiny role in Spinal Tap
[00:28:13] 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
[00:28:26] 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
[00:28:40] 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
[00:28:53] Until Rob Reiner came around to him And said, you know, I made the calculation That I think our friendship can survive this But he said that on top of as an actor That I thought he could do it And the fact that he knew me so well
[00:29:06] 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 Ephraim was the same thing
[00:29:20] Hire her as a writer, have her work on the script But also that's getting her on set Every day working in 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
[00:29:32] 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
[00:29:47] 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 Right, so they were like They loved each other so much as guys
[00:29:57] As friends and as people who respect each other's creativity That they pulled, like, gave Nora Ephraim Here are things that we did ten years ago When we were both miserable, you know? So you put those things into the script And everyone's calling from their experiences here
[00:30:12] In the way that Harry is very much a Rob Reiner surrogate And I think Sally is very much a Nora Ephraim surrogate And then the relationship is sort of An exploration of their friendship Crystal and like Rob Reiner Like there's such an interesting four square Yes
[00:30:30] 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 At this point, obviously, he's very famous Saturday Night Live He was on SOAP He's hosted a ward show, you know, like It's not like Billy...
[00:30:43] Right, it's... SOAP plays the first gay character On network television And it's a hit And it's a breakout performance So that brings him a lot of attention After being a stand-up And doing a period of... Then he does the one season of SNL Right
[00:30:58] 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? That was when I wasn't watching the show much It was the brink of cancellation
[00:31:11] And Eddie Murphy had left And Dick Ebersol 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
[00:31:23] But you only sign them up for one season So I'll agree to do it So it was Billy Crystal, Christopher Gast, Martin Short Harry Shearer Jim Belushi was already on the show at that point Was Julia Louis-Dreyfus still on? Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Martin Short, Pamela Stevenson, Rich Hall
[00:31:42] Yeah, I mean it's a lot of like big shots And they're all gone by the next year The next year is the famous Robert Downey Jr. Joan Cousack where they hire like a bunch of children That's Lauren Michaels comes back and tries to get like brat pack people
[00:31:56] But that was the year, it was the big thing of like We're gonna spend more money to get Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Christopher Gast And Harry Shearer Like a blood transfusion for the show Right, right And these guys have been doing sketch TV
[00:32:08] They've been doing comedy for so long We know they're gonna 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
[00:32:19] That's more 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?
[00:32:31] Like I'm sure it's explained within the film Yeah, it's a 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
[00:32:43] Which he's really good in and weirdly hot in He's very hot Body Cop, Chicago comedy with Gregory Hines And then Throw Mama from the Train The DeVito movie Wow Yeah And Memories of Me Which he wrote as well Which I've never seen Which is like, I don't know
[00:32:59] Sort of a forgotten Billy Crystal project I don't know if anyone's ever seen Memories of Me Mr. Saturday Night prequel That's coming out soon City Slickers is coming Like his 90s run is on its way Right Come on City Slickers Scoop Sure
[00:33:16] I mean I haven't seen it 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-billed, right? But like it's sort of funny to think about Billy Crystal as movie star Totally Especially romantic lead, right?
[00:33:34] Which he really never was before and really not since But like feel free to write again He never worked as well But he tried again He tried again with like Forget Paris Right, like I feel like there's another one I'm forgetting Where he's like an absolute
[00:33:47] Well maybe it's just Forget Paris Hmm I think that's about it He's romantic in The Princess Bride Oh, he's very sexual in Princess Bride But Dana, I mean way in Well I guess Father's Day, that's the other one
[00:34:05] Wait, what am I weighing in on whether Billy Crystal is hot? Yes, Billy Crystal is hot Like because I think Billy Crystal is hot in this movie Oh yeah, definitely He's the funny Jewish guy I mean that is and was my type
[00:34:17] In fact I'm now married to one Like the short funny Jewish guy Dana, humble brag I like him with the beard in this I know he sort of I gotta say that's the through line But that's the through line with running scared in this
[00:34:31] 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 has only gotten odder
[00:34:47] 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 like the big dick energy He's got during the college section of this movie That's what I'm saying
[00:35:06] He's coming into the car And he's the one 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 Top Gun, this is her first real leading role No, that's what I'm saying
[00:35:23] I'm not saying she's better known than him She's better known She's not known as a comedy figure at all She's like a beautiful young actress Yes And he's the one who's like Eh well, alright, whatever You probably haven't even had good sex yet I mean, he's like
[00:35:39] He's all alpha energy And it's not what you'd expect You'd expect him to be the neb-ishy 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 For immediately you're like
[00:35:55] 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 To actually play someone sort of that arrogant And that macho Successfully and somewhat charmingly
[00:36:14] 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
[00:36:29] And I imagine they don't have any chemistry And the movie is totally one-sided And then you watch this film and they're both on the exact same level Yes, how to define... They have great chemistry because they do feel like They just know each other really well
[00:36:43] 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 they kind of get being young idiots out of the way But most of the scenes are just them talking
[00:36:58] Like the scene where they argue on the stoop And then immediately kind of diffuse it and hug Like, you can't fake that 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
[00:37:16] But I think almost... You couldn't replicate this 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
[00:37:29] But Dana, I feel like you don't like the Hanks movies Well, you guys asked me to do Sleepless in Seattle with you No, we asked you to do You Got Mail Then we switched you on to this Because I know you don't like You Got Mail
[00:37:39] I prefer 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 un-generous-spirited You can find other people who love You Got Mail
[00:37:51] And there's something very basic just about the I love my corporate raider sort of premise Of You Got Mail I mean, it's very 90s It is of its time, yes But of course, I mean, Tom Hanks I think at the time people would sort of say that
[00:38:05] Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were... He was the male Meg Ryan and vice versa They were America's Swin Hearts, yes And so they more have that classic Hollywood match And of course what makes when Harry Metz Ali Work so well is that they don't have that classic match
[00:38:18] 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 You know, talk about why they work so well together In our sleepless episode
[00:38:31] Which we've already recorded, David You talk about the weird sort of Sing-song equality to how Meg Ryan delivers dialogue She gets that's exactly what I was about to talk about There's some weird melody that she finds And I think she finds it particularly well With Nora Ephron
[00:38:47] But 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 time to kind of Classic Borsch Belt rhythms Yeah, he's such a Vardvillian He's this Neo Borsch Belt guy
[00:39:03] Like he was somehow this 20-something guy You know, 30-something guy in the 70s and 80s Who felt like Henny Young men And somehow made it feel a little modern And a little cool for a pocket bear And then Ephron writes so musically
[00:39:17] It's so much about the rhythms and the rada-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
[00:39:31] 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 a long well offset
[00:39:45] 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 A novella group, I don't know Or are you gonna say, David? Oh, just that
[00:40:00] She has this take on Ephron's dialogue That sort of like she trails off In these really sort of enchanting ways And it's exactly, it's the sort of Flippertage-bit thing That she's particularly good at occupying And like Sally is a little different From the sleepless in Seattle character
[00:40:18] Who's a little different from the You've got male character But they do all have that kind of Like, you know, I don't know Sort of genius scatterbrained thing going on And Billy's on a different clip Because Billy's like a fucking jazz drum Like he's just like relentless
[00:40:34] Like to the rhythm And then watching this thing on the Blu-ray It's like, right, Billy Crystal and Carl 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
[00:40:46] You know, I say to the girl, what are you talking about? You know? Yep The rhythm that I'm thinking of with the The two guys talking is the The scene of doing the wave Which I love so much Never fails to charm me
[00:40:57] And the way they do the wave Right as he's about to sit down and say the line You're 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
[00:41:09] When 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
[00:41:25] And it was boring Because it was just like, what do you do? You put this in a diner? Like 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 Right
[00:41:37] And Billy Crystal came to Rob Reiner And was like I had this sketch I wanted to do That was a guy goes to a ballgame with his therapist And every time he has a breakthrough The wave comes around That's a great premise They just mapped it on
[00:41:52] 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
[00:42:07] All the scenes just have a button Like an outline That's just perfect Like Bruno Kirby Walking out with a wagon wheel There's always like that It's like great And we're out And the audience is going to laugh Right But that's like child of Carl Reiner Shit
[00:42:25] My dad told me You always leave him on a laugh It reminds me too It also sets the seed It establishes the 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
[00:42:41] 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 romcom thing of Montaging a conversation
[00:42:56] 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 romcom Where the two people are separated And you follow them each doing their separate thing
[00:43:09] 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
[00:43:20] But ever more funny answering machine messages And going back to your Observation about low concept David What's so great about that Is that there's not some elaborate Obstacle throne in their way Right I mean there's not Another person that one of them is in love with Overseas
[00:43:36] Hiding some secret family or something It's just like they had a fight You know Like people do It's amazing how many romcoms Feel like they have to have What you're talking about Where it's like yes Oh the boyfriend is going to come back Or like Ange says
[00:43:50] He's always pretended to be A flight attendant But actually he's a butcher There's some 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 it has to be that scene
[00:44:07] 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 You know when they're single And they're miserable Yeah And they're a little less attached When they're not
[00:44:25] Anytime that they're not Which is you know That's an honest depiction of like That kind of a friendship 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
[00:44:37] 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 Sure You know A very heteronormative Perception of relationships And obviously specific To a certain culture
[00:44:54] 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 What would be like Let's stop talking about men and women in general So like you know Whatever
[00:45:05] 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
[00:45:19] The relationships that work They over time Gains 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
[00:45:33] 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
[00:45:49] 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
[00:46:03] 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
[00:46:19] In a way to compliment those things And they figure out what they want From them Totally Their own lives, you know Totally 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
[00:46:36] 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
[00:46:52] 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 there are 5 minutes of credits With Harry Connick Jr Just charming our pants off
[00:47:07] 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
[00:47:20] It's like a lean cut of deli meat At Kansas Can I float a big conceptual question Before we get into some smaller Gritty things This has probably been another thing That annoyed 22 year old me When I saw it about this movie
[00:47:34] 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
[00:47:44] And 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
[00:47:57] 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
[00:48:08] 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
[00:48:23] But I think it's a weird case where like I fundamentally agree with you The entire time I was sitting there They don't like to end up together And I was like I should be pissed off That this movie ends up agreeing With his most arrogant thesis
[00:48:37] 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 It's the thing he says when he is The biggest asshole Which again I would say It shouldn't be proven correct
[00:48:51] 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 in the 21 year old
[00:49:04] And Billy as an actor to his credit Because I feel like Billy Crystal Is so usually defined by wanting everyone to love him No he's a jerk spitting out the grapes But I'm saying Billy Crystal in general is Please love me, you know
[00:49:17] I think he was like I'll spend the first 10 minutes Of this movie being wildly unpleasant Is 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
[00:49:30] Audiences are gonna 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
[00:49:44] Partners for either of them Like maybe you would be happier with it It's so true all the partners you do see them with She only has kind of generic Ken doll guy And all of his other women we see him on dates with
[00:49:57] Just seem like complete empty headed bimbos 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 so little consequence And they tend to be kind of stupid
[00:50:13] 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?
[00:50:26] Right and what's his name? Jim Meg Ryan's previous? Ira Right like all of those guys Ira is a new guy But is Jim the Meg Ryan's Previous boyfriend that she's Joe, Joe, Joe, right I know that because of the way she says it on the phone
[00:50:41] When he says who got married and she goes Joe! Yes, but that 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
[00:50:55] 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
[00:51:07] Well, they need to end up together because there's no one else In the world who is as charming as these two leads You know the other thing I'd say is like You know by the time they get together they're in their 30s They've had a few relationships
[00:51:20] They know they like each other it's like yeah get together Like I feel like that's why so many not to be a cynic I know this is a Romcom the people worship of the feet of but like
[00:51:29] You know people end up just sort of being like 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
[00:51:40] 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 nominee is this year Bugsy Bugsy, bugsy No I was gonna say I think the other X factor there is Rob Reiner is still very bitter post-avert
[00:52:02] Of course this movie comes out of A similar depression to Harry of I don't think he'll ever fall in love again Playing the field having meaningless affairs Relationships that break his heart What have you and then like Three or four weeks into filming on this movie
[00:52:20] 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
[00:52:38] 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
[00:52:55] 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 what 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
[00:53:09] Because that wasn't planned Is like improvised by Billy Crystal That was improvised on set? Yes and that was the first take You know I think he might have like I'm not, that might have been like Billy sort of gave him like bullet points
[00:53:24] Of what he was gonna try to say 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 pumping his fists
[00:53:37] Going like Billy's doing it and 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
[00:53:47] That's, you can't just come up with that on the spot I think Nora gave certain points And I think Meg Ryan's a chance Because Meg Ryan was obviously less comfortable with improv That I hate you thing That was pre-planned out but part of the thing was
[00:54:00] 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
[00:54:13] 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 it's like so worshiped by screenwriters Who want to make these kind of rom-coms Right
[00:54:28] And worshiped by people probably in the wrong way Who expect like Oh I can't the person I like to 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
[00:54:42] That have been created by people in real life Trying to do something like that Yeah do a grand romantic speech And it's just really really awkward The Christian Newman story Dang This is one of those movies that definitely like Watching it not having seen it since I was
[00:54:58] 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
[00:55:10] This is how you do it Totally like this was like my fantasy Was just like you meet a nice girl Your 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
[00:55:24] Oh 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 I totally fell for it What points do we want to hit
[00:55:35] 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
[00:55:46] I would love to talk about the threesome friendship Among Lisa Jane Persky, Carrie Fisher And Meg Ryan Let's go through an order As Ben said it really is a sketch movie And a thing I thought about is It's movies like this
[00:56:02] 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
[00:56:19] It's like poignolism under a microscope Like with 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
[00:56:33] 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
[00:56:48] 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
[00:57:02] 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
[00:57:17] 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 Okay we shot the other scene when I'm walking into the restaurant
[00:57:34] 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
[00:57:46] 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
[00:57:57] 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 is leaning toward
[00:58:16] 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 fall in love a little bit Like the... Is it the Museum of Natural History?
[00:58:31] Yeah, the... No, it's at the Met The Met That his base, the Paprikash, might be like my favorite One more thing I want to mention is we had to talk about Harry Connick Jr. and just in general Not just him but the soundtrack
[00:58:45] 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
[00:58:57] But then I watch this and I'm like Even putting aside personal life This just eages better than Woody Allen That's what I want to talk about Like I mean I want to revisit my You know, snobby 80 self who was sort of saying
[00:59:12] Like ah but Woody Allen is the true artist And like look what's happened Look what has lasted over the years Yeah, there's something about Like even just doing the Harry Connick And not, you know The slight change in font style And all that sort of stuff
[00:59:28] I feel 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
[00:59:43] 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
[00:59:55] Diane Keaton and Annie Hall Obviously has a huge influence on Sally 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
[01:00:05] 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 worshipped Diane Keaton As my personal style icon and still do And a part of me thought just like
[01:00:15] They're just doing a fake Annie Hall But let me see who did the costumes It's Gloria Gresham Is the costume designer did not work on No idea who that is I don't know I just seems like a pretty Like worked on a lot of Rob Reiner movies
[01:00:30] 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
[01:00:46] And I also think Dana Like there's something about her Outfits in the movie Maybe it's not the first This might be the perfection of The wave of rom-com heroin That is defined by her layers You know? Well, the Diane Keaton outfit That you're talking about I'm assuming
[01:01:05] Is the one with this sort of wide brimmed hat Yes, well she has derby hats She wears these almost chaplain style derby hats And then she's got the pants Men's shoes She's got gloves She's got a sweater She's got a sports coat over it Like
[01:01:19] Yeah, her character is almost defined By costumes in a somewhat Silent movieish 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?
[01:01:35] Very much of his time And like That classic thing of like where men Just stop changing their fashion sense Right? You know, like this is 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
[01:01:48] 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
[01:02:07] 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
[01:02:25] Is like the sort of effortless But somehow meticulous Uh, 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
[01:02:42] Which this movie has so down Her hair also goes on a journey I can just do a quick tour through her Hair journey As they're doing the drive from Chicago She's got Farrah wings basically Right? She's got these curled frosted wings
[01:02:55] Which makes her look younger just by virtue of Wearing this really dated haircut And when he sees her Those weird bangs Oh yeah, well trying to make him Have a normal hairline is just hopeless The sideburns, the extreme sideburns Right, right, the sideburns
[01:03:09] 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 I think they're just regular college Because then they meet again They're 26 I think they're supposed to be 22 21, 22 Right
[01:03:24] Yeah, because then 12 years elapsed 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 Her hair is this story Her hair is this story 80s, yeah it's like
[01:03:35] 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 It's a crazy look Yeah, that's telegraphing that she's this yuppie The guy she's with is a yuppie
[01:03:49] 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
[01:04:03] Her hair gets curlier and curlier Right, less and less styled 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?
[01:04:15] 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 And I think every romcom after this She kind of had that like straight look
[01:04:31] So I'm glad we have like this In a little time capsule Oh yeah, no 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
[01:04:45] 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
[01:04:59] It's very sharp and straight For like 15 years 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 She has the clute hairstyle though It goes past the ears then Because she looks like
[01:05:13] And the bangs Yeah, very straight Jane Fonda Aesthetically I like hairspray And I know it's bad for the world Oh my god I think hairspray is cool The bit of business with the hairspray Ben, the bit of business with the hairspray in the car
[01:05:26] 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 is the same thing Like I just love a spray From a bottle into the hair To punctuate what you're saying
[01:05:41] Alright, so what are some other big things We need to hit? I'm trying to think of Can we talk about the lunch And they pull out the Rolodex Yes, I was just thinking of that When she's 32 and they're like You're basically fucked Get your shit together
[01:06:00] That's insane that that was a thing That's the lunch with Carrie Fisher And Lisa and Perky That's the sort of like I broke up with Joe Get out Dana's selling off for Rolodex That rules Is this still updated Dana? With the important addresses
[01:06:15] 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 Is that the first scene with Carrie Fisher?
[01:06:28] Yes, I believe that's the introduction of Carrie Fisher Carrie Fisher 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
[01:06:50] 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
[01:07:03] Right? I mean the really caustic lines Get off-loaded onto her Right, right And then, and 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 Sure And then like
[01:07:19] Hannah and her sister She's the best friend who kind of fucks you over Like she's the annoying Like Roseburn and Bridesmaid's 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
[01:07:34] Hairfisher was the fucking best Post this is when She's basically done Like she stops acting She writes postcards from the edge The next year And then movie version And then she just starts doing So much script doctoring Yeah, right She pops into things Like Drop Dead Fred
[01:07:48] Or Soap Dishware 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 Doctor Evil's therapist Yes In Awesome Powers
[01:08:03] International Man of Mystery I think genuinely a very funny performance She's very funny She's always funny She's an excellent And compelling screen presence I know, so good The Paprikash scene Well, I think I mean the Paprikash scene Fits in with the Surrey and the Fringe on top scene
[01:08:22] In that there are 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
[01:08:34] It completely works Like he is never hotter Than when he's doing the Paprikash voice In the Temple of Dendorsi Right, right 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 She a movie
[01:08:47] And this is a No Bits podcast It's a No Bits podcast But that's a good bit Okay And I appreciate throughout the movie 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
[01:09:02] 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 In comedy points And also I hope Paprikash guy Does not zoom bomb us with an ad read
[01:09:12] 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
[01:09:31] 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
[01:09:48] 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
[01:10:05] 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 in That doesn't make sense to anyone on the outside And you won't reveal it
[01:10:17] 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 is 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
[01:10:34] The Met scene We have this amazing location That scene isn't that interesting right now 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
[01:10:53] We're not gonna tell Meg Ryan about it So she has no idea That he's gonna do the voice In 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
[01:11:07] 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?
[01:11:21] 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 gonna keep filming Right? Like thinking she was getting pranked Mid-scene and Rob Reiner saying like keep going
[01:11:37] And that was the first take too Yes, it's one of those insane things So many rom-com moments are like that Like her gear snapping the box On Julia Roberts, you know, and Pretty Woman Where it's literally she's breaking character She like is reacting honestly
[01:11:52] 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 what she kinda has to get serious It's so good But then also the sharper image sequence Right?
[01:12:08] 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
[01:12:22] Outside the 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?
[01:12:37] Yeah, do you think the Soho one was more This whole one was bigger, certainly I guess I just think of Sharper Image as 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
[01:12:49] And the arch play a big part And at the end he seems to be running across Downtown, right? Yes He sees the arch and then that's what inspires him To go run to her And Max is his Lower East Side obviously
[01:12:59] That one looked like the Fifth Avenue one to me But when that establishing shot Comes up at the outside of that Sharper Image I gasped I just went like, ugh I know I held my heart The nostalgia for that kind of retail store
[01:13:14] I didn't know I missed that 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
[01:13:29] When my dad we would 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 The concept is it's like as seen on TV
[01:13:43] Merchandise but it's just a little nicer And it's stuff where you're like Does that actually work? Like I would get the catalog and circle All these things My dad would be like, that doesn't work It's not going to work We're not going to buy that
[01:13:56] We don't need that Do we remember the massaging chair Where you could put your legs into the ottoman? Yeah Then you'd like pretend to get trapped And like, ahhh! It looks like the chair they used To capture James Bond Then put the laser on him
[01:14:11] 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 is a Sharper Image, sir Well another thing
[01:14:27] 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 And he says, hey look at this thing It plays a background and you can sing Now that's so much part of our lives
[01:14:38] And of course the callback that later on When he calls her on the answering machine He's bought the karaoke machine 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
[01:14:52] 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
[01:15:04] 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
[01:15:18] 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
[01:15:32] 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 and that?
[01:15:51] 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 A person, you know? And I feel like you have those conversations Where you think back at the end of a relationship
[01:16:06] 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
[01:16:19] Like there's always like Some thing 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
[01:16:31] Rob Reiner and Nor Efren are so good at using The landscape around them As part of what makes those scenes memorable Whether it's even walking back From the disastrous double date Where Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher meet And there's that moment
[01:16:45] 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 And they start window shopping As an excuse to have their private conversation With the way that the terrain of New York
[01:16:57] Works into all of these behavioral shifts That are happening Totally, that's a Carrie Fisher ad lib The red suede pump is an ad lib? It's an ad lib, that's a Carrie Fisher And speaking about someone else on the movie Who became a screenwriter and a filmmaker themselves
[01:17:11] 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 A fucking turnaround of the two Separate conversations cross cut
[01:17:26] 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
[01:17:38] No, but it's a perfect New York City hookup joke It is That whole then like And Bruno Kirby going on about Jimmy Breslin Like, you know, he's like the sort of Like sexy version of George Costanza Bruno Kirby, you know what I mean?
[01:17:53] 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
[01:18:06] He's just like, I wrote that, I swear to God I wrote that Well of course as a writer That is the most romantic come on you can imagine Right Your word spoke to me so much I'm quoting them to who I think is a stranger
[01:18:18] 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 Picks up from this movie like long takes Yes
[01:18:35] Wanners and then like kissing like long take right You know, like 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
[01:18:48] But we kick off the movie with Billy Crystal Just having a total face mash with his initial girlfriend Yes, yeah, a lot of kissing guys And we see her making out in the airport Just everybody is constantly snogging Yeah, her making out in the airport
[01:19:02] 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 they'd be like Maybe I'll just sort of like, you know Do a circuit and see if they're not kissing
[01:19:13] 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
[01:19:29] 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
[01:19:40] His timing when his head pops up behind her On the airplane seat So good, just the use of that surface And the guy switches He recognizes her when she's doing the convoluted order That's when he picks it up He's a genuine cat because he asks publicly
[01:19:54] Like did we ever Right That he does like a fist 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
[01:20:09] There's this 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 alamode And he remembers it almost verbatim So there's that thing of like him being like
[01:20:24] I don't remember, did we shh-tup But then he remembers everything about her alamode order Like even if it was buried deep somewhere in his subconscious That knight clearly made an impact on him I think he liked her from the jump And then he wasn't mature enough
[01:20:41] 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
[01:20:58] And it just feels very true again to like 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 a sharper image, until Helen and Ira come along
[01:21:12] 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
[01:21:22] Which is like very subtly powerful film making from Rob Reiner That the way he shoots and edits the movie And the way he sort of often is using pretty shallow focus People in the background are not really visible
[01:21:40] 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
[01:21:54] 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
[01:22:10] 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 Oh yes, later in Allison Hannigan And I believe that was on the London stage So bizarre
[01:22:22] I mean London had this post This Is Our Youth Which you know was done on the west end With Jake Gyllenhaal and Hayden Christensen and Anna Pakwin London had this boom of like
[01:22:35] What's a movie that we can just put some stars in like a stage version of it As quick as possible Because the graduate production happens The graduate, yes There's a bunch of them And that is one of the oddest ones Luke Perry and Allison Hannigan So weird
[01:22:50] Those are people who are sort of from separate generations As TV stars as well They're kind of sort of ten years apart But I mean I do not see it so much in there I mean I do not see Luke Perry
[01:23:03] But I don't see him doing the ethnic New York guy thing Absolutely not Allison Hannigan would be a better Billy than Luke Perry She'd probably be a pretty good Billy She could do it She has the neuroses to her Talk about that AFI 100 Funniest List
[01:23:21] It's one of those things where like With my little checklist The movies that I prioritized wanting to watch after that Where the movies like those AFI specials And tiny little excerpts of the movies Intercut with talking heads of people going like That movie changed everything
[01:23:38] 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?
[01:23:49] 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 He finds her box with all the index cards With all her VHSs alphabetized
[01:24:05] 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
[01:24:22] About someone after you slept with them Well, her apartment Her whole apartment is kind of crazy, right? She stuffed penguins on her headboard I couldn't stand the wicker There's just something that's really little girly About her apartment And it's like, that's such a weird thing
[01:24:37] 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 VHSs are Like everything about that is so strange
[01:24:54] But it's so telling to her personality It goes with the apple pie ala mode order Right, all of her OCD traits 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
[01:25:07] 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, what weirdos have movie collections How dare you Okay, well actually you know what
[01:25:23] Shut the fuck up Physical movie collections Okay, actually Ben Shut the fuck up Okay, wow You know what you would have liked a letter box Yes, Sally would have wanted one Her system would make sense now Right, her system's woollen
[01:25:33] Her system would make sense to organize your digital media Totally Let's talk about 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
[01:25:45] 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 Want to name his emotional state Like terror, dread
[01:26:00] One foot out on the floor Like one foot ready out the door 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
[01:26:12] 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
[01:26:28] And the guy looking panicked like that Or the woman looking freaked out like that 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
[01:26:41] But that first time jump is However long their first sex lasted Right, you're right And that makes it a call back To his earlier thing on the plane About oh we're just men They're just lying They're thinking about how long
[01:26:53] 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
[01:27:05] 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 They had it all live With three separate cameras
[01:27:22] 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
[01:27:38] And it took 61 times 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 Because the exposition happens Adieu Like the exposition happens
[01:27:52] 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 persons there It's very like pillow talk It's very like Rom Com's idea Carrie and Bruno also like
[01:28:05] Kind of making up excuses Or like examples of what is on In the background while the other Like it's just so plain That's Brian Gumbel Right, like Bill and Crystal was like That's the most difficult scene I've ever had to do in my life
[01:28:17] 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
[01:28:32] 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
[01:28:46] You're not going to cut Even though you're waiting for your moment To say your 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
[01:29:00] Have those three final lines to each other Bruno Kirby blew his life Oh, wow And Rob Reiner was like Are we ever going to 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
[01:29:18] 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 amazing
[01:29:29] I'll never see that scene the same way again It's incredible It's fucking incredible I mean talking about framing Dana And you are such an authority on Silent film comedy But there's that thing I think That's what I always said That like drama is a close up
[01:29:44] 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
[01:29:59] 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 own really good style With oneers and long takes And all that sort of stuff And then she's like
[01:30:12] I mean it's just a great way to See the big 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
[01:30:29] 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 And action in the same moment And all that sort of stuff
[01:30:41] 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 over shot And people just covering it too much And editing too much But I think Reiner realized And Efron realized that
[01:30:57] In a modern, varied dialogue comedy It's still as important to have things Play out on wide shots as much as possible Because the magic trick isn't Keaton landing on the grill Of an airplane, of a train And dropping the log right onto the tracks At the perfect moment
[01:31:16] 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 Bervera act of performance Which immediately gets deflated If you cut to a close up So you have to cut to a close up
[01:31:31] 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 just like a crazy well directed movie I think it's good to talk about this
[01:31:47] Because this is seen as a fluffy movie Especially at the time And like, you know There's good cinema here 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
[01:32:01] And can we talk about that And maybe Griffin, you know something About the genesis of that idea? Because those are actors, correct? Based in 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
[01:32:18] In Castle Rock Am I getting that right? Is now the head of Disney pictures After being the head of one of others Are you talking about Andrew Scheinman? Andrew Scheinman is the... No, I'm talking about Alan Horn So I'm sorry Alan Horn is a Castle Rock guy Yes
[01:32:31] Right, Alan Horn came out of Castle Rock 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 Disney
[01:32:42] 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 And Alan Horn's parents who were older Are clearly having a hard time finding it
[01:33:01] 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 gonna talk to Alan Horn's parents I wanna make him ambitio included in the conversation Sure So he has small talk
[01:33:15] Asked them how did you meet And they tell the story that is I think the first story in the movie If I was with my third wife I see this woman I tell myself This is the woman I'm gonna marry And three weeks later We are married
[01:33:28] We've 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 weren't good on camera
[01:33:42] You know people who aren't actors They talk off 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
[01:33:55] Cut down the dialogue 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 senses It is amazing Another perfectly executed scene Those two actors kill it
[01:34:15] But it's both real stories And actors taking their cues From the way the real people Told their stories There's a key to the fact That those stories were filmed With the non-actors first And they had that as reference material I also like the one where the woman
[01:34:30] The tiny old woman just 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 And that was it? I knew
[01:34:46] But yeah, no 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 But we never met in New York
[01:34:59] We were in the impasse to the hotel in Chicago The third floor was 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
[01:35:12] Is just another one of those crazy stories That you never would believe It reminds me of you two Of you two? Griffin and Dave are always finishing Each other's sentence talking about some weird movie stuff Sure, I mean Dave and I are the modern Harry and Sally
[01:35:28] I thought you were talking about Bono in the end Another Harry and Sally They had a meet cute for sure The thing it makes me think of is Of the mockumentary style of Spinal Tap Something that Reiner had already proved he was good at
[01:35:40] These kind of moments that seemed like they couldn't Possibly be scripted But they somehow are And Reiner was like so good In this window of being just like This incredible kind of Completely unpretentious Studio filmmaker Who could adapt his style pragmatically To whatever that project demanded, you know?
[01:36:01] I think that was what blew people away so much At the time, it 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
[01:36:15] 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?
[01:36:28] 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
[01:36:40] 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
[01:36:52] Title for the script that was bad So when we, how they met Something like that How they met Right, and on during production On set he would say like There's a contest, any crew member Can pitch me a new title And if you get the right title
[01:37:10] I'll pay you $200 It was a case of champagne that he promised It was a case of champagne Do you know who was that finally picked the title? I don't, that's a good question They need to come forward for their champagne You know, you have to be very
[01:37:24] 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
[01:37:42] 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 romcom titles Is how interchangeable they are It's just always right
[01:37:56] 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 It's not associated at all with the specific characters The pad nozzle joke is feeling kind of sort of But as Rob Reiner said
[01:38:10] 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
[01:38:26] 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 inaccurate They did not meet her Most people don't know this It's a very New York-y thing to know
[01:38:42] 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
[01:39:00] Have the waiter come around Katz's is more bus boys 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
[01:39:14] And go like I want like bratwurst And then they write it on your ticket And then when you leave You pay $18 for a sandwich They don't let you through the turnstile Until you pay Is Katz also like ever that quiet To have a conversation like that
[01:39:30] Or is it also just not quiet Because of when Harry met Sally 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
[01:39:44] In the line waiting for the ticket at Katz's Right? That's effective There's no table to slam down on No and the joke doesn't work Unless a waiter is coming and asking So what are you having Well I'm looking at the other Sally's Elizabeth Perkins, Susan Day
[01:40:02] Elizabeth McGovern, Molly Ringwald Like these were all people who were Going to be Sally 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
[01:40:20] 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 fricking shower scene Or whatever it's just Of course it can still be funny It can still have an impact
[01:40:36] You learn about it in fricking 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 Screamed at people just losing their
[01:40:52] Fucking minds that you still couldn't Hear the following scene after that I think also because the People are probably starting to shift in their Seats And you just think there's no way They're going to end the scene With a release valve that strong
[01:41:08] There is no way they can actually Do it I mean what was it like seeing in Theatres Dana like even as someone Who was a little resistant to the movie at the time People were just losing their fucking minds I remember in general that the movie
[01:41:22] Went over huge you know And that that was a scene everyone loved I just 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
[01:41:36] But I think that there might actually be a Vaudvillian 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
[01:41:48] I forget what it is but whatever they cut to next The first 15 to 20 seconds Are not super important I think that'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
[01:42:04] Obviously the star 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 unequal And it's also that thing of like When someone makes a joke
[01:42:20] About them having sex The weird level of intimacy The conversation then has after it Because it's like 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
[01:42:36] 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 If this is being
[01:42:52] 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't
[01:43:06] Hear the orgasms, you know Well that's the 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 Where you see it was written by a woman
[01:43:20] Is that it's total one-upmanship on 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
[01:43:32] 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 And to make Billy Crystal laugh
[01:43:46] So that's the moment where her character has So much more agency And humor than any female Woody Allen character has ever allowed Totally and that's because of Nora Efron, like Reiner said I never would have written that scene
[01:44:00] 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
[01:44:12] Rather than a movie that is solely based around A 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
[01:44:26] 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
[01:44:36] 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 think it's just the most successful It's just the most successful
[01:44:48] 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
[01:45:00] 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 I can like feel the heat Emanating off of her Her nerves Understanding how much the scene
[01:45:16] 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
[01:45:28] I'm gonna have to cut yeah 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
[01:45:38] And they had to see a scene where they have like so many extras On set you know And so many strangers That she was doing a couple takes kind of timid And then Rob Reiner was like
[01:45:48] Meg Meg Meg, stand up let me sit in the chair for a second And Rob Reiner essentially gave her A line reading of The entire Orc Battle I wish I could see that I was gonna say I wish the footage existed
[01:46:02] A he was like I wanna show you How big you need to go You'll make it your own 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
[01:46:24] Do it I say with all love So that like Meg Ryan is never gonna 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
[01:46:42] Probably laughing at Rob Reiner trying to do this Made her just feel like okay I'm safe now Like they're not gonna giggle that much at me They're not gonna judge me, you know It's another really smart piece Of directing on his point
[01:46:56] 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
[01:47:08] 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 identify some specific thing I'm getting at usually based on rhythm
[01:47:24] And you're gonna 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
[01:47:36] Where he could say like You gotta say the line like da-dun-da-dun-da-da Like it has to be the da-dun 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
[01:47:50] 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 The Mark Shaman Harry Connick Jr. music Mhmm Man, Harry Connick Jr. That guy is Really an aphrodisiac Just like hearing him
[01:48:10] Saying I was like 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's sort of great American song Book type piano Bar Vibe is like cool again
[01:48:26] That 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
[01:48:38] 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
[01:48:50] Your ex, Missed the Saturday Dance Heard they crowded the floor 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
[01:49:04] 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 there Well there's the seasonal structure After the two five year jumps
[01:49:20] Are over and we're in the present day It's basically a Christmas movie 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
[01:49:32] 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 between those two And during that year is when they have sex Regret it, Jessen
[01:49:44] And Bruno get, sorry what's his name Jessen Jess and, oh boy, Marie Yeah, right But them buying the Christmas tree together Yeah And it feels so New York specific Of just her struggling with the tree She's a raggedy Being defeated when she gets into her apartment
[01:50:04] He's like leaving the message Everything's mirrored right The stuff you saw them do together she has to do alone But that's like Any good rom-com Has some degree of mirroring But also kind of needs to end on a callback Like every good rom-com
[01:50:20] 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
[01:50:36] I know David you like even more than me Sure What did it end up even being called The one with Zoe Kazan And Daniel Radcliffe where they changed the title In America it's called What If Elsewhere it's called The F Word Great movie Recently rewatched it, still good
[01:50:54] 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 brings the sandwich Or she brings the sandwich or whatever
[01:51:06] But it's one of those things where when they set Up the sandwich in the movie You're like I get it You identify it as like that's the thing that's going to come back And this movie has the confidence to make The callbacks Very small and subtle
[01:51:20] I mean the callback is The year between these two parties It's the environment 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
[01:51:36] Like if you were just going for it We're friends and then yeah How much changes in that year But it's also just that New Year's Eve Is the time where you go like Jeez where was I a year ago and two years ago And three years ago
[01:51:50] Where you really start to chart the passage of time And what's mattered to you and what hasn't And they also just do that super Elegant montage Of All the quick Shots of their various moments When he's in Washington Square Park
[01:52:06] Which I grew up right by Washington Square Park At big running things About downtown Grafienums A big running theme of this North Afron mini series Is Seeing New York Depicted on film and me crying Because I no longer can go To the locations of the city
[01:52:24] 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 I don't even know if that cafe still exists
[01:52:40] But there's just this great New York moment Of just hanging out with your friends Talking about your messed up relationships And drinking wine and it was just Nostalgia for Carrie Fisher But also nostalgia for just New York And socializing
[01:52:54] It's hard to not be nostalgic for socializing right now I know The arch In Washington Square Park was like What I saw outside my bedroom window Humble brag But it is one of those things that like Is such a point of nostalgia and
[01:53:10] Retrospection for me because I've seen it at 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
[01:53:22] 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
[01:53:36] 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 In the last 90 minutes Also that montage
[01:53:50] That montage feels like Having memories Of your relationship like it just feels So real to me it really It feels like how memories play in your mind Made me cry really hard that moment I had forgotten he saw The couple too he sees them
[01:54:06] Kissing outside and then it cuts To his face and you know just in that moment And he's like I wish I was with Sally right now Right, yeah. And that calls back to what she said When she tells him about her breakup with Joe
[01:54:16] 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
[01:54:28] 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 like sleeves And just this weird pattern on the front It is super 80s
[01:54:46] 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 In New York
[01:55:00] They do I just don't think they would have such a princessy Wedding with the dad giving her away And maybe that's just a Hollywood thing That's just how you did weddings and movies then I think it's a little bit of a Hollywood thing
[01:55:12] 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 Ephron Totally Yeah I mean in that scene what stands out to me Is that you're a big tits You're perfect nightmare
[01:55:30] I mean it's a perfect line That's a great line And the bit of business where Sally gets the Orderve that's a shrimp with a pee pod Wrapped around it also very 80s And she just uses it fantastically in that scene She gestures with it She twiddles with it
[01:55:46] 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 Nora Ephron being A sort of underrated Food filmmaker Julia And directed So her final film is the one that is Explicitly about food
[01:56:08] 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
[01:56:26] 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 a place like Cats' and doing it in a group Versus doing it on a date
[01:56:40] And all these things 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 her food is always really important And she's very attuned And she was a great appreciator of food
[01:56:56] She cooked a lot in her real life But she's very attuned to the role that Food has In our lives and informing relationships I think Well, and Billy Crystal's observations about the Malomar being the great cookie Which we hear in voiceover I also love how that voiceover
[01:57:14] I usually can't stand the use of Voiceover in movies When it hasn't been established And yet in this movie it works perfectly It defies a logic It's another word of those things where it's like I don't know why that works
[01:57:28] 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 It's just after they sleep together And then back to the food thing They're like, oh we'll get dinner tonight
[01:57:40] And then that's when they both kind of Like oh it was a mistake Oh the awkward salad crunching 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 Because then the scene just awkwardly ends
[01:57:54] 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? And the final example of it
[01:58:16] 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
[01:58:30] 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 Of too much voiceover of him fetishizing Everything he likes
[01:58:46] And then this movie just drops it in a 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 Which is another just perfect like sketch Baby talk But Carrie Fisher makes coffee
[01:59:06] With like a Z-bars Like coffee bag Just like immediately just like got so Nostalgic and like 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
[01:59:20] Get a little political here for a second Oh boy I'm joking The American delicatis 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 cats is deli scene
[01:59:36] I ordered delivery from a local Deli catessen 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
[01:59:52] I just want to say during the pandemic During this time when a lot of really 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
[02:00:06] Because I've seen some My mom got me a box from them for my birthday It was very nice A lot of these delis I think cats is does this too Sgt. Russ and Daughters you can order stuff Ship to you anywhere Nationwide
[02:00:20] 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
[02:00:34] What is she 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 I'm going to google this right now While we do the box office game
[02:00:48] Something with sauce on the side 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 knew that That was my favorite one
[02:01:06] The Soho one was bigger but something about that one Felt fancier because it was near like You know Central Park everything This film platformed in the summer Which you would never do now Like it opened It's first weekend it opened on less than a thousand screens
[02:01:22] To like one million dollars And yet it makes 92 million dollars It was a huge hit It multiplied really well Big word of mouth hit What was the final total? 92 So It's first weekend it's limited But it opened in the summer July 14th
[02:01:42] 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 is But a lot of these ephron movies open in the summer As we've been finding out That's back comedies I'm still searching for an answer
[02:02:00] He's obviously eating a pastrami All it mentions is that she's eating coleslaw Because the main thing you see her eating Is fork fulls of coleslaw I'm still trying to figure out what Sam was having Well after the orgasm ends and she looks at him
[02:02:12] 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 One final moment of very Rob Reiner timing
[02:02:24] I want to say before we go back to the box office Remember this the scene Where Bruno Kirby and Billy Crystal Are in the batting cages He realized for framing because he wanted To get it only from two angles Where you can do reverse on the two sides
[02:02:38] Of their separate cages 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 American pastime
[02:02:56] 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
[02:03:16] He did to a woman in bed She meowed he made her meow He made her meow and then Bruno Kirby Like mind blown drops his bat Turns around looks to Billy Crystal She meow You can do that, that happened And then three balls, five past
[02:03:32] Bruno Kirby quickly while he's not paying Attention. Also the button To that scene is perfect where he's 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
[02:03:46] Okay box office the movie comes out In the middle of the summer. What is it open Again David? A million dollars It's opening limited. I mean semi-limited Opened up 700 screens The day is when you could open to a million And make it to 92 Yeah exactly, that's what's
[02:04:02] Crazy but number one of the box office Big action sequel 17 million dollars in its second week Lethal weapon too? That's right I always guess one of the lethal weapons When you say action sequel There's actually yeah, that's a fair point There's not a lot of action sequels
[02:04:18] Yeah it's a safe guess. It's a good starting guess Number two is the biggest 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 For lethal weapon 3 it was back again
[02:04:30] Because they couldn't think of a better tackling Yup I have broken down The absolutely demented lethal weapon 3 poster on this podcast before I can't remember when or where Riggs and Myrta were the secret in Roy Of 80's cinema They were the ultimate magicians and the magic was back
[02:04:46] They kept coming back Number two of the box office is the biggest movie of the year It's 1989 It's the film called Batman Batman Bartman So that would be the Michael Keaton Batman That's the Michael Keaton Tim Burton Batman Did you see that in theaters Dana
[02:05:04] If we're talking about sort of snobby I'm sure I must have I know I saw Sex Lies in videotape Sure I think I probably would have seen Batman Classic great year That's another example of just like Dana can you imagine how Quickly critics would
[02:05:22] Run to bow at the Alter of a modern superhero Movie with the aesthetics of the cabinet Of Dr. Caligari Like a superhero movie looked like that And had that tone today people would be like Where did this come from Rightfully so, understandably so In 1999
[02:05:40] 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 budget sizes in the process
[02:05:56] Well in 1989 it's the birth of the superhero thing And it's the birth of American indie movies Sex Lies, videotape mystery trainers This year like you know it's a lot of Drugs to recovery Just do the right thing That's a huge shift is like
[02:06:12] The fact that you have Sex Lies and videotapes And Mr. Train and those other movies Starting to make an impact Made independently means that Within a couple of years universal would never Make do the right thing again Like that movie does not get made in a studio system
[02:06:26] It gets made for independent financing And goes to a film festival Alright, number three at the box office It's a kids comedy I definitely saw it not in theaters I think I would have been too young For a very long time I think it's a very good concept
[02:06:42] Very good concept, star driven Or is the star the concept Has a star, has a serious I would say a comedy star of the era But not star driven Not animated but very visual effects heavy Is it a Robin Williams movie? No Is it Who Killed Roger Rabbit?
[02:07:00] Nope, these are all good guesses That's 87 right? We'll be covering soon High 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 Me saying huge is kind of a giveaway Oh, it's
[02:07:18] Honey I Shrunk the Kids Great movie Was their highest grossing live action Film for a long time It made like $200 million, huge It's got big bugs Like everything's big in it It's crazy That movie was written by And developed to be directed by Stuart Gordon
[02:07:40] The director of Reanimator And Castle Freak Also the guy who was the first person Ever stage a mammoth play in Chicago Came out of the Chicago theater And that was supposed to be his big studio breakthrough And the reason he didn't Direct the movie, do you know this?
[02:07:56] I don't know He quit On the grounds That he would not let him give the film His original intended title Oh, I do know this What could have been better? Honey I Shrunk the Kids Teeny Weenies Dana, he decided to die on the Hill of Teeny Weenies
[02:08:18] That movie would not have been a hit If it was not called Honey I Shrunk the Kids Honey I Shrunk the Kids, the title is Half the Gross It's three quarters of the gross That's the entire success of that movie The movie is surprisingly good
[02:08:32] But the success is that the poster Had that title And you went, I get it, I understand 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 are three movies
[02:08:46] You also have Honey I, We Blew Up the Kid Honey I Blew Up the Kid Honey We Shrunk Ourselves It's perfect, Honey I Blank is so evocative I just love that he was like I will be proven correct, history is Witten by the Rinners
[02:09:02] Watch this movie fail when it is titled Honey I Shrunk the Kids And I will be able to sit back and tell myself It should have been called Teeny Weenies Alright, Griffin Number four at the box office Is another action sequel, much longer Running Franchise
[02:09:18] 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 It's kind of a section of the franchise Interesting, is there a recasting After this point? There's a recasting After this, yeah
[02:09:34] So is this the last Roger Moore No. Or is it the last Timothy Dalton Correct, correct So it's For your eyes only The Living Daylights No, that's the first Dalton What's License to Kill The weirdly dark Bond movie Includes an exploding head Wow, I've never seen either
[02:09:58] It's very Miami Vicey because Miami Vice was cool So it has like Latin drug lords It has Benicio del Toro It's weird and the tone is off Some people appreciate it but it was not popular I've never seen either Yeah we should do some Bond things I mean
[02:10:16] It's interesting because she comes up in The Sleepless in Seattle episode obviously But the weird kind of A career pocket that Carrie Lowell had Carrie Lowell is the Bond girl in that movie Where she was in so many culturally important
[02:10:28] 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 She has more screen time With Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle
[02:10:42] Than Meg Ryan does Yet Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks become the pair You know, I just I mean she's dead in Sleepless in Seattle It all makes sense, I'm just saying it's interesting How she was like there at so many Different formative moments Yeah
[02:10:58] Number five, let's just wrap this up Because we've been talking for a while Is a movie that is in its 1,900 Second week in the box office Literally? That is what the numbers is putting you that I'm sure this is a re-release of a Children's classic
[02:11:16] It's a Disney re-release Fuck That's when I was a kid This is how I saw a lot of those Disney movies Like the Jungle Book or whatever, they would put them back out Well that was the first movie I ever saw Was the Jungle Book re-release
[02:11:30] I saw it at the Quad But that was a year or two after this So I know it's not the Jungle Book And they tend to cycle them It's a 50s Disney No, that's also Is it 101 Dalmatians? No, although that's agreement In 2009's the year I'm born Humblebrag
[02:11:50] 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 Is it a princess? No Bambi? Nope, great movie, all 40s Not Dumbo, not Bambi Fantasia?
[02:12:12] No, that's 40s as well 50s is Is it the cats when they eat the pasta The aristocats? Oh, you're thinking of Lady and the Tramp Lady and the Tramp, but it wasn't that The dogs eating the pasta Is it racist cats in both of those? That's true
[02:12:30] In Lady and the Tramp there are more severe racist cats Okay, wait, rescuers is 70s 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, uh The wizard? Nope, not Sword and the Stone
[02:12:48] Is it the title of the character's name? Yes It's a big movie guys, big one Our listeners are 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
[02:13:04] Disney doesn't own this This is public domain, anyone can make a movie Of this Diamond and the powder I can't find any There's so many movies, there's so many There's so many movie versions of this Peter Pan? Peter Pan I got it It's a big one to miss
[02:13:24] I feel like even though It's universally-culturally Everyone remembers 8 things from Peter Pan 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, still
[02:13:38] of the visual tropes we associate with Peter Pan now come from that movie. Yeah, and the 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.
[02:13:51] She's in every Disney movie. But also just 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.
[02:14:05] 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. Yeah, so Peter Pan. Wow. That's that's it. That's the box office.
[02:14:22] You got a lot of sequels as well. You got a last crusade. It got Ghostbusters 2. Do the right thing is in the top 10 along with Weekend at Bernie's. So two pillars of 1999. This is a Bernie's is such a good movie.
[02:14:36] This is like the first really modern box office summer where it's like Ghostbusters 2 lethal weapon to big 10 pole type movie right in the indy 3 because like I think Batman becomes the biggest opening weekend of all time and then
[02:14:52] Ghostbusters immediately dethrones it or vice versa something like the record is broken two consecutive weekends in a row. All right. We got 89 feels to me like a very pivotal movie year. You if you guys ever focus on a year you should do an 80 no it's an underratedly
[02:15:08] important because of the amount of indie movies that are breaking out like you know that's sort of mix of blockbuster and the amount of blockbusters and franchises and there's another huge industry redefining release of 1989 Disney the little mermaid downtown Griffey noobs.
[02:15:25] 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 the fifth like you know that's when Al Pacino comes back with Sea of Love like Al Pacino
[02:15:39] 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 God this is a lot let's just pick driving Miss Daisy a specific sure like let's not wait
[02:15:52] 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
[02:16:07] to American beauty I feel like 2019 was a big year and it goes to Green Book or that would know I'm sorry that was this was a good year actually this is a parasite no but yeah 2018 Green Book I mean obviously right the Bonnie and
[02:16:19] Clyde year where 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 parasite still goes to your theory that the nine year is a pivotal year nine
[02:16:30] years to do a series where you go through some decades and grab but 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
[02:16:44] next year depending on what interesting blinkies 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 yeah wow 89s interesting year yeah Dana thank you so
[02:17:00] much for being a show really quick yeah just cuz like Dana I know you're you know a lot about silent film yeah trying to 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
[02:17:13] oh boy how do you feel about loud movies movies everything's loud screaming loud sound effects the music's too loud I mean this brother's did one last year right that's loud cinema yeah that movie is someone constantly in your ear going like more of that please my whole
[02:17:38] reaction to that movie is like congratulations I'm agitated for the day right you accomplished that and Ben was like bopping along with it oh yeah Ben isn't satisfied with a talkie he wants a screamy instead of it's the
[02:17:54] train it should be the crane the crane coming into the same great yeah let's bring this screen kills everyone in the theater right arrival of the crane at station Dana thank you so much for being on the show you're one of the best
[02:18:12] it's such a pleasure I love this show I love the freewheelingness of it I love that there's not the sense as on the other podcast I do it slay that my stupid stuff is gonna be cut out my stupid stuff is just gonna be we're Lucy Goosey
[02:18:27] 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 late plus it's a time to support the things you care about if you have any
[02:18:40] disposable and I understand may 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
[02:18:54] 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 frigging cheap compared to most of the things out there it's a bit less than a dime a
[02:19:04] day and I'm telling you a lot of content and this guy Trump he's telling me the economy is gonna come back better than ever next year so you just got to do one year at the low rate and then next year you'll be a billionaire next
[02:19:14] year everyone's gonna be a billionaire he promises that that a hundred percent is gonna be his campaign platform for reelection right like hey wait I know the economy collapse but I swear to God I literally promise everyone's gonna
[02:19:27] be a billionaire next year fuck the world everything's bad thank you for being on the show when Harry Met Sally is good flashback is good slate culture gab fest is good and Nora Efron's good I'm excited to do this
[02:19:41] mini series we've recorded a good chunk of them now and boy are these movies are 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
[02:19:55] first 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 this is the Julie Kavanaugh I love it oh I love it now I wish I were doing
[02:20:12] that one okay I'll listen it's so good everyone tune in it's a great episode but she'lls a great guest I think we got good guests for this whole mini series I think it's gonna be a really fun one so please continue listening and
[02:20:24] thank you and please remember to rate review subscribe go to red dot blank tech dot com for some real nerdy shit go to patreon.com back slash blink check for special features where I think we're finally we're filling up
[02:20:39] finishing up Toy Story now starting yeah yeah we're in the middle of that we're transitioning into submission impossible into some impossible missions and thanks to and for good oh for social media and also for co-producing this show Rachel Jacobs for her editing help and lame
[02:20:57] coming for a theme song Joe Bonaparte rounds for our artwork and thank you all for being you and a time like this there's nobody like you I don't know what I'm saying and there's a come on and as always and as always Billy Crystal can
[02:21:19] get it as long as he has a beard Griffin are you just gonna reenact the fake orgasm scene no we're gonna do how you're gonna start us off it feels too dangerous okay too risky sure