9 extra floors

 

Another older-couple interview in When Harry Met Sally... - the husband and wife in this interview, telling their story of how they met, they overlap, and talk over each other - it's so funny, and typical....

**  husband:  We were both born in the same hospital...

wife:  In 1921...

husband:  Seven days apart!

wife:  In the same hospital.

husband:  We both grew up - one block away from each other...!

wife:  We lived in tenements -

husband:  ...On the Lower East Side...

wife:  On Delancey Street.

husband:  My family moved to the Bronx

wife:  He lived on Fordham Road...

husband:  Hers moved when she was eleven.

wife:  I lived on 183rd Street.

husband:  For six years, she worked - on the fifth floor, as a nurse...

wife:  I worked for a very prominent neurologist...

husband:  ...Where I had a practice, on the fourteenth floor, the very same building...

wife:  (in a hushed tone) - "We - never - met."

husband:  ...(same hushed tone) - Never (nev-ah) met.

wife:  Can you imagine that?

husband:  You know where we met?  In an elevator...

wife:  I was visiting ...

husband:  In the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago.

wife:  He was on the third floor, I was on the twelfth.

husband:  I rode up nine extra floors, just to keep talking to her. ...(!)

wife (in a tone of dreamy wonderment) - - - "Nine extra floors."

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"but I never forgot her"

 

In the movie When Harry Met Sally... there are these brief little interview scenes where an older married couple are speaking to an interviewer.  You don't see the person doing the interview, only the couple.

** wife:  We fell in love in high school.

husband:  Yeah, we were high-school sweethearts.

wife:  But then after our junior year, his parents moved away.

husband:  But I never forgot her.

wife:  He never forgot me.

husband:  Naa-ah, her face was burned on my brain. - And - it was thirty-four years later, that I was walking down Broadway, and I saw her come out of Toffenetti's.  

wife:  We both looked at each other.  And it was just as though not a single day had gone by.

husband:  She was just as beautiful as she was at sixteen.

wife:

(she puts her hand affectionately on his arm) - He was just the same.  -- He looked exactly the same!

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Woody Allen influence in When Harry Met Sally...

 

When I saw When Harry Met Sally... in 1989, when it came out, I noticed a lot of Woody Allen influence in the movie.

        If you're making a movie and you're going to be influenced, and inspired, by another filmmaker, it might as well be one of the best.  

There's the scene right before the end of the movie where Harry (played by Billy Crystal) runs across the streets of New York City, to get to the woman he has realized he loves.  It's similar to a scene at the end of Woody Allen's 1979 film Manhattan.

        There's a scene in a book-store - Sally and Marie are browsing, and Marie notices there's a guy looking at Sally; "Someone is staring at you in 'Personal Growth'" - it's Harry.    

    

        In Annie Hall, a book-store is a backdrop for the early part of Alvy and Annie's relationship.  They're shopping.  Alvy (played by Woody Allen) says, "I'm going to buy you this book on death and dying - instead of that cat book."

And then later, when Alvy and Annie are breaking up (while noting, "we can always come back together"...), they're going through their books and Annie says, "All the books about death and dying are yours.  All the poetry books are mine."

        Alvy:  "Well - you - put your name in all my books...."

In When Harry Met Sally, there's a scene where Marie and Jess are setting up house together and Harry (still in pain from his divorce) warns them, "put your name in your books right now, before they get mixed up, and you don't know whose is whose..."

-------------------------------------------------

        Also in When Harry Met Sally they discuss and reference the 1942 American film, Casablanca.  Casablanca is a major presence in the 1972 Woody Allen movie, Play It Again, Sam.

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Mr. Zero

         In When Harry Met Sally... there's a scene where Harry and Jess are at a football game.  They have this conversation while participating in "The Wave" where they stand up with their hands up in the air and then sit down again, while the people in the next section stand up and then sit down.

Jess:  When did this happen?

Harry:  Friday.  Helen comes home from work and she says, 'I don't know if I want to be married anymore.'  Like it's the institution, you know, like it's nothing personal, just something she's been thinking about in a casual way.

I'm calm.  I say, 'Why don't we take some time to think about it,' you know, 'don't rush into anything.'

Jess:  Yeah.  Right.

Harry:  Next day, she says she's thought about it, and she wants a trial separation.  She just wants to try it, she says, but we can still date. ...

        Then she tells me that somebody in her office is going to South America and she can sublet his apartment.  I can't believe this.  And the doorbell rings.  'I can sublet his apartment.'  The words are still hanging in the air, you know, like a balloon attached to her mouth...

Jess:  Like a cartoon.

Harry:  Right.  So I go to the door, and there are moving men there.  Now I start to get suspicious.  I say, 'Helen, when did you call these movers?'  And she doesn't say anything.  So I ask the movers:  'When did this woman book you for this gig?'

        And they're just standing there.  Three huge guys, one of them wearing a T-shirt that says, 'Don't fuck with Mister Zero.'  

        So I said, 'Helen.  When did you make this arrangement?'  She says, 'A week ago.'  I said, 'You've known for a week, and you didn't tell me?'

        And she says, 'I didn't want to ruin your birthday.'

Jess:  You're saying Mr. Zero knew you were getting a divorce a week before you did?

Harry:  Mr. Zero knew.

Jess:  I can't believe this.

Harry:  I haven't told you the bad part, yet.

Jess:  What could be worse than Mr. Zero knowing?

Harry:  It's all a lie.  She's in love with somebody else.  Some tax attorney.  She moved in with him.

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attractive

 

        Before the restaurant scene in When Harry Met Sally... where Sally, Harry, Jess, and Marie have supper, the movie shows Marie and Sally walking together, on the way to the restaurant, talking about the upcoming date.

Sally tells Marie if she and Harry get together, then we won't "drift apart," the way people always drift apart if one of them marries someone who doesn't know their friends.

        It cuts to Harry and Jess walking together toward the meeting place, and conversing.

Jess:  I don't know about this.

Harry:  It's just a dinner.

Jess:  I've finally gotten to a place in my life, where I'm comfortable with the fact that it's just me and my work.

(pause) - If she's so great, why aren't you taking her out?

Harry:  How many times do I have to tell ya, - we're just friends.

Jess:  So you're saying, she's not that attractive.

Harry:  No, I told you, she is attractive.

Jess: But, you also said she had a good personality.

Harry:  She has a good personality.

[Jess stops walking, and puts his hands up in despair.]

Harry:  What?

Jess:  When someone's not that attractive, they're always described as having a good personality.

Harry:  Look.  If you had asked me, 'What does she look like' and I said, 'She has a good personality' - that means she's not attractive.  But just because I happen to mention that she has a good personality, she could be either.  She could be attractive with a good personality, or not attractive with a good personality.

Jess:  So which one is she?

Harry:  Attractive.

Jess: (pointing a finger, for emphasis) - "But not beautiful, right?"

LOL.  It's so funny.  Suddenly, the more they talk and the more Jess gets wound up, no one is good enough for him - (and he, himself, is ok-looking, but he's no Richard Gere. ...)

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a passing quotation

 

In When Harry Met Sally..., Marie says, "Restaurants are to people in the '80s what theater was to people in the '60s," and then adds, "I read that in a magazine."

        And Jess says, "I wrote that!"

Marie:  Get outta here!

Jess:  No - I did! - I wrote that.

Marie:  I've never quoted anything from a magazine in my life!  That's amazing!

(She glances at Harry and Sally) -

Don't you think that's amazing?  And you wrote it?!

---------------------------------------------------

        Harry and Sally brought their friends Jess (Harry's friend) and Marie (Sally's friend) together for this social occasion; they think maybe Marie and Harry will be interested in each other, and maybe Jess will like Sally and ask her out.

        But it works the other way - at first neither of the set-ups, Harry and Marie; nor Sally and Jess are taking any interest in each other.

Then Jess and Marie find common ground in this wild coincidence of her quoting his article - Jess says, with amazed satisfaction, "Nobody has ever quoted me back to me, before."

Now - Jess and Marie are "into each other."

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...restaurants have become too important

 

In the movie When Harry Met Sally... there's a part where Harry and Sally invite their two friends out on a double date, hoping their friends will "hit it off".

        From the start, it isn't going too well.  They're out at a restaurant.  Time to order - 

Harry:  "So - what are we gonna order?"

Sally:  "Well, I'm going to start with the grilled radicchio."

Harry:  "Jess, Sally is a great orderer.  Not only does she always pick the best thing on the menu, but she orders it in a way that even the chef didn't know how good it could be!"

Jess:  "I think restaurants have become too important."

Marie:  "Oohh - I agree. - Restaurants are to people in the Eighties, what theater was to people in the Sixties."

(Her tone changes, a little - she downshifts) - "I read that in a magazine."

Jess (immensely startled) - "I wrote that!" 

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