Everyone knows that scene from “Harry and Sally” (1989), set at Katz’s Delicatessen, where Meg Ryan (Sally) shows Billy Crystal (Harry) how easy it is for a woman to fake an orgasm. While her moans ended in several loudly exclaimed “Yes!” in which she bangs both hands on the table, you can see important pillars of patriarchy collapsing in his face. The real joke of the scene is yet to come. When the waiter at the next table takes the order, the older woman sitting there says: “I’ll have what she’s having” (in the German dubbed version: “I want exactly what she had”).
It’s one of the most famous lines in film history. How it came about is interesting because it teaches that the greatest geniuses are those who don’t insist on doing everything on their own. So is Nora Ephron, who wrote the screenplay, and Rob Reiner, who directed.
Instead of just talking about it, she could fake an orgasm, said Meg Ryan
In an interview, the two once told the genesis of this legendary scene. It all started when Ephron, while brainstorming about men and women, the subject of the film, mentioned to Reiner: Hey, did you know – that women fake orgasms? Reiner had never heard of it, didn’t actually believe it and immediately ruled out that any woman had ever done it to him. Wonderful, Ephron thought, and the subject ended up in the script (along with his reaction).
During the reading rehearsal, Meg suggested to Ryan that instead of just talking about it, she could fake an orgasm. Great idea, everyone thought. Preferably somewhere where there are a lot of people – so the scene was moved from an apartment to a restaurant. Billy Crystal then remembered the brilliant sentence from the next table. And when Reiner wondered which lovely older Jewish lady could say that, he thought of his own mother, then 74 years old, who liked going to Katz’s anyway. It’s just a sentence, but Estelle Reiner (1914 – 2008) became immortal with it.
You can find more episodes of the “Nothing New” column here.