How Harry Met Sally...

How Harry Met Sally (2001)

*** (out of 4)

Fun making-of documentary takes a look at WHEN HARRY MET SALLY... through interviews with Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal, Nora Ephron, Carrie Fisher as well as archival interviews with Meg Ryan and Bruno Kirby. At just under 30-minutes there's certainly nothing ground-breaking here but if you're a fan of the movie then you should enjoy hearing a few of the stories about the making of the picture. Reiner talks about how he wanted to do the picture because he was going through a hard time being back on the dating scene after ten years of marriage. Ephron discusses how both her and Reiner wanted something honest from both the men and women's point of views. It's also fun to hear that Ephron thought Reiner was originally going to play the lead role but then the director says that the closest thing to himself was to let Crystal do it. Various scenes in the movie are discussed include how the restaurant/orgasm scene came to be as well as variations on the ending. There are certainly a lot of things that weren't covered in the documentary but for the most part I think it serves the film quite well. The stories told are entertaining and it's certainly fun seeing the cast and crew look back at the making of the film.

Since this documentary has so much footage from the film, it becomes ones of those making of pieces that is ruinous to watch both before you have seen the film and after.

However there are some interesting touches. It reveals another working title for the film as "Boy Meets Girl" (thank goodness that generic one was dropped), and shows footage of a deleted scene of a real couple doing a how-we-met testimonial. Strangely, Meg Ryan is interviewed on the set and not in 2000 when the documentary is made unlike Reiner, Crystal, Ephron, and Carrie Fisher; and Bruno Kirby is interviewed at the time of filming but without his character's moustache and with a different hairstyle. We also see interviews with customers at Katz' deli where the famous fake orgasm scene was shot.

Also it is claimed that this film was Meg Ryan's first lead, which is not true.