When Rob Met Michele

The night it happened I read the script for When Harry Met Sally, which was written by Nora Ephron based on the shared experiences that she and Rob Reiner faced as they navigated singledom and sexual politics in their 30s. I’ve only seen the movie once or twice in my whole life, but I’ve read the script twice this year alone. It’s timeless in a way that even the movie can’t live up to.

It was a different experience reading the script this time, knowing that Rob met his wife Michele on set—she was the set photographer— and it caused him to change the ending from a parting of ways to a happily ever after.

That had to be a really powerful, instantaneous connection. It was art imitating life in real time. A true love story within a true love story. And it was the first thing I thought of when I heard the news.

There’s a really cute device in When Harry Met Sally that happens at the start of each “chapter” of their relationship, where an elderly couple talks about the way they came together. In the script, there’s a note that says the conversations written are meant to be placeholders for the real thing- they would find actual couples to tell their stories for the movie. It makes me wonder if they incorporated that idea after Rob met Michele. It seems so, since the culmination of that thread is Harry and Sally talking about how they first met. And it’s this thread that keeps us engaged with the idea of the inevitability of love finding its way.

Although I’ve (mostly) let go of the notion that there is only one person for each of us, I still really enjoy how true it seems when two people meet and instantly know that the person standing in front of them is someone they would love to love. It’s amazing, really. And maybe it doesn’t work out, but it’s never for nothing. Even if it’s painful. Even if it ends in tragedy. It’s always for something. When it comes to Rob and Michele, what that something was may not be for us to know.

And so I’ll stop trying to make sense of the senseless. What Rob did with movies is create a world where everything makes sense. Even North, an unsung hero with—I’m sorry—perfect casting. I plan to sit my niece and nephews down this weekend and show them that masterpiece. All of his movies have real, satisfying endings. They all wrap up perfectly in a bow the way that life generally refuses to. Or maybe life always wants to wrap itself up in a bow, but chaotic souls externalize their disease and step in the way of perfect symmetry.

It’s a philosophical problem that I don’t have the capacity to work out tonight, so instead I’ll watch a comfort movie, maybe The Princess Bride, and feel appreciation for the people who gave me stories that soothe me when I feel a bit sad or lonely or hopeless. It is, after all, the example I try to follow in my own work and the reason I do it.

If anyone wants to read the script, you can find it here. Also— a moment for Nora Ephron. That absolute queen. Everyone should watch Mixed Nuts this week. I hope you’re one of the many people who’ve never seen it so that you get to experience it for the first time. Let me know what you think but only if you loved it.