WHEN HARRY MET SALLY… (1989)

Dueling Genre Productions

Prepare to open your hearts to a brand new era of FRANCHISOGRAPHY as we begin SMALL TALK & BIG KITCHENS, our mini-series on the romcoms of Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers, with the film that many credit as the greatest romantic comedy of all time.

While Nora had been a journalist, a satirist, and an essayist before writing her first screenplay in the mid-1970s, it wouldn’t be until the mid-1980s that Ephron would pen her first romantic comedy when director Rob Reiner pitched her on an idea he had about two platonic friends who vow to never have sex with each other because it will ruin their friendship but then have sex anyway and fall in love. Nora would write the screenplay using a journalistic approach to researching the male perspective that would form the character of Harry, and her own satirical wit and experiences as a woman to form Sally’s point of view, leading to a film full of funny, honest observations about the state of modern romance.

Featuring two star-making performances from the relatively unknown Meg Ryan as the neurotic leading lady and comedian Billy Crystal as an unlikely leading man, the film was released in 1989, and became a box office smash that kicked off a golden age for romantic comedies that lasted for twenty years.

Join Nick & Scott as they laugh, gush, and swoon over 1989’s WHEN HARRY MET SALLY… the very first romcom penned by Nora Ephron.

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