Rob Reiner Believed In Happy Endings

Gone but never forgotten

Rob Reiner was an artist with tremendous heart. This is evident throughout his expansive body of work, which included improvisational comedy, courtroom drama, classic romance, and even horror. His films were never mean-spirited or glib.

Film snobs can sometimes elevate cynicism over sentiment. I suffered from this, as well. In my youth, I often dismissed When Harry Met Sally as a lesser copy of Woody Allen’s work. Now, I know better. Written by Nora Ephron, When Harry Met Sally has the maturity of optimism. When Harry Met Sally was the first R-rated movie I ever saw. I was 15 when it was released, but my mother didn’t protest when my cousin Angie took me to see it. My mother adored Billy Crystal and was fond of Reiner, who she’d enjoyed as Mike “Meathead” Stivic on All In The Family. She trusted that he wouldn’t produce anything that might warp my young, impressionable mind, and she was right. When Harry Met Sally is a poignant, hilarious film that believes in happy endings.

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Many When Harry Met Sally fans will begin their annual rewatch at exactly 10:30:28 p.m. on New Year’s Eve to sync up with the movie’s own midnight countdown, but originally the film didn’t have this famous ending. Reiner has said that in the film’s early drafts “we didn’t have them [end up] together.”

“It was going to be the two of them seeing each other after years, talking and then walking away from each other,” Reiner told CNN’s Chris Wallace last year, on the film’s 35th-anniversary. (Now, that truly would’ve been too close to Annie Hall for my tastes.)

“Because I had been married for 10 years, I’d been single for 10 years and I couldn’t figure out how I was ever going to be with anybody,” Reiner explained, “and that gave birth to When Harry Met Sally.”

But then Rob met Michele, his wife of 36 years: “I met her while we were making the film, and I changed the ending.”

I’ve learned over the years that delivering a happy ending takes tremendous artistic courage. Critics are primed to sneer at “they lived happily ever after.” However, there is something profoundly moving about When Harry Met Sally’s happy ending. Harry Burns (Crystal) tells Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) he loves her not “in spite” of her unique human imperfections but because of them.

“I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

Harry was cynical and distrusting of life — always reading the ending of book he’d just started in case he died before finishing it. (A habit 15-year-old me picked up.) His philosophy of life wasn’t formed from a place of cool sophistication but simple cowardice. Meeting and loving Sally inspired him to change for the better. This is yet another contrast to Allen’s films. In Annie Hall, Alvy Singer is too rigid to change and can’t accept that Annie (Diane Keaton) changes, like a functioning adult. In Manhattan, Isaac Davis practically begs his teenage girlfriend Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) to stay in New York with him and never change. The rare happy ending in Hannah and Her Sisters requires that Holly (Dianne Wiest) change completely into someone Allen’s Mickey can love.

Reiner’s 1995 film The American President makes a great pairing with When Harry Met Sally. The similarities seem obvious to me, yet Robert Redford, who was originally set to star, dropped out when Reiner came aboard as director. Redford claimed that he just wanted “to do a love story, but (Reiner) wanted to do something that was ultimately about politics.”

Aaron Sorkin’s script is very much about politics, but the film’s beating heart is a romance. Of course, Michael Douglas was an interesting choice to replace Robert Redford in a love story. Douglas was the dashing rogue in Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile, but he was most famous by this point for Fatal Attraction, Wall Street, War of the Roses, Basic Instinct, Falling Down, and Disclosure — none of which you could reasonably describe as “romantic.” However, Douglas is perfect casting as President Andrew Shepherd, a first-term Democratic president and recent widower. (Saturday Night Live around this time had a Weekend Update segment where “Bill Clinton” offered his review of the film. He couldn’t stop raving about the “dead wife” plot line.)

Like Harry Burns, Andrew Shepherd also allows his fears and cynicism to guide him. This changes when Shepherd meets environmental lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening). Yes, I know, the president shouldn’t ask out a professional colleague, but it was 1995. For instance, everything in the below scene is insanely inappropriate, but movie audiences still collectively swooned over the president spending 10 minutes to write a card for the flowers he sent Sydney after their first date. (Watch below.)

Shepherd is overly cautious and calculated in his politics. He loves America, but he’s not optimistic about its voters, as demonstrated during a confrontation with his assistant on domestic policy Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox).

LEWIS: People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.

SHEPHERD: Lewis, we’ve had presidents who were beloved, who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty. They drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.

This is a low point for Shepherd. He’s given up on the American people, just as Sidney has seemingly given up on him. After a political betrayal that costs Sidney her job (the risk you run when you date professional colleagues), Shepherd tells her, “I don’t want to lose you over this,” and she responds coldly, “Mr. President (ouch!), you have bigger problems than losing me. You just lost my vote!”

(Obviously, she would’ve eventually voted for her ex — the Democratic nominee — over the Republican creep who’d smeared her publicly, but she’s allowed to vent.)

I’ve always enjoyed Shepherd’s climactic speech, where he lays into his Republican opponent Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss), norms be damned:

“We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character. And wave an old photo of the President’s girlfriend and you scream about patriotism and you tell them, she’s to blame for their lot in life, and you go on television and you call her a whore. Sydney Ellen Wade has done nothing to you, Bob. She has done nothing but put herself through school, represent the interests of public school teachers, and lobby for the safety of our natural resources. You want a character debate, Bob? You better stick with me, ‘cause Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your league.”

This is a variation of Harry’s declaration of love to Sally, but here Shepherd admits that he was wrong, that he tried to spin political cowardice as strategic savviness. He says, “I’ve loved two women in my life. I lost one to cancer, and I lost the other ‘cause I was so busy keeping my job I forgot to do my job. Well, that ends right now.”

Shepherd announces that not only will his White House send Congress the aggressive environmental bill Sydney had championed, but he’s also withdrawing his centrist crime bill, which he’d previously believed would ensure his re-election.

I’m throwing it out. I’m throwing it out writing a law that makes sense. You cannot address crime prevention without getting rid of assault weapons and handguns. I consider them a threat to national security, and I will go door to door if I have to, but I’m gonna convince Americans that I’m right, and I’m gonna get the guns.

“I will go door to door if I have to …” is my wife’s favorite line. It represents so much of what Reiner believed: Politics as persuasion, not dominance; a committed passion for improving the world without contempt for those who believe differently or even stand in the way. Rob Reiner was both an activist and a romantic. That’s why his work will endure long after lesser men are forgotten.