When Harry Met Sally > Trivia

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  • The segments of married couples telling the stories of how they met are real stories that Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner collected for the film. Then they hired actors to relay the stories.
  • The orgasm scene was filmed at Katz’s Deli, an actual restaurant on New York’s E. Houston Street. The table at which the scene was filmed now has a plaque on it that reads, “Where Harry met Sally…hope you have what she had!”
  • The concept of Sally being a picky eater was based on the film’s screenwriter, Nora Ephron. Years after the movie came out, when Ephron was on a plane and ordered something very precise, the stewardess looked at her and asked, “Have you ever seen the movie When Harry Met Sally?”
  • In the museum scene, Billy Crystal (Harry) ad-libbed, “But, I would be proud to partake of your pecan pie.” Meg Ryan (Sally) laughed and looked to her right where director Rob Reiner silently prompted her to go with it.
  • The film is based on director Rob Reiner’s experiences after his divorce and as a single man. Coincidentally, Reiner met his current wife while making the film.
  • Nora Ephron supplied the structure of the film with much of the dialogue based on the real-life friendship between Rob Reiner and Billy Crystal. For example, in the scene where Sally and Harry appear on a split screen, talking on the telephone while watching their respective television sets, channel surfing was something that Crystal and Reiner did every night.
  • At a test screening, director Rob Reiner reported that during the fake orgasm scene, all of the women in the audience laughed uproariously, while all of the men were silent.
  • Harry is shown reading the Stephen King novel “Misery”. The film adaptation Misery (1990) would be the next film directed by Rob Reiner.
  • Prior to the wedding, Marie tells Sally that Harry was seeing an anthropologist. Sally asks her what she looks like and Marie responds with “Thin. Pretty. Big tits. Your basic nightmare.” This line also appears in Nora Ephron’s book “Heartburn”, published in 1983.
  • In addition to Rob Reiner’s mother, Estelle Reiner, appearing in the film, so does his adopted daughter, Tracy Reiner, whose birth mother was Reiner’s wife, Penny Marshall.