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Q: I just rewatched "When Harry Met Sally" for the umpteenth time and it just occurred to me: Are those real couples telling their relationship stories throughout?

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Author: 
Adam Thomlison / TV Media

How about this: They're real stories, but those aren't real people. They're actors. (Sorry, actors -- we kid because we love.)

Depending who you ask, the idea for including real romance stories in the now-classic 1989 romcom "When Harry Met Sally" came either from director Rob Reiner or writer Nora Ephron. It almost doesn't matter, because the two were such close friends that they basically wrote it together in a series of conversations over years.

Either way, in practice the stories came from a series of interviews that Ephron conducted with real people she knew. The point was to sneak some real, everyday emotion into the film.

The problem was, of course, real people aren't great at showing real emotion on camera. After a few screen tests, Reiner decided to get actors to tell the stories instead.

He also had to do a bit of scripting. Real people also aren't generally snappy storytellers -- they ramble. These little vignettes were supposed to be quick breaks between the action of the film, but they weren't so quick when the real people told them, so Reiner and Ephron had to write the actual dialogue themselves.

 

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