As I mentioned a couple posts ago, I spent part of my Friday evening watching (again) the movie When Harry Met Sally. I have no idea how many times I’ve seen this film, but it’s safe to say many. So many, in fact, that I can almost quote it, scene for scene. This movie is seriously quotable (“Oh, but ‘baby fish mouth’ is sweeping the nation?” or “I will never want that wagon-wheel coffee table,” to name a couple of the more obscure ones), and as I watched it yet again, pretty cutting edge, if only for the way it illuminated the differences between men and women in a new way (in 1989).

I haven’t yet listened to the Popcorn Dialogues podcast about this movie, but I did watch one of the DVD special features, in which Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner talk about the making of the movie. What interested me, and gave me sort of an aha moment, was the comment by Nora that this movie isn’t really about the question of whether or not men and women can be friends without the sex getting in the way. It’s about the broader issue of the differences between men and women and the way they think.

As I was watching the movie, I was reflecting on how differently I think about that issue now as a 4o-something than when I first saw the movie in theaters, when I had recently graduated from college. When the movie first came out, I was firmly in Sally’s camp, based on personal experience. Of course men and women can be friends! I still believe that, but over the years, I have also come to understand better (or at least acknowledge) the very real differences between the way women and men think, especially about each other. And so I get where Harry is coming from today more than I ever could have when I was 22.

So, what do you think about the premise of When Harry Met Sally? Has anyone else watched this movie as many times as I have? And does anyone besides me find New Year’s Eve (the date when this movie seems to get the most play on cable TV) as anti-climactic a holiday as I do? Discuss. 🙂