‘I’ll have what she’s having’
Scene from When Harry Met Sally changed the way we talk about sex
“Are you OK?” Harry asks Sally as she starts moaning across the table from him at a crowded New York deli.
“Oh God,” Sally says, running her hand through her hair and down her neck, tossing her head back as her moans get louder. Harry puts his sandwich down, a look of defeat on his face as he realizes he’s about to watch his best friend prove him wrong by demonstrating in public that, yes, women fake orgasms.
Sally, played by Meg Ryan, smacks her hand on the table, yelling “Yes! yes! yes!,” as the other diners turn to watch. Sally caps it off with a triumphant bite of coleslaw and a smile.
The scene lasts only three minutes, but its impact has endured for decades, with the film marking its 30th anniversary this month. The scene’s punchline — “I’ll have what she’s having,” uttered by Estelle Reiner, mother of the film’s director, Rob Reiner — ranks 33rd on a list of the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest movie quotes of all time.
“The orgasm scene became bigger than the movie it came from,” Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist and close friend of the movie’s screenwriter Nora Ephron, wrote in a book about their friendship.
It was the moment women realized this thing they were doing in private was, in fact, universal. It was the first time many men learned about the charade.
Not everyone understood the joke. “When the scene was shown to a Las Vegas convention of movie distributors, the men in the room did not react at all. They didn’t get it,” Cohen wrote. “The women, however, did. They laughed, and their laughter became infectious until, one by one, the men joined in.”
Jennifer Gunter recalled a similar reaction when she saw the film as a 22-year-old in Canada. The women in the theatre exploded in laughter while the men were silent. Gunter, an obstetrician, gynecologist and author of The Vagina Bible, thinks the scene was incredibly validating for women. “Even if it doesn’t make a woman feel that she can have a conversation with her partner,” Gunter said, “just knowing that you’re not the only person doing something is incredibly powerful.”
Few people realize the scene was a group effort: Reiner felt the movie needed to reveal a surprising truth about women that made men deeply uncomfortable, notes Erin Carlson, a journalist and author of I’ll Have What She’s Having: How Nora Ephron’s Three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic Comedy. Oddly enough, the film’s producer’s girlfriend’s sister — model and actress Dani Minnick — was the one who suggested Harry and Sally discuss women faking orgasms. Ryan said Sally should act out a climax in a public place. And Crystal came up with the line “I’ll have what she’s having.” Ephron loved the idea, and it went into the script.
However, filming it was no easy task. Ryan was “anxious and worried about what her then-boyfriend, Dennis Quaid, would think,” Carlson said. (Ryan and Crystal declined interviews for this story, and Reiner did not respond to an email.) Ryan’s performance was underwhelming at first, Carlson noted, so Reiner acted out what he wanted. Carlson’s book notes that it took about 30 takes to get the fake orgasm right.
The scene has made an impact on young feminists who were born generations later. Lux Alptraum knew of the scene long before she saw the movie. And while she was writing a book called Faking It: The Lies Women Tell About Sex — And the Truths They Reveal, she was living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, near Katz’s Deli, where the orgasm scene was filmed.
Jake Dell, the deli’s owner, told The New York Post that customers frequently do their own Sally impressions. “It happens at least once a week, if not more, and more likely at 3 in the morning than 3 in the afternoon,” Dell said.
For all the boundaries that scene broke, there are a few it didn’t. For example, Harry and Sally do not discuss the reasons someone might fake an orgasm.
Movies play such a large role in shaping our ideas about sex, Gunter said — and the Katz’s scene, especially at the time, was the rare one that presented a particularly female perspective. But the conversation the movie started is one couples are still tripping over. Gunter’s book asserts that only half of women are satisfied with their sex lives — and couples find it hard to discuss ways to address that.