Wesley Morris

There's a couple things with Rob Reiner that makes this outpouring of grief over his death important.

His peak as a director was at a time when the movies were interested in just simple things.

brought to life by a good script and a couple of stars.

These are not values the movies have anymore.

These are bygone aspects of American moviemaking.

And he embodied, he was one of the principal embodiments, his movies were, of that era.

For me, When Harry Met Sally was great because it had these two people that I kind of knew, Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal.

Rob Reiner made them movie stars.

This movie made them movie stars.

It's kind of hard to imagine that they weren't movie stars before that, but somehow.

Yeah, you'd seen them in things before.

And, you know, Billy Crystal was a well-known comic, and Meg Ryan was somebody who'd been in other movies as, like, a supporting character before.

And you also had in Harry Met Sally this great script by Nura Efron.

Nora Ephron, William Goldman, Aaron Sorkin, they wrote the great Rob Reiner movies.

And he knew what to do with a good screenplay and good actors.

And part of the pleasure of watching them all congeal, just come together and, you know, transmogrify into this, like, amazing...

experience of just feeling right I mean you watch the princess bride and it's all exuberance you watch when Harry met Sally and it's just whatever you believe about people getting together and like spending time with each other and communicating it's amazing you look like a normal person but actually you are the angel of death are you gonna marry him we have only known each other for a month and besides neither one of us is looking to get married right now I'm getting married

I think When Harry Met Sally, to me, it's the peak of all his priorities as a filmmaker.

The human part, the love part...

And obviously, if you're gonna boil this movie down to one scene, it's the diner scene, right?