Kate Goldbeck on giving When Harry Met Sally a fresh take in You, Again
"To me, it’s more interesting to explore that confusing, blurry zone where friends turn into something more."
To celebrate the release of You, Again, we are honoured to have Kate Goldbeck here today to chat about why she decided to reimagine When Harry Met Sally in her debut novel.
Picture this: a pair of opposites are thrown together multiple times over the years with disastrous results. Almost a decade after their first meeting, they run into each other again. This time, they finally have something to bond over: both of their lives aren’t exactly going to plan: they’re both grieving the end of their long-term relationships. In this shared pit of personal despair, a friendship blooms. But will their growing attraction to each other ruin everything?
Sound familiar? It should, if you’re in a certain age bracket or well-versed in classic romcoms. This is the basic plot of When Harry Met Sally, the film that made Nora Ephron, already a celebrated writer, synonymous with the romantic comedy.
It’s also the (very loose) framework of my debut novel, You, Again.
I was a child when the film came out in 1989 and it was a favorite of my parents. To me, When Harry Met Sally was a completely accurate depiction of grownup relationships, even if some of the nuances when over my head. Did I “get” the iconic scene at Katz’s? Not at all.
Watching the film as an adult, I’m struck by its timeless quality. Because the relationship between Harry and Sally is so central, we barely learn anything about the other aspects of their lives. They have no financial concerns (maybe Harry and Sally had no student loan debt when they drove away from University of Chicago), seemingly infinite free time (unencumbered by phones and social media), and apparently, no subplots. Do they have good relationships with their families? Promising careers? Political opinions? Let’s also acknowledge that Harry and Sally live in a version of New York where they don’t encounter queer people or people of color, except as waitstaff!
The film isn’t concerned with the details of their 1989 lives. Instead, every line of this script feeds into the central question: can men and women be friends?
Harry’s a pessimist who’s been sleeping with women and ghosting them before we had a term for it. Sally, who’s both fastidious and outwardly cheerful, just wants to be held after sex. On paper, it’s a dated premise—a relic from the era of Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. I’d argue that the witty writing (this is Nora Ephron, after all) and the effervescent performances elevate these characters beyond representations of traditional gender roles.
In gender-swapping the Harry and Sally archetypes (in You, Again, Ari is the one sneaking out of her date’s apartment at 3 a.m., while Josh wants to be the little spoon), I wanted to explore the friction between these perspectives in a fresh way. I suspect that if any producer were foolish enough to attempt a When Harry Met Sally remake, they would have to challenge Harry’s assertion, too.
To be clear: people of any gender can most certainly be friends. To me, it’s more interesting to explore that confusing, blurry zone where friends turn into something more. It’s the uncertainty, awkwardness, anticipation that makes a slow burn romance irresistible to me. And yet, the actual friendship has to be believable, too. Nora Ephron subtly nails those moments—the looks that last a beat too long, the friendly banter that borders on flirtation, agreeing to be a New Year’s Eve date in a pinch. When Harry Met Sally is an episodic film, with each vignette building the case for Harry and Sally’s potential romance.
One thing I often hear from You, Again readers is that my characters are “messy.” And perhaps they’re not quite as aspirational as Harry and Sally. They have very 2023 problems: career crises, struggles in the gig economy, social media humiliation.
But if Carrie Fisher’s character, Marie, is any indication, messy people have been agents of chaos in the dating pool in every era. Maybe we’re just more likely to label these behaviors. I assume people had situationships and rosters thirty years ago, even if they couldn’t post about them on social media.
Romance writers are constantly in conversation with works that came before. Writing You, Again gave me the opportunity to celebrate and challenge some aspects of a film that lodged in my brain when I was a child, while telling a story that felt very true to my experience as Millennial messy dater.
