“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and the thing is, I love you.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
“How do you expect me to respond to this?”
“How about, you love me too?”
“How about: I’m leaving.”
That’s the start of the last scene of the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally. In case you haven’t seen it, the movie goes like this:
The first time Harry and Sally meet, they hate each other. The second time they meet, Harry doesn’t even remember who Sally is. The third time they meet, Harry and Sally become friends. Then they sleep together, and things go south and they stop being friends.
And then one New Year’s Eve, Harry finally realizes he loves Sally, and he runs to meet her, and he declares his love. And she says, “I’m leaving.”
The fact is, screenwriter Nora Ephron and director Rob Reiner both felt that movie should end like this.
No way should it end with Harry and Sally winding up together. That’s not how the real world works. People in those kinds of relationships don’t end up together.
That’s how the first two drafts of the movie actually went. The bitter truth.
But in the third draft, Ephron wrote this final scene, and Reiner shot it. After Sally’s “I’m leaving,” Harry delivers a speech about all the little things he loves about her, and they kiss and they wind up together, forever, in love.
And that’s how the movie was released, and it was a big, big hit.
So what’s the point?
Well, maybe it’s obvious, but you can go negative and cynical and sarcastic for the whole movie, but you gotta end on an inspiring, positive note.
It’s gotta make sense to people and give them a feeling of hope, at least if you want to create something that has a chance to be a big big hit, something that can appeal to a wide swath of the market.
Or in the words of screenwriter and director David Mamet:
“Children jump around at the end of the day, to expend the last of that day’s energy. The adult equivalent, when the sun goes down, is to create or witness drama — which is to say, to order the universe into a comprehensible form.”
But now I have a problem:
I’ve just pulled back the curtain. And what’s behind the curtain is not so nice. So how can I end this email on an inspiring, positive note?
Well, I can admit to you that the world is a large and complex and often unjust place. But it does have its own structure. And just by reading these emails, you’re finding out bits and pieces of that structure, and that helps you make more sense of the world you live in, and it helps you shape and influence the world for the better.
I can also tell you that the above bit, about Harry and Sally and Nora and Rob, is part of a book I’m working on, the mythical “10 Commandments of Hypnotists, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Con Men, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Propagandists, and Stage Magicians.”
I’ve been working on this book for a long time. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
In the meantime, do you know about my other 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters?
It also collects bits and pieces of the structure of the world, and it can help you understand and shape that world for the better. In case you’d like to find out more: