When Harry Met Sally… hit theaters 35 years ago, not only did Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s “opposites attract” chemistry make for one of the greatest rom-coms of all time, but the film also introduced another Harry to the entertainment world.
Harry Connick Jr. was a 21-year-old singer and pianist with big dreams when, in 1989, director Rob Reiner asked him to record the film’s soundtrack. Connick performed standards with an orchestra, arranged by composer Marc Shaiman, and the soundtrack went to No. 1 on Billboard’s traditional jazz chart and also made the Billboard 200.
“It was like a dream,” Connick, now 56, tells Yahoo Entertainment. “I was a kid — I was like 20 years old — and I was working with a man that I really admired,” he said of Reiner.
While the New Orleans native had been performing for several years already, “I was thrilled to have the opportunity to do some things I had never done before,” he says. “I had never sung with a full orchestra, so being in the room with all of those folks and having my eyes and ears open to listen and learn, I’ll never forget that. That was a huge opportunity for me.”
The When Harry Met Sally… soundtrack netted Connick his first Grammy for Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance. Looking back, he says, “That whole time in my life was really wild.”
Three decades later, Connick is acting and singing in a new Netflix rom-com, Find Me Falling, which features two original songs by the musician. He plays an aging, heavily tatooed rock star at a personal crossroads.
At the start of the film, he’s “at a sad, lonely, grumpy point in his life,” Connick says.
Luckily, in true rom-com fashion, things get better along the way.
Connick — who has also starred in films including Hope Floats (1998) with Sandra Bullock, Independence Day (1996) with Will Smith and New in Town with Renée Zellweger (2009) — had no problem coming up with two songs for the film, including one that inspired the film’s title.
“Stelana Kliris, who wrote and directed the film, said, ‘We need a song that John would have written and sung in his early 20s,’” Connick says about his character. “So I wrote ‘Girl on the Beach’” as the song that made John an international rock star.
“The second song he would have written recently,” he said. “That had more melancholy and poetry, and would have been a more evolved version emotionally. So I wrote ‘Find Me Falling,’ and based on the lyrics I wrote, the [film’s] title evolved. That wasn’t the original title. They changed it to [my] song title. So that was fun, writing as someone else, because I made choices I wouldn’t necessarily have made.”
Find Me Falling has the traditional elements of a romantic comedy — as Connick’s character reconnects with an old flame — but this film, shot in stunning Cyprus, has some twists and turns along the way.
“I think the general feeling of a rom-com is kind of the same” as it was years ago, Connick says. “It’s escape, it’s love, it’s travel, it’s zany stories.”
Find Me Falling is currently streaming on Netflix.
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