YOU'VE GOT MAIL
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Rivals and enemies in real life, but friends and lovers in cyberspace. That’s what the wacky twosome Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are, in this romantic comedy directed by Nora Ephron...

They’re back. After wowing audiences with the 1993 box-office hit Sleepless In Seattle, the terrific trio of actor Tom Hanks, actress Meg Ryan and director Nora Ephron team up yet again in You’ve Got Mail, a romantic comedy catering to the cyber-savvy generation.

Hanks plays Joe Fox, and Ryan is Kathleen Kelly, two book-store owners who are at loggerheads with each other. Hanks is the owner of Manhattan’s largest book superchain, while Ryan runs a small children’s bookstore which she has inherited from her mother. Both lead a contented life until they meet each other in a computer chat room and begin conversing through e-mail. Under the electronic pseudonyms NY152 and Shopgirl, Hanks and Ryan start confiding in each other, and reveal everything about one another except their actual identities.

Their friendship on the Internet leads to affection, and around this time Hanks opens his new book-shop just a few blocks away from Ryan’s bookstore. He offers heavy discounts to the buyers, and also adds a huge inventory and an espresso bar to the shop to attract customers. Naturally Ryan’s business starts dwindling. Realising the threat to her business, she seeks help from her internet friend NY152.

When Hanks learns that his e-mail friend is none other than his charming rival, he also realises that he is actually in love with her. How he reveals his identity to a woman who hates him and his bookshop, and woos her is what the film is all about.

It was executive producer Julie Durk’s idea to produce You’ve Got Mail, based on the classic The Shop Around The Corner, which she just loved. Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, who have an enviable reputation as both, storytellers and filmmakers, were then asked to write and direct the film. Producer Lauren Shuler Donner sounded to the Ephrons that the film should be set in the world of Internet, who then updated and re-worked on the original story. In The Shop Around The Corner, James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan correspond by writing letters. The producer felt that e-mail would be the apt correspondence mode in modern age.

Donner also feels that love blossoms at great speed on the Internet. “The Internet affords you a great candour and intimacy. You can’t be embarrassed because you don’t know the person. Being on the Internet one may expose oneself further and faster in a relationship than one would normally in a face-to-face situation,” the producer opines.

The filmmakers always wanted two-time Oscar-award winner Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan to play the lead. Especially Nora Ephron, since she had enjoyed working with the two in Sleepless In Seattle. Says the director, “It’s very hard if you write a comedy to not think about both of them, because they are so good. And it’s a short list of people who can do comedy, much less do it well. Also they kind of look as if they belong together.”

Nora always felt that Hanks comes the closest to old-time hero Jimmy Stewart, who played the lead in The Shop Around The Corner. “Tom has such charm, he is so irresistible that he can play a bad guy and you never once believe that he doesn’t truly have a heart,” the director opines.

Hanks, on his part was happy to work with Meg Ryan once again. The two who have earlier been paired in Sleepless In Seattle and Joe Vs The Volcano, share a great rapport. “I just think we pick up right where we left off,” says Hanks, “In real life when we talk about our homes and our kids, and what not, it is equal to our life at work.”

Director Nora has made a name for herself as an expert on the nuances of contemporary romantic comedy. She enjoys finding the conflicts that reveal her characters before they succumb to true love. “The ‘I hate you, I hate you, I love you’ affliction is the backbone of the greatest romantic comedies,” she asserts. Agrees producer Donner, “For any good love story there has to be a reason why the lovers can’t get together. In You’ve Got Mail there are two reasons: firstly, the lead characters don’t know each other since they are communicating only through Internet, and secondly they hate each other in real life. This gives the audience a wonderful sense of desire for two people to be together.” The film, which topped the US b.o. for three weeks, makes for an apt Valentine release in India since it is a love story which shows how two people who hate each other in life, can fall madly in love with each other under different circumstances, when their preconceptions aren’t standing in their ways.