Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

“You’ve Got Mail” and the business of book superstores

In linking to Larry Ribstein's business movie blog, Tyler Cowen opines: "I haven't seen "You've Got Mail," but I recall that the previews villainized book superstores." Granted, "You've Got Mail" often is seen as a condemnation of Borders, Barnes & Noble, et al. In fact, however, I think Ephron was much more balanced. There is a great scene in a gym where Joe (Tom Hanks) is working out with his friend/co-worker Kevin (Dave Chappelle), in which Norah Ephron skewers the news media and lets Joe defend Foxbooks. They're running on treadmills watching a tv news report on the fight between Foxbooks and The Shop Around the Corner:

JOE (on the television): I sell cheap books. Sue me. KEVIN: That's what you said? JOE: That's not all I said. I said -- I can't believe those bastards -- I said we were great, I said people can come and sit and read for hours and no one bothers them, I said we stock 150,000 titles, I showed them the New York City section. I said we were a goddamn piazza where people could mingle and mix and be. KEVIN: A piazza? JOE: I was eloquent. Shit. It's just inevitable, isn't it? People are going to want to turn her into Joan of Arc -- KEVIN: -- and you into Attila the Hun.

I don't doubt that Ephron's sympathies are with the independent bookstores, but she does give the superstores their due. Indeed, there is a poignant scene in which Kathleen (Meg Ryan) wanders through Foxbooks and discovers that it really is a piazza -- not a perfect one, perhaps, but still a piazza. Besides which, any movie that prominently features a golden retriever is okay in my book. UPDATE: Larry Ribstein (of the UIUC law school and the BusFilm blog) sends the following email: "The point in my movie paper about that movie is that the film was remarkably tolerant of creative destruction -- the big chain in the end helped Meg Ryan out of her dead-end book store and into a more fulfilling life as a writer."