The Shop Around the Corner

Decoder Ring

Slate Podcasts

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2020

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. The 1998 romantic comedy You've Got Mail starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan is about the brutal fight between an independent bookstore, The Shop Around the Corner, and Fox Books, an obvious Barnes & Noble stand-in. On this episode of Decoder Ring we explore the real life conflict that inspired the movie and displaced independent booksellers on the upper west side of Manhattan. This conflict illustrates how, for a brief time, Barnes & Noble was a symbol of predatory capitalism, only to be usurped by the uniting force at the heart of the film: the internet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There are some movies that I'll always watch no matter how many times I've seen them before
0:09.7	no matter if I come across them when they're already halfway over.
0:13.6	To be honest, most of these movies are romantic comedies.
0:17.5	And one of them is you've got mail.
0:21.2	Don't you love New York in the fall?
0:23.0	Makes me want to buy school supplies.
0:25.0	I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils
0:30.0	if I knew your name and address.
0:32.0	I need a job of today. On the other hand, this not knowing has its
0:36.1	charms. You've got mail was directed by Nora Ephron and is lovingly set on
0:40.2	Manhattan's Upper West Side. It stars Tom Hanks, who you just heard as Joe Fox,
0:45.4	and Meg Ryan as Kathleen Kelly.
0:47.9	Professionally, Joe and Kathleen are enemies.
0:50.6	He's the brash owner of a powerful expanding a chain store called Fox Books, who is putting
0:56.1	Kathleen's small beloved children's bookstore, the shop around the corner out of business.
1:01.8	There's only one place to find a children's book in the neighborhood.
1:04.8	I will not always be the case.
1:07.2	And it was yours, and it is a charming little bookstore.
1:11.3	You probably sell what, $350, dollars worth of books in a year?
1:14.3	How did you know that? I'm in the book business. I am in the book business.
1:20.3	Personally though they're falling in love by anonymously exchanging heartfelt emails on
1:25.7	AOL.
	...

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