You’ve Got Mail (1998)

directed by Nora Ephron

Lindley Estes

It must have been Anne who first pointed to the screen and told me, “That’s you. You’re Frank Navasky.” We must have been in that rambling house where we lived with four other friends in college, watching You’ve Got Mail in the Cat Lounge, our affectionate name for the upstairs TV room. I say must have, because I’ve watched the movie so many times—multiple times with Anne—that my memory runs together on that first note of recognition. But she called me Frank at some point. And then it caught on with another friend in that house. And at some point I, too, internalized the feeling that I was Frank Navasky.

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In the perfect first scene of You’ve Got Mail, Frank Navasky is introduced as the boyfriend of our heroine Kathleen Kelly. Kathleen isn’t that into him, even though they’re a perfect couple on paper. She’s a bookstore owner and he’s a writer in the Upper West Side. And they’re there for each other, even if she’s a fan of the emerging Internet and he’s more than a bit of a Luddite.

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But Frank is vain. He very much wants praise for his work.

And Frank is opinionated. Greg Kinnear does a fantastic job relaying his wide-eyed self-ignorance while bemoaning the impending downfall of civilization due to video games and convenience, blaming the industrial revolution on problems he and his friends might face in 1998 New York City.

When he finds out halfway through the film that Kathleen didn’t vote in the previous mayoral election, he gets high and mighty.

Frank is convinced of his own genius.

Frank spouts off obscure facts at parties.

Acquaintances describe him in passing as “that nut who is so in love with his typewriter.” In fact, he owns three typewriters—each an Olympia Report Deluxe which he rhapsodizes about in big baroque descriptions. 

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All of that considered, it’s like looking in the mirror and having Greg Kinnear stare back at me. I’m the nut who is so in love with my typewriter. I’ve got a Hermes Baby 3000 that types in cursive. I wrote this whole essay originally on it. It’s powered solely by my own typing and not some obscure power source that’s contributing to the planet’s fiery destruction. When I’m sitting in Northern Virginia traffic, watching cars up and down the highway spew carbon into the air and bemoaning America’s inability to build reliable train links up and down the East Coast, it’s my typewriter that gives me hope. And really, only, my typewriter.

*

There I go, throwing out opinions that show my vanity. There I go convinced of my own genius and getting high and mighty. Frank Navasky, indeed.

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My aunt—the one we don’t speak to anymore—introduced me to You’ve Got Mail some time around 1999. We must have watched it on my parents’ very old boxy TV while they were out of town. But I must have watched it 30 times the first year on the tape she left behind because I became obsessed with the arc it travels, beginning with a dial tone and ending with a kiss in Riverside Park. I’m the kind of person who gets obsessed easily and frequently. When Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring came out on VHS, I watched it every afternoon for 6 months. That’s not an exaggeration.

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Outside of its narrative arc, You’ve Got Mail is one of those rare films that fits its time so snugly, it’s hard to imagine it being made outside of 1998, at the advent of AOL and chat rooms. But the film isn’t an original; it’s a remake three times removed from the original play, a little Hungarian script called “Parfumerie” that eventually caught the attention of Frank Capra who made The Shop Around the Corner with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in 1940. Remember when I said I get obsessed? I’ve seen The Shop Around the Corner at least 20 times, every year around Christmas and usually once in between holiday seasons ever since I was 15 years old. It was remade again in 1949 as a musical with Judy Garland. But I’m not an obsessive about just any movie.

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What Nora Ephron and her sister Delia Ephron did when they rewrote the story of adversaries who are unaware they are actually falling in love with each other through anonymous correspondence in the ‘90s was to make the world full. Nora Ephron did this incredible thing in so many of her films, giving life to the minor characters who populate them. And I can picture it, how these people live their full lives in the city while Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly are falling in love.

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We get a sense of Bertie’s past loves.

We know George loves antique books, that he’s frustrated with women and hangs out at the nut shop next to the bookshop when things are dull. 

We know about Joe’s father. His stepmother. His best friend.

We know their coffee orders. We know the books they read and their favorite flowers and why they would never live anywhere but the Upper West Side.

We know so much in such a small space. This world is alive and it’s populated with these characters who are so quirky and so nuanced, they might as well be real.

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And the dream of New York in the ‘90s was all about being surrounded by friends who are as close as family. I wanted that as a teenager obsessively rewatching the film. I wanted it bad. For a while I felt deep down that New York was where people ended up and found themselves. But on each visit to the city and even now, I just feel anxious. It’s the screech of alloy wheels on alloy rails and the ridiculous crowds of people. New York is bagels, which essentially just act like glue in your intestines. It’s the smell of dirty hot dog water. Riverside Park is okay. I guess Washington Square Park is, too.

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But I found it, that dream, in a small Southern city when I wasn’t paying attention. When I was rewatching You’ve Got Mail with Anne. We have some excellent parks here in Fredericksburg, Va., a great bookstore and plenty of opportunity to write. But most of all, this place is where I found my friends. Anne moved to New York and she found it too, but the core four—Jordan, Michael, Stephanie and I—bonded to the point that it’s no longer natural to bond. Sometimes when we’re all dancing—and we go out and dance a lot—I want to just touch their faces and let them know that, the industrial revolution withstanding, I’d never want to live in another time or place, because they’re it for me. If they made romantic comedies about groups of friends, we’d be it, with our discount champagne and our unending fount of gossip. These three jerks are the people who will put up with my ranting, my rhapsodizing and my unravelling list of obsessions.

*

I just love these pricks that I hang out with so much. And I’ve reached a point where I realize that movement doesn’t solve any problems. It feels supremely grown up. I’ll never need to move to New York to fix my life. I’m not done with this place yet and I’ll never be done with these people.

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But more than that, I am completely fine being the supporting act while they set the world on fire with their brilliance, while they fall in love and get married and adopt dogs and do all of the wonderful things they do. Jordan is as sharp and as endlessly cool as someone played by Parker Posey. And Michael would be portrayed by Tom Hanks because he’s just that lovable. Stephanie has never had an equal in glamor, but Meg Ryan, I suppose, will do. I’ll be the Greg Kinnear to their headliners any day.

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So, these days I can use Frank Navasky as a shorthand for myself. I think a lot about his life after the first half of the movie, when we see him ride off into the night in a taxi, through one of those mystery mists that plagues Manhattan, with his typewriter. It’s a good shorthand for what happens next.

*

Frank marries Sydney Anne. I know that. You’ve Got Mail is a romantic comedy, after all, and it drops heavy hints that Frank has already met his match. I’ve done that, the marriage thing.

*

Frank writes his book, the one he pitched to Patricia Eden at the cocktail party while Joe and Kathleen were unaware of their own mutual attraction. I’m working on that. And I can talk about it like Frank does, in waves of obscurity and pretension.

Frank continues his perfect voting record.

Frank acquires additional typewriters.

Frank never runs out of obsessions. 

Frank also, I think, gets divorced. 

But, Frank is never without his friends.

Lindley Estes is a writer, reporter, and editor based in Fredericksburg, Va. She is an MFA candidate in fiction writing at George Mason University and a Hermes typewriter enthusiast. Find her work at lindleyestes.com.