What Would You've Got Mail Look Like In The Social Media Age?

WHEN GLAMOUR ASKED ME TO UPDATE A SCENE FROM Nora Ephron’s beloved film You’ve Got Mail for its twentieth anniversary,

- Susanna Fogel

I was confronted with a challenge many screenwriters face today: Can any moment of mistaken identity or unplanned coincidence (both of which have led to some of the greatest movie scenes in history) happen now, in a world where any answer is at our fingertips and devices help us see around every corner? Not to mention that we live in a society where nearly every IRL love story today begins with an Internet connection. Could any scene from You’ve Got Mail even exist today?

Rather than surrender, I asked myself, WWKKD? (What would Kathleen Kelly Do?) Undoubtedly she would, with plucky determination, rewrite the assignment. Just as she reimagined her professional ambitions in the film and concluded that rather than stem the tide of American capitalism, she’d find herself a new dream. So I set a new goal: to reimagine the entire story of You’ve Got Mail for a new era, exploring what kind of old-fashioned romance might lurk in a plugged-in 2018 when we all Always Have Mail. Here goes.