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YAHOO INTERNET LIFE:
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Internet Life Interview
To:
Yahoo! Internet Life readers
From: Tom Hanks
In a rare interview on the set of his new movie, Tom Hanks
tells West Coast Editor David Sheff how he feels when his computer
announces, "You've Got Mail"! 
I finally got online for the first
time, for my upcoming movie. I wasn't quite a neophyte, but I mostly
used computers as multithousand-dollar typewriters. Wite-Out would
be cheaper. But now, guess what--I've started to use it for e-mail
and checking in on news headlines. I'm in for the long haul now. In
fact, e-mail is far more convenient than the telephone, as far as
I'm concerned. I would throw my phone away if I could get away with
it. E-mail is a much better way of communicating. First, you get to
think about what you're saying and how you want to say it. You can
compose your thoughts carefully and review them before sending them
along. Second, you can deal with your correspondence when you want
to. You don't have to play phone tag, and you don't have to worry
about time zones. It's incredibly time-efficient. So much so that
I'd like to have a single phone line in my house for personal calls
and talk to everyone else via e-mail. I don't think that's going to
happen, unfortunately--not in this lifetime--but I would much prefer
it.
I wanted to do You've Got Mail
not because of the computer or e-mail itself, but because of the
script, which was Nora [Ephron, a cowriter of Sleepless in
Seattle and the writer of When Harry Met Sally] at her
absolute best. When she writes a screenplay that works, it's an
incredibly elegant thing to behold, at the same time simple and big
and glamorous in the way that movies have to be.
This was essentially the 47th remake
of The Shop Around the Corner. In every version, there is
always the initial problem to solve: How do you have people talk to
one another and not know each other? E-mail solved the problem
seamlessly.
Nora had a lot of experience with the
online world and folded it into this story like a beautiful deck of
cards. There's always a big conceit, a big pretense, in movies like
this. You have to buy the initial premise. If it doesn't make sense,
if it's not logical, you're not going to buy it, and the movie
shouldn't be made. Here, however, anyone who has been online knows
how this stuff works and what's possible--and it makes total sense.
In our movie, the couple has a
wonderful relationship online, without knowing who the other is. And
meanwhile, in real life, they know each other--and hate each other.
For all the appropriate reasons. Of course, the fun is when the two
worlds collide.
CONTINUE
Click
Here to Access the Pictures of TOM HANKS on the cover of GQ
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