Movie Couple Therapy： YOU'VE GOT MAIL

This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful website and grow your brand. My business rival is also the person that I am in love with. You're at war. It's not personal, it's business. He needs her softness. That's already within him, but it needs to come out. And she needs a bit more of his toughness and grit. You are nothing but a suit. Am I still in love with them after I've seen them at their worst? I fall back on witty repartee in the form of insults and sparring. But what I'm actually doing, and what I keep doing, is I keep hurting her by not revealing this other side of myself. West Coast, we're coming to California, baby! Live shows. 18th in Los Angeles. 20th in the Bay Area. A Q&A, live meet and greet. March! Link is in the description below. It will be fun. Hello, and welcome to Cinema Therapy. I'm Jonathan Decker, licensed therapist who loves movies. This is... Aw. Today, we're gonna be- I also need therapy. Yes. We're gonna be talking about love and the need for therapy. You've got mail. They need therapy? Oh, yes. I guess they need couples therapy. I definitely have notes, but we're also gonna bask in just the magic that is Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks together. Still plugging Joe vs. Volcano, though. Go watch Joe vs. the Volcano. Pause this, watch Joe vs. the Volcano, come back to this, be slightly disappointed, then watch Joe vs. the Volcano again. I love you, too. Okay. You probably rented those children. Why would I spy on you? Because I am your competition, which you know perfectly well, or you would not have put up that sign, just around the corner. The entrance to our store is around the corner, and there's no other way of saying that. It's not- But her bookstore is called just around the corner. He's deflecting. The phrase, around the corner. She's attacking, he's deflecting. What is that? What are you doing? What is that? What are you doing? You're taking all the caviar? That caviar is a garnish. The reason- So one thing I'd never noticed before is- Spending the day with Annabelle and Max. She takes it off of his plate. Oh my God, she is. She's scooping it up off his plate. I only noticed that when I was preparing for this. Incredible. So his deflection's gonna turn to defensiveness here. Watch this. Sure. A charming little bookstore. You probably sell, what, $350,000 worth of books in a year? How did you know that? I'm in the book business. I am in the book business. I see. And we are the price club. Only instead of a 10-gallon vat of olive oil for $3.99 that won't even fit under your kitchen cabinet, we sell cheap books. Me, a spy. Oh, absolutely. I have in my possession the super-duper secret printout of the sales figures of a bookstore. So inconsequential, yet full of its own virtue that I was immediately compelled to rush over there for fear that it's gonna put me out of business. Ouch. Too far. What? My breakdown of personality types, and there's a million, there's Myers-Briggs, there's the color code, there's so many, but I like to go very simple with what I call dreamer, healer, closer, thinker. Four types. And your healers, which is what Meg Ryan's character is, are very warm and nurturing and personable, and they're all about connection, and they're all about comfort. She runs this cozy little bookstore that provides comfort for people and connection in the community, but it's also comfortable for her because she's carrying on the family business from her mother. She's not going out and doing her own thing, establishing herself, she's just business as usual, right? And this is the lane that she presumably likes to stay in. He is a closer with a secondary healer, and what I mean by that is he leads with aggression, he leads with dominance, he leads with power, and I'm gonna take control and I'm gonna take over, but then he's got this softer side where he later regrets, did I hurt people along the way? And she is falling in love with the online version of him, she doesn't know, because he's showing his vulnerable side. He's the opposite of most people. Most people in real life are nice enough to your face and awful online. He's a jackass in person, and online he's very sweet. This movie has caused so many problems for the world in general, because we assumed this is what online life is going to be like. It's like, oh, this is where people go to really be their true, authentic, wonderful selves, and then we got there and it's a ******* hellscape. And maybe their true, authentic selves are assholes, that's possible. But the issue, of course, is when he meets her the first time and he's in her bookstore with the kids, she sees this softer side. She sees this side that not a lot of people get to see. But as soon as she starts talking about him being a competitor, he deflects. As soon as she starts going after him, he goes from deflecting to defensive, and now, for him, that's blood in the water. Hey, have you seen, oh, you had to be there, folks. Have you seen our cinema therapy website? You don't have to use dial-up to get to it, because it was so easy to build and customize using Squarespace. That has nothing to do with dial-up, but anyway, we're talking about Squarespace. We found a template that worked really well as a starting point for us. From one of the many professionally designed templates that Squarespace offers. And then it was so easy to customize. With intuitive drag and drop editing. And awesome visual design. Even better than, like, writing every word in six different fonts and all the different colors. Is that something you did in the 90s? That's what everybody did in the 90s, because it stands out. Squarespace Domains also makes it easy for you to find the best site name for your business at one all-inclusive price. No hidden fees or add-ons required. And every Squarespace domain comes with advanced privacy and security tools. Your site will even be safe from the rooftop killer. I don't think he attacked websites, though. Squarespace SEO tools will help you get discovered fast. Faster than using dial-up to log into your AOL account. Um. Every website is optimized to be indexed with an auto-generated site map. Meta descriptions. And more. So your site will show up more often on search engines. And reach more of your ideal audience and customers. So whether you need to build a website for your adorable children's bookstore. Or your typewriter appreciation fan group. I'm actually in one of those. Or to sell your specialty school supplies like bouquets of sharpened pencils. Squarespace will work for you and you won't have to spend months designing a website. Check out squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch. Go to squarespace.com slash cinematherapy and use code cinematherapy to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. And what we're gonna see is he acted like a jackass because he led with the closer side. But the healer side's gonna regret it. Do you ever feel you become the worst version of yourself? That a Pandora's box of all the secret, hateful parts, your arrogance, your spite, your condescension has sprung open. Someone provokes you and instead of just smiling and moving on, you zing them. Hello, it's Mr. Nasty. This is the story of my life. And you are kind of like this because you'll zing people and then later you'll stay up being like, I hurt them. Yeah, I never stay up thinking about what I could have said. I stay up thinking about what I shouldn't have said. I get tongue tied, my mind goes blank. Then I spend all night tossing and turning trying to figure out what I should have said. Well, most of the personality types, in fact, all the personality types sometimes wish they could do what the others do naturally. Yeah. She, as a healer, being kind comes naturally, but she wishes she could zing people. She wishes she could. Oh, look, there is something deeply satisfying about absolutely undercutting someone's argument and their self-confidence at the same time. It feels great for about a second and a half. Yeah. Nothing. See, she can't even think of it now. Even now, even now, I can't figure it out. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could pass all my zingers to you and then I would never behave badly and you could behave badly all the time and we'd both be happy. But then on the other hand, I must warn you that when you finally have the pleasure of saying the thing you mean to say at the moment you mean to say it, remorse inevitably follows. And then we get just a great bit of nonverbal acting from Tom Hanks where his face falls and he's remembering the thing that he said and how much he regrets it. And that leads into some more typing. But like, man, these are two actors at the top of their craft being charming as hell, you know, letting us into their emotional worlds. And also got to shout out the great Nora Ephron. This was an unsolved problem. So much of our modern lives are this or this. How do you make that cinematic? Right. How do you make it cinematic? I mean, the way I see it is in conversations on screen, you need nonverbals, you need to see the facial expressions, you need vocal intonation so you understand the emotion behind what's being said. And that's why this works because you get to see and experience all that even if it's just people typing. He feels remorse, she's falling in love with the real him, the buried him. It also helps the audience not hate his guts. Yep. You know, because... Because he's pretty hateable. Well, to her face. And in the business setting, he's a fairly detestable figure. He's a third generation fail son, except that he's not a failure, except in personal relationships. But like, dude's inheriting a business from his dad and from his dad's dad who are both philandering douchebags. Philandering douchebags in their personal life and in their business lives, they delight in shutting down other businesses and divide and conquer. Yeah, cutthroat monopolists. Right. Gross. These are gross people. But that also helps us like him because we think, okay, it's a miracle he has a heart at all. Look at where he came from as a strong closer to have balance. He needs the softness of a healer, which she brings out of him. And she needs some of his toughness, some of his backbone. She needs to stand up for herself more, which is one of the ways that this couple, even though they're different, they influence each other in positive ways. I guess even before they're a couple, right? As they're falling for each other. And I will say, as a sailor, one way we know that Tom Hanks is a good guy who has descended from bad guys, his dad has a big giant motor yacht and he's got a smaller sailboat. I'm the captain now. Just saying. Good people. Because the man who is coming here tonight is completely unlike you. The man who is coming here tonight is kind and funny. He's got the most wonderful sense of humor. But he's not here. Well, if he's not here, he has a reason because there is not a cruel or careless bone in his body. She is inferring a lot. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Homogenize the world, mochacino land. You've deluded yourself into thinking that you're some sort of benefactor bringing books to the masses. But no one will ever remember you, Joe Fox. And maybe no one will remember me either, but plenty of people remember my mother. And they think she was fine and they think her store was something special. You are nothing but a suit. Boom. And then there it is. Meg Ryan's a movie star and we're watching her do it in real time. Ooh, Tom Hanks with the eyes, man. Good night. The closer is the armor, right? The healer is like the squishy center. And she cut through the armor. This is what makes a movie star. Yeah. What makes a movie star is basically two things. You can light and shoot the person from any angle and they're beautiful. But that makes a pretty person. That makes a model. What makes a movie star is they invite you in and you feel every emotion that they're feeling. Tom Hanks, you feel every emotion that he's hiding. That is what makes a movie star because we want to go on a journey with these people. We want to be right here and have an entire story play out, a whole three-act structure in 20 seconds. And we get it. Yeah. And that's why these two are big damn movie stars. You mentioned that she infers a lot from these emails. In his book, How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk, Dr. Jon Hennep talks about the importance of testing who you think a person is versus who they actually are. Sure, yeah. Because she only knows from a few emails and she infers all these things about this guy. She's built this wonderful, magical man who is always good and always kind and always lovely and funny. And this is why it's important when you're dating to take time, to see them in as many contexts as you can, to not ignore red flags and fill in gaps that you don't actually have data on. This is why dating is important because it's data collection. That's why they call it dating. Is that why they call it dating? No, it's why I'm calling it dating. Okay. Nerd. Because she actually is describing a man that is in front of her, but people are complex. Yeah. There's more than one side. There's multiple layers. And then the real question becomes, okay, do I love the totality? Yeah. Am I still in love with them after I've seen them at their worst? Well, and I always say that. It's not what they're like at their best. It's what they're like at their worst. Yeah. Like how bad is the worst? And at this point in the story, his worst is pretty bad. Sure. But that's why the death blow she lands is so important. When she says, you are nothing but a suit, he realizes I see myself as so much more, but others don't. And that's my fault. Yeah. He is the reason she doesn't see him. He also might be realizing, I'm wearing a mid to late nineties suit and it's kind of just a big bag. Do you ever feel like a plastic bag drifting through the wind, wanting to start again? She's also inferring a lot about Joe. She's doing the same thing that she's doing with NY152, just in the opposite direction. He's a monster. All he is is a suit. You've talked to him three times. Yeah. What do you know about the guy? Online, you've talked to him a lot more times. Again, people are complicated. And one of the beauties of the script and of the screenplay is it's a lesson in perspective taking. I said earlier that he needs her softness. That's already within him, but it needs to come out. And she needs a bit more of his toughness and grit, which we see here. And she learns that he was absolutely right. When you finally say the thing that you wish that you could say in the moment and stick it to that person, it's immediately followed by regret. To your point about Meg Ryan's performance, you see that all here as he walks out of the restaurant. To be clear, if you're a mature adult, it's immediately followed by regret. A lot of the things that I said when I was a teenager, I regret deeply now. Yeah. At the time, I thought I was a cool badass. I was able, for the first time in my life, to say the exact thing I wanted to say at the exact moment I wanted to say it. And of course, afterwards, I felt terrible, just as you said I would. So I think I've discovered the secret to making typing on a computer cinematic. No, I can hardly believe what I said. Just shoot Meg Ryan doing it. Or Tom Hanks. And then just move the camera a little bit. Just a little bit. I mean, in this one, we're just locked off. We don't even need to move. For my behavior. Anyway, I so wanted to talk to you. I hope you have a good reason for not being there last night. You don't seem like the kind of person that would do something like that. The odd thing about this form of communication is that you're more likely to talk about nothing than something, but I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings. So thanks. Really well-written movie. Not if the words is good, the movie will be good. We, the audience, get to see the wheels turning and the character growth. And it also doesn't come from nowhere. When I talk about like, he leaves with Closer and he's a secondary healer. I don't mean to imply that the Closer is bad and the healer is good. It's just that we all need that kind of balancing energy. So if you're a healer, you might get walked on because you think being nice is the right thing to do. And you need to have some balance and stand up for yourself. But if you're a Closer, you're gonna step on people. Right. And you need to like, have some healer to balance that out and remember to like, tread lightly. Yeah, and be mindful and considerate. And his whole thing of it's just business, it's not personal, like that sounds great, but it's also a way to justify treating people like garbage. The person he's quoting for that is a ******* mobster. It's not personal, son. It's strictly business. Don't take relationship advice from the Godfather. Just not a great idea. Because in his case, it's a conscience suppressor. I can go after what I want, the glory of my family, the wealth of our business, and I don't have to feel guilty about it if I truly believe it's not personal, it's just business. And she's gonna cut to the heart of that real good here in just a second. But I do enjoy, as an audience member, we're given a very unlikable character with him and then they make him very likable. And that is a neat little hat trick, but also true to life. Here's the lesson, though, to be careful about. Just because someone treats you poorly doesn't mean they secretly got a heart of gold. Most people are not fictional, Tom Hanks. And also it's important that if the person that you're interested in needs to work on themselves, don't get involved with them until they've done that work. Dear friend, I cannot tell you what happened last night, but I beg you from the bottom of my heart to forgive me for not being there. He also knows from his interactions with her online that his quote-unquote mean and nasty business rival is the sweetest person on the world. For what happened. I love the, nope. I can't lie-lie, I can only lie by omission. But I'm absolutely sure that whatever you said last night was provoked, even deserved. And everyone says things they regret when they're worried or stressed. You're expecting to see someone you trusted and met the enemy instead. Great perspective taking. The fault is mine. Someday I'll explain everything. Meanwhile, I'm still here. Talk to me. Speaking of movie logic versus real life, I completely get why in the movie, in his mind at least, he has to string her along so that real in-person him has a chance to represent online him. Because if he just says to her, I'm the guy you've been talking with online and I'm really sorry, I get at least in his mind, he's like, well, at least she deserves the truth, but I'm in love with her and I want to help bring her around. Like, I get the movie logic of it. I don't know that I could actively endorse, like if I were his therapist, continuing a line now that he knows who's who and she doesn't. Yeah, keep up the dual identity for at least a few months to really solidify your standing here. Just be Batman. Keep up the dual identity to establish your trustworthiness. That's not advice you would give? That's not advice that I would give. Again, it doesn't ruin the movie for me because I understand that movies operate by movie logic. I'm just saying, again, watch movies with your brain turned on and say, this is how it works here. It's not how it would work in real life. Listen, these are a bunch of people who live in a magical fairyland version of the Upper West Side. None of this is real. I know I keep bringing up James Bond when we talk about Rom Collins, but really to me, and it seems like they couldn't be further apart, but here's why I keep doing this. I enjoy James Bond movies. I don't base my life on James Bond movies. I would never ride a motorcycle off a cliff to chase a plane that was falling. I would never do that. And that's where we're different. Have done, would do again. It wasn't personal. What is that supposed to mean? I'm so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn't personal to you. I love this. But it was personal to me. It's personal to a lot of people. I mean, what is so wrong with being personal anyway? Intentions don't matter. Nothing. Because whatever else results do. You ought to begin by being personal. Intentions don't matter as much. Yeah. My head is starting to get fuzzy. But that's... And Tom Hanks is so good at... Why did you stop by? You could see the paradigm shift happening behind the eyes. I wanted to be your friend. Oh. I knew it wasn't possible. What can I say? Sometimes a guy just wants the impossible. Did I just say that? How dumb am I? Oh boy. I don't know. I read that as like, was that really dumb or actually really brilliant? She kind of smiled at me. Did I just save everything? Listen, I make that face a lot on this show. It's just edited out. I'll say something. I'm like, was that good? Sounded... Was that really dumb? I don't know. No matter what your dominant personality is, you've got some of the rest inside you. There, believe it or not, is a tiny amount of healer inside of this closer thinker dreamer. Oh, everybody knows. Everybody sees your softness, at least on this show. But she's got more closer than she thought because she dismantles his entire business philosophy in seconds. Without attacking. So she's learned and grown already. She's not deploying this newly found skill of being able to zing people. Well, it's an art to stand up for yourself and to, you know, hold a mirror up without being cruel. Sure. A lot of people use that skill of holding a mirror up to really dress someone down and just destroy them. And I, like you, sometimes enjoy that in cinema when it's really well written. Oh, yeah. But in real life, that's no way to approach people. How can one learn this skill? Not from a Jedi. No. But also... Why must you hurt me? I've got a therapeutic deep dive on our Patreon called How to Stand Up for Yourself Without Being a Dick. I have legitimately... I'm not making this up. You're like, wait, so what did you... I was still working on it, okay? I'm not there yet. What I love about this scene is just how quickly she cuts right to the center and he's utterly defenseless by it. He's got nothing, yeah. And the whole movie, he's had a smarmy response. He's had a quick comeback. And there's two reasons why he doesn't have one now. One, she caught him off guard. But two, he's approaching this entire situation with humility and internal accountability. This is my issue as an accountability kink person. We've seen an hour and a half of this and then we got about 15-20 minutes of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan being cute and sweet and falling in love together. And he is kind. I'll push back on that. An hour and a half of this in person. Right. We've seen the cute and sweet and fun online. But this is why it works for the audience because we know who these characters are. Right, they don't. She doesn't at this point. Yeah, she doesn't. He does because he's Batman. All she knows is that the man who ruined her life and has been cruel to her is now suddenly showing an interest in being nice. That's all she knows. And then he spends the rest of the film being charming and funny and they connect and they laughed. But he never says, I'm sorry. And he should right here. You know, sometimes I wonder. What? Well, if I hadn't been Fox Books and you hadn't been the shop around the corner and you and I had just met. I know. Yeah. I would have asked for your number and I wouldn't have been able to wait 24 hours before calling you up and saying, hey, how about, oh, how about some coffee or, you know, drinks or dinner or a movie? For as long as we both shall live. What a great line. Joe. And you and I would never have been at war. I mean, the big speech at the end of When Harry Met Sally is kind of the best one in a rom-com. This one's really good, though. And it's mostly down to that one line. Who fights about that? Well, some people. Not us. We would never. We would never have petty fights. And this is beautiful and frustrating. What's about to happen right here. I gotta go. Well, let me ask you something. How can you forgive this guy for standing you up and not forgive me for this tiny little thing for putting you out of business? And I know he plays it as a joke. Oh, how I wish you would. It's a tiny little thing. I really have to go. But it's a dismissive, minimizing joke. Yeah. And here he's being vulnerable. He's asking for forgiveness and he's expressing longing and expressing genuine affection. She is wearing the greatest slacks in the history of movie nights. And the 90s were a special time for fashion. But he never acknowledges wrongdoing. And my issue is, because of the previous scene, we see it. He was wrong and he knows he was wrong. The moment she says what she says about business being personal, it's the most personal thing in the world, that lands, he knows he can't hide behind it anymore. And if you're going to spend so much time watching them hurt each other and then seeing her just devastated because of him, you need to do the work to win her back over and us back over. I am going to offer the tiniest bit of pushback. Okay. In the text of the film, this is several months later, and we've seen them hanging out and getting to know each other and whatever. And the subject of she is thriving has been brought up. She's finding new opportunities. Things are going well. She's getting to explore her own life instead of just living her mom's life. So there's a little bit of that. But I agree that he should take full accountability here. He should become 100% clean. But I don't think it's as big of a deal maybe because we have this context of things are actually going well and she's pretty happy. I think because things are going well, it doesn't absolve him from saying what needs to be said. No, absolutely correct. Because what are you trying to do? You're trying to establish trustworthiness. You're about to reveal yourself, by the way, as both the person who put her out of business and the person who stood her up. So actually, she has a lot more... Whoopsie. To steal a line from Loki, right? I know what I did and I know why I did it. And I'm not that person anymore. For him to say, I know that I hid behind this philosophy. I truly believed in it. And I don't see the world that way anymore. And I'm so sorry that I hurt you. Because she's going to see, in a rush of conflicting emotions, her greatest confidants support and comfort and the person who hurt her the most are the same person. How do you navigate what's what? You have to assure her that the person who hurt her is gone. And the way to do that is through accountability. Does not ruin the movie for me. And since he brings up, they both do, Darcy and Elizabeth, Pride and Prejudice, Darcy made amends. Darcy took accountability. Darcy apologized. And he's not showing how he's going to make amends. He can't get the bookstore back. Or maybe he can. Who knows? But I would love to see something where he says, I want to make this right as best I can. By the way, if ever in a movie, the characters mention a book, that's the movie you're watching. It's that book. So until next time, I'd buy you a bouquet of sharpened pencils. She's a pill. Beautiful. 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