You’ve Got Mail
Romance set against the backdrop of the book-selling business. Meg Ryan is shocked when an Amazon fulfillment center managed by Tom Hanks opens across the street from her own, slightly-smaller, Amazon fulfillment center. Meanwhile she develops an online relationship with a mysterious Amazon reviewer who she meet-cutes after rating his comment below Mackenzie Bezos’ review of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon as “Useful.” Unbeknownst to her, her cyber lover is in fact her Amazon rival, Tom Hanks, whose new 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center is threatening to outperform her much-loved 100,000-square-foot monolith to convenience. Sparks fly between the two proving that all’s fair in love and e-commerce, Amazon continues to sell books. Remake of the classic 1940’s movie: The Fulfillment Center Around The Corner from the Small-Town’s Disused Industry.
Notting Hill
Hugh Grant plays a bumbling Amazon fulfillment center team supervisor, whose everyday existence monitoring his employees via tracking devices is interrupted when a beautiful movie star played by Julia Roberts happens to stumble into his aisle of the 1 million-square-foot warehouse. She is charmed by his simple life of deliberating how best to package a spatula, extension cord, ski boot rack and a Miley Cyrus biography into one mailable cardboard box, while he’s nonplussed by her fame, and love blossoms between the two. Soon their different schedules begin to interfere; her filming commitments and his daily three-hour commute from London’s fashionable Notting Hill to the desolate former mining town where the Amazon center is actually located. “Can the most famous film star in the world fall for the man in the street-sized aisle?” is the question this movie asks, while brushing over the question of: “Why was a Hollywood actress strolling incognito through a massive distribution center in Rugeley?”
Empire Records
Ensemble dramedy spanning a single day in the lives of a bunch of fun-loving temporary contractors of Empire Staffing Solutions working at an Amazon fulfillment center. A.J. (Johnny Whitworth), lusts after Corey (Liv Tyler), who trades banter with her bitchy friend (Renee Zellweger) while antagonizing their depressed co-worker (Robin Tunney) whose monotonous, mechanized work has pushed to the brink of a statistically-probable suicide, in a day full of the hijinks and spontaneous dance routines, all the while threatened by the fact that their jobs are essentially temporary. Will true love blossom? Will Corey’s searing exposé of her working conditions get her into Harvard? Will anyone be offered a permanent position? Covers all 12 hours of their mandatory overtime shift in real time. Tag-line: “Open indefinitely.”
High Fidelity
John Cusack, area manager of a lovable old Amazon fulfillment center, shares life, love and laughs with his 10,000 part-time temporary contractors all played, memorably, by Jack Black. “Which came first: the list or the Listmania?” he ponders over the booming warehouse tannoy in the opening scene, before idiosyncratically describing his love-life in the same data-metrics Amazon uses to sell products; comparing his past relationships against a number of cheaper external relationships and deliberating which former girlfriend gave him a “Most Helpful Favorable Review.” With a banging soundtrack of ambient machinery hums and a classic “conveyor belt rock-out” sequence, this movie inspired a generation to open their very own Amazon fulfillment center.
Funny Face
While scouting locations for a fashion shoot, a famous photographer played by Fred Astaire stumbles upon gamine warehouse worker Audrey Hepburn, high-mindedly reading Amazon shareholder letters in a dark corner of an Amazon fulfillment center. Noticing that her pale skin and deathlike demeanor from hours of working in the windowless warehouse makes her perfect for high-end fashion, he whisks her off to Seattle for an industrial-themed fashion shoot. The unlikely model Hepburn, meanwhile, is only going in the hopes of meeting her hero, Jeff Bezos, because in addition to being a classic beauty she has an insatiable interest in e-commerce. This charming musical follows the pair as they waltz through the streets of Seattle, capturing the razzle-dazzle efficiency of online sales and contains many classic musical standards like “Think Prime!” “Oh hey Seattle” and “S’1-click! S’Marvelous!”
Illustrator credit: Brenna Killeen is an illustrator and cartoonist whose work has appeared on The Hairpin. Her webcomic, Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Brennana updates every Monday.
