Blockbuster Entertainment Awards: Meg Ryan – Favorite Actress – Comedy/Romance
Blockbuster Entertainment Awards: Greg Kinnear – Favorite Supporting Actor – Comedy/Romance
BMI Film & TV Awards: George Fenton – BMI Film Music Award

Kathleen: [in an email] 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.

Joe: It wasn’t… personal.
Kathleen: What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn’t personal to you. But it was personal to me. It’s personal to a lot of people. And what’s so wrong with being personal, anyway?
Joe: Uh, nothing.
Kathleen: Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal.

Joe: You know, sometimes I wonder…
Kathleen: What?
Joe: Well… if I hadn’t been Fox Books and you hadn’t been The Shop Around the Corner, and you and I had just, well, met…
Kathleen: I know.
Joe: Yeah. I would have asked for your number, and I wouldn’t have been able to wait twenty-four hours before calling you 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?”

Joe: Don’t cry, Shopgirl. Don’t cry.
Kathleen: I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.

Kathleen: When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.

• The children’s bookstore scenes were filmed at Maya Schaper’s Cheese and Antique Shop at 106 West 69th Street. The filmmakers wanted to use the antique shop because it had the quaint, homey feel they were going for. They sent the owner of the antique shop on vacation for a few weeks, and while she was gone, they turned the store into a children’s bookshop. After filming was finished, they put everything back the way they had found it.
• The scene where Joe accidentally closes the door of Kathleen’s shop on the balloons was unscripted. Tom Hanks ad-libbed the line, “Good thing it wasn’t the fish.” Nora Ephron thought it was so funny that she kept it in.
• The extra playing the florist at the beginning is pregnant. Later, Kathleen is buying flowers at the same florist, and there’s a sign in the window that reads “It’s a girl.”
• Nora Ephron arranged for Meg Ryan and Heather Burns to work in a real New York City bookstore in preparation of their roles prior to filming. The store was Books of Wonder in Manhattan, and the jobs lasted for about a week.
• All of Joe and Kathleen’s e-mails were put on the movie’s official website, which Warner Bros. kept active until May 2018.
• The film invokes several literary and cinematic references to The Wizard of Oz (1939): a full shelf of Oz books on the shelf behind Kathleen when she opens the door for Jessica and Maya; the ruby slippers ornament that Kathleen is placing on the Christmas tree; the Scarecrow of Oz book opened on Kathleen’s bed when Joe visits her apartment; and “Over the Rainbow” playing in the closing scene.
• A remake of The Shop Around the Corner (1940) starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. The original film involved two employees at a leather goods shop in Budapest who are, unbeknownst to one another, pen pals. The name of Kathleen’s bookstore is an homage to the film.
• The opening and closing titles use common computer imagery of the time, specifically Windows 95/98. The ending title song, which begins just after the words “The End” appear on the screen, starts with an adaptation of the “startup” sound from Windows 95.
• The passage Kathleen Kelly is reading during her bookshop’s story time to a group of kids (including Joe Fox’s aunt and brother) is from “Boy: Tales of Childhood”, an autobiographical children’s novel written by Roald Dahl.
• The store used for Fox Books is the old Barney’s department store at 17th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan.
• “If only…” which is the line that Tom Hanks says to Meg Ryan before meeting her online love, was the only line that was kept from the original movie this film was based on – The Shop Around the Corner (1940).