You know the scene: A young, tall and lanky man stands in front of a house at dawn. He’s wearing a trench coat and a Clash T-shirt, holding a large boombox over his head while Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” blares from its speakers. A stalker sending a creepy message to his prey? It’s hopeless romantic Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) declaring his unrelenting love for Diane Court (Ione Skye) in Cameron Crowe’s 1989 directorial debut Say Anything …
Now, 30 years after the film first hit theaters — and was named one of the year’s best by Roger Ebert — that iconic scene remains a part of our love lexicon. It has inspired dozens of parodies — from the likes of The Simpsons, South Park, Glee, Saturday Night Live and more — and ignited conversations about what’s a romantic gesture vs. what’s a troubled man’s refusal to take no for an answer.
But at its core, Say Anything … remains an epic example of teen romance and young love. It’s messy, naive, confusing and at times really, really funny. And while that boombox scene is the first thing that comes to most people’s minds, the film is rife with other very realistic and important relationships — including Diane’s relationship with her father (John Mahoney) and Lloyd’s relationship with his best friend Corey Flood (Lili Taylor). (While I personally hoped to be the Diane Court of my own little world, I knew in my heart of hearts I was Corey, the girl who spent the majority of her waking hours nursing a broken heart through awful song and poetry.)
To celebrate the film’s 30th anniversary, Cusack has been touring the country, hosting screenings and moderated discussions with the audience. Ahead of his stop at War Memorial Auditorium this weekend, he chatted with the Scene about the film’s legacy, Dobler’s feminism and which songs almost replaced “In Your Eyes.”
You’ve been hosting screenings of Say Anything … across the country this year to celebrate the film’s 30th anniversary. Has that given you a new perspective on the film at all, having discussions about it with different audiences night after night?
It’s nice. I don’t usually look back that much. It’s not like I’m trying to avoid looking back, it’s just usually the mind’s centered on what you’re doing or what’s in front of you. It’s nice to have people still feel like it matters to them somehow. Like it still has resonance. That’s very flattering and gratifying to see people still getting pleasure out of it. It makes people feel good, so that’s pretty cool.
While you were making it, did it feel like this was something special? Or is this continued reverence a pleasant surprise?
I knew the people involved in it were really cool filmmakers. [Cameron Crowe] was a first-timer, but everybody the producer James Brooks surrounded everyone with were really great filmmaking professionals. The first AD [Jerry Ziesmer] was Francis Ford Coppola’s first AD for Apocalypse Now. One of the producers was Polly Platt. So there were a lot of very intense artists around the movie. You had the sense that this was kind of the big leagues, these people really care about what they’re doing. It wasn’t that factory-farm movie-making production where they just want to churn out a hit. So I knew there was at least a chance everyone was gonna try to make it really good and not just think about commercial potential and not just think of the money. You could tell. It was a little bit different.
Obviously a lot of films from that era haven’t aged all that well. The current climate is a lot different from what it was, and what we used to consider romantic in the ’80s and ’90s, we now recognize as signs of a toxic relationship. Do you feel like Say Anything ... has stood the test of time, at least better than some of the movies of that era?
I can’t really say I’ve thought about movies from that era that much. In the revisionist sense, where they’re saying this guy’s like a stalker or he’s not respecting [women] — I don’t know. It’s kind of a grand romantic gesture! [Lloyd Dobler] is pretty cool. He’s a pretty cool character. He’s kind of a post-punk feminist in a way. He was friends with girls; he respected women.
Obviously the most memorable scene is the boombox scene. Is it true that that scene originally featured a Fishbone song? “Question of Life”?
Yes, it is. Because we didn’t know whether that scene would work or what song would be playing. I was hoping it might be that Replacements song, “Within Your Reach.”
Oh, that would’ve been great! That’s a great song.
It’s at the end of the movie, but there was some talk of that. We were also playing around with Fishbone and The Clash. Once we put [“In Your Eyes”] up, the rest is history.
