Say Anything… (1989)

Director: Cameron Crowe

Cast: John Cusack, Ione Skye, John Mahoney, Lili Taylor

Have I Seen it Before: Sure. In fact, it was after this screening I realized how much the film floated around in my head at that certain point in the early 2000s when I was that same age as Lloyd (Cusack) and Diane (Skye). Long, long ago, in the earliest days of Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries where I thought the vanity card would feature a Lloyd stand in with his Peter Gabriel-infused boom box held high, only to have his leading lady breeze into frame, give him a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, reach for the controls of the radio, turn it to ACDC (or some other appropriate mood killer, probably Kiss, if I’m remembering the details of that far-flung era correctly) and head-bang her way back out of frame.

Did I Like It: That is, to bring up two points I feel about the film:

First, that moment with the boom box is, for all of it’s iconic significance in the landscape of romantic comedies, its a pretty perfunctory moment within the context of the film. To say nothing of the fact that it flies in the face of the very real affection that Lloyd and Diane enjoy, and depicts Lloyd at his least heroic, most obsessive low.

Second, and this speaks to the ultimate strength of the film, is that it singularly touches upon every type of person who orbits the subject of love. Other romantic comedies latch onto laser focus for their leads, and thus they lose their luster relative to your experience at the moment. If you aren’t slowly but surely falling in love with your best friend, then When Harry Met Sally (1989) may not always work. If you aren’t running the long con an amensiac, then While You Were Sleeping (1995) may not be the film for you anymore. If you aren’t ultimately a toxic person in a relationship that is somehow even more toxic, then I’m not sure how either Annie Hall (1977) or Manhattan (1979) is anything but uncomfortable*. But we have all, at one time or another, been some variation of Lloyd, some version of Diane, a riff on Corey (Taylor), and even a Joe (Loren Dean) on occasion. As we grow older, give or take a dollop of hair dye or an indictment, we might realize we’ve become Mr. Court (Mahoney). Don’t lie; you know you have. Thus, this film is evergreen for any time you might watch it, regardless if you might be the one holding the boom box or the one listening.

*As I type all of that, I may be just now realizing that all romantic comedies are a little weird.

Almost Famous (2000)

Director: Cameron Crowe

Cast: Patrick Fugit, Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, Frances McDormand

Have I Seen It Before?: Yes.

Did I like it?: I remember liking it well enough, but for whatever reason it didn’t enter that pantheon of great movies for me at the time. Now, as I watch it again twenty years after the fact, I can’t quite grasp why it didn’t more thoroughly burrow its way into my brain.

Which is odd, because that most profound experience occurs for me as the film unfolds. I see myself reflected in the characters. One might think its solipsistic to reach for those—perhaps tenuous—connections, but if we don’t reach to see yourselves in the characters projected for you on the screen, we’re doomed to be subjected seven or eight more Transformers movies, or the written-by-committee blockbusters that Disney and the other studios are churning out with disappointing regularity. We’ve relegated Crowe to not direct that much anymore, after the admitted misstep of Aloha (2015), but if he could reach into the recesses of his deeper felt inclinations to make more movies like this, it may be past time to let him out of director jail.

On first blush, I shouldn’t feel so connected to the film. The main character and I are almost pointed opposites in many ways. We are separated by thirty years. William Miller (Fugit) is doomed to appear younger than he actually he is for all of his days, while I appeared to be in my mid-thirties since the age of ten. Miller’s soul is filled with every inch of popular music, whereas I couldn’t be bothered with anything musical (itself a likely act of rebellion against my musically inclined family), but instead steeped myself in movie so early, it’s entirely possible my real life didn’t begin until after my family got a DVD player and I was first introduced to the wild world of audio commentaries.

So why do I feel seen by the film, as much as I myself am seeing it? There’s the scene early on where Miller and Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman, so perfectly cast that I thought the role had to be written for him, until I realized he was one of the few characters who really existed) talk about writing just for the sake of it, with no aim in sight (see these reviews) and talk about their typewriters like people in other movies might talk about cars and motorcycles. It’s a small scene, but such a specific choice that tickles the wrinkles in my brain that I would have gone anywhere the film wanted to take me after that moment.