Say Anything Boombox Scene

Most people I know loved Say anything and I am among the many who thought this was a very good touching, funny movie for teens and young people. It is a bit more wholesome then a lot of what's out there in this genre and although it doesn't rank among my favorite teen movie it definitely earned it's praise.

Trench coat-wearing Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) holding his boom box over his head at arm's length, rock serenading his true love Diane Court (Ione Skye) in 1989’s “Say Anything,” remains one of the most enduring images of film romance.

Even those too young to have cranked a boom box revere the scene from Cameron Crowe’s directing debut, released 30 years ago Sunday, with Dobler defiantly blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” while Court listens from her bedroom.

But a big part of what makes the scene subtly effective is the real-life apprehension both actors were feeling shooting the scene.

'That scene is like Romeo under the trellis,' says Crowe. 'But I have this feeling when I watch it that it’s filled with double emotion – both with the story and the actors, whose own trepidation bleeds in.'

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Cusack, who was 22 at the time, got over the fear of falling into teen romance clichés even before making the movie. These fears resurfaced with the boom box bit, which came on the last day of production. Crowe had to convince him to shoot the final scene, but Cusack's resistance is still visible.

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'(Cusack) thought it was too subservient. The defiance that he has when he’s doing the scene is what makes the scene great,' says Crowe. 'He made it work. The way he performs it, it’s just blatantly defying you to consider it cheesy. That's why he’s so heroic in that moment. He’s still doubting whether the boom box scene is going to work at all. He’s kind of fighting for the scene.'

Skye was a 17-year-old making her major-film debut with 'Say Anything,' and admits she was experiencing feelings of a different kind, separately shooting Court's moments as she hears the music played by her first love, with whom she had broken up.

'I was young. I remember thinking I didn’t like the way that top looked or something in the scene. It’s just so silly,' says Skye, 'That’s what you get for being a teenager; every once in a while, it comes out with the acting.'

While Skye says she 'would put a little more into' the scene given the chance to do it again, her subtle unease as she listens to the music conveys Court's own emotional discomfort.

'Ione was feeling vulnerable. Her kind of nervousness brought that moment to life,' says Crowe. 'Lloyd is working his way into Diane's life again and Diane is nervous about it all.'

Crowe admits the boom box serenade he had written could have come across 'silly' if played incorrectly. But it was inspired by true emotion.

'It's when you’re at the peak of loving a song, and the song is speaking to you so loudly,' says Crowe. 'I thought, 'What if you take this song to the person that you’re thinking about and just listen to it with them?' But I didn’t know how it was going to turn out.'

History would say, perfection. 'Say Anything' and the boom box became an instant cultural phenomena. Crowe says Cusack saw that he had made the right choice in making the movie the first time he saw it. Watching it together was 'emotional,' and the reaction they both received walking around New York City after release was special.

'(Cusack) was getting so much love from people on the street. They were asking, 'Are you Lloyd Dobler?' And I remember him saying, 'On my better days, that’s me.' That was so full circle.'

Still parodied, re-creating the boom box moment is getting more difficult. Skye found this out during a 2014 25th anniversary event filled with trench coat-wearing attendees.

'I talked to the organizer, who said it was so hard to get all those boom boxes and the coats,' says Skye. 'The whole thing is getting much harder to pull off.'

Say Anything.. is a 1989 American teenromanticcomedy-drama film written and directed by Cameron Crowe in his directorial debut. The film follows the romance between Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack), an average student, and Diane Court (Ione Skye), the class valedictorian, immediately after their graduation from high school. In 2002, Entertainment Weekly ranked Say Anything .. as the greatest modern movie romance, and it was ranked number 11 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 best high-school movies.^[3]

Plot[edit]

Noble underachiever Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) falls for valedictorian Diane Court (Ione Skye) at their high-school graduation ceremony. Lloyd lives with his sister Constance (Cusack's real-life sister Joan Cusack), a single mother, and has no plans for his future. Diane comes from a sheltered academic upbringing and lives with her doting divorced father Jim (John Mahoney), who owns the retirement home where she works. She is due to take up a fellowship in England at the end of the summer.

Diane accompanies Lloyd to a party, surprising their classmates. During a dinner at the Court household, where Lloyd fails to impress Diane's family, Jim is informed that he is under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. Diane takes Lloyd to meet the residents of the retirement home and he teaches her to drive the manual-transmissionFord Tempo her father gave her as a graduation present. Their relationship grows intimate and they have sex, to her father's concern. Lloyd's musician friend Corey (Lili Taylor), who has never gotten over her cheating ex-boyfriend, Joe (Loren Dean), warns him to take care of Diane.

Jim urges Diane to break up with Lloyd, feeling he is not an appropriate match, and suggests she give Lloyd a pen as a parting gift. Diane tells Lloyd she wants to stop seeing him and concentrate on her studies, and tells him to take her pen. Devastated, Lloyd seeks advice from Corey, who tells him to 'be a man'. Jim's credit cards are declined when he tries to buy Diane a luggage set.

At dawn, Lloyd plays 'In Your Eyes' by Peter Gabriel, the song that was playing the first time they slept together, on a boombox under her open bedroom window. The next day, Diane meets with the IRS investigator (Philip Baker Hall), who explains that they have evidence suggesting Jim has been embezzling funds from his retirement-home residents. He advises her to accept the fellowship as matters with her father will worsen. After Diane discovers cash concealed at home, Jim tells her he stole the money to give her financial independence, justifying it by saying he provided better care to the victims of his embezzlement than their families did. Distraught, she reconciles with Lloyd at the gym where he trains.

Some time later, Jim is incarcerated. Lloyd visits him in a federal penitentiary and tells him that he will go with Diane to England; Jim reacts with anger. Lloyd gives him a letter from Diane saying she cannot forgive him, but she arrives to say goodbye and they embrace. She gives him a pen, asking him to write to her in England. Lloyd escorts Diane, who is afraid of flying, on her flight.

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Cast[edit]

• John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler, an eternal optimist
• Ione Skye as Diane Court, a high-achieving student
• John Mahoney as Jim Court, Diane's divorced father
• Lili Taylor as Corey Flood, Lloyd's friend
• Polly Platt as Mrs. Flood, Corey's mother
• Bebe Neuwirth as Mrs. Evans, a guidance counselor at Diane's and Lloyd's school
• Amy Brooks as D.C., Lloyd's friend
• Loren Dean as Joe
• Pamela Adlon as Rebecca
• Chynna Phillips as Mimi
• Jeremy Piven as Mark
• Eric Stoltz as Vahlere
• Jason Gould as Mike Cameron
• Philip Baker Hall as IRS Boss
• Joanna Frank as Mrs. Kerwin
• Lois Chiles as Diane's mother (uncredited)
• Joan Cusack as Constance Dobler, Lloyd's sister (uncredited)
• Dan Castellaneta as Diane's teacher (uncredited)

Soundtrack[edit]

Allmusic said the soundtrack, like the film, is 'much smarter than the standard teen fare of the era.'^[4] The soundtrack consists of these songs:

Critical reception[edit]

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert called Say Anything .. 'one of the best films of the year—a film that is really about something, that cares deeply about the issues it contains—and yet it also works wonderfully as a funny, warmhearted romantic comedy.'^[5] He later included it in his 2002 Great Movie list, writing, 'Say Anything exists entirely in a real world, is not a fantasy or a pious parable, has characters who we sort of recognize, and is directed with care for the human feelings involved.'^[6]

The film also had detractors. Variety called it a 'half-baked love story, full of good intentions but uneven in the telling.' But, the review also called the film an '[a]ppealing tale of an undirected army brat proving himself worthy of the most exceptional girl in high school elicits a few laughs, plenty of smiles and some genuine feeling.'^[7] In a mixed review, Caryn James of The New York Times wrote:

[The film] resembles a first-rate production of a children's story. Its sense of parents and the summer after high school is myopic, presented totally from the teen-agers' point of view. Yet its melodrama—Will Dad go to prison? Will Diane go to England?—distorts that perspective, so the film doesn't have much to offer an actual adult, not even a sense of what it's truly like to be just out of high school these days. The film is all charming performances and grace notes, but there are plenty of worse things to be.^[8]

It holds a '98% Fresh' rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus reading: 'One of the definitive Generation X movies, Say Anything is equally funny and heartfelt—and it established John Cusack as an icon for left-of-center types everywhere.'^[9]

Cultural influence[edit]

The film features one of the most culturally recognizable scenes in American movie history, in which John Cusack holds a boombox above his head outside Diane's bedroom window to let her know that he has not given up on her. Crowe and producer James L. Brooks believed the scene could become a hallmark of the movie, though Crowe found it difficult to film because Cusack felt it was 'too passive'. The scene was first scored with Fishbone's 'Question of Life', but after viewing the scene, Crowe opted to replace it with Peter Gabriel's 'In Your Eyes' to better fit the mood that he wished to convey. Gabriel initially turned down Crowe because he confused the film with another film in production at the time, a John Belushi biography called Wired.^[10]

TV series[edit]

A television series based on the movie was planned by NBC and 20th Century Fox, but producers Aaron Kaplan and Justin Adler did not know that Crowe had not approved of the project. When they found out his views, the show was dropped.^[11]

References[edit]

1. ^Box Office Information for Say Anything.Archived 2013-12-11 at the Wayback Machine, TheWrap.com; retrieved April 4, 2013.
2. ^Box Office Information for Say Anything., BoxOfficeMojo.com; retrieved April 4, 2013.
3. ^'50 Best High School Movies'. Filmsite.org. 2006-09-15. Retrieved 2012-05-17.
4. ^Say Anything .. (soundtrack) at AllMusic
5. ^Ebert, Roger (April 14, 1989). 'Say Anything'. RogerEbert.com. Ebert Digital LLC. Retrieved January 13, 2017.
6. ^Ebert, Roger (February 17, 2002). 'Great Movie: Say Anything'. RogerEbert.com. Ebert Digital LLC. Retrieved January 13, 2017.
7. ^Variety Staff (December 31, 1988). 'Say Anything ..'Variety. Retrieved January 13, 2017.
8. ^James, Caryn (April 14, 1989). 'Mismatched Teen-Agers Fall in Love, Of Course'. The New York Times. Retrieved January 13, 2017.
9. ^'Say Anything.. (1989)'. Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved January 13, 2017.
10. ^http://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/58268
11. ^Elavsky, Cindy (October 23, 2014). 'Celebrity Extra'. King Features. Retrieved October 23, 2014.

External links[edit]

• Say Anything .. on IMDb
• Say Anything .. at AllMovie
• Say Anything.. at Rotten Tomatoes
• Say Anything.. at Metacritic
• 'Say Anything..' says so much', latimes.com, October 25, 2009.