Rewatchables Reference

• Bill's nominees: Diane finally calls Lloyd back (great landline anxiety – 'monumentally busy'); the party scene; Lloyd telling his female friends they had sex (Lili Taylor: 'You might be 60 walking down the street, but what you'll really be thinking is we had sex'); Lloyd's dinner speech ('I don't want to sell anything bought or processed...'); Lloyd visiting his guy friends after getting dumped at the Gas N' Sip ('You'll never have a chance with a girl like that – the Malibu is your castle'); the boombox scene; Diane confronting her dad with the letter; the airplane ending.
• Bill's favorite: The party. 'I'd never seen a scene like this in a movie before – somebody that accurately hammered home what a party was actually like.' Different rooms, the Lili Taylor room singing songs about Joe, the laundry room, Eric Stoltz in a bird costume, Jeremy Piven demanding keys ('You must chill'). CR: 'They feel like they actually did go to high school together.'
• Judd: The sex in the car – 'He starts shivering afterwards. It's so powerful for him emotionally, but he just starts coming apart at the seams. They're so good together.' Also Philip Baker Hall's IRS scene with Ione Skye – 'Does he have a lot of rugs?'
• Judd also highlights the breakup scene: Lloyd says 'I love you,' she dumps him 20 seconds later. His reaction: 'I feel like a dick. You must think I'm a dick.' – 'So accurate to what someone would say at that age.'
• CR: The party, all the way.

• Bill: John and Joan Cusack playing siblings (like Grosse Pointe Blank later). John Mahoney as the insanely proud dad – Bill identifies with it now as a father. The movie organically saying its own title ('You could say anything to me').
• The music: Peter Gabriel's 'In Your Eyes' and The Replacements' 'Within Your Reach' both get played multiple times. Also a Living Color song and Fishbone. Judd: 'In Your Eyes is still one of the best songs of all time.'
• The random cast sprinkled through: Lauren Dean, Pamela Adlon, Bebe Neuwirth, Jeremy Piven, Eric Stoltz – all went on to do really cool things.
• Judd: The movie feels timeless despite being 31 years old. Costumes held up ('sometimes you see movies from other eras and some collars throw you'). The behavior is so universal. Only real giveaway: the enormous video recorders at graduation and the phone booth.

• Bill: The boombox scene – it's become so iconic and so parodied that it's not as impactful anymore. Anyone under 30 is like 'What's he holding? A robot?' Also: she doesn't even look out the window. 'I almost forgot the context around the scene.'
• Bill: The primitive MMA equipment – Lloyd's gloves look like he found them on a prison yard.
• The whole late-80s/early-90s era of guys winning girls back by calling a hundred times and standing outside their house. 'Emilio Estevez in 'St. Elmo's Fire' follows Ally Sheedy three hours to the ski lodge. The Pickup Artist is just Downey chasing people up and down the street.'
• CR: Wished for more late-80s underground music – 'They could have worked a Fugazi song in here.' (But Fugazi wasn't selling their songs.)

• Cusack beat out Christian Slater. CR: 'Slater is too close to the 'Pump Up the Volume' / Heathers James Dean character. It's hard to imagine him capturing the really quick-twitch neurosis Cusack has.'
• Robert Downey Jr. turned the role down.
• Jennifer Connelly and Elisabeth Shue both auditioned for Diane.
• Pamela Adlon auditioned for the friend role. Julia Roberts was also considered. It went to Amy Brooks (James Brooks's daughter).
• Dick Van Dyke expressed interest in the dad role and met with Crowe and Brooks. Bill: 'There was a dark side to Dick Van Dyke.'
• Lawrence Kasdan was set to direct but dropped out to let Crowe do it.
• Richard Dreyfuss had read the script and wanted to be Lloyd.

Jeremy Piven in the party scene – 'about as dialed up as it gets.' All three agree. 'My Firebird. Chill. Chill.' Bill: 'Half the parties I went to in high school had a Piven.'

• Bill: Mike Cameron – the kid in the car at the end of the party that they have to drive around for three hours. 'I know that guy.'
• Also discussed: Loren Dean as Joe. Bill: 'He's bounced around. Billy Bathgate, 'Enemy of the State'.'

• Bill: Eric Stoltz – he's in the movie for maybe four minutes as the guy in the bird costume. 'He was a PA on the movie who wanted to learn about filmmaking, even though he was a rising star from Mask. They put him in the bird costume.'
• Judd: Joan Cusack's son – 'Every shot of him he's tracking the action. Happy, sweet, funny.' The definition of how great a tiny kid performance can be.
• Bill floats Lili Taylor but rules her out – too many scenes to qualify.

All three agree they wouldn't recast anything. Judd: 'I really like everybody in the movie.' CR: 'This is one of the most perfectly cast movies ever.'

• The dojo featured in the movie was also in 'The Karate Kid'. Cusack did kickboxing scenes with Don 'the Dragon' Wilson, leading to a real decades-long kickboxing obsession – he holds the highest belt.
• The exact boombox model: a Toshiba RT-SX1.
• Cameron Crowe commissioned The Smithereens to write the theme song. He rejected 'A Girl Like You' for outlining the entire plot too clearly; it became their biggest hit anyway.
• Peter Gabriel initially declined the song because he confused 'Say Anything' with Wired (the John Belushi biopic). They reportedly sent him the wrong screener.
• Stone Gossard (Pearl Jam) has a cameo as a cab driver.
• Eric Stoltz was a PA on the movie to learn about filmmaking, despite being a rising star from Mask. They ended up putting him in the bird costume at the party.

• Ione Skye: Yes – best character she ever played.
• John Cusack: Debatable. He has two peaks – this, and then 11 years later with the run of 'Con Air', Being John Malkovich, and 'High Fidelity'. Judd: 'He has amazing movies in every era.'
• 80s high school movies: No – it's either Bueller or Breakfast Club. This movie is an outlier, more sophisticated. Judd: 'It's like a Larry Sanders show but in high school.'
• Seattle movies: No – singles is more of a Seattle movie. You don't see that much of Seattle in this.
• Nursing home fraud movies: Probably yes. Bill: 'Better Call Saul is close.'

• Bill: Maybe 23 minutes less of the nursing home fraud subplot. Judd completely disagrees: 'I want to meet more of the people in the nursing home. I need 20 more minutes. 'The Godfather Part II' version where we get the flashback to when Mahoney first decides to start scamming old people.'
• Bill: The breakup feels a little abrupt – she seemed to love him and then suddenly calls it off. CR notes the changing outfits indicate time passing across multiple conversations with her dad. Judd: 'The pre-going-to-college breakup was just how it worked back then.'
• Bill: The boombox scene location – 'For some reason he's in a park. It doesn't look like the outdoor part of her house at all. It looks like he's standing in Griffith Park.'

• Bill's initial reaction was pure revulsion, but then got 1% excited playing it out in his head. Judd: 'Episode 3 is all about Joe.' Bill: 'Wouldn't you spend 10 hours at the Gas N' Sip?'
• They note the 'High Fidelity' TV remake worked well with a gender flip (Zoe Kravitz as the Cusack character). Bill: 'Maybe you flip the characters and the Ione Skye character is a guy who has his shit together and the Cusack character is a woman.'

• Did Lloyd predict the UFC? Judd: 'Kickboxing is a sport of the future – he was right. He's vindicated. Maybe he's Dana White.'
• What is Lloyd's podcast? Bill: 'He's on the Rogan show. He's the producer brought in every once in a while.' CR: 'Lloyd just made a hundred million dollars selling his podcast to Spotify.'
• How long did they stay together in England? Judd: 'Seven weeks. He got depressed, had nothing to do, someone asked him to do a fight, went back, and that's how the podcasting empire started.'

• Judd: Cameron Crowe – 'He took young people more seriously than they had been taken before. For me it was like, this is the kind of movie I want to see, this is the kind of movie I want to make.' Also gives extra respect to John Mahoney since he's no longer with us.
• Bill: Cameron Crowe. Cusack has too many signature movies (could argue three others). For Crowe, it launched his directing career and you 'buy season tickets for him after this – whatever he's doing, you're in.'
• Bill's outsider case: Peter Gabriel – 'That song becomes one of the most memorable things about the movie, if not the most.'