September 5, 2008: Say Anything
This is one of the oft-referenced classics of ’80s teen cinema. John Cusack was well-known at the time but not yet a huge star. He’s another actor I’ve always considered myself to like, but I haven’t really seen much of his work. Grosse Pointe Blank really worked for me, though, and was one the movies that particularly struck me in 1997 (another being Chasing Amy).
I know I had seen this movie once before, although I certainly can’t say that I remember any of it. Generally, if I see a movie only once, I don’t retain much from it – a week later I often can’t even recall how a movie ends and who dies or lives. If I see a movie 3 or 4 times, then I start being able to recite lines, and might actually figure out the nuances of the plot and characters, but I can be a bit thick on a first viewing.
Anyway, here we have John Cusack as a high-school student (actually a recent grad in the summer after Senior year), who finally resolves to make contact with the beautiful smart girl who recently gave the valedictory address, and they start to enjoy each other’s company, but eventually need to address the nearing end to the summer and their different life directions and ambitions. These differences are judged to be vast by the girl’s father, but the kids aren’t so sure. Throw in a few major sub-plot complications to force things to a head and get this all done with in 100 minutes, and you have what has become a classic ’80s teen angst film with a small handful of iconic bits (perhaps most notably the shot of Cusack holding up the ghetto blaster…if it’s still appropriate to call it that…outside the girl’s window to try and win her back).
I was struck by how real (i.e. actually believable) the conflict was. I’m well aware of the construction of a typical Hollywood movie, requiring conflict among the main characters around 65-75% of the way through, so that a resolution can be provided and everyone can finish at a high point. I sometimes wonder whether my half-assed “devotion” to the movies is rooted in a fundamental cynicism surrounding the dogged consistency of this approach, leading to a greater interest in the less conventional narrative films of the ’70s, although when on occasion I push further into crazy Antonioni or Fellini or Bunuel stuff from the ’60s and ’70s, I realize that I don’t seem to be *that* devoted to getting away from typical film structure.
But getting back to the conflict, it struck me that first of all we were dealing with a very real scenario that many teenagers must deal with at the end of high school, where different people’s paths in life, artificially held together for 4-5 years or more, finally have their first major chance to diverge, but the shared experiences and very real human connections among individuals (I suppose most typically between romantic couples in such movies, although we’re starting to see that pattern broken in recent films such as Superbad, examining non-romantic friendship bonds in more than just a superficial way) make that final summer after high school one which is like walking on a tightrope at times. So in Say Anything, I’m very happy to see the conflict come from people dealing in an uncertain way with the fundamental paradox of that final summer, rather than from some boneheaded drunken comment overheard at a party, or whatever the device may have been in countless teen angst movies from, say, the ’90s.
It’s good to see John and Joan Cusack working together. It’s interesting to see Lili Taylor in an early role before she had broken out into much less conventional roles. It’s good to see John Mahoney playing a real character (although the performance didn’t quite sit right with me in the final quarter of the film) rather than a caricature on Frasier, which was funny for a couple of years but I have difficulty imagining the idea of watching that show for 10+ years.
And of course a review of Say Anything wouldn’t be complete without a full (or half) analysis of Cameron Crowe’s career arc. This is his directorial debut, although he had been screenwriting previously (most notably Fast Times at Ridgemont High, another teen comedy which holds up surprisingly well). If I had to pick a favourite of his written/directed films, I’d still have to go with Almost Famous, but that might have just been because I was in a particularly good movie mood, or that it was a particularly good movie year, in 1999, and in 1989 I didn’t take nearly as much advantage of my oodles of free time to actually sit and watch movies.
And of course, as an aficionado of at least part of the responsibilities of cinematographers (I like composition, but don’t care nearly so much about colour and lighting, which is a big part of why it’s not actually my profession), I must mention that this film was shot by Laszlo Kovacs, one of those venerable cinematographers who has been around for decades, and worked with big directors and big stars throughout his career, yet most people wouldn’t recognize his name. This list is amazing (and no, this is not all recited from memory) – Easy Rider with Dennis Hopper, Five Easy Pieces with Bob Rafelson, What’s Up, Doc? with Peter Bogdanovich, Shampoo with Hal Ashby, New York, New York with Martin Scorsese, F.I.S.T with Norman Jewison, The Runner Stumbles with Stanley Kramer, The Toy with Richard Donner, Crackers with Louis Malle, Ghostbusters with Ivan Reitman. You get the idea. He’s awesome.
Well, this review seems to be getting dangerously close to being full-assed, in breadth if not so much in depth or quality of writing, so maybe I’ll stop there. Say Anything certainly seems to hold up after 19 years – well worth a look.