Sam Amico
Who can forget the scene in Say Anything when John Cusack’s character holds a boombox above his head, playing Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes, as Cusack tries to win over his one true love?
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In fact, that classic scene is all some people know about the 1989 romantic comedy-drama.
But guess what? It almost didn’t even happen.
Cusack was portraying Lloyd Dobler, a C-level student, who fell for Ione Skye’s Diane Court, the class valedictorian. The film marked the directorial debut of Cameron Crowe, a former rock writer for Rolling Stone.
Crowe originally wanted a Billy Idol song for the boombox scene. And Cusack didn’t really want the boombox scene at all, as Crowe tells it.
“John felt that Lloyd was kowtowing too much by holding up the boombox, and that it was too subservient a move,” Crowe once said, via Ultimate Classic Rock. “He wanted to be more laid-back.”
Eventually, Cusack reached a compromise. But that didn’t end up working out, either.
“I wanted to just have the boombox be on top of the car and him sitting on the roof,” Cusack said.
And the scene was indeed actually shot that way — then scrapped.
Say Anything…. Trailer
Once Crowe finally got Cusack to agree to just hold the boombox over his head, other challenges awaited. After doing away with the Bill Idol song, Crowe was going to use a song by Fishbone, a ska band liked by Cusack.
Ultimately, Crowe decided on In Your Eyes. So he called Gabriel.
That didn’t go well, either.
“I was given a day to call him at his studio,” Crowe said. “And he got on and there was this kind of you know, ethereal voice, Peter Gabriel, really nice, and he said, ‘I appreciate you asking for the song. It’s a very personal song to me and I just hope you don’t mind that I have to turn you down.”
It’s safe to assume that Crowe was hoping to hear Gabriel say just about anything else.
Turns out, Gabriel got Crowe’s movie confused with the John Belushi biopic, Wired, which also requested to use the song. Gabriel didn’t want the song to be used in an overdose scene, as planned for the other movie.
Once Crowe cleared things up, Gabriel gave his blessing.
So Crowe first had to convince Cusack, then Gabriel, that the scene needed them both, and in the way, it was originally intended.
Say Anything hit theaters on April 14, 1989, and has been considered a classic ever since. If nothing else, everyone knows the boombox scene that almost didn’t happen.
