John Cusack is My Hero

Over the weekend I went to a wedding. During that wedding, I danced with my ex-girlfriend's roommate and best friend. (she may have been trying to keep me from dancing with my ex-girlfriend; it's a little hard to tell)

Anyway, one of the dances was to "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel. During the dance, I made a Say Anything reference. This particular roommate seems pretty hip and cultured. I figured she would get the reference. Apparently not! So I explained the whole scene were John Cusack holds the boom box over his head and blasts the song. To me, this is one of the key movie moments of the late 80's. This was a well crafted moment by Cameron Crowe. How could you not know this moment? Heck, John Cusack is holding the boom box on the cover to the movie!

Anyway, during dinner I watched High Fidelity again. I like to watch High Fidelity periodically because I always get something new from the movie every time I see it. It doesn't seem like it would be such a deep movie... but I think it captures growing up as a boy pretty well, like really most things written by Nick Hornby. This was Hornby's really quintessential boy-growing-up work, and I think it's his best. Anyway, this got me thinking about Cusack again, so I decided to do some research about that fun Say Anything moment that I remember so fondly... I found this, which is referring to "In Your Eyes" and its role in the movie:

This was featured in the movie Say Anything in a scene where John Cusack plays this from a Boom Box he holds over his head to win the heart of Ione Skye. Cameron Crowe, who directed the film, was going to use Billy Idol's "Got To Be A Lover," but it didn't work with the scene. Crowe got the idea to use this when he played a tape from his wedding which had this on it. Because it was a deeply personal song, Gabriel did not want to let him use it, but when Crowe called and sent him a tape of the movie, Gabriel loved it and let him use it.

I think this is a great little tidbit of info! I think it fits well with my wedding dance story too. I also think that since Peter Gabriel was driven by the niftiness of the scene to allow them to use his music, my ex-girlfriend's roommate really should take it upon herself to get a little more culture before she leaves college. I mean, c'mon! The boom box!!! SUCH a good scene! :)