Say Something‘s most iconic scene might have appeared very completely different if John Cusack had adopted his preliminary instincts.

The movie’s author and director, Cameron Crowe, is recalling filming the beloved 1989 teen romance movie, sharing his reminiscence of capturing the sequence during which Lloyd Dobler (Cusack) blasts Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” to win again his ex Diane Courtroom (Ione Skye) by elevating a boom box over his head outdoors her window.

In a wide-ranging new dialog with The New York Times, Crowe mentioned Cusack did not need Lloyd to carry the boom box in any respect. “He felt prefer it was a subservient act: Why does Lloyd need to be a wuss like that?” the filmmaker mentioned. “We struggled with how to get that scene.”

Crowe mentioned the film’s cinematographer, László Kovács, “knew that we would been battling” with the sequence, and subsequently filmed an alternate model of the scene — however he by no means meant to make use of it.

“We had really shot the scene the place Cusack had the boom box on the hood of a automobile and he was saying, ‘That is extra what I might do,’” Crowe remembered. “László leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘Don’t be concerned, there is no movie within the digital camera.’”

Crowe recalled Kovács then discovering an ideal spot to seize their meant boom-box-over-the-head shot as they ready to wrap the sequence. 

“On the final day, as we had been shedding the solar, he mentioned: ‘I discovered a spot throughout the road that will be good, and the automobile is parked there. Let’s get him throughout the road and see if we will get it,’” he informed the Occasions. “So we ran throughout the road. [John] mentioned, ‘Okay, I will do it.’ So he’s holding up the boom box, actually type of pissed that he’s having to do it yet one more time. And also you knew it watching within the monitor: That was the proper emotion for the scene.”

Leisure Weekly has reached out to a consultant for Cusack for remark.

Cusack beforehand recalled capturing the sequence at a Q&A following a Say Something screening in Dallas in 2023. “At first I did not wanna do it ‘trigger I believed it was too corny, and that kind of was the strain of creating the film,” the Excessive Constancy star mentioned. “The character I favored, however I believed he was a bit too smooth. He was like a Paul McCartney tune with out John Lennon.”

Cusack continued, “I used to be like, ‘C’mon, he cannot be such a sap.’ So we kind of went backwards and forwards on it, and at last, I simply mentioned, ‘Let’s simply put the boom box on the automobile or one thing.’ After which Cameron mentioned, ‘Will you simply do it one time?’ And I mentioned, ‘Alright, I will do it as soon as.’ And so I held it up as soon as, and that is the one time we ever did it.”

Elsewhere within the Occasions interview, Crowe mirrored on collaborating with Cusack for his efficiency within the movie. “I believe Cusack grew up on that film in plenty of methods,” Crowe mentioned. “The primary time I noticed him, he was going through away from me in a espresso store in Chicago. He hadn’t even circled and I knew he was Lloyd Dobler.”

Nevertheless, the filmmaker mentioned it was instantly clear that the actor did not fully share his imaginative and prescient for Lloyd. “Then he circled and we began speaking and he mentioned, ‘I am by no means gonna do that half as a result of I do not wanna be that John Cusack man once more in that method,’” Crowe remembered. “We had been preventing with that notion of earlier-period Cusack all through the whole making of the film.”

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Crowe mentioned Cusack finally understood his intentions as soon as they had been recording extra sound in post-production. “He watched one of many scenes and mentioned, ‘Oh, yeah, alright, I suppose I do get what you had been going for.’”