Movie Quote/Trivia of the Day This is for those of us that grew up during the grunge era. 1) David Bailey - Tonight Ill be the super me. Steve Dunne - What if the super you meets the super her and the super her rejects the super you? David Bailey - Then its no problem. Steve Dunne - Uh-huh. Why? David Bailey - Because it was never you, it was just an act. I live my life like a French movie, Steve. 2) Eddie - A compliment for us, is a compliment for you. -David Bailey, Steve Dunne and Eddie (Jim True-Frost, Campbell Scott and Eddie Vedder in Singles) How big of a Singles fan are you? You may have worn out your CD of the best-selling soundtrack and made a pilgrimage to the landmark apartment house in Seattle. And you probably know all the cameos: Eric Stoltz is the mime that wont shut up, Tim Burton is the dating video director, and thats Jeremy Piven as a hyper supermarket clerk chatting up lead Campbell Scott, but did you know that it was once set in Arizona or that it might have starred Johnny Depp? Come along with me and heres what Ill tell you. Did you know? Singles was in the works as early as 1984 and was originally going to be set in Phoenix, Arizona. The movie took a different course after the 1990 death of Andrew Wood, the lead singer of Mother Love Bone (whose remaining members would go on to form Pearl Jam.). As Cameron Crowe wrote in his film diary, I was in the process of rewriting an old script of mine at the time. .. I wanted to write something that captured the feeling in that room. Not Andys story but the story of how people instinctively need to be together. Is anybody truly single? Despite the presence of local rock stars, Crowe didnt set out to make a movie about the Seattle scene: People thought Singles was going to be The Mark Arm Story. [Arm was the lead singer of grunge frontrunners Mudhoney.] What Singles was always meant to be was Manhattan set in Seattle. Crowe cast Pearl Jam in the movie before they were even known as Pearl Jam (they changed their name from Mookie Blaylock during filming). He met Stone Gossard [lead guitarist] and Jeff Ament [bassist] through Hearts publicist and tour manager and interviewed them about their lifestyle, then decided to put them in the film. Crowe calls the movie his least successful and admitted, I never got that movie cast right. Its the only movie that Ive directed that didnt feel right. Johnny Depp turned down the lead role that went to Campbell Scott (as did Matt Dillon, who instead played rocker Cliff). While we can picture Depp as a slightly addled rock dude, Crowe says he actually wanted him to play the straight guy, something he wasnt ready to do at the time. Crowe recalls that Depp told him, Ill get there one day, but I cant say I love you yet on screen. Depp, who was fresh off 21 Jump Street, went on to shoot Benny and Joon and Whats Eating Gilbert Grape instead. Matt Dillon had to be talked into signing on to an ensemble film. He was saying, I like the script, but have you seen my movies? Crowe told journalist Tim Appelo in a 1992 interview. Im kind of the star of my movies. So I told him its a role Jack Nicholson might have done, like in Terms of Endearment. He said, Ehhhh I dunno. Dillon wasnt convinced until he met -- and got drunk with -- the future Pearl Jam. I thought, okay, I know where Im goin. These guys are cool, he told EW. The cast met for the first time at a Mookie Blaylock (as Pearl Jam were originally known) and Alice in Chains show. Crowe recalled Dillons odd conversational opener: I hope this isnt a yuppie movie, no doubt a reference to the very upwardly mobile and clean-cut main couple, played by Scott and Kyra Sedgwick. Despite the awkwardness, Crowe wrote, We go to the club. Its sweaty and packed, and the cast slowly makes friends as we sit in a corner booth. There are two concerts in the film: Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and two deleted scenes on the DVD, but Crowe would love to do an additional DVD with some of the unreleased stuff and the concert sequences too. The movie was shot in 1991, then sat on the shelf until the studio -- who had originally wanted to move it to the beachside volleyball courts of L.A. -- realized it had a bankable movie with grunge superstars in it. Crowe recalled, 65-year-old studio guys, were shouting, Weve got a film in Seattle! Is Kurt Cobain in it? Warner Brothers hated the title Singles and offered several suggestions, including In the Midnight Hour, Love in Seattle, and -- if youll recall the films ever-present answering machines -- Leave Me a Message. To capitalize on Nirvanas enormous popularity, they also suggested Come As You Are, even though the band (and its music) appears nowhere in the film. The only way the studio would release the movie was if we had a promotional party where Pearl Jam and Screaming Trees and Alice in Chains play, Crowe told Contact Music. Unfortunately, the new-to-superstardom band choked and, as Crowe recalls, Eddie [Vedder] got drunk, very drunk... The show was a disaster. People were streaming for the exits. Fights were breaking out. The music was basically unairable. It was just, in retrospect, perfectly hideous. Vedder and Crowe didnt speak about the incident until the filming of Pearl Jam 20. Crowe didnt make any money off the hit soundtrack. I didnt want to take any money that belonged to those musicians... It was meant to be something pure, and still is for me. The whole thing was a little bit muted about how to pay tribute to the Seattle scene because by the time it came out it was a global phenomenon. At one point, Warner Bros. wanted to do a Singles TV series, but Crowe turned them down. Steves dream project, the Seattle Super Train, finally came true, in a way. Sound Transits light rail system debuted in 2003 and expanded in 2009. Instead of the 900,000 to a million passengers Steve pitched to the mayor, its daily ridership is around 26,200. The Java Stop coffee house where Fondas character works was actually the live-music venue the OK Hotel, where bands including Nirvana and Mudhoney headlined. If youre trekking to Seattle to sit in a window booth as Matt Dillon and Eddie Vedder did, youre out of luck: The hotel closed in 2001 after being damaged in an earthquake. But you can live there: its been restored and is now a condo and art space. Resentful of a more famous movie set in the Emerald City, Crowe joked that there should be a plaque at the most famous Singles location, the apartment building where Dillon and Fondas characters live. Nobody ever said, heres where they filmed Singles. But they would say Sleepless in Seattle was here, Sleepless in Seattle was there, the people making Sleepless in Seattle once walked through this building. Alice in Chains, playing the part of a sleazy bar band, perform the song Would? for the film prior to its live debut in May 1991 at the Starplex in Dallas. A year later in August 1992, a month after the films release, Would? becomes Alice In Chains biggest AOR hit to-date and Singles wins an MTV Movie Award for Best Movie Song. Campbell Scotts character is seen wearing a SubPop t-shirt, a well-known independent record company from Seattle which released many albums which became known as the Seattle Sound, most notably Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 23:33:34 +0000
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