Singles

I had a friend whose theory was that whatever you love in high school and early college is what you love for the rest of your life. He suggested that your favorite music, tv show, or movie when you were eighteen or nineteen is still probably your favorite today and the new things you encounter get measured against it. 

Now this theory doesn’t hold 100% true because I know for a fact my 90s love affair with the Dave Matthews Band is long since over. But there are a lot of things from that period that I still think are wonderful, and one of them just came out on Blu-Ray this month. The 1992 film Singles is kind of Cameron Crowe’s lost film. Right before it, he directed his first movie, the classic high school love story Say Anything, and after it he directed the unexpected Tom Cruise blockbuster Jerry Maguire. Right between those two notable movies came this small film about a group of six friends who all live in the same apartment building trying to navigate the single life in grunge-era Seattle. It’s like an extended episode of Friends set in the northwest and with a far better soundtrack.

 

Crowe is among America’s most writerly filmmakers. He loves character, idiosyncratic dialogue, and bumper-sticker worthy one liners. Let us not forget this is the guy who introduced “Show me the money” to the national lexicon. Singles is divided up into vignettes with short story-like titles such as “Have Fun, Stay Single” and “What Took You So Long?” Each one focuses on both the pathos and occasional absurdity of being single.

The relationship between Steve, the traffic engineer trying to solve Seattle’s gridlock problem, and Linda, the more-wholesome-than-the-granola-she-eats environmental activitist, is the heart of the film, but I love the subplots and side characters even more. Matt Dillon, for example, plays Cliff Poncier, the empty-headed puff-chested lead singer of the ridiculously named band Citizen Dick. He’s pursued by the sweet and naïve Janet played by Bridget Fonda. He neglects and ignores her until a very Cameron Crowe moment when Janet decides to test Cliff by pretending to sneeze around him. Her only standard left for a boyfriend is that he say “Bless you” when she sneezes. She tries it and he hands her a box of Kleenex saying, “Don’t get me sick, babe. I have to perform this weekend.” She breaks it off with him and he is left to suddenly realize that he lost a really good thing. 

 

My other favorite supporting character is Debbie Hunt played by Sheila Kelly. Debbie is a bit of a man-eater and at one point has a full-on auction-slash-negotiation with her roommate in the kitchen for the eligible bachelor sitting well within earshot in the living room. The bacherlor is disappointed when he hears that Debbie is willing to give him up to her roommate in return for doing the dishes for a month.

The film is thick with cameos including members of Pearl Jam as Cliff Poncier’s band and director Tim Burton as the guy who directs Debbie Hunt’s entry for a video dating service. Real-deal grunge era bands like Alice in Chains and Soundgarden play in clubs attended by the singles. Crowe himself makes an appearance as a rock reporter, which is a bit of an inside joke because he got his start as a teenage journalist writing for Rolling Stone.

 

Looking back now, almost 23 years later, the film doesn’t seem very grungy. Its version of the club scene in Seattle looks tame and quaint, and as Crowe’s camera pans across the singles various apartments, it’s kind of funny and dated to see what used to seem alternative and edgy. Still, outdated or not, Singles has been one of my favorite movies for a long time. Since late high school/early college to be exact. And I’m glad it’s being reintroduced to new viewers on Blu Ray.