Cameron Crowe reveals how he tricked John Cusack into filming “Say Anything”’s iconic boom box scene

Say Anything‘s most iconic scene could have looked very different if John Cusack had followed his initial instincts.

The film’s writer and director, Cameron Crowe, is recalling filming the beloved 1989 teen romance movie, sharing his memory of shooting the sequence in which Lloyd Dobler (Cusack) blasts Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” to win back his ex Diane Court (Ione Skye) by raising a boom box over his head outside her window.

In a wide-ranging new conversation with The New York Times, Crowe said Cusack didn’t want Lloyd to hold the boom box at all. “He felt like it was a subservient act: Why does Lloyd have to be a wuss like that?” the filmmaker said. “We struggled with how to get that scene.”

Crowe said the movie’s cinematographer, László Kovács, “knew that we’d been battling” with the sequence, and subsequently filmed an alternate version of the scene — but he never intended to use it.

“We had actually shot the scene where Cusack had the boom box on the hood of a car and he was saying, ‘That’s more what I would do,'” Crowe remembered. “László leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘Don’t worry, there’s no film in the camera.'”

Crowe recalled Kovács then finding a perfect spot to capture their intended boom-box-over-the-head shot as they prepared to wrap the sequence.

“On the last day, as we were losing the sun, he said: ‘I found a place across the street that would be good, and the car is parked there. Let’s get him across the street and see if we can get it,'” he told the Times. “So we ran across the street. [John] said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’ So he’s holding up the boom box, literally kind of pissed that he’s having to do it one more time. And you knew it watching in the monitor: That was the perfect emotion for the scene.”

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to a representative for Cusack for comment.

Cusack previously recalled shooting the sequence at a Q&A following a Say Anything screening in Dallas in 2023. “At first I didn’t wanna do it ’cause I thought it was too corny, and that sort of was the tension of making the movie,” the High Fidelity star said. “The character I liked, but I thought he was a little too soft. He was like a Paul McCartney song without John Lennon.”

Cusack continued, “I was like, ‘C’mon, he can’t be such a sap.’ So we sort of went back and forth on it, and finally, I just said, ‘Let’s just put the boom box on the car or something.’ And then Cameron said, ‘Will you just do it one time?’ And I said, ‘Alright, I’ll do it once.’ And so I held it up once, and that’s the only time we ever did it.”

Elsewhere in the Times interview, Crowe reflected on collaborating with Cusack for his performance in the film. “I think Cusack grew up on that movie in a lot of ways,” Crowe said. “The first time I saw him, he was facing away from me in a coffee shop in Chicago. He hadn’t even turned around and I knew he was Lloyd Dobler.”

However, the filmmaker said it was immediately clear that the actor didn’t completely share his vision for Lloyd. “Then he turned around and we started talking and he said, ‘I’m never gonna do this part because I don’t wanna be that John Cusack guy again in that way,'” Crowe remembered. “We were fighting with that perception of earlier-period Cusack throughout the entire making of the movie.”

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Crowe said Cusack eventually understood his intentions once they were recording additional sound in post-production. “He watched one of the scenes and said, ‘Oh, yeah, alright, I guess I do get what you were going for.'”

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