h2. Trouble in Mind (1985)
Director Alan Rudolph’s cheeky film noir transformed Seattle into a town where, as he puts it, “past meets the future, but it’s not the present.” Ex-cop Kris Kristofferson gets out of jail and heads back to his old haunt, a brooding, mysterious metropolis called Rain City ruled by characters like malevolent mob boss Hilly Blue (played by John Waters’s muse Divine in male drag).
“Like noir, Seattle to me exudes a hard-boiled romanticism, the appropriate mood for this story,” says Rudolph. “Everything we filmed, however, had to go through the Rain City filter. Most real-life or national brands were hidden or eliminated, replaced with Rain City sensibility, with its ominous, authoritarian overtones.” Teams of local artists provided signage and placards with slogans such as “Repression Is Depression.” As Kristofferson’s tough-talking old flame, Genevieve Bujold runs a cafe built out of a storage space on First and Blanchard. Some passersby who wandered in and tried to order food even earned jobs as extras. “Belltown was quite different then—funky, lonely, ignored,” says Rudolph.
The Seattle Asian Art Museum (then still the home of the Seattle Art Museum) acts as Hilly Blue’s estate. At the climax, his art collection is obliterated in a gonzo comic shoot-out. “Dale Chihuly offered some unbelievably gorgeous pieces that had imperfections,” Rudolph remembers. “I, of course, tried to save one from destruction, thinking I could find it a home.” No dice. Chihuly donated the pieces on the condition that they all be shattered.
Rudolph wrote Trouble, he says, with Seattle in mind to star: “A film’s setting plays a lead role, many times just as fictional as the other parts. Like any successful actor, Seattle has authenticity, movement, and looks good up close.”
How It Defined Us: Seattle proved capable of giving a full-bodied character performance.
Say Anything (1989) Singles (1992)
Cameron Crowe married Heart’s Nancy Wilson, a hometown hero, in 1986, so we may owe her some extra thanks: His first two films as writer and director were set in Seattle.
In Say Anything, John Cusack’s Lloyd Dobler, a recent high school grad with no solid plans except not “to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career,” romances the class valedictorian, a beauty with a future named Diane Court (Ione Skye). Aside from references in dialogue, Crowe makes sure we know exactly where we’re supposed to be, giving Lloyd a depressive musician gal pal (priceless Lili Taylor) and grabbing casual passing shots of you-have-to-live-here-to-know-it landmarks such as Fremont’s Waiting for the Interurban sculpture.
No matter that the most iconic image was filmed in a park in Universal City, California. This is movie reality; that park is our park. And that image is golden: Undeterred after Diane breaks up with him, Lloyd stands outside her window at night, hoists his boom box over his head, and blasts the Peter Gabriel song “In Your Eyes.” It’s a statement of hurt, hot, bald love that for the MTV generation became the equivalent of Marlon Brando screaming “Stellaaaa!” at the bottom of the staircase in A Streetcar Named Desire.
There’s a scene near the beginning of Singles, meanwhile, that’s quietly imbued with a different sort of love. Campbell Scott, sitting in the courtyard of his Capitol Hill apartment complex with Kyra Sedgwick, looks around him and gives her a rundown of the tenants who live behind each window. He finishes and Sedgwick says, “You sound like me talking about my family.” Singles remains the movie that inspires people to live here and make families of their friends.
Crowe made friends here, too, and had them all within reach. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, and Jeff Ament—just before Ten, their breakthrough album, started to catch on—portray bandmates of addle-brained rocker Matt Dillon. A wealth of such cameos allows the film to both spoof and embrace the city’s burgeoning public persona. “This one was very close to him as a person because of his music background, his story, and his intimate knowledge of the breaking music scene that Nancy and her sister were kind of the godmothers of at the time,” says Singles production designer Stephen J. Lineweaver. “All of the big names out of Seattle we know today were either in the movie or sitting around the set all the time or we were at their music events—or they were performing music in our movie.”
The music lives on and so does that iconic apartment complex at 1820 East Thomas Street.
How They Defined Us: Crowe bestowed upon us the kind of insider’s affection that Woody Allen once lavished on New York.
Published: December 2009
I’ll add Fear and Mad Love.
Some nice Seattle scenes in those.
Nice article, I have worked in the movie industry in the northwest since 1983 and long for the good old days of 1-2 Hollywood produced movie a year coming to Seattle. Unfortunately those days are long gone, most of the “Seattle” movies are made in Vancouver and at best come “down” here for only a few days just to rip off enough shots to make the movie seem like it is Seattle. After falling way behind other states with tax breaks for productions in Washington the tide may be turning, however when combined with a declining crew base, and lack of infrastructure, not to mention the traffic gridlock it may never come back. It is a shame most of my work has been out of state where quite frankly movie making is embraced as the job creating, clean industry that it is. But thank you for not mentioning those Seattle rip off movies so many others do.
Ten Things I Hate About You?
Although not a big screen movie, The Night Strangler (1973) not only used Seattle really well, it actually got me to spend the money to go on the Underground Seattle tour.
Cool! You know, the independent Cap Hill video store On 15th Video has a whole Seattle section…bet if you browsed that you’d come up with even more…
I really do think that we can take Seattle to a new level in film making. I would personally like to be involved in promoting such. Jobert1234@aol.com. We recently made a movie “Poppies, Odyssey of an Opium Eater” based on a true story (and book of the same name) of Eric Detzer’s life as a opium addict. Eric lives in Seattle and wrote the book about his addiction to wild opium poppies, which truly do grow wild in the Pacific Northwest. Eric was a well respected (master’s degree) social worker who fought child abuse, while scouring the country-side for the poppies. It is a story of his “spiral down hill” !!! If you are interested, we have a web site with a trailer….. www.poppiesthemovie.com ….. We would love some feedback about how to promote and distribute the movie in the Northwest. Happy New Year to you all. Josephine
Thanks for the article. I would like to add Assassins and Disclosure since I was an extra in both movies. I was next to Sly in one of my scenes. Fond memories!