Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Sometime around 1980, writer Jeff Arch watched an episode of This Old House in which host Bob Vila toured a renovated Seattle houseboat. Arch himself was charmed by Seattle after a visit in 1985. “Then in 1990, I get this idea for a love story where the two people don’t meet, and I thought it’d be really cool if I set it on a houseboat,” Arch recollects. “Then I get to go to Seattle, I get to hang out on a houseboat, and what isn’t cool about that?”
Indeed—especially if your love story puts Tom Hanks on said houseboat and, after a series of near misses, hooks him up with Meg Ryan on top of the Empire State Building. The worldwide box office totaled nearly $228 million.
We’re still reaping the tourism benefits of Sleepless in Seattle. “It’s Americana at this point,” says David Blandford, director of public relations for Seattle’s Convention and Visitors Bureau. People still want to know where Hanks and buddy Rob Reiner talk tiramisu. (It’s the Athenian Inn.) Argosy, Ride the Ducks, and Waterways Cruises all spotlight Hanks’s floating haven on Lake Union.
The main tourist attraction—the houseboat itself—almost didn’t make it into the picture. “The family that owned the houseboat was getting divorced,” says producer Gary Foster, “and I ended up having to get on the phone with each of them and try to find a way for this to be something that they could agree on. And it was iffy.”
No surprise that the movie lures people here; it exudes the genuine fondness for the city felt by the visitors who made it. “I’d never been there and I instantly fell in love with the Market and tried to shoot as many scenes as I could in and around it,” says director Nora Ephron. “We lived on Union Street in an apartment right on top of the Market, and we went to it every day if possible. Started in cherry season and worked through peach season. It was a blissful shoot.” Even the Empire State Building took a shine to Seattle; the entire scene at the end of the movie was shot on a set built at Sand Point Naval Base.
How It Defined Us: Seattle came out of the rain to claim a permanent place as a romantic destination.
HYPE! (1996)
It wasn’t easy for documentary filmmaker Doug Pray to descend on Seattle with the idea of covering the grunge phenomenon. “The resistance to making a ‘Seattle scene’ movie was so huge ,” he says. The cynicism, ironically, was what sold him: “The antimedia passion was so intense it was a great story.”
Pray didn’t just skim the top of the cultural event—he dived down into it with an open curiosity. Watch the film with anyone who’s lived in Seattle for more than, say, a decade and you’re bound to hear at least one cry of “I know that guy!” Eddie Vedder’s around to muse about the effects of fame, sure, but Pray gives generous screen time to local acts like the Fastbacks and Gas Huffer. “We were recording bands who’d never even had a video made of them or anything,” Pray says. “And that act endeared us in a huge way. It broke down the wall.”
Local goodwill extended to the film’s major coup—footage of Nirvana’s first-ever live performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” from the now-demolished OK Hotel. All these years later, you can still feel the seismic shift about to happen in pop culture. “In classic Seattle friendly community spirit, it was very kindly shared with me by a filmmaker up there named Alan Pruzan,” Pray reports. “And the reason I say it was classic Seattle is I can see somebody in LA—of course, where I’m from—just being like, Yeah, I got that footage, what do I get for it? But the guy was just completely cool about it.”
Even after cutting hours of interviews teeming with anti-outsider angst, Pray still managed to capture Seattleites’ hands-off attitude: Onetime Sub Pop receptionist (and now executive vice president) Megan Jasper shares how she famously duped The New York Times with a phony grunge lexicon. “To me the Seattle music scene was always extremely funny and full of humor,” says Pray. “I think the mainstream media so got it wrong. To them it was all about heroin and rain.”
How It Defined Us: In the definitive document of what went down in the early ’90s, Seattle revealed the humanity behind its music.
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!