So, it took the fine literary styling of Chuck Klosterman in "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs" for me to realize this particularly inalienable truth: every woman's seven-year coming-of-age crush on John Cusack is not, in fact, a crush on John Cusack the Man. It's a crush on Lloyd Dobler.
And this is completely true.
Here's how Chuck puts it:
"It appears that countless women born between 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack. I cannot fathom how he isn't the number-one box-office start in America, because every straight girl I know would sell her soul to share a milkshake with that motherf****er. For upwardly mobile women in their twenties and thirties Cusack is the neo-Elvis. But here's what none of those upwardly mobile women seem to realize: They don't love John Cusack. They love Lloyd Dobler. When they see Mr. Cusack, they are still seeing the optimistic, charmingly loquacious teenager he played in Say Anything, a movie that came out more than a decade ago. That's the guy they think he is; when Cusack played Eddie Thomas in America's Sweethearts or the sensitive hit man in Grosse Pointe Blank, all his female fans knew he was only acting...but they assume when the camera stopped rolling he went back to his genuine self...which was someone like Lloyd Dobler, and someone who continues to have a storybook romance with Diane Court (or with Ione Skye, depending on how you look at it). "
Tough to argue with that logic.
As nice as his romantic notions of the ultimate mixed tape were in High Fidelity and as, um...heroic as he managed to make limo-driving seem in 2012 (destruction porn! destruction porn!) I did watch Say Anything four times in a row the night I first rented it and can quote the entire movie beginning to end (including the lyrics in all of the songs from the soundtrack) - certainly haven't done that with any of his other movies. And yes, my sister and I did nurse the typical Cusack-Crush through high school (only rationale I have for why I suffered through "Must Love Dogs" a few years later...both he and Diane Lane should probably have been taken out back and shot for that miserable paycheck they *hopefully reluctantly* signed up for)
I have to agree, it was the Lloyd Dobler I loved as much as the the John Cusack playing the Lloyd Dobler. Didn't hurt that I was bookish, nerdy and isolated in high school much like Diane Court (and I probably wore sweaters just as ugly) so there was something infinitely easy to relate to about Say Anything...
Then I started thinking about Lloyd Dobler as a man.
His one ballsy moment was calling Diane to ask her out. The rest of the movie: she does all of the talking. He hardly speaks. He smiles, looks smitten, kicks the glass, does his best to teach her to drive her car, follows her around to her job at the retirement home, but doesn't particularly assert himself...
He hangs out with obnoxious, caricature girl friends that know absolutely nothing and give him bad advice (in fact, that righteous free-style "rap" scene at the Gas-n-Sip is the only time we see any semblance of "man friends"). He gets laid and opts to send her a "thanks....by the way, I love you..." greeting card...a greeting card? Really? I must have missed that "it was really nice sleeping with you this week" section of the greeting card aisle. And if you're trusting the generic "thank you" section to say "I love you, and thanks for the great Back Seat Memories" you're walking a thin line...
I know the scene with the boom box and the Peter Gabriel songs gets held up as the most romantic moment in teenage flick history, but really, that was about the only time he even seemed to grow a pair. Then when "Take this pen...and write me" Diane waltzes back into the picture (without so much as a "I'm sorry" Hallmark of her own, actually) he jumps in the sack with her and follows her off to England. Loyal as a puppy, sure, but....is schlepping around in the shadow of "Diane-Court-Whoa" really going to be particularly fulfilling in the grand scheme?
I've decided Lloyd is a big pussy.
And he conditioned an entire generation of women to think that we've hit true love gold if we find a sucker that will follow us wordlessly to work and back, a sucker with few goals other than listening (with adoring grins) while we yap - we might ditch him if Daddy is sufficiently persistent, but he'll still be waiting around for us when we get lonely (or when solemn IRS agents tell us we're silly little girls). I worry that Diane will get tired of him...she'll meet some sort of literature professor that doesn't let her get away with being a petulant, self-indulgent weenie and Lloyd will be back in his sister's apartment playing babysitter...
I could be wrong, but here, a dozen years or more after first falling in love with Lloyd I'm inclined to think he's basically a glorified emo wimp....glass-sweeping or no glass-sweeping, he's one key master that just wouldn't have long term staying power...
No comments:
Post a Comment