Singles

Cast: Bridget Fonda, Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick, Sheila Kelley, Jim True, Bill Pullman & Matt Dillon

Crew: Written & Directed By: Cameron Crowe Produced By: Cameron Crowe & Richard Hashimoto DP: Ueli Steiger Editor: Richard Chew Costume Designer: Jane Ruhm Music By: Paul Westerberg

Theatrical Release Date: September 18, 1992

Tidbits:

• Very early drafts of the script (circa 1984) had the movie set in Phoenix, Arizona.
• In addition to Singles, other early script titles included Love & Confusion, Twister Street and Blues For A T-Shirt (and other tales of love, luck and lust).
• Warner Bros was not sold on the film’s title. They came up with a few alternatives including Addicted to Love, In the Midnight Hour, Love in Seattle, Leave Me a Message and Come as You Are.
• Cameron filmed more than 300 scenes (the final movie consists of about 200), researched and wrote even more. Cameron’s first cut ran 2 hours, 45 minutes.
• Cameron on Singles: “It’s about the lengths people go to make a connection with another person, the good advice and bad advice they get along the way.”
• William Arnold, film critic for the Seattle PI votes Say Anything and Singles as one of the Top 10 Landmark Events in Seattle Movie History.
• Cameos to look out for include:
  • Tim Burton (Video Date Director)
  • Eric Stoltz (The Mime)
  • Jeremy Piven (Drug Store Cashier )
  • Tom Skerritt (The Mayor)
  • Sportscaster Wayne Cody & former Supersonics basketball star Xavier McDaniel
  • Peter Horton (the bicyclist date)
  • TAD (who Janet accidentally calls)
  • Sub Pop records co-founder Bruce Pavitt tries to land a date on video
  • Director Gus Van Sant and Mudhoney vocalist Mark Arm load furniture
  • Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell watches a car self-destruct
  • Legendary Seattle stage diver Larry Steiner moshes during a concert
  • Cameron playing a rock journalist interviewing Cliff Poncier.
• Paul Giamatti, in one of his first roles, utters the line (“What?!”) when Steve and Linda stare at him making out with someone in the coffee shop.
• Cameron talked about some of the cameos in a September 13, 1992 snippet from Newsday:
  • Eric Stoltz is unrecognizable as a street mime. Since he’s Fonda’s real-life steady, he was available. How did Batman Returns director Tim Burton turn up for his big-screen acting debut playing a filmmaker for a video dating service? “We just asked him,” said Crowe at the Montreal World Film Festival, where Singles was screened in competition. To get Tom Skerritt to play Seattle’s mayor was even easier – “Tom’s a local who had the day off. He donated his salary to charity.” Peter Horton’s brief appearance as Sheila Kelly’s dreamy, bicycle-riding video date was squeezed in between plane flights. “Peter was directing in Vancouver and came through for an afternoon because he was on his way home. He was a little distressed,” Crowe laughed, “to see he was on a bicycle again. But it proves that Gary from thirtysomething could have a life elsewhere.”
• Pearl Jam (Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament & Stone Gossard) play Matt Dillon’s bandmates in the fictional group Citizen Dick.
• Citizen Dick perform the song “Touch Me I’m Dick,” which is really just the Mudhoney song “Touch Me I’m Sick” with a few lyrical alterations.
• The fictional Citizen Dick CD is called Smarter Than You, and its design is an obvious parody of  Soundgarden’s Louder Than Love; track 7 is entitled “Louder Than Larry,” a spin-off on “Loud Love,” which is also track 7 on Soundgarden’s 1989 release.
• In the scene with Steve and the drug store cashier, Mr Deegan is mentioned. He’s also mentioned in Fast Times, Say Anything…and Roadies.
• Don’t miss the name of the pickup truck that hits Steve and Linda. It says “Crowe Landscaping”.
• Here’s Cameron’s comments  in 2000 reflecting back on Singles: “It was meant to be Manhattan, a movie I loved, set in Seattle. It stayed in the can for a year until the studio released it on the heels of the so-called “grunge explosion,” which created some problems of perception. But there were also some casting issues and some screenwriting problems I never quite solved. Pulp Fiction solved the vignettes issue in a way that made my jaw drop. I thought, “Fuck!” [Laughs.] If I had done Singles later, I might not have made some of those mistakes. I would have been one of the many movies that ripped off Pulp Fiction instead. [Laughs.] Singles didn’t aspire to define a generation. It aspired to be my tribute to Manhattan. So there’s a little frustration there. I hope that someday, as time goes on, it can live on as a snapshot of that period, because Seattle is not the same anymore.
• Cameron said this to Spin magazine in August, 2001: “Singles was in the can for a year before it came out. But the success of the so-called “Seattle sound” got it released. Warner Bros. said, “If you can get Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam to play the MTV party that we can use to publicize the movie, we’ll put it out.” So I painfully had to try and talk the bands into doing it. Pearl Jam said that they’d do it as a favor to me. So the taping happened, and it was…a disaster. It was populated mostly by studio executives and their children, who wanted to see the Seattle Sound. They were playing covers, and somebody got into a fight, and Chris Cornell got into it, and I think [Soundgarden’s] Kim Thayil got into it. I remember Eddie yelling, “Fuuuck! What the fuck is this?’ and studio executives grabbing their kids and streaming out. I was seeing this whole thing to get the movie released going down the tubes. But Singles came out, and the show aired twice, heavily edited. To anybody who taped it off the air, it’s a real collectible. Later, we made up t-shirts to commemorate the party and they said on the front “Singles Premiere Party” and on the back it said, ‘Nobody Died.”
• Here’s a scan of the Japanese LaserDisc: