MOVIES/ TV/ MUSIC/ B O O K S↑ Rob puts his
sweetest moves on
Laura (Iben Hjejle)
↓ Rob confronts
Ray (Tim Robbins,
far right) while
Barry (Jack Black)
and Dick (Todd
Louiso) look onbaby, Cusack and Frears flew to
Copenhagen to meet her. “I knew
John was, like, one of the teenage
heartthrobs,” she remembers.
“And I love Say Anything...! But
the terrible thing is, I said, ‘Are
you the guy from Ferris Bueller’s
Day Off?’ And he was so nice
about it. He was lovely.”Getting the gang together
Most casting arrived closer to
home: Lili Taylor and Tim Robbins
were old friends and collaborators;
the studio suggested Catherine
Zeta-Jones, and Lisa Bonet fol-
lowed. Cusack asked his sister
Joan to drop in and deliver one of
the film’s most iconic lines (“Yeah,
I knew I could tell her, ‘Okay, just
walk in, call me a f---ing a--hole,
and leave’ ”). But his “secret
weapon,” he says, was landing a
then-unknown Jack Black—whom
he met through Robbins—to play
berserk record-store clerk Barry.
Even the Bruce Springsteen cameo
came surprisingly easy. “I was just
lucky enough to be friendly with
him, so I called him up and said,
‘Do you want to be in this movie
that’s a love letter to music, and
you’ll be you, talking to me in my
head?’ And he just paused and
laughed and went, ‘Yeah, sounds
good.’ ” (They got the Boss, but lost
a Beatle: Failing to secure John
Lennon’s “I’m So Tired” for the
final scene is one of Cusack’s great
regrets. “But man, we really tried.”)Living the dream(s)
As the smugly ponytailed world-
music aficionado Ray, Robbins got
to be both a lover and a fighter.
While shooting Laura and Ray’s
fantasy sex scene (it’s all in Rob’s
head), Frears banished men from
set and asked female members of
the crew to come in and help him
direct it. “He said, ‘I need you ladies
to tell me what’s fun and sexy,’ ”
Hjejle recalls, “and we just giggled
all the way through it.” Another
dream sequence, in which Ray gets
a spectacular beatdown, almost
didn’t happen. “We were running
out of time,” says Todd Louiso, 50,
who played Black’s timid fellow
clerk, Dick. “But John, Jack, and Iwere really fighting for it. And Tim
was the one who came up with his
teeth flying out. I don’t know what
they were, probably Chiclets?” he
says. “Just grab some candy from
craft services.”Don’t look back in anger
Through a 2020 lens, Rob’s behav-
ior—dumping a high school crush
for not sleeping with him, berating
his ex for moving on and then lin-
gering below her window like a
lovelorn Peeping Tom—seems like
the definition of toxic bachelor-
hood. But Rob was also a product
of his time. “I knew tons of guys
like that, where it was ages before
they understood that relation-
ships and committing and having
kids is a good thing and it doesn’tmean that you have to lose your-
self,” says Hjejle. “Rob is just the
sort of character I would fall for,
and to me he symbolizes a whole
generation, at least here in Den-
mark, of ‘What matters is not what
you’re like, but what you like.’ I
still love that line.”
“Part of what makes the film
good,” Cusack says, “is that it
relentlessly admits how human
and flawed the characters are. But
it doesn’t ask you to forgive them
or excuse their behavior. It’s more
just like, ‘This is how life is, this is
how much people f--- up. This is
the neuroses and craziness inside
of our heads.’ And I didn’t want to
shy away from that at all. Plus it
was in the book, you know?” He
admits he hasn’t yet seen the new
remake on Hulu starring Zoë
Kravitz. “But I think the gender
change is actually very cool.
I mean, why not? Anyone is still
gonna have the same relationship
to pop culture, to music and
movies and literature, and they’re
still gonna have the same inner
monologues. Ms. Kravitz seems
like a lovely, smart, charismatic
performer, and I really admire and
respect her parents a lot. I would
just say one thing,” he breaks off
with a laugh. “You better get the
music right.” �EW ● COM APRIL 2020 57APRIL2020.MOVIES4.LO A.indd 57 FINAL 3/3/20 10:07 AM