Singles (1992 Cameron Crowe & scr)

Terrific film, underrated and undervalued in this house. It's insane we've neglected it when we watch Aloha and all the others every ten minutes.

Central romance in Seattle-set film is that of Kyra Sedgwick and Campbell Scott (all the cast are really good in the hands of a great director). Also, Bridget Fonda is nuts about loser wannabe rock star Matt Dillon (you hope she'll end up with breast surgeon Bill Pullman instead). Also with Sheila Kelly, Jim True, Tom Skerritt, James Le Gros, Eric Stoltz, Jeremy Piven.

It's just very funny and entirely quotable, e.g. 'I just happened to be nowhere near your neighborhood'.

'When I first moved out here from Tucson, I wanted a guy with looks, security, caring, someone with their own place, someone who said 'Bless you' or 'Gesundheit' when I sneezed, and someone who liked the same things as me, but not exactly, someone who loves me.'
'Tall order.'
'Yeah - I scaled it down a little.'
'What is it now?'
'Someone who says 'Gesundheit' when I sneeze. Although I prefer 'Bless you'.'

Talking of props as plot points - this features an automatic garage door opener!!

Photographed by Tak Fujimoto and Uell Steiger.

Cameron himself is the Citizen Dick interviewer and Paul Giamatti has a cameo. That snatch of great jazz is John Coltrane 'Blue Train'.

Great art direction joke in breast clinic

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.

That classic photo of the Paris couple kissing is Doisneau's 1950 The Kiss: