Say Anything is one of the 1980s cult classic hits with a notable love story that John Cusack believes can’t be remade for today’s audience for one key reason involving his character.
The 1989 film by Cameron Crowe starred Cusack as Lloyd Dobler, an average student who goes after the school valedictorian, Diane Court (Ione Skye), after graduation.
During an appearance on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, the actor admitted that the iconic boombox scene from Say Anything might come across as stalkerish rather than romantic in today’s age compared to the ’80s.
“There’s a good chance,” Cusack said, “if Say Anything was made today, they’d be like, ‘You can’t do that. You’re stalking her. You’re stalking her. You know, she gave you her emotional boundaries, and you’re putting a, you know, a boom box outside of her [house].”
The scene in question takes place near the end of the film, as Dobler stands outside Court’s house, holding the boombox above his head as it plays Peter Gabriel‘s “In Your Eyes.” He does so in the hopes of winning her back after a rough patch, with the song expressing feelings he couldn’t put into words.
While his romantic gesture worked, Cusack sees it more as overstepping boundaries that the female character put in place after their initial breakup. After all, she broke up with him because she wanted to focus on her studies, the issues surrounding her father’s embezzlement scandal, and accepts a fellowship in England.
Believe it or not, Cusack wasn’t a fan of the scene when he first filmed it. Crowe revealed in a 2025 interview with The New York Times that the actor saw the scene as a “subservient” act.
“He felt like it was a subservient act: Why does Lloyd have to be a wuss like that? We struggled with how to get that scene,” Crowe explained.
He added that Cusack instead filmed the scene with the boombox on the hood of the car and said, “That’s more what I would do.” Cinematographer László Kovacs whispered in Crowe’s ear that there was no film in the camera when they shot Cusack’s version. When they finally filmed the scene from the film, Cusack was “kind of pissed,” but it ended up being the perfect emotion.
During the podcast, Cusack admitted that Say Anything is much more than just about a stalker, as he described it. It’s an “inert relationship” about “people who are totally stuck,” and it’s a “relatively new development that you have to equate likability, every moral action with whatever is considered, you know, acceptable now or not, right?”
To this day, the boombox scene has been recreated not only by fans but also in countless films and TV series as a romantic gesture.
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