What John Cusack has to say about a 'Say Anything...' sequel

If you liked Say Anything..., the 1989 coming-of-age film about a nervous-talking high school graduate winning over his crush in the summer before college, feel free to tell star John Cusack if you see him.

Cusack appreciates it when fans of the movie give him kudos for it, partly because they tend not to quote the film or, say, mime holding up an imaginary boombox in some sad attempt to replicate the movie’s most memorable scene. They mostly just say how much they liked it.

“They seem to be very warm about it, that it means something to them, so that’s nice,” Cusack told Mashable in a phone interview to promote his upcoming Q&A about Say Anything... at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. “For some movies, they’ll have a line that they’ll repeat to you a lot of times, but that one is more just a vibe. People seem to really still dig it.”

That’s kind of an understatement. Say Anything... didn’t set box office records, but to many Gen Xers like myself, the movie perfectly captured the ennui that often follows high school graduation. And Cusack hit the bull’s-eye in his portrayal of the quirky Lloyd Dobler, simultaneously giving him a coolness and vulnerability that appealed to both male and female audiences alike.

Cusack already had movies like Better Off Dead..., Sixteen Candles, and Eight Men Out under his belt when he made Say Anything..., but the film launched the career of director Cameron Crowe, who went on to become one of the most talked-about directors of the '90s with movies like Singles, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous. More recently he toyed with the idea of a Say Anything... sequel, potentially picking up Dobler’s story three decades later.

So what would Llyod Dobler be doing today as a middle-aged man? Would he still be with his love, Diane Court? Would they have teen-angsty kids of their own? How would he look at adulting from the other side? Would he even use words like “adulting?”

Though some fans might be disappointed, these aren’t questions Cusack thinks about much.

“When you’re making something, you just think of the story itself, and you put everything you can into it and let it sort of live. If there’s a sequel, why are you doing the sequel -- because you want to turn it into a product or a commodity? If Cameron wanted to do it, I would certainly talk with him about it, but he’s never really seriously said to me that he wants to do it.”

One thing Cusack does like to talk about is the film’s nonconformist message. Ultimately Say Anything... is about Lloyd charting his own path, and doing it without adopting some kind of label or picking a pattern that’s predetermined for him. If you’ve ever visited Cusack’s Twitter feed -- or just paid attention to his political viewpoints throughout his career, you know he’s anything but traditional.

“[The summer after high school] feels like a very memorable, loaded time for a young person. Even though I already knew that I wanted to make films, there’s still this pressure to sort of conform to the normal ways of doing things – go to college, get a job, get married, do all these things. I can certainly relate to the not wanting to do that.”