11. The Epic "Singles" Movie and Soundtrack

Have you ever made a mountain out of tic tacs in life? Elaina dives into the quintessential ’90s Gen X romantic comedy, "Singles," set in Seattle during the grunge scene and directed by Cameron Crowe. The amazing soundtrack features Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, and more. Exploring themes of modern love, miscommunication, and the significance of little moments, Elaina parallels scenes from the movie with personal anecdotes, highlighting how seemingly small events can have profound impacts. Through the lens of the film – and her own failures – she talks about letting the little things remain little, while also acknowledging the complexities of relationships and single parenthood. Elaina explores a memory of her daughter’s surgery and the Smashing Pumpkins’ ballad from the "Singles" soundtrack, “Drown.” With insights from the movie and poignant lyrics, she encourages you to embrace your dreams and navigate life's ups and downs with resilience and empathy.

Thank you for listening, and don't forget to shine bright!

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a 5-Star review as it helps my podcast grow and reach more people. Find me on Instagram @Your90sAreShowing and say hi!

About the host: Elaina Satti is a lover of the '90s living in Rhode Island, USA, the smallest state with the biggest heart, and she is in fact a divorced single parent living her best "now what?" exploring the journey of "what's next" – with coffee.

Transcript

Hey everyone, this is Elaina with “Your '90s Are Showing.” How is it, party people? '90s party people – the best kind. I'm having a great week. How are you? I really hope that you are tuned in again, it really warms my heart. We are going to talk about a little film called Singles from 1992. Oh yes, the Cameron Crowe classic, say that fast three times, “a Cameron Crowe classic.” He's had many classics over the years, Say Anything, Vanilla Sky, but this one takes the cake. It is the quintessential Cameron Crowe film. And we're going to explore the theme of '90s Lost in Translation once again. It has to do with technology, hint, hint. And we are going to get into the phrase that was verboten in this film. Okay. This is the phrase that actually caused actors to turn down the role of Steve Dunn. What is that phrase? Cameron Crowe could not find an actor to be able to say this little phrase, because we're going to explore it. When little things become big things and big things become little things '90s edition. It's “Your '90s Are Showing,” and we're here for it. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we're getting into the Singles movie. I saw it in the theater. I didn't understand all of it at the time, but it's the quintessential '90s movie. It's an American romantic comedy film, written, co-produced and directed by none other than Cameron Crowe, the auteur, the mastermind, and starring Bridget Fonda, Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick, and Matt Dillon. It also features appearances from several musicians prominent in the 1990s from the band's Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, etc. Even MudHoney, it was amazing. It was like all the lights went on for me when I saw this in the theater with my friend Lauren. Again, it had a little bit of an adult content to it. I didn't understand it. Maybe today. I still don't, let's be honest. But it was about the music people. 

It was set in these ’90s Seattle coffee shops. It felt like you were actually transported into the grunge scene. There was flannel, there were couples going to clubs. Just the fact that Alice in Chains actually performed in one of the seminal scenes where our heroes Steve and Linda meet is absolutely incredible. Let me just break down the plot for you. And we're going to get into how little things become big things, '90s edition. 

Singles centers on the precarious romantic lives of a group of young Gen Xers. Yeah, that's right. That's me in Seattle, Washington at the height of the 1990s grunge phenomenon. Now, that happens to be my favorite phenomenon. Well, let's continue. Most of the characters dwell in an apartment block with a sign in front which advertises singles, like single bedroom apartments, get it? It's a play on the words “For rent.” Divided into chapters, the film focuses on the course of two couples’ rocky romances, as well as the love lives of their friends and associates. It focuses on Janet Livermore, a coffee bar waitress fawning over the love of her life. She thinks Clif Poncey, played by Matt Dillon, is her man, and he is in a faux '90s rock band called Touch Me I'm Dick. Okay, that's enough said about that. He's an aspiring yet slightly goofy grunge rock musician of a fictional grunge rock band. And Linda Powell and Steve Dunn, there are a couple that go back and forth on whether to commit to each other.

Debbie Hunt is also trying to find Mr. Right. So this is the cast of characters that we see. But what I love about Singles is Cameron Crowe is honing in on the little moments.

Even if you're not divorced, single parent, Now what?, if you've been happily married for all this time, or somewhere in between, you remember the moments of life where the little things become big things. Steve and Linda meet each other. At a club, which I wish I could have gone to in the '90s when Alice in Chains is playing. We see the incredible Layne Staley on stage which gives us so much emotion and nostalgia he's no longer with us. And Steve looks over at Linda. Linda kind of shakes her head no, this isn't happening. It's a great meet you I mean, who doesn't love a good meet cute? I do. In fact I want to hear your meet cute stories; even better if they were in the '90s, but this is the ultimate meet cute. In fact, I think this meet cute informed all my other ideas about how meeting someone should be – in a rock club with Layne Staley performing, looking over at that person and locking eyes. What's not to like about that?

But being rebuffed, Steve is undeterred. When later on, he meets Linda at a magazine rack outside that same club hours later with his wing man, she's with her wing woman, both besties. And they lock eyes again. And then they talk almost all night long. Besides the magazine rack. I mean, really, is there anything more romantic than that? I'm sure  Rolling Stone was on one of those racks when it was actually readable. I used to devour it. What Steve is about to find out is that Linda is shut down because she just experienced heartache. An exchange student from Spain broke her heart. And she found him with another girl at a club, while “State of Love and Trust” by Pearl Jam was playing Okay, can I just geek out for a minute. It's amazing that Linda and her bestie were at a club dancing to Pearl Jam, I can't believe that; that's one of my favorite scenes in the movie. But she looks over and she sees the guy that she thought was going back to Spain, right? She thought that they were going to be together when he came back from Spain, that they had a future together. Well, she was wrong. And her heart was broken. So she was not ready to meet Steve. But he won her over.

As the relationship unfolds, there comes one minute where Steve has basically screwed up. He asks his male friends, how long should he wait to call Linda? They really liked each other. And of course, the guys say three days. When he waits three days, he ends up calling her at work. And she is just absolutely scathing. She doesn't want to talk to him. Nothing. So basically, he tries to get back in her good graces by saying, “Let's just go for lunch.” And she said, “How about a water?” So finally they go for water. They have a water, they talk. They repair it slightly. And then she opens up his door. Remember those push buttons, basically the knobs that you had to push down and up because it was the '90s there were no automatic doors? That was what we all had. So she pushes it up so that he can get into his driver's side door. And that little moment means so much to him. And he recognizes that the movie sort of slows down and he's in slow motion. And he says to himself in voiceover, “Well, she opened up the door for me.” That's a little moment that means a lot. And that theme is repeated over and over in this movie. So much happens. We're not doing a total recap. These two fall in love. But Linda waits for the other shoe to drop as anxious people often do. Being an anxious avoidant, I do understand that to a certain extent. 

She waits for the other shoe to drop, it turns out, they actually get pregnant. And as they're deciding what to do, she's eating a chili dog. And they're talking: “What are we going to do about this? I think we're gonna go forward, we're gonna have a baby together.” And all of a sudden, Steve basically says, “Marry me.” And Linda looks at him and says, “What?” “Yeah, marry me.” And she says, “Don't make this a historic chili dog.”

Because sometimes those moments that we think aren't going to mean a lot, they do. We just ordered chili dogs. We just ordered a slice of pizza. Sometimes they become significant.

They decide that they're actually going to go forward. They're going to do this. They're going to make this commitment. They're driving down the street, Linda's driving, and all of a sudden a truck T bones her. She wakes up in the hospital. And the first thing that she says to Steve, I'm sorry, this is very sad. There's no other way around it. She says, “I lost the baby.” It's a heartbreaking scene.

From there, their entire relationship is on frozen ground. No one is talking to anybody. It's the opposite of the Cameron Crowe movie Say Anything, where Ione Skye and John Cusack's characters could say anything to each other. These two cannot say anything to each other. And Linda, who is some kind of environmental scientist, goes out to Alaska on a boat to do her work, and Steve buries himself in his work.

But what's so significant is that Steve goes to another club. When Linda comes back. He picks her up from the airport. Though he drives her home, they make small talk.

There's a scene in which there's a payphone at the club. You guys remember pay phones. There's none to be found around now, but these were staples. You had to know where a payphone was. You had to use a quarter to make a call. It's a whole thing. It's a vibe. It's a lifestyle. If you understand the '90s, you understand that there were actually payphones around to call people. We didn't have cell phones. Oh, no, we had payphones. Now in this club that Steve goes to by himself, he's had enough to drink that he gets the liquid courage. He goes into one of these phone booths. But it looks almost as if from the outside, it's a restroom. So there are these Club Kids pounding on the door. And he's like, “Shut up! This is not a restroom.” He's trying to call Linda. He leaves a heartfelt message. One of the lines of the message says:

“I want to be new to you. I want to be Mr. New. This is the last time I'm going to call. I love you. So just call me back.”

It's an incredible, heartfelt message. And it goes on Linda's answering machine. Do you guys remember those? The tapes? And what would happen if something got jammed in the tapes, right? Well, in this '90s plot point in the movie, Linda gets home just as this message ends. Just as Steve stops pouring out his heart on the message. She walks in.

And the tape has been eaten by the answering machine. And it's incredibly garbled, and she gets her little pencil out. And she says “This thing just eats tapes.”

All his care for her, all his heartfelt message was poured out on an answering machine, ’90s style, '90s plot point. And all she could do was throw the tape away. So she never knew how he really felt. Lost in translation people, '90s technology,

the big moment that Steve prepared for, confessing his true feelings and saying

“I hate this, we should talk. Let's start again,” was ruined by the failure of '90s technology; technology fail. 

And sometimes that happens. Sometimes things are just lost in translation. The big moment that he was waiting for became no moment at all because of technology.

When the little moments become big moments, sometimes we can all relate. Recently my daughter had what was an outpatient surgery. It was for her eye.

She has something called a chalazion. Welcome to parenthood, you never know what's going to come at you next. But it's basically a growth on top of her eyelid.

And she named them actually, she's so funny. She named them Sid and Quinsey. And when the surgery was happening, it had happened before actually, this is the second time that she's had to have them because sometimes people are just prone to them, and they just grow.

Well, I knew that this was going to be a very difficult surgery for me to actually

go through with her. Because I remember the previous time. And I remember when she came out, she was groggy, and I was giving her ice chips and she had some pain meds. But she had this little tear in her eye. And the tear was actually a tear of blood. And it freaked me out to such an extent that I started almost hyperventilating, almost crying because we don't like to see our kids in pain. We're all good parents. We don't like to see them hurt even though I knew she was going to recover fine. And by the end of the day, she wanted a large Dairy Queen Blizzard. That was the way that she was going to get a large Blizzard. But I didn't want to see her hurt. It was going to distress me. So going into that morning with my older daughter into the hospital was already a stressful situation. I was also going with my ex. I was gearing up for that kind of day. I'd started a new job not too long before so I was really thankful that I even got this day off. So many things were swirling around my head.

And then there came the moment where my daughter confessed that she had had a tic tac that morning. It was sort of a nonchalant confession like oh yeah I think my dad had some tic tacs in the back seat. And, you know, he either offered me one or I just took one. And I said, what? You are not supposed to eat anything after midnight. I don't even think you're supposed to have clear liquids, maybe only until 8am. I think the surgery was scheduled at 10 am, 

So, I try not to panic. And I talked to one of the schedulers, and she looked at me and said, “Oh, she had a tic tac.” And what was kind of funny, you know, a little bit of a funny idea that a tic tac could stall entire surgery was becoming increasingly

Severe. I was being sunk by a tic tac. 

The sooner that I realized that, that the scheduler was going to talk to the doctor, and the doctors were going to consult with each other and the nurses were involved, it was becoming a big thing. And I was getting more and more agitated. I usually try to take things with a huge grain of salt. It's like, what else can go wrong? It's part of being divorced single parent, now what? It's part of being a parent in general, it's part of being a human. You can't take yourself too seriously. And thankfully, my dad taught me not to take myself too seriously. That's what the A plus banter is for, it circumvents anxiety. But I found that I couldn't even banter. I was getting more and more agitated. And I was agitating my daughter. I was getting sharp with her. I was actually almost getting sarcastic. “How could you not have known that you shouldn't have eaten the tic tac?” Now unless you think that I was going a little crazy, I had straight up lectured her and her dad the day before. Look, there is no eating food of any kind. Only clear liquids until a certain time, don't eat anything. Is everyone clear? And I repeated myself like four times. Like one of those Simon Says games, that's more 80s. But whatever. I was repeating myself over and over and over again. It fell on deaf ears. So I felt like both of them had been completely ignoring me. And she chose to eat the tic tac just to throw a monkey wrench in everything. They weren't listening to me. I wasn't being respected.

And it seemed like the surgery was going to be pushed out further and further and further. My daughter was already hungry. She was already tired. But the thing that I didn't know is that my own existential sadness was coming down on me. The little things were becoming big things, ‘90s style.

I was dealing with some loss in my life. And I wasn't being honest about it. My birthday was coming. Okay. That's always a fun time. When you're in medias ray in midlife, some things hadn't worked out recently that I had really hoped would. And I had to deal with the fallout. So if that backdrop wasn't going on, I'm pretty sure that I would have sort of rolled with it and said, Well, what else can you do? My normal self, my higher self, would have said, well can't do anything about it. Now, if the surgery gets pushed back, that was one thing, but then the surgeons kept saying, we're not going to even have the surgery today, we might not be able to have it. And I became even more agitated. Because I started to worry, hey, wait a minute. I don't think that I can get another day off here. When realistically, I probably could have. And then if the surgery is delayed, how am I going to get my other daughter from school?

There's a bit of a health situation going on with my family so I can't ask them. What am I going to do? And why is this always falling on my shoulders, and the whole weight of everything was there. My older daughter was looking at me, my ex was looking at me, and I had to go out in the hallway. Now what I really probably needed was some kind of Chapel, but I didn't ask for that. And there I am, in the hallway, calling my mom having a mini breakdown right there saying I don't know what I'm going to do. Now what I really should have done is called one of my besties, Producer Cheris. She would have talked me down off the ledge. Calling my mom made it all the more real. Because here I was doing all this again by myself.

And I realized out there that there's only one person who can tell me to calm down and that's my younger daughter. She is the only one who's able to ever tell me to calm down. If my ex tells me to calm down, even if my older daughter tells me to calm down or anyone else who tells me to calm down, it's going to have the opposite effect, and maybe you can relate. So them telling me to calm down, it's not that big of a deal, we can just reschedule,  became a bigger and bigger deal. That little tic tac became a mountain. Usually I'm so good at rolling with the punches. But on that day, the existential sadness was too much. And I couldn't help but think of the movie Singles.

Sometimes we get so lost in translation that what we think means one thing can mean something totally different. When Janet is explaining to her friend Steve, actually, Janet wants to go and have plastic surgery. She wants to have a breast augmentation because she thinks Clif isn't attracted to her unless she has it. How's that for a toxic relationship? Steve goes with her to the office and says, Hey, you know, what are women really looking for?

Janet says, “Well, when I first moved to Seattle, I wanted someone who was fun and nice and attractive and likes the same things as me, like books, and is really good at music. And says Gesundheit when I sneeze, or bless you, which is nicer.”

And he says, Wow, that's a pretty big list. Well, what is it now? And she says, “I pared it down. Right now, it's just somebody who says ‘bless you’ when I sneeze.”

So all her lists became simplified, and she's just looking for someone who says bless you when she sneezes. That's the thing that's for her.

Now, towards the end of the movie, there are bright spots as there are with '90s movies. Every loop is closed. Every book end is bookended as one would imagine with the script, especially a Cameron Crowe one. Steve proposes this amazing

idea to the mayor, which is a speed train, some kind of public transport. And he's been working on it for months, maybe even half a year. And he insists that if you give people really good music, and really good coffee, they'll go on the super train. And Linda tries to tell him, “Look, I just really liked my car.” Which is ironic, because that's how I felt. I know that you just really like your car at the end of the day, you're not going to give it up for public transport.

And the mayor looks at him after he makes this proposal and says, “No.” And this sends Steve into a tailspin where he's laying on the floor listening to Coltrane. There's takeout bags all over. It's like all of us in COVID. He's playing with a model train. And his friend. Janet comes to check on him and says, “Steve, you’re kind of wigging out.” Remember that phrase? He's like, “I'm not wigging. I'm just spending time to regroup. I'm just regrouping with myself. I've read half of Exodus. You know, in the modern world, there's almost no need to go outside.” Flash forward to COVID.

Or so they said to us.

Steve is wigging out, because everything that he thought is no longer. He thought the proposal was going forward for the super train. He thought he would be with Linda.

He thought things were going a certain way. And he had to face the existential sadness. And my favorite scene is when Linda knocks on the door. He doesn't know it’s her; he actually thinks it’s Janet again. So he opens it up. He's a mess. He hasn't showered in how long. And Linda's stands there and says, “I was just nowhere near your neighborhood. I don't need to be your girlfriend. I just want to know you again.” And he says, “What took you so long?” And she says, “I was stuck in traffic.”

Good writing, right? It's so apropos because he wanted to make the super train to get rid of the traffic but she likes her car. It's a beautiful scene. They kiss and they make up. It's so beautiful.

There's also a motif in this movie of a garage door opener. Parking is really scarce in cities. You know if you've lived in any kind of city for any length of time, but it's a gift that's bestowed on someone that you're dating. If you give them not just a key, but if you give them a garage door opener, it's like you've made it to a certain status. And that is something that they do for one another. Linda and Steve end up giving each other their garage door openers, something that could be so little to someone else. It's the garage door opener that takes on that significance. The opening of the car door with that push button. The historic chili dog

And for me, it was the tic tac.

I was losing it in the hallway. And as my ex came towards me, I also lost it once again, this sounds like a familiar theme. Again, I probably should have found some kind of Chapel or place by myself or just gone outside, but I couldn't stop the emotions from coming. He did say “Your daughter is in there, and she's very upset.” And that made everything worse. Because I so want to be a good mom. And sometimes it just doesn't happen that way. But sometimes the only thing that we can do is say I'm sorry. And so I did. They had gone to the cafeteria. They were still waiting on the verdict as to whether this tic tac became a mountain and would stop the surgery from going forward or if it wouldn't, if it would remain a tic tac; the jury was still out. But as the jury was still out among the medical community in the hospital, I walked down to her. I said, can we just talk, and my daughter and I walked the halls. And I told her I was sorry.

I told her that she didn't deserve me to be so upset. And it wasn't really about that.

And I let my emotions get in the way. And I'm not going to do it again.

I said I loved her. I was proud of her. And we were going to get through the surgery together. She had nothing to worry about. And I went back into the mom mode that I knew I needed to take on, I needed to take on the mom mantle. Emotion time was over; time to turn that off. Mom on duty was back in business.

They finally said she could have this surgery. Several hours later, my mom was able to pick up my other daughter from school. There was laughter at the end of the day, even between me and my ex since we all took one car. My daughter got her large Blizzard at the end of all of this, which is what she really wanted out of the day.

When she finally woke up from her surgery, I was sitting there holding her hand and I had to get one of those little gauzes and she was weeping that little bloody tear. And I had to wipe it away. And I was crying. Even though she couldn't see me and open her eyes.

I will always do what I need to do. For my daughters, I will always be that mom on duty. And sometimes that means realizing that those little things need to stay little things so that the big things can be important. They can remain big. Linda and Steve realized that whatever miscommunication was there, it was going to be little because they were really the biggest things, how they felt about each other, their connection.

Caring about each other as human beings.

I promised I would tell you the reason why multiple actors including Johnny Depp turned down the role that Campbell Scott picked up as Steve. He did an amazing job by the way.

Cameron Crowe has since said that he's recasting movie singles in his mind, which is bizarre to me. Kyra Sedgwick is incredible. She's such a cool girl. I've always wanted to be like her. Campbell Scott did an amazing job as Steve, I don't think it should have been recast at all.

So many actors, including Johnny Depp, turned down the role of Steve, because he says I love you. Because Steve says I love you in the message twice. That is why these other actors turned it down. They basically told Cameron Crowe in an article that I read. They're like, “Yeah, we're turning this down. So we can take a role where we actually blow 50 guys away, that's a little bit more our style.” They didn't want to be vulnerable. They didn't want to say I love you. Sometimes that's the only thing we can say. Sometimes, I'm sorry is the only thing that we can say, when that little thing we allow to be such a big thing keeps us from another person. We have to say it, we have to say I'm sorry. We have to say I love you. We have to let the little things be little and not keep us from the bigger and better things. We have to do that with ourselves.

Greater love has no man than this than he lays down his life for his friends. That's what Jesus did. Love is a big enough thing.

So as an apology, it's not worth us letting those little things stand in the way, just like Steve didn't. And if you're wondering about Janet, pining for Cliff, guess what? She got an architectural degree. She was designing a fountain in the courtyard. She was working at the coffee shop. And she decided she's okay without Cliff. She didn't need plastic surgery for him. She was doing her own thing. And guess what? They run into each other in the elevator, because Cliff has now realized that he is so into Janet. He says something like, “Janet, you rock my world.” And she tells him “Cliff, I think you're really entertaining.” So she's over it, right? But in one of the last scenes of the film, they're in the elevator together. And she sneezes. And guess what Cliff says, Bless you.

The little things come back around again in the '90s universe, as they should, as God intended. And the little thing became a big thing. And they look at each other as if they see each other for the first time. And they kiss. Because that's what happens. They're supposed to be together.

So I say to you, let the little things be little. Let the big things be big. Let us have the eyes to see which are which, in true Singles style.

Well, let's have the soundtrack in the background. As we do so. Let's embrace what this beautiful film has to offer. Not only is it heartfelt, but it's joyful. It has that joy de vive, it's not cynical, like so many of the films that came before, I would even go so far as to call it the anti Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which is one of the most odious films I've ever seen in my life. Don't change my mind, you can't. That might be a podcast for another time. But this movie made an impression on me, even when I saw it in the theater, and I didn't know what it was about. Let's let those big things be big, the little be little. If you're divorced, single parent now what?, there is a way to access those feelings, to have them come out at the right time, and also to be a parent on duty. But guess what? We're not going to do it perfectly. And sometimes we have to forgive ourselves for not doing it perfectly, and for learning. And for taking up the mantle of showing that we can apologize to our kids, and we can say I didn't play that one the right way. You didn't deserve that. I'm sorry. Modeling for them what to do when everything falls apart so that they someday can do it for their own kids. And I want to leave you with the lyrics to the song “Drown” by the Smashing Pumpkins, which was voted I believe in Rolling Stone, one of their top four songs of the ’90s. It was on the Singles soundtrack in 1992, which is probably by far one of the best soundtracks that have ever come out for any film ever.

That thing was on total rotation, I had it on tape I had on CD, it's still in rotation.

Smashing Pumpkins made the decision for that to come out on the soundtrack rather than on the album Siamese Dream. And they were one of the only bands that were not from Seattle on the actual soundtrack. That's part of your '90s homework by the way, just go listen to it. Just go do it right now. What else are you doing? I want to read you some of the lyrics:

“No matter where you are, I can still hear you when you dream. You traveled very far. You traveled far like a star. And you are./ All of those yesterdays, coming down.

Is it something someone said? Was it something someone said?/ You've traveled very far.Just to see you all come around. When I'm down.”

I think Billy Corgan says it best. And we'll leave it to him.

Can we really hear someone dream? Maybe we can. Maybe when I was sitting there with my older daughter and she was slowly waking up from the outpatient surgery, when her eye was bleeding a tear, maybe I could hear her dream.

Maybe that's what parents do. Maybe they actually hear their children dream.

Maybe we can do that for each other. And dear listener, that's what I'd love to do for you. You have dreams. You haven't forgotten them. Maybe you let me hear them. Maybe you'll let someone else hear them. Don't give up on them.

When you wake up you're going to make them a reality. That's what we're doing here. Dear listener, this has been Elaina with “Your '90s Are Showing.” As always, thanks for going down the waterslide with me. Until next time, don't forget to shine bright!