Film: Say Anything (1989)
Director and Writer: Cameron Crowe
Starring: Joan Cusack and some other people
Dear Cameron Crowe,
What are you doing these days? I don’t hear much about you. Not that I would necessarily hear anything about you, because we are all living within our own vibrations and our own algorithms, and I am not sure your algorithm and my algorithm line up.
For instance, in your social media algorithm on Instagram, is there that older white woman who wears the deep-blue outfit, giving spiritual lessons about the light and the dark? I don’t know her name, but everything she sounds sounds pretty accurate. I like her voice. It’s calming.
Or is there the Hindu man in orange, who is bald, trying to fit his spiritual wisdom into numbered lists? Like, “3 things you need to know about a good friend” and stuff like that? I agree with all the stuff he says, but I am not a list-category-ish person. I mean, I don’t have anything against them. I just don’t think in lists.
So my point in this letter, C.C., is that I am focusing on Joan Cusack this spring on my film blog, and I noticed that Constance Dobler, the single-mom sister of Lloyd (played by John Cusack) is apparently “uncredited” on IMDB and other places, as a character of note in your 1989 movie Say Anything.
I think this is an error of judgment, and I want to politely state why.
Constance Dobler, the mother of the cute little boy Jason (played by Glenn Walker Harris, Jr.) is and was always pretty significant to me. I loved watching Say Anything and I felt for Constance pretty deeply from the first scene where she shows up. I was raised by a single mother, and so I felt the truth of Constance’s emotions, and I also saw how helpful Lloyd was for little Jason to have around. That’s another reason Lloyd is so great! He’s a great uncle to little Jason.
But, Joan Cusack being un-credited as the older-sister-single-mom? Ahh! It got me thinking, Cameron. Are single moms just these unseen figures who are essentially holding up the planet, yet ignored and discounted?
This obviously is not the first time I have contemplated the question.
Now, I am not complaining about it, or making single moms into victims, even though single moms often are victims. A woman who is not a single mom (but a divorced and remarried one) told me yesterday that she feels like both too much and also not seen at all. And so, it may not be a “single mom” thing, but just a “woman” thing. Still, a woman who gives birth to a child shall now heretofore be seen and heard, as declared by Ms. Wonderful. Have we got this? Fix this situation, Cameron. Call up the IMDB people.
Little things really matter. We don’t want to admit that they do, but they do. There’s that quote (probably not said by the older woman in blue or the bald Hindu in orange I mentioned above) that goes like this:
“It’s the little things.”
Like, in your movie Singles, Janet (played by Bridget Fonda) says “it’s the little things!” (And you wrote that movie, so you clearly know!) Janet really wants a guy to say “Bless you” when she sneezes. She tells Steve (played by Campbell Scott) what she is looking for in a guy, and mostly they are general—like he loves her and is nice to her. But also, she has this little special magical secret desire that a man consistently says “bless you” when she sneezes. And if a man doesn’t do it, she’s out the door.
So you know how important the little things are, and I am declaring now, that Joan Cusack, who plays Constance Dobler, shall hereby be credited in your movie material on IMDB and elsewhere for her role as a single mom in Say Anything!
I laughed in the scene with Constance. I felt for Constance. Of course, she wants to be kind and caring to her kid but she is busy and tired. A lot of women are busy and tired, like the earth is, and the rivers and oceans are, but there are all these dudes saying, “Give me more and more and more and I want to kickbox, too!”
One of the most notable scenes in Say Anything, for me, for years, was when Lloyd says to his older sister Constance, “How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood and be in a good mood"?
And she replies, “Hard.”
And I used to be in that experience frequently—where someone negated my feelings instead of supporting them. So let’s be clear: someone brushing off one’s feelings is not helpful. It doesn’t more easily allow one to move past difficult feelings. This is the only area in the movie where Lloyd seems to be a douche, and we need to acknowledge the douche-y-ness of Lloyd here. His girlfriend Diane is revered, the bad money-stealing father is forgiven, the friends are just dumb sad guys who we can accept, but Constance is told, “You are not entitled to having any negative feelings because it’s not comfortable for me and I’m trying to prepare myself to call a girl I like, and so can you just be nicer?”
It’s so common, this “Can you be nicer” thing, said to women.
I heard it from a man a few weeks ago. I wondered if I should also add cookies to my new, “nicer” personality. I then watched and shared the Taylor Swift video called “The Man,” wherein Taylor A. Swift demonstrates comically and heroically and true-ically, how women are constance-ly told how to be. Like, the whole world could be burning down and a dude can be kicking people in the face and erasing the constitution and spitting on God and babies, but a single mom is told, “Be in a good mood. What’s your problem?”
(Watch that video linked above if you haven’t. Also, Taylor ALSO makes cookies for people. Not kidding.)
Did you ever wonder, Cameron (et al), if perhaps women—especially single moms—are God incarnate on the planet telling you what God really thinks of you? What God really thinks of all of us and IT?
What if, instead of discounting women’s voices and un-crediting them in feature films, we recognized that the difficult women are actually holding the space of the eternal divine truth of it all?
It is—at a minimum—possible!
What if, as soon as a single-woman-mother walked into the room, all the dudes got on their knees and said, “Here here, whatever thou pleases, Madame?” Like, in a Lord of the Rings-ish way when an ethereal queen shows up. And the guys are all in loose white suits and they take off their hats and they offer her a club soda with lime, too.
What if these dudes—or Lloyd, if he’s invited to this new scenario I am creating—says, “You seem a little tired today, Constance. Is there anything I can do to help?”
What a different world we’d have. Then Lloyd—and/or those dudes in white suits on their knees—get to be heroes, and supportive healthy masculine energies that take care of women, mothers, children, and the planet. Wherein, women, mothers, and the planet are cared for and things get infinitely better, and prosperous for all.
So Cameron, do what you gotta do. Fix this problem.
I love Lloyd, but he has some growing up to do. when it comes to supporting his sister Constance, and her feelings, and recognizing he is not the center of the world.
Ay? Capiche?
Love,
Ms. Wonderful
Sunday Vinyl BECAUSE I AM JUST SO KIND AND GENEROUS (and a SINGLE MOM too).
Maggie Rogers’ Heard It in a Past Life.
(Talk about the holy grail up in this joint.)
