Trailer Park: Singles

Movie
Singles, released September 18 1992

Trailer Synopsis
A group of twentysomethings try to navigate their relationships while a narrator breaks down a muddled philosophy about said relationships.

Does It Honestly Represent the Movie?
Mostly. Singles, writer-director Cameron Crowe’s follow-up to his breakout debut Say Anything…, is a series of loosely-connected vignettes about a group of people who largely inhabit the same apartment complex in Seattle. Though it’s meant to be an ensemble, Crowe is clearly most interested in the fate of the couple played by Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick, who are both neurotic professionals. Matt Dillon and Bridget Fonda make up the other couple, with Dillon playing the frontman of a local band called Citizen Dick and Fonda serving as his fawning girlfriend. On the outskirts of the narrative we find Sheila Kelly (who gets involved in video dating and generally feels like a punchline), Jim True (Scott’s best friend and sounding board), and Bill Pullman (a sweet-natured plastic surgeon who consults Fonda). It lacks the concentrated narrative thrust of Crowe’s debut, but it is a good-natured series of sketches about modern love that also serves as a mostly-excellent reel for Seattle tourism.

Not that Seattle needed the help. By the time this film landed in theaters, bands like Pearl Jam (who appear in the movie), Alice in Chains (ditto), Nirvana and Soundgarden had captured the imaginations of music fans and even scored crossover mainstream hits despite the fact they made extremely caustic records. With that new attention came a spotlight on the scene and culture of Seattle, one full of flannel and espresso and literate conversations about Xavier McDaniel. Singles was one of the many cultural artifacts that made Seattle into a thing in the early ‘90s, and yet it is not mentioned at all in the trailer (though I suppose eagle-eyed viewers would be able to spot locations or just recognize how grey everything was).

Does It Make You Want to See The Movie?
It does not! Singles has problems with pacing and structure but it’s largely charming thanks to a relatively game cast, and little of that comes across in the trailer. I think my biggest problem is the narration, which presents a totally non-sensical series of thoughts about the progression of relationships and doesn’t really have a ton to do with the movie (though True’s character does act as a sort of relationship Svengali who spouts would-be wisdom about the opposite sex, his character is relatively isn’t particularly effective because he constantly fails). The trailer tries to paint Singles like a Woody Allen-esque neurotic comedy, and there’s a little bit of that in the movie, but it fails to express the genuine likability of its characters (particularly Fonda’s).

What’s Weird About It?
Was Campbell Scott a bigger deal in ‘92 than I thought he was? He was just coming off the Julia Roberts vehicle Dying Young, a performance that earned him an MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Breakthrough Performance (he lost to Terminator 2: Judgement Day’s Edward Furlong). That movie has 23% on Rotten Tomatoes and Rogert Ebert called it “a dreadful experience,” but it did make a relatively robust $34 million at the domestic box office. The Singles trailer seems particularly excited about the presence of Scott, but both Dillon and Fonda were significantly bigger stars at the time. It makes sense because the movie itself revolves around Scott, but it’s odd to me that the trailer doesn’t just zoom in on Dillon and Fonda (who are the easier-to-embrace couple anyway).

Also, what the hell is that font they’re using? I don’t know why I was so bothered by it.

The trailer is soundtracked by Paul Westerberg’s two entries on the platinum-selling Singles soundtrack, “Dyslexic Heart” and “Waiting on Somebody.” They’re both sweet pieces of jangly power pop, but the Singles soundtrack was known more for the crunchier stuff, including Alice in Chains’ “Would?” (which had a video co-directed by Crowe), Pearl Jam’s “State of Love and Trust” and Smashing Pumpkins’ “Drown.”

Does It Spoil the Movie?
Considering Singles has even less plot than Empire Records, no, it does not spoil anything.

Final Analysis
I don’t know why I chose movies whose soundtracks are more famous than the films themselves for my first two entries in this series, but here we are. Singles is a strange movie that was pitched as a youth dramedy but the characters all read like they have already entered middle age. Looking back, everybody just reads so adult, which I don’t think people thought at the time. The soundtrack still slaps, and this is probably Scott’s best star turn. There are a lot of Cameron Crowe-isms that sneak into this movie that would become real albatrosses in subsequent projects, but here they just feel like quirks. Singles is a very typical second movie in that Crowe had a lot of heat following the critical and commercial success of Say Anything… and his second movie is the work of a guy who feels emboldened to go all-in. The result is a little overstuffed and underfocused, but it’s a much better flick than its trailer lets on. 2/10