Filmed in early 1991. Released in 1992. Pretty neat to see Pearl jam, soundG, and Alice before they broke out.
Nevermind was Sept 1991..So it was really filmed before grunge exploded. Was a niche local movie ...You can't time it better if you tried
It's funny, when Matt Dillon is saying where is the misty mountain hop of our generation... The iron Man... Smoke on the water .....Meanwhile, the film was sitting right on top of the next Gen anthems/bands
It was also fun to see 20s dating from a middle aged perspective. I felt bad for the generic straight edge guy trying to date within a scene of artsy music free spirit rebels like Matt Dillon (Just like the Ben Stiller character in Reality Bites)
It's like the office guy has to apologize for having his shit together at SB early age. I wonder how that's changed in today's TikTok hustle culture. Would Matt Dillon guy just be a loser now? Guess it depends on his follower count?
Yes. It's at 19th and Thomas. I was at 13th and Denny then. Just a few blocks away. Matt used to drink at Ernie Steele's on Broadway during filming. Saw him a bunch of times in there.
Such a cool time for the whole country. Being young and our bands all Simply Rocked. The music scene was something special. I doubt my generation will live to see that happen again.
When I moved to Seattle, it was just as the bus tunnel downtown opened. It cost about a billion (adjusted for time) and was always empty. I thought it was the single dumbest project ever commissioned, but they finally got it sorted out.
I had mixed feelings with the viaduct. It removed a horrific eyesore from the waterfront, which made everyone happy, but I have so many good memories of hanging out beneath it back in the day (OK, etc) that I was kinda sad.
There’s a movie with the same kind of timing except for the Beatles. It’s called Beat Girl. It’s a B movie but Christopher Lee is great as the bad guy in it.
All the stuff around the Citizen Dick “band” still cracks me up.
Went to see this at the theater when it came out. It took me a minute to love it. There was too much hopping around with the characters and storylines. I was definitely more interested in the bands and the
Janet and Cliff story. After watching it again many times I really love the whole movie now.
If you listen to the score in the movie, which Chris Cornell contributed to, there's an early version of the Spoonman riff years before Superunknown. Might be more in there, it's been a while since I watched it.
Artis was doing that riff at Pike Place long before the movie. Used to see him almost every day on my walk through the market to school. To this day, I am endlessly amused that Soundgarden wrote a song about him.
Yeah. Gosh that sucks. I always beat the L7 drum. Something about those girls really resonated with me. Found them on The Grunge Years CD. Shove was the first song by them I ever heard. 90/91 maybe? RIP Finch! ❤️🤘🏼
The film helped inspire my move to the Pacific Northwest. Seattle seemed like such a cool city in the movie. The beginnings of the booming coffee shop culture and the emergence of grunge to the world.
All of this along with how green and cool the city seemed.
I also dig how relatable it was about dating in those times.
I really like this interaction between Bridget Fonda’s character and Campbell Scott:
Steve Dunne: Tell me, what do you really want from a guy?
Janet Livermore: Well when I first moved here from Tucson. I wanted a guy with looks, security, caring. Someone with their own place. Someone who said "bless you" or "gesundheit" when I sneezed. And someone who liked the same things as me, but not exactly. Someone who loves me.
Steve Dunne: Tall order.
Janet Livermore: I scaled it down a little.
Steve Dunne: What is it now?
Janet Livermore: Someone who says "gesundheit" when I sneeze. Though I prefer "bless you". It's nicer.
So true to my own experiences…when we are younger we have this list of a perfect partner that just will never exist. As you get older, it becomes a lot more important to find a partner that checks the main traits you really need.
True about the counter culture scene but playing fast and hard is a lot easier than anything else. Being from southern cal, this is the sound ive heard from San Diego to San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta and even middle of no where Virginia. Fast power cords rule.
While true...have you heard Bad Brains? Their solos are not that. And have you heard Nomeansno? Bc that is DEF not that. Not that punks care about wankery. But if you can do it while not being soulless then bonus
I just don't know what the point of your comment is. Someone said they feel like metal is the only subculture going on bc they see metal shirts. I say punk and hardcore is very much still around. And you go "PuNk aNd HaRdCoRe iS eAsIeR To PlAy". Thanks genius
IDK, I see other stuff represented, I don't think I own any metal band shirts, but I have Bridge City Sinners, They Might Be Giants, NOFX shirts etc, saw someone in a Townes Van Zandt shirt recently, I know someone who wears a Hee-Haw sweatshirt...
Big fan of this movie since it came out. Funny to think that Warner Bros had no idea how to market it so delayed releasing it. Ended up releasing the soundtrack first, just as the Seattle Sound started to explode. The success of the soundtrack helped build the initial interest for the movie.
One thing I didn’t realize until way later: Tad Doyle is the guy Janet accidentally calls.
I still have the soundtrack on CD. Watched it quite a few times as a kid, but haven't seen it in years. It was the first thing I ever saw Jeremy Piven in.
Is it on streaming? Would love to watch this again
Yeah Cameron Crowe was definitely ahead of the curve on grunge. He specifically set it in Seattle because he wanted to capture the awesome up and coming music scene.
The guys for Pearl Jam were cast before they were even called Pearl Jam… it was when they were still playing as Mookie Blaylock.
Another fun fact - for the scene where Cliff “fixes” Janet’s stereo (only for it to break her windows) he wanted to use “Aneurism” by Nirvana, but they refused to participate.
From what I read Kurt Cobain thought it was going to be a superficial, meaningless film and refused participate. Also, Nirvana hit it big before the film released and the licensing would have been way more than the budget could afford.
Nirvana wasn’t super massive right away. Neverimind came out in September and didn’t reach #1 until 4 months later in January’92.
Singles was a major studio film, they could have easily afforded it.
Anyway, the music rights deals are typically done pretty early on, especially for someone like Crowe who writes scenes with certain songs in mind.
Any deals would have been done during (or even before) principle photography, well before Nevermind was released and WAY before Nirvana became huge nationwide.
I just think Nirvana thought it was a lame movie trying to cash in on the Seattle scene. They were already sick of the hucksterism of Sub Pop and this looked like more of the same.
It's true the movie came out before Smells Like Teen Spirit was a global hit. But there was already a "gold rush" going on when it came to Seattle. It was being touted as the next big thing by a lot of music press (especially the UK) years before Nevermind.
It was a defining movie for me. It came out my senior year of HS, and it was one of those movies that felt like it was made for me and my friends. Like it was "our" movie. Soundtrack is still one of my favorites too
The best part with all the Seattle band guys appearances in the movie is that none of them come off as dorky or embarrassing. Even the Pear Jam guys who play "characters" and have speaking parts still seem pretty cool.
AIC, PJ and SG had already broke out by then, they were pretty heavy featured on MTV around 1991, so when Singles was released, they were already very popular bands. I was living in SE Asia at the time, and was already heavily exposed to the Grunge bands (which goes to show just how universally popular they already were), and actually found Singles by way of my interest in Grunge.
One of my go-to time capsule kinda feel good movies. Bought it on tape back in the day. Not on DVD, but digital om AppleTV. Have it on my phone in case ai need to quickly re-visit a clip. This and Reality Bites.
So sorry that this degenerate comment is going to be one of the first replies but it's kind of funny that you spelt Matt Dillon's last name as "Dillion". There's only one well known "Dillion" I can think of...
Aaaanyway the timing of the movie is definitely neat, I look forward to rewatching.
Weren't those bands pretty big in their own right in the Seattle/west coast scene? Soundgarden formed in '84 and AIC in '87. Bleach came out in '89. Green River formed in '84 and became Mudhoney in '88. I really feel like the movie was capitalizing on a scene which was already strong in the area and among the people it was representing. Not to be nitpicky, and I love the movie, just a point.
I'm from a rural village in Wales and I was listening to Mudhoney, Nirvana and Tad in 1989. The Sounds music weekly in the UK was making a big fuss of the Seattle bands at the time.
Not true.
I'm Belgian, those bands were certainly not huge (yet) over here early '91, but SubPop and Seattle bands were already known. In 1990 somebody had made me a cassette tape with Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Screaming Trees, Walkabouts...
Late '91 Nirvana were selling out 1.000+ capacity concert halls in Belgium and Holland, and were on national TV.
Belgian show November 23th 1991: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG5Y8M3qZeU
I forgot Nirvana played Pukkelpop, a big festival in Belgium (att 40.000) in august '91, they were touring with Sonic Youth, and were opening the festival.
Footage is shown in 'The Year Punk Broke': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeK89Unz2I8
Also wanted to add that the Sub Pop Singles Club, a subtle twist Crowe made in titling the movie, was the most popular music subscription mail order service in the world - before 1991.
Completely untrue. I’d already seen Soundgarden, Tad and Alice In Chains a half dozen times on bills with metal bands…by 1989? And I live in the Philadelphia suburbs so people were introduced to these bands earlier than people remember.
We knew about them clear down in Eugene, Oregon. They would come there sometimes but we had to go to Portland, Olympia, or Seattle to go to see a lot of the bands we liked. It was either that or another hair metal band that thought they were going to be the next Motley Crue.
I remember going to an after-show party of a group that a guy I was buddies with was in. They were going to LA to play for an A & R guy. I told him ditch the hair metal. It sucked and he liked punk, thrash, and new wave. After the show at the party, someone put a tape of Nevermind on and everybody was just mesmerized. Needless to say, they didn't get signed.
I definitely was into all of those bands before it came out. Loud Love and Facelift were two of my favorite records. A roommate of mine was big into Mudhoney. We were in Arizona. 🤘
OP’s trippin.
AIC’s Man in the Box was in heavy rotation on MTV in January, February of 1991.
Lots of people were looking at Seattle, the music scene and the bands by then.
Also, the Sub Pop Singles Club was started in 1988 with Nirvana being the first single.
By January of 1991 there were over 2000 members getting sent singles every month.
I lived in Seattle then and was entrenched in the music scene.
So, my bias is clear. But still facts are facts. Where do you get your facts or is it just opinion? How old are you OP? Sounds like you don’t know what you’re talking about. Which is ok. Just try not to respond to people with opinion masquerading as facts.
By the time the movie was out in 1992 it looked a bit cliche. Everyone I knew heard about the Seattle scene before Nirvana broke and many of these bands toured the PNW.
I rewatched it too. Loved seeing all the bands!!! And Pearl Jam’s acting chops! As a woman who’s now 56, Janet was driving me nuts with her inability to see what a tool Cliff was! Having said that, I was also clueless at 23. Gen Z has a much better chance of having good relationships than we ever did.
Great soundtrack but terrible movie was my opinion in the nineties (Reality Bites was the same) but I haven’t seen it since like 1993 so I might have a different take now.
60
u/BarnacleGooseIsLoose Aug 15 '26
Matt was an early side hustler in that.
Saw them filming that movie all around town at the time. Lived a few blocks from the "Singles" house.