Dear 1994 Sam Anderson: Hello. It’s me, 2024 Sam Anderson – you from the future, exactly 30 years from now. (I’m explaining because you are bad at math.) I am typing this on technology that doesn’t exist yet. I’m older than your parents currently are. I have a big beard, and my lower back hurts, and I spend most of my time playing word games or reading apocalyptic news alerts on the supercomputer I keep in my pocket. The 21st century, to be honest, sucks. To put it in terms you’ll understand: We’re trying to swing on the flippity flop, but we’re living in a harsh realm.
But I don’t want to scare you. There are good things too: wireless earbuds, exciting new flavors of Doritos. Weird Al Yankovic is still going strong. And your life has turned out better than you have any right to expect. You do not die of that thing you think you are dying of. You are allowed to write goofy things like this for your job. And — the biggest miracle of all — you have a stable, loving, long-term marriage.
For that last one, you owe a serious debt of gratitude to a classic film: the 1992 romantic comedy “Singles.”
Well, it’s classic for me. You have just now seen it, on your first date with Sarah from math class. This, in fact, is the main reason I’m writing: to tell you that 30 years from now, you and Sarah will still be together, and “Singles” will be such a pillar of your relationship that you will celebrate your 30th dating anniversary, Valentine’s Day 2024, by rewatching it.
You will see it, this time, from a very different angle. You will marvel at the passage of time; at the ways that the world, and you yourselves, are exactly the same but also radically different; at how things that once struck you as extremely cool still strike you as extremely cool, but are now also drenched in sadness. Rewatching “Singles” with Sarah will feel life-affirming, like an unofficial renewal of your vows. And you will realize that this film — this ancient, lighthearted, 99-minute comedy — has been the most important movie of your life.
These days, “Singles” is remembered mainly as a novelty: the “grunge rom-com.” It was filmed in Seattle in 1991, as the city’s scruffy rock bands drifted, improbably, toward global superfame. And it came out in 1992, with grunge mania in full bloom: Nirvana topping the charts, journalists flocking to Seattle, fashion designers scrambling to put flannel on the runway. “Singles” is to grunge basically as “Saturday Night Fever” is to disco. Scenes take place in Seattle clubs, where Soundgarden and Alice in Chains play live. Members of Pearl Jam are minor characters. The soundtrack is so packed that it was rushed into stores months before the movie reached theaters.
Given all that, I worried “Singles” might not hold up. But I’m happy to report that it is still delightful. This is largely because of Cameron Crowe, the writer/director responsible for such immortal rom-com moments as “guy in trench coat holds up boombox” (“Say Anything”) and “You had me at hello” (“Jerry Maguire,” which you’ll see in a few years). With “Singles,” Crowe was ambitious, trying to capture the vibe of a whole scene, a whole city; it is a collage of a film, with more than 75 speaking parts. The main characters are 20-somethings who live in the same apartment building and hang around the same coffee shop. (Crowe claims that “Singles” inspired “Friends,” a sitcom that will soon dominate the world.) There is Janet (Bridget Fonda), an architecture student who is infatuated with Cliff (Matt Dillon), a doofusy singer in a band called Citizen Dick. There is Debbie (Sheila Kelley), who searches for love through a VHS dating service called Expect the Best. There are cameos from young (to me) versions of Paul Giamatti, Jeremy Piven, Eric Stoltz and Tim Burton. Characters keep speaking directly to the camera, trading off as narrators. It’s a perfect blend of indie film and slick rom-com.
I know you just finished watching it, but I am reminding you of all this because you spent most of the film distracted, trying not to projectile vomit from anxiety. You desperately wanted the date to go well. Sarah was your monthslong crush — the girl you noticed the moment she walked in, on the first day of school, wearing a yellow dress. She, too, is bad at math, thank goodness, because that’s how you each ended up in this remedial class, where the teacher lets you goof around — where Sarah is allowed to get up in front of the room and tell funny childhood stories, and sometimes you go up and pantomime them like an old-timey clown. Finally, after months of this, she gave you her number. And when she came over, she brought the VHS tape of “Singles.”
It’s better for us that “Singles” has been largely forgotten, because it still feels small and private, like a time capsule. Its characters talk on big clunky phones and discuss the Seattle SuperSonics; a major plot point involves an answering machine eating a cassette tape. (None of these are things anymore.) And there is the grunge. You, as a moody white teenager from the Pacific Northwest, are fully devoted to that lifestyle. You wear long johns under your shorts. You learned guitar by copying Kurt Cobain’s fingers. You are driving your mother crazy by never washing your hair.
But what makes “Singles” perfect, for you and Sarah, goes deeper than flannel. It is the movie’s central love story. In a world of goofballs, Linda (Kyra Sedgwick) and Steve (Campbell Scott) seem like adults. They have meaningful careers they are passionate about. (Linda works for an environmental organization; Steve wants to solve Seattle’s traffic problems with a “Supertrain.”) They go to rock concerts but also love to stay home and talk. They are smart enough to understand, even as they are falling in love, that relationships are never easy, never perfect. Theirs will be so imperfect, in fact, that late in the movie it falls apart. But then it comes back together, stronger for its imperfections. As Steve puts it, drunkenly, on Linda’s answering machine: “We had good times and bad times … but we had times.”
Looking back, I can see the appeal of this for two teenagers who were desperate to start their own lives. You didn’t have many examples, in your own childhood, of mature, healthy, long-term relationships. You needed “Singles.” And you needed Sarah from math class.
Very long story very short: You and Sarah will make a life like that. She will support you in your grunge inclinations. She will tolerate the wasteland of your hair. She will borrow your T-shirts and wear flannels over them, and one day she will drive you to get your nose pierced by a lady at a sidewalk table, which will cause a minor scandal in your family and get you uninvited from a big church event.
But also, just as crucial, she won’t support you too much. When you are thinking of delaying college to see what happens with your band, Station Wagon, she will advise against it — and she will be right, because I am sorry to break this to you, but your songs are pretty bad. Over the years, she will be relentless in getting you out of the depressive turtle shell you’re always trying to disappear into. She will encourage you to participate in the world: visit Europe, go to therapy, adopt a dog. She will persuade you to have children, which will turn out to be the very best thing you ever do. Eventually your teenage daughter will borrow your old T-shirts and wear flannels over them too.
One year, on a work trip to Seattle, you will make a pilgrimage to the “Singles” apartment building, which still looks just as it did in the movie. You will take a picture of yourself there and send it to Sarah. You will think about the big Seattle voices that are now gone — Cobain, Cornell, Staley — and consider what a miracle it is that you are still here, and that you and Sarah are still together. Of course it has not been perfect. You have had good times and bad times. But you have had times.
Source photographs for the illustration above: Warner Bros./Everett Collection; Moviestore Collection Ltd./Alamy; Thomas Pajot/Alamy
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