Cameron Crowe is having a big 2011, after spending the six years since Elizabethtown tanked practically missing in action. At the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year he debuted his documentary The Union, about the collaboration between Elton John and Leon Russell, and at this fall's Toronto Film Festival he'll have another music doc, Pearl Jam Twenty, about the seminal 90s band and how they've made it this far in their careers without any of the big classic rock star melt downs. The next month, on October 21, the doc will air on PBS as part of the American Masters series, and two months after that he'll be back in theaters at last with We Bought A Zoo, a bittersweet family drama starring Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson. He's got some time before publicity ramps up for that one, but on Saturday he went before the assembled critics at the Television Critics Association press tour to talk up Pearl Jam Twenty… and also hint at a sequel idea he's apparently been kicking around for the last 20 years.
When asked about a potential sequel to Say Anything, his 1989 romantic comedy that probably boosted sales of boom boxes and trenchcoats for years after, Crowe gamely admitted that he and star John Cusack had thought about it. Here's the quote, as reported by Hitfix:
"It’s the only thing that I’ve written that I would consider doing that with. I’ve thought about it from time to time and talked about it with John Cusack once and just said this is the only story that I kind of think there might be another chapter to that at some point."
At least Crowe has the decency not to try and spin this idea into something that we should actually expect to happen-- he makes no mention of producers being involved, financing being in place, or even anything resembling a script written. It sounds like Crowe is simply as curious about the fates of his characters as you might be, wondering what happens to Lloyd and Diane the moment the seatbelt sign gets turned off on that airplane. I'm not really sure I'd want to see a full produced sequel for this, but maybe a web short? A staged reading of a screenplay? Or even an entire film that's a Say Anything sequel but also somehow a documentary accounting for the movie's strange, lasting cultural impact? There's a lot of possibilities there, and so long as Crowe seems open to the idea but not married to the notion of a full-fledged sequel, why not think big here?
