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It’s probably inevitable that when a longtime movie critic writes a book, movies are going to find their way into its pages. My debut novel, Storybook Ending, was partly inspired by my love of great romantic comedies: Its plot owes a debt to Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail, and much of the story takes place in a Seattle bookstore where a movie is being filmed.
Seattle’s pretty face has long been an inspiration for rom-coms, though too often those films aren’t actually shot here. (It pains me to share, if you haven’t already heard, that John Cusack and his boombox in the lovely Say Anything are actually standing in a Los Angeles park.) But, for my fellow rom-com fans, here are five made-in-Seattle treats, each of which depicts our city as a winsome place to find love.
Laggies
2014
The late writer/director Lynn Shelton made nearly all of her films here, and in this light, agreeable comedy, it feels like we’re watching our neighbors in locations that might actually be in our neighborhoods: the former Northgate Nordstrom, the Skansonia ferry, the Chihuly Glasshouse. Keira Knightley plays a 28-year-old woman-child who gets a bit stuck in adolescence—but is nonetheless drawn to a teenage friend’s single dad (Sam Rockwell).
Lucky Them
2013
Seattle filmmaker Megan Griffiths’s gently funny rom-com makes nighttime Capitol Hill into a neon wonderland. Local music journalist Ellie (Toni Collette) ends up on a road trip with documentarian Charlie (Thomas Haden Church) to find a mysteriously vanished Seattle music legend. Guess what happens along the way? The actors are a joy here, finding an effortless, breezy chemistry.
Singles
1992
How is it possible that this movie is, at 33, now older than most of its characters? Cameron Crowe’s 1992 grunge rom-com revolves around a group of young neighbors in a Capitol Hill apartment building (that still stands today) falling in love and listening to music and being idealistic and just being young. It’s a sweet time capsule.
Local Books
Seattle Met Book Club
October 29, 6pm at Barnes & Noble University District
Join the Seattle Met book club in person for a conversation with author Moira Macdonald.
Sleepless in Seattle
1993
Well, of course I had to include this one, didn’t I? But honestly, I rewatched it for its 30th anniversary two years ago, and it absolutely holds up. Writer-director Nora Ephron fell a bit in love with Seattle (even a few scenes set in East Coast locations were actually shot here), and if you don’t also fall a bit for Tom Hanks’s sweet widower and Meg Ryan’s intrepid reporter-in-search-of-romance, well, why are you even reading this? Fun cameo by the Athenian in Pike Place Market, which to this day has an enormous Sleepless in Seattle poster on its wall.
The Fabulous Baker Boys
1989
OK, this is a bit of a cheat, as Steve Kloves’s beautifully slinky romance is most definitely not a comedy. But it’s my favorite made-in-Seattle movie, and as the years go by I find fewer and fewer people know it existed. Real-life brothers Jeff and Beau Bridges play fictional brothers Jack and Frank Baker, lounge musicians whose longtime twin-piano act is wearing thin; a breathtaking Michelle Pfeiffer is the woman who comes between them. Watch it for a glimpse of an older Seattle (an unrecognizable, pre-condo-buildings Capitol Hill; a beautifully noirish downtown), or for a master class in movie-star chemistry.
