Say Anything… Even My Name. My Queer Movie/TV Crush
A Prism & Pen writing prompt.
My queer movie crush was and is Ione Skye.
My relationship to her should be pretty obvious. Gotta be crushing uber-hard to try and honor an actress by taking her name and making it yours. Most folks remember her from the movie “Say Anything.” That was the movie that said to me, “Be Anything. Be her.” The class valedictorian emotionally stunted by a corrupt dad and then captivating a quietly heroic John Cusack.
Well, except for that iconic scene where he held up the boombox outside her window to play Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” That was loud and clear.
Not that I wanted to be under a father’s thumb. Not sure if that would have been better than what I did get. More on that later.
The thing is, John Cusack was everything Brother — my former self — wished he could be in that movie. And that ironically, Brother kind of was. Crushed hard on intelligence. And vulnerability. Especially when wrapped in the curvy innocence I’m sure the casting director went voila! at when Ione auditioned. Could win that pure heart and lose it by being, well, Brother.
But I was there, in Brother, too. Who yearned to be as young and pretty as Ione was in that film. Who also had an absent dad, except mine…
