At approximately 4:00 p.m. today, an ’80s movie tribute band will arrive in Times Square to begin the final leg of a journey that went from Penn Station to Washington Square Park to Union Square in an attempt at the seemingly impossible: To transform the island of Manhattan into Diane Court’s front yard.
Having trouble placing the name “Diane Court?” How about an image to help jog your memory? A young man stands in the rain, wearing a trench coat and holding a boom box overhead that plays Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”
It has been two decades since Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything was first released and its 20th anniversary “will be commemorated in true 1980s style,” says event organizer Callie Jernigan. With a little help from a flash mob of trench coat-wearing, boombox-wielding Lloyd Dobler clones (which the general public is encouraged to partake in), Say Anything tribute band the Lloyd Dobler Effect will “will perform the song inextricably associated with the movie” and re-create the iconic scene from what has been called the greatest romance flick of all time.
Not so coincidentally, the event coincides with the release of the film’s 20th anniversary edition Blu-ray and DVD, available today.