Next Saturday (August 1st) at West Seattle Outdoor Movies, it’s the Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter 1987 comedy “Raising Arizona“:

But before we spend too much time looking ahead – here’s the story of this weekend’s movie night, the slightly shower-splashed showing of the 1992 Seattle-set, grunge-rock-laden romantic comedy “Singles.”

First, there was the surprise guest in the Hotwire Online Coffeehouse (WSB sponsor) courtyard – a car. The courtyard is not a public parking lot, but somehow, a car was parked right under the movie screen as the gates opened in early evening, and no one came to claim it. So it became a part of the evening, including gathering the audience for a group “selfie” with it:

The pre-show entertainment, playing to stage left of The Car, was the movie-tune band Stay Tuned – we caught part of their version of “Gangsta’s Paradise” (from 1995’s “Dangerous Minds“) on phone video:

(Before they finished, people in the back row were waving lighters.) By then, by the way, as befitting the screening of a Seattle movie, one shower had passed through. And while some drizzle followed later, a determined core crowd remained, buying $135 worth of raffle tickets to benefit the night’s spotlight nonprofit, Northwest Center:

The movie itself was memorable for the rueful laughter when those of us who hadn’t seen it since the ’90s realized that one Seattle issue hadn’t changed: The male protagonist, played by Campbell Scott, was an engineer working on a plan to solve Seattle traffic – in hopes of getting hundreds of thousands of people out of their “single-occupancy vehicles,” he came up with something called the Supertrain. Politicians, represented by Tom Skerritt as the mayor of Seattle, told him no. Meantime, a running gag in the movie involved the status conferred by an apartment accessorized by its own offstreet parking space – rendering the presence of The Car (which was claimed by the time we returned to Hotwire for a coffee beverage late this morning) all the more apropos. And here we are still talking about parking, traffic, and transit almost a quarter-century later.

Also seen in the movie: West Seattle rock stars plus the crash scene filmed at California/Charlestown (though most of the rest of the movie featured scenery from Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, and downtown). If you’ve never seen “Singles,” find it online (and if you’re interested, read director Cameron Crowe‘s diary of making it, here). Meantime, next Saturday is the third of six Saturday night West Seattle Outdoor Movies this summer – see the full schedule here.