Seattle in Mind

A label called Shout Factory has released a 25th Anniversary Special Edition of Alan Rudolph's 1985 film, Trouble in Mind. It's not exactly the Criterion treatment, but it's a good presentation of one of my very favorite films. I've written about the movie before. As I wrote then, one of the attractions of the film is that it captures a portrait of Seattle as it looked when I first moved here the year before. To some extent, 25 years later, that Seattle is gone, so here I'm presenting images of that lost city as seen in the film.

I've always assumed that this shot from the opening credits was from the Union Street Station, but I'm not completely sure. It could be the King Street Station, which shows up later in the film too. This is also one of numerous shots in the film that echo Blade Runner (1982) in some way. There's a concerted effort to mix up the time signifiers in costumes and cars and so on, and the Blade Runner imagery signals a science fictional future.



( Everybody wants to go to Heaven; nobody wants to die. )