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John Cusack in Say AnythingI blame John Cusack.

No, not for his recent run of lousy movie choices. (I still talk about the stink-o-rama that was "War, Inc.") I blame our favorite Chicago native for making movies in the '80s that made guys think that if a woman rejects your advances, it's OK to write her love notes, stand outside her window with Peter Gabriel playing from a boombox, surprise her at work, and do all sorts of things that in real life would be considered stalking.

Take the case of Marc Giaquinto, who was accused of stalking a member of the Morristown Madams, a women's roller-derby team in my de facto hometown of Morristown, N.J. After asking her out and getting rejected, he kept going, and going, and going ... well, you get the idea.

Complicating matters is the fact that he co-manages the rink in which the Madams play and practice. So what does the team decide to do? Keep using the rink ... minus the victim and her lawyer, who's also a member of the team. So much for sisterhood.

Giaquinto, for his part, claims that this wasn't a one-way flirtation, and a number of commenters on the Star-Ledger article have come to his aid, feeling that he has been railroaded. But some of the accounts I've heard, as well as the same Star-Ledger article, mention the fact that a police search of Gianquinto's home produced pictures of the victim and poems he wrote to her.

So, this may fall into a he-said, she-said fight -- Gianquinto dismissed her account of being followed to a local shopping mall as being a coincidental encounter, for instance -- but the pictures and poems are a bad sign. It makes me think of Crazy Joe Davola stalking Elaine on "Seinfeld" rather than anything from the '80s-Cusack oeuvre.

But it also makes me wonder if Gianquinto took his cue from those movies and all the ones since. I mean, what guy hasn't used that rationale as encouragement to keep going even after being rejected multiple times? What we soon realize is that we're not being "adorably persistent," as those movies might make a person think. More often than not, we're at the very least "obnoxiously pestering," but it only takes a random appearance at the woman's office to cross that line into restraining-order territory. Most of us haven't crossed that line, but many have, and it's a scary thought.

Have you ever been persistent with a woman, only to look back and realize that you were closer to John Hinckley than John Cusack?

Joel Keller is a freelance writer and editor-in-chief of TV Squad. He blames John Cusack for a lot of stuff that happened to him in the '80s, but still wants to interview him one day.