The last addition today is from The San Diego Door‘s February 24, 1972 issue. It’s Cameron’s review of Keith Emerson with The Nice. He provides a brief history of Emerson, ELP and also looks at the ELP release, Pictures of an Exhibition.
Cameron’s Journal for Elizabethtown
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Here’s the first entry for Cameron’s Elizabethtown Journal.
December, 2003
Elizabethtown finally has its lead actors. Orlando Bloom (as Drew Baylor) and Kirsten Dunst (as Claire Colburn). Dunst had come very close to being cast in Almost Famous and Bloom had been the lead (with Kate Beckinsale) in my one and only commercial, a black and white ad for the Gap. We’d made a pact to work together in the future. Now’s the time. Only one problem. He’s not available for close to six months. Dunst will have time to make another movie, “Wimbledon,” in England, and I will have time to storyboard and prepare the movie to a fine degree. And the movie, which is set in summer, will be able to be shot in summer. That had always been a problem how were we going to do a movie about summer, in all its glorious humidity, with January snow on the ground? It feels right to wait. Vinyl Films will go into a long pre-production hibernation_ we make all kinds of plans on how to spend the down time. We’ll work on future projects, plot visual style on “E-town,” plan music for the movie and we’ll put out the vinyl on our fave artists Low and Mark Kozelek, and wait out the long months.
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Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums
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Cameron was among the 273 voters for Rolling Stone’s 500 greatest albums of all time (this special issue is on newsstands now!). Crowe’s #1 selection was the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds. He wrote this about that seminal album. I’m trying to get all 50 of Cameron’s picks, so stay tuned….
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Mojo Risin’
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David Bowie. Photo courtesy of Neal Preston.
Cameron talks with Chris Marlowe of the wonderful UK music magazine, Mojo. This interview is from the August, 1995 issue. I’m not sure what Cameron was doing in the UK at that time (since this was between the release of Singles and Jerry Maguire). He talks about the early days, Fast Times, Singles and his love of music. It’s the only Crowe interview I’ve located for 1995.
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Rita Coolidge Breaks Out
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Cameron talks with singer Rita Coolidge about her career and marriage to musician/actor Kris Kristofferson in this Rolling Stone interview from June, 1977. The album mentioned in this interview (Anytime…Anywhere) was a break out smash for Coolidge. Coolidge and Kristofferson were one of the big power couples of the ’70s. Coolidge and Kristofferson released one final duet album, Natural Act, in 1979, but their marriage was on the rocks, and they separated by the end of the year.
Coolidge never repeated the pop success of Anytime…Anywhere, but she did continue to land hits on the adult contemporary charts through the early ’80s.
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Proof Returns
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Here’s the latest in our series of Crowe inspired essays called “We Have the Records, We Have the Proof”. The latest entry (by Dan Pulliam) is entitled The Penny Lane Identity Crisis. Another powerful, personal story. Check it out!
The Penny Lane Identity Crisis
(or: how I learned to become an invisible man in just six years)
by Dan Pulliam
Penny Lane is, in some ways, that same person for each of us that she was for William Miller. It took a while for this to dawn on me, but upon subsequent viewing of ‘Almost Famous’ (and, more especially, of ‘Untitled’), a few things became undeniably clear. One: Penny’s perfection is in her flaws. Two: Penny isn’t perfect…she just happens to be perfect for the one who loves her. Three: Under it all, she carries her battered heart wrapped up in a blanket while projecting an air of invincibility. And four: Through everything, there is one person who knows her best…possibly better than she knows herself.
That’s where we come in. And come on, guys, you know who you are. We’re the tortured souls. The ones who find something of worth in a Crowe film because we can actually feel what other people just watch casually with less-than-discerning eyes. We’re the best guys that everyone knows. We’re the last in a dying breed of chivalrous romantics (the ones as yet unphased by the recent influx of societal cynicism). We’re the people who sit patiently and wait for something intangible. We’re never happy until we find it, and yet we’re never quite sure what it is. If this is making any kind of sense to you, then we’re probably on the same page, and in the vein of the tortured soul syndrome, we’ve all got our Penny Lane, don’t we?
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Early Mac
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Cameron profiled the band for Rolling Stone back in 1974. This was before Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined the band. On a related note, don’t miss the very famous Mac profile that Crowe did three years later…
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Gathering Proof
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Here’s the latest in our series of Crowe inspired essays called “We Have the Records, We Have the Proof”. This one comes courtesy of site reader Lisa King. She recalls her experiences with Crowe’s film and how they shaped her personal life in her piece entitled “The Beauty of Gray”. It’s heartfelt and worth your time. Check it out.
The Beauty of Gray
“Every passing moment is a chance to turn it all around”
by Lisa King
My introduction to the films of Cameron Crowe was a shaky one.
When I first watched ‘Say Anything…‘, I was frustrated with Lloyd for taking Diane back as easily as he did in the scene at the dojo. I remember thinking that if only the filmmaker had made Diane look into Lloyd’s eyes and really sell the idea that she needed him, not just someone, that I would have felt more satisfied with the movie.
When I first watched ‘Jerry Maguire’, I was exasperated by the ending and felt like I was the only person in the theater who didn’t believe it was an entirely happy one. I remember thinking that if only the filmmaker had made Jerry and Dorothy hold each others hands at the end, instead of continuing to have Ray be the (literal and symbolic) bridge between them, that I would have felt more satisfied with the movie.
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