Accolades
Top Film Sites for January 2002
Articles by the former Rolling Stone scribe are reprinted here, as are record sleeve notes and extracts from his book on Billy Wilder. Pages on each of Crowe’s films are equally good and include trivia and photos.
As The Crowe Flies: A Fan Pays Tribute to a Director
”I thought to myself, this is a special movie, there’s not a lot of information out there on him, and someone needs to do something about that.” That ”special movie” is Almost Famous, the ”him” is director Cameron Crowe (below), and the ”someone” is the speaker, Greg Mariotti, creator and webmaster of a packed-to-the-rafters site (cameroncroweonline.com) dedicated to all things Crowe. Entitled ”The Uncool” (after one of Crowe’s rejected titles for Almost Famous), the six-month-old site includes articles, interviews, and trivia based on Crowe’s films and years in rock journalism. When not at his ”working-stiff job” as a credit union manager in (where else) Seattle, the 31-year-old Mariotti spends some 15 to 20 hours a week updating the site and responding to e-mail.
Traffic, he said, has been ”very heavy” after the opening of Crowe’s Vanilla Sky (above, with star Tom Cruise), approaching some 60,000 hits per day. And in case you’re wondering, Crowe has visited the site — and picked up the phone to voice his appreciation. ”He told me that he was really honored,” says Mariotti, who also runs a site dedicated to Magnolia director Paul Thomas Anderson. ”I thought if anyone can appreciate…a fan-driven website, he can.” Given the site’s enormous depth, Crowe might have said, You complete me.
November 2002
#1 in British film magazine Total Film’s Best…Official Unofficial Director Fan Sites. “Greg Mariotti runs The Uncool, which boasts a wealth of detail about Cameron Crowe, including articles by the director himself.”