Almost Famous – IF Magazine

Almost Autobiographical

Writer/Director Cameron Crowe, four years after his box office and critical smash Jerry Maguire, gets more personal with Almost Famous based on his life as teenage rock and roll journalist.

With just four directing credits to his name, Cameron Crowe is somewhat of a newbie director. Unless of course, you figure in he’s been directing for nearly 12 years. He is a slow, careful thinker who must feel every moment is the right moment. But the public and the studios will wait … and wait and wait until Crowe is ready. He’s ready once again four years after Jerry Maguire became a smash hit and won Cuba Gooding Jr. an Academy Award. Crowe can virtually be credited with giving a variety of actors their first big breaks including John Cusack (Say Anything), Gooding (Jerry Maguire) and Renee Zellweger (Jerry Maguire) to name a few.

The 43-year-old Crowe has written about obsessive and sex addicted teens (Say Anything, Fast Times at Ridgemont High), going no where twenty-somethings (Singles) and a sports agent who grows a conscience overnight (Maguire). All the films led up to the inevitable. His most personal film to date, Almost Famous, is based on his teen years growing up and writing for Rolling Stone magazine while touring with rock and roll groups. The film is nearly 15 years in the making with Crowe always veering off to do something else. But Crowe says he is glad that he waited all these years and he feels, “ … Jerry Maguire helped me get the opportunity to get this done right. This is a first movie that usually would be made cheaply probably without the cinema photographer that I really wanted and all that stuff. And although we didn’t spend a lot doing the movie I definitely got people to help me that trusted me more than if it was my first thing.”

Jerry Maguire gave Crowe oodles and oodles of respect from the studios but Maguire star Tom Cruise apparently admired Crowe from a far for many, many years. “He was the first big star who actively said to me, ‘I want to play a character in one of your movies,‘ ” says Crowe. “He said, ‘I don’t want to play the big starring part with the leading man golden haze around me. I want to be like Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything.’ I’ve always had a hard time getting ‘so-called’ stars to do my stuff and then here comes one of the biggest who says, ‘I want to be like (John) Cusack, give me a part like John Cusack.’ That’s why Jerry Maguire was such a joy because I could actually say to Tom Cruise, ‘Fall down. You’re going to walk into this office and I want you to fall down and hit your head.’ And he would be like, ‘Okay, I’ll do it again for you.’ I was like holy shit this is amazing. This guy is really here for me.“

Famous gives his fans a sneak peek at Crowe as a youth and a taste of his upbringing. Crowe says the film’s lead, played by new comer Patrick Fugit, is about ”ninety percent” Cameron Crowe, that’s a big amount of him on the screen for all to see. And although his Dad passed away shortly after Say Anything premiered, Crowe says he had a close relationship with his Mom who Frances McDormand’s character is based upon. Crowe recalls his mother‘s advice whenever he went on the road, “Call me every five minutes and don’t do drugs.” Crowe was a gifted child skipping many grades in school and who rose above his fellow classmates. Not until he hit the road did he feel like he belonged.

“I was going to school with people who were so much older than me,” says Crowe. “ And especially to the girls I was invisible to them. And that’s when I went on the road with some of these bands, some of whom were my heroes. I was not invisible to them. So it was a dream come true and then a dilemma.“

Crowe looks back on some of his most exciting rock n’ roll memories for iF in a Super 8 rock and roll Crowe flashback…

ON STILL HAVING PROBLEMS GETTING BACK STAGE AT CONCERTS…

“When we came to the San Diego sports arena to film this I went to the door and the guy behind the door, on like a Tuesday afternoon, said ‘You can’t come in.’ I couldn’t come in to film the scene about not being able to come in. It was bizarre. There is something about me that says, ‘I don’t belong.’ Jim Brooks had this party for As Good As It Gets and it was at the House of Blues in LA. And there was this room where they were having the party and there was this big guy at the door. I just knew I was doomed. I knew that I was on the list but I knew that I was doomed as soon as I saw that guy and he didn’t let me in. I’m traumatized by it.”

ON HIS FIRST NIGHT OUT WITH A ROCK AND ROLL GROUP…

“The first night that I got backstage was a Yes/Black Sabbath concert at the sports arena here in town (San Diego). There was a guy named Steve Wolf who was the promoter of the concert associates and this guy sort of believed in me and I wasn’t on the list. I was supposed to be and then this guy came out and said, ‘Come on backstage.’ So I went wild that night. I interviewed everyone that night. I went into every dressing room. I talked to everyone and it was an amazing night and then the addiction was setting in. The Allman Brothers was a very dark inviting situation because Dwayne Allman had died not too long before and Barry Oakley, their bass player, had died. They had a press blackout and they were still mourning. So there was a feeling of family and deep togetherness and us against the world around the Allman Brothers. So to kind of puncture that and to be invited in was an amazing thing. And they were bigger than ever. It was amazing.”

ON HIS EXPERIENCE WITH JOHN BONHAM…

“He was always either really exuberant or just within himself but there was an amazing thing that happened where he just came alive on their plane one day. He came lumbering down the aisle and apparently he did this from time to time but he said, ‘Show me your knob.’ And he meant like expose yourself. And his eyes would look around and he would try to lock onto someone and he would just start taunting them to show him their knob. I watched him just move across the faces and he settled on the promotion guy who had thick glasses and Bonham just started saying, ‘Show me your knob.’ And this very prideful guy wouldn’t do it. So Bonham took his glasses and threw them onto the floor. And then crushed them and there was this terrible moment like, ‘What’s going to happen?’ Is this loyal promotions guy actually going to fight the drummer of this band that he loves?’ And then the moment passed and he moved onto Neil Preston who was my partner on a lot of stories and Bonham said, ‘Show me your knob.’ And Neil was like, ‘Okay.’ I just thought, ‘What an amazing thing to have a defining moment between these people who are all like family. As a young guy on the road, watching that, I couldn’t believe how complex and thrilling and dangerous stuff like that was.”

ON WHETHER LESTER BANGS ( PLAYED BY PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN) WAS RIGHT ABOUT ROCK AND ROLL BEING DESTROYED…

“Yes. Rock and Roll dies every year and then it gets resurrected. I feel we’re in a lull now in a lot of ways but I remember feeling this way before ‘It Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (by Nirvana) came out and re-energized everything. So, I always have this feeling that somewhere some guy is in a garage about to change it all.”

ON THE WORST THREAT HE GOT FROM UNHAPPY BAND MEMBERS HE WROTE ABOUT…

“Someone said, ‘I’m going to write about you and I’m going to write a song about a guy who seems like a friendly kid but really he writes stuff that embarrasses me.’ But it’s never about what you think. They never get upset about the thing you think they’re going to get upset about. They get upset about your comment about their shirt, not their marriage that dissolved painfully. It’s like, ‘Oh that’s fine but man I would never wear a shirt like that!”

ON HIS AGE EVER BECOMING AN ISSUE WHEN HE WAS INTERVIEWING BANDS AT AGE 15 AND 16…

“I had a lot of confidence after having done a few profiles. And I had a lot of confidence that it was okay to be as young as I was and no one is going to be ageist about it. And I got a surprise because I went to do a profile on Steve Miller and my age became an issue. ‘Was I even old enough to truly know his music?‘ And I felt like, ‘Wow I’m as old as the people in the audience. I mean, don’t I have the right?’ That’s the only time that my age became an issue.”

ON MEETING HIS ROCK AND ROLL WIFE NANCY WILSON FROM THE GROUP HEART…

“I think I was at a festival where she was playing and she was very cocooned. I remember and very shy and very protected. I don’t think that she was walking around or anything but later two friends of mine attempted to set us up and I was very nervous about the whole thing but later I ended up actually meeting her looking for music for Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Crowe wrote the script). So that’s when I met her. I never got the song but we ended up together and it’s very cool because she’s very sort of unaffected and not part of the LA or New York scene. No one ever said to her, ‘Hey man it’s not cool to date a rock and roll journalist.’ She didn’t know until later until we were already together and I had to say, ‘Honey, I’ve got to tell you this, you’ve crossed the line and it’s too late.’ “

ON ANY PLANS TO WRITE THE QUINTESSENTIAL ROCK NOVEL AND WHAT IS HIS BEST MOMENT AS A ROCK AND ROLL JOURNALIST AND WHAT IS HIS WORST MOMENT…

“This is it for me because I feel like the problem with all the rock novels and tell-all books is that they are losing one important thing which is why do you love the music? You don’t love the music because they’re decadent you love the music because the music touches you. You’ve got to tell that story about why the music touches you because it’s more important than the TVs going out the window. So this is the story for me. And I’d say my best moment is Led Zeppelin doing ‘Dazed And Confused’ at the Madison Square Garden and the worst … getting crushed at the front of the stage at the San Diego Sports Arena in 1971 for The Who.”

Courtesy of the IF Magazine – Pamela Harland – September 9, 2000