The title is my favorite line from a movie that dropped ten years ago this month, Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. Based on a variety of experiences Crowe had as a teenager in the 70s writing for Rolling Stone, Almost Famous is only partly about what it's about. The story, yes, follows a kid who bullshits his way into a freelance gig at Rolling Stone and goes on tour with a band, but it's not about the rock 'n' roll scene, it's about, as Fairuza Balk's “Band Aid” character puts it, “truly [loving] some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much it hurts.” Almost Famous is, ultimately, about its sincerity and being unafraid to look uncool.
This was why, upon its release, most of the negative reviews gave Cameron Crowe shit for not putting in enough scenes where everyone sat around wearing sunglasses and shooting heroin or some such bullshit. If you'll recall, September of 2000 was a very low point in music. Rock 'n' roll was on life support, and what few rock stars were left were not a whole lot of fun: the last paradigm shift in American rock 'n' roll, the largely media-created Seattle thing circa 1991-2 (one of the major cultural artifacts of which was Cameron Crowe's own Singles), had established the role of the modern rock star as a sensitive, humorlessly progressive mumbler (see Vedder, Eddie). Drugs were taken, if at all, in moderation—and even when a Kurt Cobain came along to keep the proud tradition of heroin addiction alive, he fucked everything up by being genuinely tortured instead of milking minor emotional slights to make cheesy, lighter-in-the-air ballads. The British had a pop music renaissance in the mid-90s but only produced one good God Almighty coked-out-of-their-scrotum rock 'n' roll band—Oasis—and they went full retard on their third album, before breaking up for the first of about thirty times and ceasing to make epic rock 'n' roll. It was thus that a considerable number of American music fans began to turn nostalgia for the 70s into a fetish: the days when Led Zeppelin made groupies fuck sharks, Keith Richards got busted for heroin every week, Rod Stewart gave so many blowjobs he had to have his stomach pumped, et cetera (Ed. Note: none of those things actually happened). Making a movie about rock 'n' roll, set in the 70s, was thus expected to be wall-to-wall sex and drugs, and Cameron Crowe not delivering on everyone's grimiest fantasies was considered to be an artistic and moral shortcoming; Almost Famous bombed at the box office and was treated condescendingly at best by the hipper, more pretentious critics (though their mainstream, square counterparts all dug it).
This is a failure of criticism of any kind, and a very common one—blaming the work in question (movie, or play, or book, or album, or video game, etc etc) for not being what the critic wants it to be, rather than evaluating what it is. Movies about music are really asking for it from critics—people who love movies can be total jagoffs about their favorite movies (ahem), but the hundred most obnoxiously sanctimonious subjective opinions declared to be objective fact have all been about music. These two loci of masturbatory douchiness collide and form the perfect storm of being an asshole. I, clearly, have forgotten to duct-tape my windows (so to speak), and I'm digressing.
The reason I get so bent out of shape about people knocking Almost Famous for somehow lacking balls because it wasn't just three hours of people doing drugs and fucking is that it is much, much harder to be sincere that it is to be cool. I would maintain that Almost Famous has more balls for not succumbing to the temptation to throw tits and lines of coke all over the place. It's a story about the Cameron Crowe character (Patrick Fugit) managing to keep his sincere, innocent love for music despite the best attempts of musicians to make him a bitter old cynical bastard (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Love for music has no objective connection to tits and cocaine.
Fittingly enough, the movie opens with the event that made Patrick Fugit—as a little kid—a music lover. His sister (Zooey Deschanel before she was Zooey Deschanel), tiring of the ascetic, kooky leftie lifestyle enforced by mom Frances McDormand (who is ridiculously good in this), leaves home to be an airline stewardess, and leaves her records with her brother. Records like Pet Sounds and Blue are found therein (the collection he leafs through are Cameron Crowe's own from when he was that age).
Fast forward a few years and Patrick Fugit is an earnest nerd who listens to a radio interview with legendary critic and editor Lester Bangs (the above-mentioned bitter old cynical bastard P.S. Hoffman) where Bangs spouts off about how the Doors suck and how he likes The Guess Who more because they aren't as pretentious and about how Iggy Pop rules. Fugit senses a kindred spirit and sends writing samples to PSH/Bangs, who sees some promise and sends Fugit off with some cynical, pragmatic advice to go review a Black Sabbath concert. However, the advice is all he gives Fugit; the kid has no ticket or backstage pass or anything. It is here that he meets a group of young women who share his love of music, but whose love of musicians is a bit more, shall we say, tangible: the “Band-Aids.”
Care is taken to differentiate the Band-Aids (Fairuza Balk, Anna Paquin, Bijou Phillips, and Kate Hudson) from the stereotype of the groupie. In this story, which is about the love of music, theirs is but another way to show that love. Sure, they go on tour with rock stars, get high with rock stars, and fuck rock stars, but their claim that it's about the music is not disingenuous. The way Fairuza Balk bellows that stupid Robert Plant “Does anyone remember laughter?” line, you know she means it. (Almost Famous embraces the apparent contradiction of recognizing how ridiculous rock 'n' roll can be while at the same time loving it unconditionally).
Though his meeting the Band-Aids will prove fortuitous (and result in falling head over heels for Kate Hudson), Fugit still isn't allowed backstage without a pass or ticket until opening act Stillwater shows up, massively late. Fugit, desperate, compliments the band on a song of theirs. The band, won over by his enthusiasm and eloquence, invites him backstage as their guest.
Fugit's eyes get wide as he befriends both Band-Aid Penny Lane (Kate Hudson in, it must be said, a deliriously overrated performance) and Stillwater guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup). He ends up turning in a piece on Stillwater to PSH, who gets worried and warns him about the dangers of getting seduced by the cool.
However, his piece on Stillwater brings Fugit to the attention of Rolling Stone, whose editor hires him to do a piece on Stillwater for them. The catch is, they don't know he's only 15, because Fugit took the liberty of bullshitting them so they'd take him more seriously. Whoops. Frances McDormand lets him go with extreme reluctance, and so young Fugit joins the circus.
The band is a bit uneasy about having Fugit around. Singer Jason Lee calls him “the enemy” while simultaneously going off on hilariously vacuous self-important rock star monologues that he, on some level, hopes Fugit will transcribe and make him look cool. (Even the cool people in this movie aren't cool). Billy Crudup is much more diplomatic with the kid, but still resists all Fugit's efforts to sit down with him and do a proper interview.
The tour unfolds with gentle emphasis on the drudgery of it all (and one hilarious scene where Frances McDormand starts lecturing Billy Crudup over the phone and eventually concludes by giving the speechless Crudup an inspirational quote from Goethe and telling him “I'm glad we talked”). Gradually we see some internal band conflicts come to the surface. Most rock 'n' roll bands worth their salt have tension between the singer and the guitarist, but Stillwater's problem is relatively novel: this time it's the guitarist who's the good-looking one and gets all the attention and the chicks, and it's the singer who's jealous.
Tensions come to a head in Kansas when the band take delivery of a few boxes of t-shirts with their likenesses on the front. Except Billy Crudup is the only one in focus, and he's massively larger compared to the rest of the band. Jason Lee, as a cursory review of his other roles will attest, does not suffer slights quietly, and the band has a big screaming shitfit that concludes with Billy Crudup storming off in a huff looking for something or someone “real.” Fugit, half looking for something interesting to write about and half looking to protect him, follows Billy Crudup.
They end up at a house party thrown by a bunch of high school kids who are all like, “Whoa, shit, a portmanteau of Jimmy Page, Duane Allman, Peter Frampton, Glenn Frey and Allen Collins just showed up at my house, far out.” Billy Crudup happily accepts a tab of acid and proceeds to very urgently tell the kids at the party how real they are, in a way that bizarrely reminds me of the way John Turturro carries on about “the common man” in Barton Fink, except the kids don't pull a John Goodman and start fucking up his trip by bellowing about the life of the mind, they offer to let Billy Crudup watch a snake eat a mouse. Patrick Fugit, in a panic, calls up Stillwater's manager and asks him what to expect from someone on acid.
“I AM A GOLDEN GOD!” —Billy Crudup, on the roof of the house (haha he's peaking while standing on the peak of the roof . . . haha . . . ha . . . coughcough)Well, that solves that mystery. Billy Crudup, convinced this is his last night on earth, tells Fugit to record his last words for posterity (the final candidates are “I'm on drugs!” and “I dig music”) before splashing unceremoniously into the swimming pool. Stillwater's manager arrives to throw a blanket around the half-naked, shivering, extremely embarrassed Billy Crudup and shleps him onto the tour bus, promising the kids a return to Topeka on the next tour.
Then, another scene a lot of people rolled their eyes at that I will defend to the death. Largely due to that weird scene in Magnolia where everyone sings the Aimee Mann song, people were walking around rolling their eyes when Almost Famous came out and saying “God, every movie has a scene where everyone sings some song, God, it's so tired.” These people, of course, can suck my dick. Two movies are not every movie. The other thing is, the scene in Almost Famous is an illustration of the movie's central theme: love of music. It does so perfectly, in that it uses a song that is both extremely uncool and magically fucking good: “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John. Let the record reflect that I have slow-danced in a bar to “Tiny Dancer,” I have made amends with previously antagonistic colleagues to “Tiny Dancer,” and by God, I have had sex to “Tiny Dancer.” My relationship with this song is not unique. It's just one of those songs. Everyone—except Elton fans—has the same progression with it:
Curiosity—“Hey, this song is awesome, who is this?”It's true. You can make fun of me all you like; I'll just give you the finger.
Shock—“This is Elton John?”
Denial—“Get the fuck out of here, it can't be Elton John, this is actually good.”
Acceptance—“God damn . . . this song is really good.”
Nirvana—“Hey, did we just spontaneously start having sex because this song is so awesome? We did? Wow, this song rules.”
The way the scene unfolds is especially nice. Everyone's sitting there goofing on Billy Crudup, then someone starts singing the song. Then another voice joins in. Then another. Eventually everyone's singing, a way of being like, “Hey, man, we have our differences, but we love you. Join us.” And right at the best fucking part of the whole song, Billy starts wailing along with everyone else. Game, set, match, Crowe: music brings people together. Conclusive proof.
But all this harmony will, inevitably, be short-lived. A new manager comes in, played by an unrecognizable (because he doesn't suck) Jimmy Fallon, to introduce a more professional influence into the band's midst. He gives them all a proto-yuppie speech about the industry being a business and blah blah blah and, in one of Cameron Crowe's cutesy little reminders that he's telling this story 25+ years after the fact, drops the priceless line “If you think Mick Jagger will still be out there trying to be a rock star at age fifty, then you are sadly, sadly mistaken.” See, you know Mick is still a rock star at age 67, I know Mick is still a rock star at 67, but Jimmy Fallon doesn't. Because he's a dipshit! Bahahahahaha! Don't forget to tip your waitress!
There's another complication: Kate Hudson, who is—contrary to her own best instincts—deeply in love with Billy Crudup, has to leave the tour before his actual girlfriend shows up. Billy Crudup, looking to appear cool in a poker game with the road managers of several popular bands, starts flexing his nuts and “bets” Kate Hudson, losing her kind of sort of on purpose. Fugit, who witnesses this, is disgusted, and tells Kate Hudson (who he's madly in love with). She's devastated and welches on the deal to go with the band to follow Stillwater to New York.
This, of course, ends badly. Kate Hudson confronts Billy Crudup, who pretends not to know her. She goes back to her hotel to OD, but Fugit saves her. In gratitude, she tells him her real name that she never tells anyone.
Fugit returns to the tour, and their plane (a sign they've hit the big time and are going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone) promptly hits shitty weather and it looks like, in grand rock star tradition, they're all about to die in a plane crash. This prompts a round of truth-telling: Jason Lee confesses he fucked Billy Crudup's “real” girlfriend (who's there with them), and Billy Crudup gets all indignant, and Jason Lee is all like “you were the one fuckin around with that groupie [Kate Hudson] for the whole tour!” at which point Fugit jumps in, outraged, and lectures them about the shitty way they treat their biggest fans, concluding with a passionate declaration of his love for Kate Hudson. This shocks everyone speechless, then the drummer, in his only line in the movie, chimes in:
“Fuck it . . . I'm gay!”At which point the turbulence immediately ends and everything's fine.
Fugit leaves the tour in San Francisco, and Billy Crudup tells Fugit to write whatever he wants. Fugit turns in a piece to Rolling Stone that acquiesces to the band's desire to “make us look cool” (there's that yearning again . . .) but that the editors consider weak and sycophantic. Fugit asks Phil Hoffman for advice, which is “be honest and unmerciful.” Since he's still stratospherically pissed about the way Billy Crudup treated Kate Hudson, Fugit tears the band a new asshole, putting in every last embarrassing (but true) detail. This is more what Rolling Stone is looking for. Unfortunately, during their fact-checking process, the band flatly denies everything, putting Fugit in the shitter. He runs into his sister, now a stewardess, living the dream, and, dejected, Fugit heads home to San Diego.
Fairuza Balk runs into a guilty Billy Crudup in Miami, and piles on some more guilt telling him about Kate Hudson's OD and so forth, and how Fugit saved her, and about how shitty it was that the band dogged Fugit like that. Crudup, looking to fix things, calls up Kate Hudson and asks for her address so he can visit and fix everything by saying I'm sorry or something retarded. Kate Hudson plays a trick on him, giving him Fugit's address instead.
Billy Crudup shows up to a flabbergasted Zooey Deschanel, a gently scolding and weirdly awkwardly star-struck Frances McDormand (man she's good in this; the character's well-written and everything but she knocks it outta the fuckin park), and one pissed off Fugit. Crudup explains that he's called Rolling Stone and told them the truth, so Fugit's piece is going to run, and expresses remorse for mistreating Kate Hudson. By way of accepting, Fugit sits him down and finally does the interview he's been trying to get for the whole movie.
Fugit: “What do you love about music?”
Crudup: “To begin with . . . everything.”
And there's your movie, right there. Sappy, perhaps, but unabashedly sincere. Unafraid to seem uncool. Yet, somehow, through the sincerity and the passion that comes with it, all the cooler for being uncool.
Cameron Crowe's critical legacy has suffered a bit in the last ten years due to having directed Vanilla Sky, which started off kind of promising, then stumbled around the beginning of act two and faceplanted at the beginning of act three, and Elizabethtown, which had no such promise and sucked start to finish. Fortunately, he will always have the script to Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which is amazingly good. As a director, he'll always have the iconic John Cusack/boombox/Peter Gabriel moment, as well as the underrated Jerry Maguire (underrated primarily because all anyone remembers is the scene where Cuba hollers “Show me the money!” over and over, and they forget that it's actually a really well-constructed story about Tom Cruise's self-discovery, and that Tom Cruise is really good in it). And Almost Famous.
One wonders whether Almost Famous wouldn't have been a bigger hit if Brad Pitt—for whom Cameron Crowe wrote the Billy Crudup part—had agreed to do it. Then again, Brad's been in a flop or two his own self (remember, Fight Club didn't turn a profit til DVD) and he dropped out of the movie because he didn't get the character or the movie, so it was probably all for the best. Instead, the movie ended up with no stars, no desire whatsoever to appear cool, and no hobbits or lasers. It did, however, find a second life on DVD and cable, so all was not lost, and Cameron Crowe won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (the classic consolation prize Oscar).
Kate Hudson's performance, which owed most of its acclaim to a well-written part and Crowe's camera being in love with her, did not take home a statue, thus sparing the Academy the indignity of having to hear the words “Academy Award winner Kate Hudson” in the trailer for How To Confuse Matthew McConaughey with Josh Lucas in 10 Days.
Patrick Fugit caught some shit for his ponderous line readings—and he certainly hasn't done much since—but in this picture he's exactly the right nerd for the job (maybe because he grew up with people teasing him by pronouncing his name “fuck it” . . . trust me, as someone whose name is uncomfortably close to “bozo” I feel the cat's pain).
Almost Famous is not in any danger of being forgotten. It doesn't quite fit the usual definition of “overlooked gem,” what with the Oscar and the omnipresence on cable there for a few years. On its tenth anniversary, all I'm saying is let's celebrate a picture that isn't lighting its pants on fire trying to be cool. Let's hail the (regrettably rare) proverbial good “write what you know” picture. Fuck it, let's celebrate music. Hold me closer, tiny dancer. Lay me down in sheets of linen. You had a busy day today.
(Ed. Note: Fuck you, that song is awesome)
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