Almost Famous

This article is about the film. For other uses, see Almost Famous (disambiguation).
Almost Famous

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Cameron Crowe
Produced by Cameron Crowe
Ian Bryce
Written by Cameron Crowe
Starring Billy Crudup
Frances McDormand
Kate Hudson
Jason Lee
Patrick Fugit
Anna Paquin
Fairuza Balk
Noah Taylor
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Music by Nancy Wilson
Cinematography John Toll
Edited by Joe Hutshing
Saar Klein
Production
company
Distributed by DreamWorks Pictures
Release dates
 September 13, 2000
Running time
 122 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $60 million[1]
Box office $47.4 million[1]

Almost Famous is a 2000 comedy-drama film written and directed by Cameron Crowe and starring Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, and Patrick Fugit. It tells the fictional story of a teenage journalist writing for Rolling Stone magazine in the early 1970s while covering the fictitious rock band Stillwater, and his efforts to get his first cover story published. The film is semi-autobiographical, as Crowe himself was a teenage writer for Rolling Stone.

The film is based on Crowe's experiences touring with rock bands Poco, The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Crowe has discussed how during this period he lost his virginity, fell in love, and met his heroes[2] — experiences that are shared by William Miller, the baby-faced main character of the film.

It received four Oscar nominations, one of which led to an award to Crowe for his screenplay. It was also awarded the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. Roger Ebert hailed it the best film of the year, and also the 9th best film of the 2000s. It also won two Golden Globes, for Best Picture and Kate Hudson won Best Supporting Actress.

Plot

In 1973, 15-year-old William Miller aspires to be a rock journalist. His single mother, Elaine, a radical college professor, wants him to become a lawyer. Shunned by older classmates because of his young age, William, who loves rock music, writes free-lance articles for underground papers in San Diego.

Rock journalist Lester Bangs, impressed with William's writing, gives William a $35 assignment to write a review of a Black Sabbath concert. William is unable to get in backstage but the band Stillwater arrives and brings William inside with them after he praises their music. Lead guitarist Russell Hammond takes a liking to William, partly because of William's new friendship with a rock groupie, Penny Lane, to whom Russell is attracted.

William accompanies Penny to the Riot House – the Hyatt Hotel on Sunset Boulevard - to meet with Stillwater. Penny, feigning retirement from her rock groupie glory days, acts as William's chauffeur, but only to get close to Russell, for whom she has genuine feelings.

William is contacted by Ben Fong-Torres, editor of Rolling Stone, and, believing William is older, hires him to write a story. William convinces Ben to let him write about upcoming band Stillwater, and he is instructed to go on the road with them.

William makes his first in an increasingly frustrating number of attempts to interview Russell. Penny watches the interaction and sympathizes with William, who experiences tensions with the band due to his role as a journalist.

A new manager, Dennis, comes on board while Penny is told she must leave the tour before New York, where Leslie, Russell's ex-wife/girlfriend, is joining them. During a poker game, the groupies are used as a stake. Stillwater loses the groupies to the band Humble Pie for $50 and a case of Heineken. When William tells Penny, she acts nonchalant but is devastated. Penny and Doris, the band's tour bus, are left behind; Dennis has piled the band into a small chartered plane to play more gigs.

Penny goes to New York on her own, and shows up at the restaurant the band is at. As they celebrate making the cover of Rolling Stone, Penny makes Leslie uncomfortable and is asked to leave. William chases Penny back to her hotel, finding her overdosed on quaaludes, and calls for help.

Believing they are about to die in-flight during a severe storm, the group confesses their secrets to one another. Jeff, the band's lead singer, insults Penny. William defends her and discloses that he loves her. The plane lands safely, leaving everyone to ponder the changed atmosphere.

William travels to the Rolling Stone office in San Francisco to finish the article, parting ways with the band in the airport. Upset about Penny, he writes the article, telling the truth. The Rolling Stone editors cannot publish it until the band verifies the facts. Fearful the story will damage the band's image, Russell denies that the story is true to the Rolling Stone fact checker. William is crushed and the story is dead. Sitting dejected in the airport, he runs into his sister, Anita, a flight attendant. She suggests they take a trip together. William, exhausted, chooses for them to go home to San Diego to see their mother.

Backstage at the Miami Orange Bowl, groupie Sapphire chastises Russell, saying that everyone knows what the band did to William. Russell calls Penny and asks for her address, telling her he wants to meet. Unbeknownst to Russell, she gives him William's address in an attempt to resolve their conflict. Russell arrives at the house, believing it is Penny's home, but is greeted by Elaine; Russell then realizes where he is. William and Russell reconcile and Russell reveals that he called Rolling Stone to verify William's article. Russell then gives William a proper interview; Penny purchases a ticket to Morocco, and William's story is published with Stillwater on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Cast

Production

Crowe used a composite of the bands he had known to come up with Stillwater, the emerging act that welcomes the young journalist into its sphere, then becomes wary of his intentions. Seventies rocker Peter Frampton served as a technical consultant on the film. Crowe and his then-wife, musician Nancy Wilson of Heart, co-wrote three of the five Stillwater songs in the film, and Frampton wrote the other two, with Mike McCready of Pearl Jam playing lead guitar on all of the Stillwater songs.

Crowe based the character of Penny Lane on the real life Pennie Ann Trumbull and her group of female promoters who called themselves the Flying Garter Girls Group.[3]Though they were not in the Flying Garter Girls group, various other women have been described as Crowe's inspiration, for instance Pamela Des Barres [4] and Bebe Buell.[5]

The character of William Miller's mother (played by Frances McDormand) was based on Crowe's own mother, who even showed up on the set to keep an eye on him while he worked. Though he asked his mother not to bother McDormand, the two women ended up getting along well.[6]

Crowe took a copy of the film to London for a special screening with Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. After the screening, Led Zeppelin granted Crowe the right to use one of their songs on the soundtrack — the first time they had ever consented to this since allowing Crowe to use "Kashmir" in Fast Times at Ridgemont High — and also gave him rights to four of their other songs in the movie itself, although they did not grant him the rights to "Stairway to Heaven" for an intended scene (on the special "Bootleg" edition DVD, the scene is included as an extra, sans the song, where the viewer is instructed by a watermark to begin playing it).

Soundtrack

The Almost Famous soundtrack album was awarded the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.

Personnel

"Stillwater"

Other personnel

Reaction

Almost Famous had its premiere at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.[7] It was subsequently given a limited release on September 15, 2000, in 131 theaters where it grossed $2.3 million on its first weekend. It was given a wider release on September 22, 2000, in 1,193 theaters where it grossed $6.9 million on its opening weekend. The film went on to make $32.5 million in North America and $14.8 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $47,383,689, well below its $60 million budget.[8]

Critical reception

Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and praised it for being "funny and touching in so many different ways".[9] In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, "The movie's real pleasures are to be found not in its story but in its profusion of funny, offbeat scenes. It's the kind of picture that invites you to go back and savor your favorite moments like choice album cuts".[10] Time magazine's Richard Corliss praised the film's screenplay for "giving each character his reasons, making everyone in the emotional debate charming and compelling, creating fictional people who breathe in a story with an organic life".[11] In her review for the L.A. Weekly, Manohla Dargis wrote that "the film shimmers with the irresistible pleasures that define Hollywood at its best - it's polished like glass, funny, knowing and bright, and filled with characters whose lives are invariably sexier and more purposeful than our own".[12] Rolling Stone magazine's Peter Travers wrote, "Not since A Hard Day's Night has a movie caught the thrumming exuberance of going where the music takes you".[13] In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen wrote, "Character-driven, it relies on chemistry, camaraderie, a sharp eye for detail and good casting".[14] Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, " Every Cameron Crowe film is, in one way or another, about romance, rock & roll, and his romance with rock & roll. This power ballad of a movie, from 2000, also happens to be Crowe's greatest (and most personal) film thanks to the golden gods of Stillwater and their biggest fan, Kate Hudson's incomparable Penny Lane."[15]

Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A-" rating and Owen Gleiberman praised Crowe for depicting the 1970s as "an era that found its purpose in having no purpose. Crowe, staying close to his memories, has gotten it, for perhaps the first time, onto the screen".[16] In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan praised Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Lester Bangs: "Superbly played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, more and more the most gifted and inspired character actor working in film, what could have been the cliched portrait of an older mentor who speaks the straight truth blossoms into a marvelous personality".[17] However, in his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris felt that "none of the non-musical components on the screen matched the excitement of the music. For whatever reason, too much of the dark side has been left out".[18] Desson Howe, in his review for the Washington Post, found it "very hard to see these long-haired kids as products of the 1970s instead of dressed up actors from the Seattle-Starbucks era. I couldn't help wondering how many of these performers had to buy a CD copy of the song and study it for the first time".[19]

The film received an 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 90 metascore on Metacritic.[20][21]

Awards and nominations

References

  1. 1 2 "Almost Famous (2000)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved September 10, 2009.
  2. ↑ "Biography," The Uncool: The Official Website for Everything Cameron Crowe. Accessed Dec. 14, 2014.
  3. ↑ Ammann, Ana (September 7, 2012). "Will the real Penny Lane please stand up?". Oregon Music News.
  4. ↑ Lecaro, Lina (December 15, 2010). "Zooey Deschanel to Play Original '60s Groupie Pamela "I'm With the Band" Des Barres in HBO Series (NSFW)". LA Weekly.
  5. ↑ "Wild Things: Cameron Crowe and Bebe Buell". Talk. March 2001.
  6. ↑ Goldstein, Patrick. "This Time, It's Personal A '70s rock film co-starring . . . Mom? It's Cameron Crowe's life story, and he's tried to tell it for years," Los Angeles Times (August 27, 2000). Archie on The Uncool.com.
  7. ↑ Kehr, Dave (August 25, 2000). "Organic Growth In Toronto". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  8. ↑ "Almost Famous". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  9. ↑ Ebert, Roger (September 15, 2000). "Almost Famous". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  10. ↑ Scott, A.O (September 15, 2000). "Almost Famous". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  11. ↑ Corliss, Richard (September 10, 2000). "Absolutely Fabulous". Time. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  12. ↑ Dargis, Manohla (September 21, 2000). "Gonna Make You Groove". L.A. Weekly. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  13. ↑ Travers, Peter (December 10, 2000). "Almost Famous". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  14. ↑ Ansen, David (September 18, 2000). "He's With The Band". Newsweek. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  15. ↑ Geier, Thom; Jensen, Jeff; Jordan, Tina; Lyons, Margaret; Markovitz, Adam; Nashawaty, Chris; Pastorek, Whitney; Rice, Lynette; Rottenberg, Josh; Schwartz, Missy; Slezak, Michael; Snierson, Dan; Stack, Tim; Stroup, Kate; Tucker, Ken; Vary, Adam B.; Vozick-Levinson, Simon; Ward, Kate (December 11, 2009), "The 100 Greatest Movies, Tv Shows, Albums, Books, Characters, Scenes, Episodes, Songs, Dresses, Music Videos, And Trends That Entertained Us Over The Past 10 Years". Entertainment Weekly. (1079/1080):74-84
  16. ↑ Gleiberman, Owen (September 15, 2000). "Almost Famous". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  17. ↑ Turan, Kenneth (September 13, 2000). "Almost Famous". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on September 11, 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  18. ↑ Sarris, Andrew (September 17, 2000). "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll-Where Are the Sex and Drugs?". The New York Observer. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  19. ↑ Howe, Desson (September 22, 2000). "Almost Poignant". Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  20. ↑ "Almost Famous (2000)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved September 10, 2009.
  21. ↑ "Almost Famous Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved September 10, 2009.

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