After success with films such as “Singles” and especially “Jerry Maguire”, Cameron Crowe has finally received the green light from Columbia Pictures to make a film based largely on his own life. The result is this wonderful coming-of-age adventure-musical-romantic comedy drama that Roger Ebert ranked as one of the ten best films of 2000 and a film that completely got under my skin when I first saw it as a teenager. Paul Thomas Anderson managed to achieve something similar twenty years later with “Licorice Pizza”, but “Almost Famous” is a film that evokes nostalgia even in those of us who were not even alive when its action took place.
“Almost Famous” takes us to the first half of the seventies, at a time when everything seemed somehow possible and achievable, including a 15-year-old kid ending up on tour with a popular rock band. And it was indeed possible because Crowe designed the story based on his own life, because he himself was at the age when the main protagonist, naive, smart and boyishly sincere William Miller (Patrick Fugit), started writing for Rolling Stone. To the horror of his mother, the conservative and strict teacher Elaine (Frances McDormand), William will go on tour with the fictional band Stillwater in 1973, after he was assigned by the editor of a famous music magazine to write an article about them. At Rolling Stone, they have no idea that William is only 15 years old who was infected by rock music by his older sister, and he is not even aware of what awaits him.
He had planned to spend a few days with the band, but it will turn into a trip across America with a rising band that is on the verge of becoming famous, and the article that should appear in Rolling Stone should contribute to that. And a naive kid who looks at the world with his eyes wide open and is not yet aware of what opportunity has opened up for him, will immediately get involved in that sex, drugs and rock’n’roll world which has some of its own legalities and rules. A world that is completely different from the world that other mortals live in, a world where you can do whatever you want, and this seductive way of life will immediately draw William in until he begins to understand that it is actually an illusion and that the lives led by the band members they are not real.
It will be a tour of discovery and realization for William, who will initially see the band members, especially frontman and guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup), as a deity. And although the band members will be friendly towards him and will accept him into the narrow circle of their entourage, only later will William realize that they did it primarily for egoistic reasons. And that all of them, especially his idol Russell, are egoists who only look out for themselves, especially after the boy falls in love with the seductive groupie Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), who in turn is in love with Russell. And he is with her during the tour, but that’s only for the duration of the tour and without a second thought he’ll dump her once it’s over or someone new doesn’t show up.
And it is not only a film about the growing up of a boy obsessed with rock music, but also a film about a time, about an era when the era of the first rock bands that filled stadiums was coming to an end, and that idealistic enthusiasm that the pioneers of the sixties had, is now heavily overshadowed huge profits and everyone is looking to make money on the train while it is still running. The film is about the time when kids like William still really dreamed and believed that rock’n’roll could save the world and that it was the solution to all problems. Until he will understand first hand how that world works. And although Stillwater is a fictional band whose songs were written by Crowe himself while Mike McCready of Pearl Jam played guitar, it’s one of those stories where real and fictional characters mix.
It is also interesting how Crowe wrote the role of Russell Hammond for Brad Pitt, but after the first few rehearsals it turned out that he simply did not fit the role and Crudup replaced him. Much of what William will experience on tour with Stillwater, Crowe actually went through with the Allman Brothers Band. In the end, Crowe won the Oscar for the best original screenplay, while McDormand and Hudson were nominated for the best supporting role, who also jumped in at the last minute because the role of Penny Lane was planned for Sarah Polley, but she also gave up the performance when he gave up and Pitt. It is a great film about an exciting, dynamic and seductive period, and Crowe perfectly captured the spirit of the time in “Almost Famous”.