My Favorite Movies: #24—Almost Famous

24. Almost Famous (2000)

Genre: Romantic Comedy

Director: Cameron Crowe

Writer: Cameron Crowe

Stars: Billy Crudup, Patrick Fugit, Kate Hudson, Jason Lee, Frances McDormand, Zooey Deschanel, Phillip Seymour Hoffman

Awards: 1 Oscar—Original Screenplay

Metacritic score: 90   

IMDB Ranking: n/a

Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical film about a 15-year-old writing prodigy who spends several weeks on the road with an up-and-coming '70s rock band is filled with wonderful performances that evoke a strong sense of nostalgia for both the music we loved growing up as well as the bittersweet taste of the first sense of romantic love in our teenage years.

Crowe's alter ego, a young man named William (Patrick Fugit), writes freelance articles for Cream magazine under the frenetic counter-cultural tutelage of the magazine's founder, Lester Bangs (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who steals every scene he's in). Bangs sends him to cover the local Black Sabbath performance, but unable to get into the concert, William hooks up with the opening act, Stillwater (an amalgam of The Eagles and The Allman Brothers Band, according to Crowe).

Stillwater is a band on the rise, but they are plagued by bruised egos—the band's lead singer, Jeff Bebe (Jason Lee), never thinks he's getting the attention he deserves—and resentments, most notably the awareness of lead guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) that he's better than the rest of his bandmates. When William comes into the mix, now writing a feature for Rolling Stone magazine, they vacillate between wanting the positive exposure William can give them with fearing that he will tell the truth about who they really are.

This movie, at its heart, is about being honest about who you are. William is the only honest character around the band. His love/crush is groupie Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), who is never honest about her real name or actual age (though she does reveal these to William, who is the catalyst for honesty). Jeff and Russell refuse to tell William the truth about almost anything, which leads to a harrowing yet hilarious airing of brutal honesty in the midst of an airplane flight that is apparently going to crash in a thunderstorm. When they all land safely, they are left to deal with the aftermath of the truth.

It's also a movie about the love of music. Lester Bangs waxes rhapsodic to William about what's both good and bad about rock music. The groupies insist they follow the band for the music, not the sex or the association with fame. William wants to be a music writer because he loves the music above all. Lee and Crudup really perform the music on screen, and you can tell how much they love the experience. Toward the end of the movie, when Russell finally allows William to honesty interview him, after all they've been through in the weeks before, what they talk about it why they love the music.

William is a character driven by female forces beyond his control. The good in him is driven by his mother, played with characteristic brilliance by Frances McDormand. His love for rock and roll is inspired by his sister (Zooey Deschanel), who leaves William her rock album collection as she runs away from home. His heart yearns for Penny, but she's in love with Russell, who's also married, and the whole thing leads to an airing of honesty that is both painful and liberating. Even while on the road, he stays in the same room as the band's groupies (and what 15-year-old boy wouldn't think of that as a slice of heaven?).

I love this movie because it makes me wish that at age 18, I had been a member of a rock band that threw all their gear in the back of a van and traveled the country playing gigs for food money and comped rooms until we made the big time. That's the dream. The reality, however, is that if that had actually happened for me, I would be the drummer they found dead in his hotel room about 37 minutes into the VH1 Behind the Music documentary: "He had choked to death on his own vomit." Not exactly the epitaph I'm looking for. But the dream is still enticing as a dream, and Almost Famous lets us all tag along for the ride.