Certain pieces of media, be it a film or an album or a favorite poem you’ve memorized, seem to seep into your soul and stain it forever, like coffee or blood on your favorite t-shirt. When I get into that strange place where the world stops making sense and starts to resemble a rambling, out of focus fever dream, I tend to reach back to those soul-staining classics that have long made my heart ache and my ass shake. I’m not usually a creature of habit, but sometimes you have to wrap up in the blanket and look to reaffirm that feeling of belonging that often gets lost in translation in this overanalyzed and under tenderized world. So, a few nights ago, feeling bewildered by a project that seems to be going off the rails with no end or solution in sight, I decided to traverse the technological tightrope for tacit truth and stumbled upon a familiar beauty: Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous,” his semi-autobiographical, Academy-Award winning ode to the rock scene of the early 1970’s. This is probably the 15th time I’ve seen it, and it has never been anything other than exactly what I needed it to be.
Cameron Crowe has a history with me. His book “Fast Times At Ridgemont High,” where Crowe pulled a 21 Jump Street and infiltrated a Southern California High School, was developed into a film which, for better or worse, remains my favorite movie of all-time. The kids in it go through some serious stuff. Thhe subjects are not treated like children, with kid gloves, as difficult adult themes permeate the film. It’s not your typical 80’s teen faire – a horny boobs and bozo romp. It cuts far deeper than most other teen movies of the era. And it also doesn't hurt that the soundtrack is phenomenal.
A few years later, Crowe brought “Say Anything” and the tender neurotic beauty of Lloyd Dobler (played by John Cusack) into my life. I was hooked. But it might be his 1992 film “Singles” that was the clincher for me – a flick seat in Seattle during a time, an era, which I remember fondly and loved. It came out when I was 15 and it spoke to me. I’m half-embarrassed to say, more than three decades later, it remains a go-to movie when I want to feel like I felt during the days of movie-watching parties with friends, late night MTV and schlocky horror, wandering hands, aimless meanderings with friends and fucking "figuring it out, man."
Every last character in Almost Famous is on their own full-blown odyssey, fraught with Kalypsos, Medusas and angry gods galore. Furthermore, their journey is thinly disguised under a barely veiled cloak of various human frailties, all of which threaten to drag the individual and collective down into the anguished depths.
Wild-eyed teenage rock scribe William Miller is pushing against his innocence, chipping away, as best he can, at his upbringing, at the lack of understanding from his peers, at the isolating reality of an upbringing in his mother’s strange and unconventional home – seeking growth, freedom and maybe an answer or two along the way through the only healing solace he’s ever found: rock n’ roll. In the end, one of the heaviest realizations has to do with those very chains of youth he endeavored to escape. He finds a kind of peace and beauty in the things he sought to run from, going home to mom and finding a respite from a cruel and chaotic world. The road, the music, the escape doesn’t equate to fewer problems, just different ones. Wherever you go in life, whatever far off corner you run to, you will always find yourself there.
Penny Lane and her gloriously merry band of Band-Aids are battling for respect and love; fighting against perceptions about who they are during a time when women across the country were beginning to raise a collective middle finger to patriarchal convention.
Russell Hammond, the brooding but immensely talented and surprisingly insightful guitarist of burgeoning superstar rock band Stillwater is navigating the heavy burden of being the most talented man in a band he has stylistically outgrown, all while trying to maintain a leadership role among the brothers he cares for despite knowing they limit his creative freedom.
His frontman, Jeff Bebe, is battling imposter syndrome and having a difficult time keeping himself from falling apart over the ongoing war in his psyche.
Anita, William’s older sister, is frantically trying to escape their mother’s protective clutches, while their Mom (brilliantly played by Frances McDormand) is doing everything she can think of to keep her kids safe in a rapidly changing world that has already claimed her husband and that she not-so-secretly fears will lure her kids away, too.
It was everything I needed to upend my funk the other night. The film is funny where it needs to be (Philip Seymour Hoffman’s take on iconic rock journalist Lester Bangs is inspired -- “You’ll meet them again on their long journey to the middle”), serious when it is called for (“Most people are just waiting to talk, but you listen”) and always seems to lead with is heart (“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”) Crowe has always written characters and dialogue that deeply resonate with me, and, I would assume, with many of you.
Being born in 1977, I missed out on this fantastic era of rock history, save for what I’ve been able to glean from books, documentaries and decades of crate digging, but the age’s siren song has always called out to me. So many of the bands I grew up loving all grew up worshipping Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and the like. And so it goes, the rolling wheel of life, love and rock n’ roll, no?
In this decaying age of Influencers putting forth fool’s gold on their virtual dopamine farm platforms, I still mine for the real deal. It certainly doesn’t feel like it’s in abundance anymore (though I may be curmudgeonly and about to yell at the kids to get off my lawn), but the odd nugget of beauty can still be excavated, provided your eyes are open, your mind remains sharp or your ears can still feel the real. "Almost Famous" celebrates the real as well as any cinematic love letter to rock n' roll that ever graced the big screen.
I wish I could direct you to dozens of similar films, but in truth, it has very few contemporaries. These moments are beautiful and scarce. The intoxicating beauty of rock n' roll is just hard to capture. But when the moment happens, even if it’s rare, it’s magic. It’s forever. It calls to you, again and again. It gets deep into your soul. All you can do is dance with it because It’s All Happening.
