Born to write

If Cameron Crowe isn't famous yet, he should be. The writer/director got a pair of Oscar nominations in 1996 for Jerry Maguire, earned a cult following with his 1989 gem Say Anything, and has been on the brink of the big time since 1973, when at the age of 15 he became a writer for Rolling Stone.

That last outbreak of precocity is the inspiration of his latest movie, the autobiographical Almost Famous. Newcomer Patrick Fugit plays high-schooler William Miller, Crowe's surrogate, who despite the protests of his mother (a brilliant Frances MacDormand), and encouraged by legendary rock critic Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman), covers the concert tour of the fictitious, up-and-coming band Stillwater, who're fronted by hunky Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup). It's a rite of passage kids his age could only dream of, especially the interludes with the ethereal "band-aid" Penny Lane (Kate Hudson).

Most of us, however, would have fantasized about being the rock star, not the rock critic -- the idol in the spotlight, not the scribe taking notes in the corner. Not Crowe.

"It's good to just have a byline," he insists. "I love that it's out there and you can always say, `That's me.' Directing is like an extension of that. You can be anonymous and observe life and not squander that ability to be the unrecognized observer because you were on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's Olympian and anonymous. I knew I wasn't going to be Jim Morrison. I was going to be Lester Bangs."

As it turned out, he became Cameron Crowe, a director with remarkable success in bringing independent vision to mainstream movies. He felt miffed in 1996 when all the Best Picture nominees came from independent studios except for his -- which made him look like the establishment flunky. "I always felt like I was waving my arms around a lot, saying, `Hey, my movie's a personal movie too!' 'Cause it was. Jerry Maguire was a very personal movie for me, hidden in the sports-agent Tom-Cruise-of-it-all. And Tom Cruise did the movie so that he could do something personal, and felt that he was serving my script. It kind of seems like a commercial juggernaut looking back, but it certainly wasn't made that way."

No one should have trouble identifying Almost Famous as a personal movie, especially the scene in which young William loses his virginity in a hotel room full of scantily clad groupies. Did that really happen?

"Yes. And Steely Dan was on the TV, on The Midnight Special. The girl that I really liked did leave me with these girls. And we were in Portland [Oregon], and I was writing about Lee Michaels. I was 15. It was wild. And it hasn't happened since! I told my mother about it about it later. Like, last week."

And Stillwater? Were they a real band?

"It's sort of a combo platter. I've been realizing lately how much of it is probably the Eagles. Around the time before they really exploded and became sort of the representative band of the Frampton Comes Alive era, where you could sell 15 million copies of an album. I spent a lot of time writing about them before that."

And what about that title? Is it self-descriptive?

"The film was always Untitled. It just took me forever to convince the studio to let me call it Untitled and ultimately [they] just couldn't go for it. It was kind of like the White Album or Led Zeppelin IV. But DreamWorks was passionate about needing a title. I don't know why."

If not famous, Crowe thinks he is influential -- as with the Jerry Maguire line "Show me the money." "I am a force in culture. Newt Gingrich has recorded my line. Nothing beats watching the Westminster Dog Show and hearing them say `Show me the Chow Chow.' "
-- P.K.

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