Joni Mitchell reportedly recruits longtime friend Cameron Crowe to direct her biopic
A film collaboration between Cameron Crowe and Joni Mitchell has secretly been in development for over two years
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Although Joni Mitchell’s theoretical biopic has been a point of debate for years, it turns out she’s been working on her own with longtime friend and screenwriter Cameron Crowe over the last two years.
According to a write-up at Above The Line—which Mitchell seemingly confirmed by sharing on her website—the project lies somewhere between the realm of biopic and documentary with its untraditional take. Crowe is as close to a perfect fit as one could get for the project, as he’s been interviewing Mitchell over the course of both of their lives. The legendary singer-songwriter has entrusted Crowe to pen the script with her input when necessary, giving it more of an autobiography feel. The approach is complementary to the longtime music journalist’s work, who dramatized his own experience as a teenage writer at Rolling Stone in his Oscar-winning film, Almost Famous.
Crowe and Mitchell have remained close friends over the years, and in 2017 accompanied her to her first public appearance after suffering a brain aneurysm two years earlier. Recently, Mitchell joined Crowe at the premiere of Almost Famous’ short-lived Broadway show.
“Every journalist has their dream list of interview subjects,” Crowe wrote in 1979. “Mine was Marvin Gaye, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell. I never got to Marvin Gaye, but Joni Mitchell more than made up for it. My last cover story for the magazine, and still my favorite.”
The Mitchell feature will be Crowe’s first film project since 2015's Aloha, which failed to hit the critical and box office markers seen with Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky, and Say Anything. The next year, Crowe created the Showtime series Roadies, which was canned after one season. The movie marks a bit of a comeback for both of the artists, as Mitchell has set her first concert date in over 20 years for this summer.
15 Comments
Great to hear this. I’m always pulling for Cameron Crowe to find something else to break through on the level of Fast Times or Almost Famous. Even Elizabethtown – it’s pretty bad, but has probably more great moments than any other bad movie I’ve seen. If you clipped out that final road trip through the south sequence you’d have a really good short subject film, for instance.
I just think Aloha showed extremely poor judgement as a comeback vehicle. Everything about it was retrograde.
Yeah, and I can’t really find much to like about We Bought a Zoo either. Still hoping this project is something he connects with.
I remember I was watching a DVD and before the menu there was a preview for this movie that I was sure I’d never heard of, even though it had just a ton of ridiculously famous people, and I was like “how in the world did I miss this movie existing?” and then the title flashed on the screen – Aloha. Ah, that explained it.
My mom loved Elizabethtown enough to have a band fly a free bird at her memorial. So yeah I agree it works on a series of scenes and not so much an overall narrative.
Mitchell has written some truly great songs. I’m not a major fan, just aware that she’s good at her job – and her life has been interesting enough to make a fine movie. No idea who could play her, though.It needs to be casting along the lines of Ben Dickey as Blaze Foley in that Ethan Hawke-directed movie that no one saw but me [or Charlie Sexton as Townes Van Zandt in that same movie] : a musician, not necessarily a well-known one, who can act. But hell, they’ll probably cast Taylor Swift. Who, actually, could be darn good.
…and Taylor Swift as David Crosby
I couldn’t begin to imagine who could play the most beloved soft spoken aggressive Canadian who hates Judy Collins.
Anya Taylor Joy would be awesome.
Especially if she reenacts the For The Roses artwork.
Oh hell yeah! I always like Crowe even at his worst filmmaking and I could gush about Joni all day. Yes yes yes!
Will it be the kind of biopic that only shows its subject in a positive light, or will it show Both Sides Now?
My dad grew up in small town Saskatchewan. At some point in the late 50s he got invited to a weekend at a friend’s cabin. To his horror, a few hours into the first night of drinking some underage blonde waif pulled out a guitar and sat everyone down cross-legged and began to sing songs. To his surprise she was pretty good and she played several times for them throughout the weekend. Years later, he recognized her onstage – you guessed it, Joni Mitchell. Why doesn’t shit like that happen to me?
This is as good a time as any to mention that Vanilla Sky is one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s not perfect, but it scratched that odd scifi itch I had as a teen.
This is probably going to hagiographic in regard to Mitchell herself, but how’s it going to treat Dylan? She has described him as an early inspiration to her as a writer, but also “a phony”, “not authentic at all” and “not musically talented”.