“We’re uncool”: Almost Famous and High Fidelity celebrate music—but they’re warnings, too
Image: Graphic: Natalie PeeplesScreenshot: High FidelityScreenshot: Almost Famous Film Features Y2K Week
Spinning vinyl looks great on camera: The concentric spirals, the way the light glints off the surface. It’s mesmerizing, and metaphorical, too: You can’t photograph sound in motion, but footage of a needle hitting the outer groove of a record will do just fine.
At the turn of the 21st century, vinyl records were enough of a novelty that putting one onscreen still worked as a shorthand. But in the real world, where the CD was king and MP3s were knocking at the throne-room door, any format with an RPM attached was strictly a specialty concern: DJs scratched them, collectors hunted for them, retro-minded hipsters hung them on their walls. In the 1999 video for Lauryn Hill’s “Everything Is Everything”—the third and final single from an album that sold CDs by the truckload—director Sanji Senaka imagines New York City as a record on an island-sized turntable, its people and buildings rotating around the Empire State Building as a massive stylus scrapes across the streets. The city and the format that built hip-hop, all in one visual package.
The “Everything Is Everything” video went on to pick up a Grammy nod and three MTV Video Music Award nominations in 2000, but it wasn’t the only affirmation of vinyl’s cinematic qualities that year—two big screen releases also had audiophiles celebrating the format. The first was High Fidelity—an adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel about an unlucky-in-love record-store owner—which opens on a flat, black, and circular image: The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators (or maybe it’s a pressing of Nuggets?) cauterizing the wound where Rob Gordon’s (John Cusack) heart used to be. Six months later, at the Toronto premiere of Almost Famous, festivalgoers saw Rolling Stone wunderkind-turned-Academy Award nominee Cameron Crowe recreate his first impressions of The Who’s Tommy, the tiny indentations containing “Amazing Journey” rushing by in an overhead shot. The record’s prismatic Decca label doubles, then triples while the multiple exposures keep the enraptured face of Crowe analogue William Miller (Michael Angarano here, but Patrick Fugit after the dissolve and the segue into “Sparks”) in frame.
To the credit of everyone involved, it’s a miracle that neither of these scenes is unbearably corny. Translating the power of a good pop song to the screen is a tricky business, one that’s flummoxed greater filmmakers than Crowe or High Fidelity director Stephen Frears. (Martin Scorsese works a needle drop like few others, but all those instincts failed to keep the Vinyl pilot from feeling like anything more than a coked-up run through the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.) It helps to get the words right, and both films have a leg-up in that department: There would be no Almost Famous if Crowe hadn’t been a preternaturally gifted rock scribe drawing on memories of profiling The Allman Brothers Band, the Eagles, and Poco; Hornby, while fairly conservative in his tastes and as navel-gazing as any of his literary creations, writes music criticism in the same conversational tones that makes each of his books double as a prefab screenplay.
It could be diminishing of each film’s individual strengths to link them so closely together like this. They’re unique works with vastly different tones and thematic concerns that don’t all fit cleanly into the confines of two verses, a chorus, and a bridge. Almost Famous is a quasi-memoir and an act of wish fulfillment, a vicarious backstage pass to classic rock’s arena-filling heyday. It’s the best possible use of Crowe’s sentimental streak, with John Toll’s cinematography casting William’s road trip with up-and-comers Stillwater in endless romantic shades. From the parting assurance from his older sister Anita (Zooey Deschanel) that “one day, you’ll be cool” to Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) processing the news that she’s been betrayed by the guitar player she loves, we see so much of Almost Famous through William’s wide eyes that even the parts that would be exhausting to experience in person retain a heady allure. Tailing a tripping Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) through a suburban party? Big pain in the ass, but hey: It results in a heartwarming Elton John singalong, and is an excellent anecdote for the magazine feature you’re being paid a grand (in 1973 dollars) to report.
High Fidelity doesn’t come anywhere near that level of access: The Chicagoans at Rob’s store, Championship Vinyl, are “professional appreciator”s from afar who can barely hold it together in conversation with rising singer-songwriter Marie De Salle (Lisa Bonet). It’s a much more grown-up male adolescent fantasy (i.e. Rob winds up having a one-night stand with Marie) where the specters of age, responsibility, and purpose are always hovering around while only occasionally impeding on Rob’s daytime routine of listening to music and rattling off personal top five lists, or his off-hours regimen of listening to music and rattling off personal top five lists. High Fidelity is a film colored by a love of music, but it’s also about love love, the complexities of romantic relationships and the path toward becoming a better, fuller person.
We watch Rob drink a lot, smoke too much, and put his records in “autobiographical” order, but we’re never really in his shoes. Though we’re invited into his head to see how he remembers his history of romantic fuck-ups, the choice to air so many of his inner thoughts in direct address is one of distance. When Cusack monologues, Frears isn’t so much breaking the fourth wall as he is relocating the Championship counter to the Kinzie Street Bridge or the bar at the Green Mill. He may as well throw in a sales pitch for The Three EPs by The Beta Band, because Rob’s talking at his audience, not to us.
Yet Rob Gordon’s movie could be in conversation with William Miller’s. They make sweeping proclamations about all the great art that’s been made because somebody couldn’t get laid. Defying all dictates of taste and logic, both films have inspired stage musicals. They each have a take on Peter Frampton: The “Show Me The Way” singer played an essential role in shaping Stillwater’s onscreen presence, teaching Billy Crudup how to play guitar and running a pre-production “rock camp” alongside Heart guitarist and Almost Famous composer Nancy Wilson, who was married to Crowe at the time. Meanwhile, in High Fidelity, Rob overhears Marie covering “Baby, I Love Your Way” as he approaches Lounge Ax. He turns to the guy at the door and asks, with the utmost disdain, “Is that Peter fucking Frampton?”
I also have this pet theory that High Fidelity breakout Jack Black could’ve played the Philip Seymour Hoffman part in Almost Famous, and vice versa. The antic energy and self-righteousness with which they imbue Lester Bangs (Crowe’s real-life mentor/sparring partner) and Championship clerk Barry is simpatico. Hoffman’s turn is more soulful and layered overall, but just compare Lester’s physical reaction to “Search And Destroy” with Barry flailing to Katrina And The Waves and tell me the actors couldn’t have swapped places for at least that scene. At the very least, there are overlapping tastes in casting at play: After all, before he moved armfuls of vinyl for Frears, Cusack held up a boombox for Crowe.
It’s serendipitous that High Fidelity and Almost Famous played in theaters during the same year. It’s interesting that it would be the year 2000. A used-record store comedy for a Virgin Megastore age. An expense-account rock-journalism retrospective for the earliest rumblings of the recording industry’s downturn. All those scenes of characters fawning over and coveting pieces of physical media when increasing numbers of listeners were expanding their libraries exponentially on Napster.
Read one way, these attributes point toward a willful retreat from the present day they were released into. Almost Famous has an almost unwavering nostalgia for its period setting, pausing only for dramatic irony (“If you think Mick Jagger will still be out there trying to be a rock star at age 50, then you are sadly, sadly mistaken”) or to underline the power imbalance between a “band aid” like Penny and “golden god” like Russell. The online technologies that had revolutionized so many other elements of daily life in the 1990s had finally come for our music by the year 2000, but the High Fidelity guys are proudly one or two generations behind, passing cassette tapes around and hitching their livelihoods to the seemingly dead format of vinyl records.
But Almost Famous and High Fidelity are uncommonly savvy about music fandom—whether it’s 1973, 2000, or 2020. “Music, you know, true music—not just rock ’n’ roll—it chooses you,” Lester says shortly before waking the good people of San Diego up with a dose of Raw Power. “It lives in your car, or alone, listening to your headphones—you know, with the vast, scenic bridges and angelic choirs in your brain.” (This is how the late Bangs wrote. It’d be unreadable if it weren’t so exhilarating.) Sentiments like this are what bonds the movies most tightly. Using whole passages from Hornby’s first novel (only occasionally de-Anglicizing them), Frears and the Grosse Pointe Blank trio of Cusack, D.V. DeVincentis, and Steve Pink shaped a film that understands the way a song can open your eyes, cut you to the quick, or clasp you by the shoulders and cry “This is it!”
The enthusiasm this inspires takes many forms, even in the space of a feature-length film. There’s the prickly devotion practiced at Championship Vinyl, a dedication to cultivated opinions and aggressive gatekeeping that’s efficiently dismantled by Alex Désert’s Louis: “You feel like the unappreciated scholars, so you shit on the people who know less than you.” (Rob, Barry, and Dick in unison: “No.” Louis: “Which is everybody.” Rob, Barry, and Dick, again: “Yes.” High Fidelity is a funny movie.) Russell “To begin with, everything” Hammond and Stillwater singer Jeff Bebe (Jason Lee) love music so much they’re driven to make their own; for William, Lester, and High Fidelity alt-weekly staffer Caroline Fortis (Natasha Gregson Wagner), the passion comes out in interview questions, printed accolades, or on-air arguments with radio DJs about the proper types of drunken rock ’n’ roll buffoons. The Stillwater guys love playing up the artist/critic divide, but they’re clearly versed in the chestnuts of the rock press: “From the beginning, we said I’m the frontman, and you’re the guitarist with mystique.” (Almost Famous is a funny movie.)
So what, then, to make of Penny Lane, Polexia Aphrodisia (Anna Paquin), Sapphire (Fairuza Balk), and Estrella Star (Bijou Phillips)? It’s in the charitable spirit of Almost Famous that their commitment to the music is taken as seriously as Williams’, or that of Vic Munoz, the endearingly gawky Led Zeppelin follower played by Jay Baruchel. As someone who’s spent his fair share of concerts glancing down at lined paper, I’ve always been mortified by the moment where Penny swipes the pen out of William’s hand mid-notation. As a moviegoer, I love what it says about their differences in philosophy: Reflecting on the music after the fact versus feeling it in the moment. Both are valid expressions in Almost Famous’ eyes, and as the movie plays out, they feed its unique vibe, this lightning that moves the the characters to forego family, friends, and a home that’s not on wheels to re-bottle: The journey William embarks on in his bedroom, Lester’s “angelic choirs,” “the fucking buzz” Jeff describes in an interview, an emotion Sapphire describes as being so strong “it hurts.” I kind of hate how intoxicating I find it, even now.
The superfans of Almost Famous are inspired by people whose paths crossed Crowe’s in the ’70s rock scene, and it’s great that while they’re given jokes (Balk being especially handy in that capacity), they’re never the punchline—they’re different points on the spectrum of rock fandom in addition to colorful personalities populating the Felliniesque circuses of The Riot House and Swingos Celebrity Inn. It’s less great that the movie kind of laughs off how young these characters are, or that Stillwater’s bassist is played by goddamn Mark Kozelek, or that—when he returned to his Almost Famous/Jerry Maguire/Singles wheelhouse after the mindfuck departure of Vanilla Sky—rather than writing another Penny, Crowe went on to conjure up the epitome of a condescending, vexingly persistent cinematic archetype.
Despite bearing some surface similarities to the impish Kirsten Dunst character whose entire reason for being is perking up Orlando Bloom’s deflated Elizabethtown protagonist, Penny is a more complete picture of a person. Partially because Hudson inhabits her character with maximum born-movie-star charisma, but also because we’re allowed to see Penny realize that although she can give her body, mind, and soul over to the music and the people who make it, her affection will never be fully reciprocated. Her OD in a New York City hotel room is Almost Famous’ most glaringly bum note, an unnecessarily melodramatic coda that nearly saps the grace from her and William’s first parting, after she learns that the Stillwater boys used her and the band aids as an ante in a poker game—their value equivalent to $50 and a case of beer. No need for the pharmaceutical fireworks: There’s enough tragedy, epiphany, and dark humor in the half-minute, unbroken shot where Hudson turns from the camera, gathers her composure, wipes away the tears, and asks, “What kind of beer?”
These movies are celebrations, but they sound an alarm, too: Please don’t put your life in the hands of a rock ’n’ roll band who’ll throw it all away. Music enriches the lives of these characters and helps them make sense of their surroundings. But, as an armor against what Penny keeps calling “the real world,” it’s not impenetrable. The Championship credo that “What really matters is what you like, not what you are like” is not to be taken at face value.
It would no doubt delight the characters in these films to know that, although they wouldn’t be smash hits, they would achieve cult-classic status. High Fidelity did modest business opposite March 2000 fare like The Skulls, The Road To El Dorado, and future Oscar contender Erin Brockovich. Almost Famous was a high-profile bust for DreamWorks; Steven Spielberg told Crowe to “shoot every word,” and the price tag for doing so was a $60 million prestige picture whose biggest stars were all on the soundtrack. (Crowe paid the studio back with a healthy awards-season run and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay on the night Gladiator gave DreamWorks the second of three consecutive Best Picture wins.) The films’ statures would grow with time, DVD releases, and the fondness of viewers who saw their romantic plights reflected in Rob and their ambitions acted out by William—like the white, cishet guy writing this article, which helps explain the positive press High Fidelity and Almost Famous garnered upon release and in the years since. It also explains the gimlet-eyed assessments of their shortcomings, biases, and blindspots that recently culminated in a TV version of High Fidelity that takes place in a post-gentrification, post-Fleetwood-Mac-reevaluation Crown Heights where Rob is a mixed race, bisexual women played by Zoë Kravitz. There’s a lot of postmodern fun to be had with a remake that quotes from the film and the book to such a degree that it cast Lisa Bonet’s daughter in the lead role.
It’s a twist of fate funnier than Sonic Death Monkey turning out to be pretty okay that the two most prescient things about the 2000 version of High Fidelity are
- vinyl making a comeback, and
- the 2020 version of High Fidelity operates in a musical world shaped by the genre agnosticism of Championship shoplifters Vince and Justin.
If only all the modern practices of fandom had inherited The Kinky Wizards’ sense of skate-punk chill. Almost Famous and High Fidelity found their foothold after they left theaters, but their warnings about maintaining separation between yourself and the media you love never really has. If anything, that type of behavior has only gotten worse as the years go by, amplified by social media and monetized by a shrinking number of conglomerates controlling an increasing number of recordings, movies, and TV shows. The internet democratized the collections and the knowledge bases that Rob and his co-workers cited to feel superior to other people, but the gatekeeping didn’t come to an end—it simply mutated into loud, abusive campaigns whenever people who’d been previously shut out of Star Wars, Ghostbusters, or video games asked for access to the clubhouse. The artist has always had a louder megaphone than the critic, but these days the Twitter equivalent of Jeff and Russell bellyaching about Rolling Stone summons armies of unpaid maniacs to their defense. These are broad strokes, but how else do you encompass how intensely weird and scary it is when a largely positive review of folklore can lead to Swifties posting the author’s personal information online? Lest we forget, Y2K’s widest-reaching and enduring depiction of fandom gone too far is Eminem’s “Stan.”
I don’t understand the escalation, but I get where it originates from. I let the chills that ran down my spine the first time I heard “Only In Dreams” lead me down this primrose path of a career. (Zoë Kravitz as Rob: “All white guys love Weezer.” The 2020 High Fidelity is funny, too!) One of the first things I talked about with my future wife was the Pavement button on her jacket. (She knew Stephen Malkmus’ exact age. I was a goner.) I’ve got my own records and turntable now, and I do like to watch them make a few rotations before I step away from the stereo console.
But not as much as I like watching High Fidelity and Almost Famous, my feelings for which have ebbed and flowed with time. To chart it out, it probably looks a lot like my relationship to some of my favorite songs: The intense surge of attachment and identification in the initial exposure, the cooling as flaws are made apparent and the dedication transfers to other works, the long term where they’re valued for their abiding merits as well as their reminders of another time and place—a certain audio-visual security blanket. Years might pass between viewings, but whenever I revisit the films, I still find moments to cherish, or new details I once missed. I see through Rob Gordon’s bullshit now, but I hold tight to this Lester Bangs gem: “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone when you’re uncool.”
64 Comments
I did not watch the new high fidelity show (nor much liked the movie) but if the height of its wit in 2020 is a joke about how white people like weezer, I’m not surprised it’s not getting another season.
She’s right. We’re so lame.
Sure, but that joke would have felt tired 10 years ago
It’s a Simpsons reference.
No, that’s pretty funny.
That schtick was funny when Patrice O’Neal did
Patrice O’Neal could make eating a sandwich funny. He was one of the funniest men to never get his due.
I suppose a better joke would have been “white guys have Opinions on Weezer”.
I wanted to love Almost Famous so badly, but it’s a supposed rock movie with a folk soundtrack where the mom is one of the main characters. Maybe it’s a good film in a different context, but it’s not the rock movie it was sold as. It was too safe. On the other hand, Velvet Goldmine nailed it a few years earlier.
“Folk soundtrack”? What tracks would you consider folk? Okay, there was one Simon & Garfunkel track on the soundtrack, but even that was from their post-folk period. Rock isn’t all heavy metal. Bowie, the Beach Boys, The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rob Stewart, etc. are very much rock.
I was in a mall the other day. The Muzak coming from the speakers was Ozzy’s Crazy Train. The world has moved on, Roland.On another, note: While I quite like the song, America is pretty squarely in the center of the Folk Oeuvre. I assume that’s the S&G song you were referring to.
It doesn’t rock hard, no. But it is a song they wrote themselves, so not folk by definition. Folk songs are old traditional songs like “Scarborough Fair” (which S&G also recorded, but not on the AF soundtrack).
I’m not willing to strongly defend the hill I’m on here. I’m not passionate about music, I just like it. But artists like Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, CSN(Y) and S&G have long been considered folk artists.
I concede that a stringent definition of folk (Folk music, type of traditional and generally rural music that originally was passed down through families and other small social groups ) To me, and to my parents who played this stuff for me, there were lots of 60s and 70s artists who were folk singers. Here’s a random list from the internet that includes our boys. https://digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_artists-folk.html
If I’m going to watch a white dude musician wankfest, that’s def. going to be Velvet Goldmine. VG captures so much about the 70s. Almost Famous was The Wonder Years: the Remix.
Velvet Goldmine almost a great movie but there are so many things that just felt completely off. I think what got me most was when the Jonathan Rhys Meyers character faked his own death causing all his fans to immediately turn on him and reject him. That’s the total opposite of what would have happened if Bowie faked his death on stage at the height of Glam, the world would have LOVED it.
You could do worse than remixing one of the all time greatest sitcoms.
I was thinking of my punk-rock drummer bestie when I wrote that. He’d probably agree with you.Me? I’m pretty tired of jerk male protagonists who whine all the time. Although at least Kevin was going through puberty, which is a decent enough excuse. Also, I grew up with all that boomer nostalgia. It gets tiresome after a while.
I agree with the sentiment, although I’m not sure I’d call it just “folk”. Maybe just the kind of MOR, 70s incipient “soft rock” movement. The movie to me seems far more in line with the Elton John, the Rod Stewart, the Simon and Garfunkel, and the Cat Stevens on its soundtrack than what I would have considered “rock” as a teen. [Yes, Rod Stewart was a rocker, but he was the kind of rocker my mom liked.]
That’s why I hated the movie when I first saw it when I was about 20 (aside from the Lester Bangs scene, which was great and which may have raised my expectations too high for the rest of the movie). The funny thing is that now I’m a lot less doctrinaire and my tastes a lot broader than they were then, so I might like the movie more. But it left such a bad taste in my mouth at the time that I’m not likely to ever give it another try.
It was notable that the film didn’t even touch on Springsteen, who released two albums in the year it took place. Crowe was so weirdly preoccupied with making the American salt-of-the-earth band resemble Zeppelin that he forgot about an obvious reference point, and if you’re going to aim your film at Music People, you’re courting this kind of critique.
Springsteen, for all his creative force, was still a new-jack critic’s darling cult figure in the year this movie took place.Sales-wise, here are the actual numbers: https://bestclassicbands.com/1973-top-selling-albums-3-27-18/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_200_number-one_albums_of_1973
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/boydblake/top_selling_albums___early_1973/
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/boydblake/top_selling_albums___summer_1973/
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/boydblake/top_selling_albums___late_1973/Surprise: ‘73 was dominated by Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Paul McCartney/Wings, Stones, Chicago (sigh, it’s only soft rock ‘n’ roll), the Allman Brothers Band (:D), and this little group by the name of Pink Floyd. Hell, the former VU frontman did better than Springsteen with the album on which he debuted his Sad Panda look (as he damn well deserved to!).Speaking of the masses, I’m not so sure the former Mr. Nancy Wilson was “aiming his film at Music People” (capital letters). I’m sure you’re sure about that, cool guy. I like to think the movie was aimed at— General Audiences (technically over the age of 17, shrugs-and-eyerolls)…
To be fair, the soundtrack has Sabbath, Zeppelin, Stooges, MC5, Deep Purple, The Who, Neil Young, Hendrix, Bowie and a bunch of other artists on it too. There’s a lot of soft rock in there, but for a movie set in 1973, I think it’s got plenty of the harder rock end of things.
It’s almost as if different people have different ideas about what constitutes rock music.
I disagree.
Have to disagree with your comment that Pennylane’s o.d. in Almost Famous was “an unnecessarily melodramatic coda “. It was pivotal in establishing that these women were actual people not just band-aids . The scene injected a needed antidote to the consequence free prior scenes. Life is messy and without this scene the movie would have been just another rock and roll fantasy.
I know I’m four years late on this but since there’s an opening, jesus was HBO’s Vinyl terrible!!! I watched about half of the show on a 12-hour flight, first out of genuine interest and then out of morbid curiosity. The scene where they talk to Elvis…I just…what the fuck??
A reference to The Skulls movie? I haven’t thought about that movie since it came out.
Which is the least necessary trilogy: Skulls, Cruel Intentions, Wild Things, or Bring it On?
Hate to knock on Union and Dunst but Bring It On is weirdly uncomfortable now, lots of homophobia and sexual assault, but I think we all mostly remember the girl power so I think the love for it is still merited.
I loved HF when it opened and can watch in now and again, mostly for Cusack. When Almost Famous opened with a crowded first showing audience, I was sitting next to someone whose every thought was expressed loudly “I wonder what type of Bus that is?” “Oh her hair is like an ashy-honey blond, or is it?” I shushed her a couple of times then the first verse of Tiny Dancer and she started singing WAY off key. “Blueee JEEan Bay-BEEEeee…” I had enough. I turned to her leaned over into her seat space, stuck my finger in her face and said with my loudest voice simply “NO.” Held the finger there for a second while she sat looking like she just swallowed an egg, then I turned back to continue watching the film, and heard not another peep. Now that was back then when I was younger and cheeky, I wouldn’t do that today with so many reactionaries but I still am bothered by people who feel watching a film equals a forum for loud open conversation.
It’s too bad Cusack stopped making movies after this.
Hmmm…Except for the FORTY SIX films he made after High Fidelity?
There’s a shell of a man in those also named “John Cusack” but there’s no way that’s the same actor.
I disagree. Max, Identity, 1408, Grace is Gone, War, Inc. Hot Tub Time Machine, Love and Mercy, Cell and some non starring roles. I still love watching him and though there are some bad choices he still doesn’t choose the road often travelled taking middle of the road roles just because he can. He is and will always be a broody outsider.
I really like The Numbers Station and Frozen Ground, as well.
Thank you, he has some good grownup level roles and odd characters in that body of work. I would be sad if he was John from 20 years ago. Almost 50 movies since HF and someone has the nerve to say he is not working… Puh-leese!
Cell was one of the worst movies ever. I side with the OP. Cusack has been spotty since HF. I thought 1408 was alright, though.
So one film out of FORTY SIX and you completely write him off? You weren’t much of a fan to begin with… I liked Cell OK (the opening was great) until the ending but Cusack wasn’t bad in it. And many of the other movies I listed he is still good in them—I loved Identity. He is older and cannot do the same roles everyone wants to pigeonhole him in, and is eclectic in his choices. Spotty is not the same as absent. The “OP”acted like he up and died. He is consistently good AND still working when others have actually faded away.
Eh. Was gonna rebut, but I have no enmity for the guy and you seem to have passion for him. So. I concede. The guy is great.
Wow! Concede? On this day in history…. I simply think he is a consistent working actor (unlike scores of faded peers) who appears to try his best, even with these smaller roles. I always brighten up when I see him on screen, I suppose in a fangirl way, but still…
The onscreen persona he created worked great for adolescents and man children like Rob, but what should he have been doing in his 40s and 50s other than the weird stuff he did?
***THIS***
Watch Love and Mercy. He’s fantastic in that.
I love you, and if I wasn’t already married, I would propose to you.I thought I was the only person who bitched out other people for talking in movie theaters!
Pro-Tip (if you have a car or can borrow one): The Drive-In! I saw Birds of Prey alone in my car, seat reclined perfectly, snacks in hand, volume to my desired specifications, vaping myself into oblivion, AND WAS TOTALLY BY MYSELF LOOKING AT A HUGE SCREEN! It was just the best.
You can say that I’m a dreamer but clearly I’m not the only one! I’m happy to hear you found a hack to avoid chatty Cathy/Carl. Don’t have a Drive-In close by (coastal northern Cali) and I think I am too much of a purist to give up the dark theater as a nod to the preferred venue in which a filmmaker would want his or her film to be seen. I will continue to fight the good fight, woman on a mission, one annoying yappity yap at a time.
Keep fighting the good fight.But we have a drive-in in Concord if you ever need one (I’m in Northern California, too).
The Drive-Ins tend to be inland because of the fog along the coast especially in summer. I worked as a travel nurse for years and I took a months long assignment at Contra Costa County in Martinez, I know Concord well. Hey you too, never give up the fight until the fight is done, right!?
Almost Famous is and has always been a terrible movie. It starts off with William’s sister leaving him a box of records that just happens to contain nothing but albums that would be recognized by a 2000s audience as culturally relevant. Of course its Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds or Joni Mitchell’s Blue instead of their at-that-time higher charting albums. Can’t pick a recent Stones’ album? Pick the one that’s a favorite of a character (Lester Bangs) we haven’t met yet.This is a small thing, but its emblematic of the problem with the whole film: not only is it overly-nostalgized, but it’s cheap and facile. Russell Hammond’s talent and magnetism are meant to overcome any possible personal criticisms of him, but the film wants you to find those criticisms charming too. Billy Crudup gives a fantastic performance and almost makes the whole thing work, but the rest of the film is too willing to overlook Hammond’s flaws as just part of the rock and roll dream. The willingness to trade Hudson for beer is meant to be a greater betrayal than spending months raping a child, which is what Hammond is doing. But Jason Lee’s the real asshole for being in love with Crudup’s wife! Because Crudup is the one who understands how important the music is. In High Fidelity, Cusack’s character uses his music obsession to cover up what a horrible person he is, and the film knows this – it’s basically what the film is about. Almost Famous completely believes that a love of music is worth any level of moral depravity. The overdose is the only moment in the film where the shitty characters might have to pay a price for their actions, where an innocent dies and things change. But William helps cover it up and Hudson survives, so everything’s okay. The music is safe.And it’s even worse that it’s actually based on things Crowe experienced. The band Stillwater and the movie itself are fictional retellings of Crowe’s time travelling with and reporting on Lynyrd Skynyrd for Rolling Stone. So he turns the most tragic element of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s story, the plane crash that killed three band members and injured the rest, into a gay joke?I understand two movies coming out in 2000 about love of music and vinyl does indicate a cultural moment of connection, but High Fidelity is well aware of what a piece of shit Rob is. He realizes it at the very end, but also knows he’ll have to do more than just understand it; his actual behavior will have to change. Almost Famous is far too self-satisfied for any kind of reflection.
I always thought Almost Famous was a profoundly sexist movie and I was a teenager myself when I first saw it — but I could still tell there was something off here. It’s not that Russell trades Penny for beer, it’s that the movie really wants us to forgive him for it, and to believe that he does love her. It plays it like a star-crossed romance, instead of a shitty older dude treating a sixteen year old girl like a stack of poker chips. It’s that stridently feminist caricature in the Rolling Stone office getting handed William’s incoherent notes on scraps of paper and napkins or whatever and getting told to type them up (I remember my face going totally hot with rage at this moment). There’s probably a truth to this about this scene: sexy women get to be playthings and plain women get to be servants and that’s it; but there is no actual self-awareness to the movie about it. I also remember it being pretty unclear that William and Penny were supposed to be the same age but I may be misremembering that.
These are all really good points, I agree.There’s a scene towards the beginning when William first meets Penny where she keeps saying something like ‘we’re 18 . . . but we’re really 17 . . . but we’re really 16′. I think they’re meant to be pretty close in age. Which could actually be read as William treating her as much like a possession and Hammond – William has a crush on her and his main issue with the way Hammond treats her could be seen as jealousy more than not liking him not treating her as a person.
It seems like a good time until you realize that it’s stuck in a very particular version of the 1970s and willing to overlook (or openly embrace) any amount of shitty attitude/behavior to maintain the sanctity of that idea. Almost Famous: Your alcoholic older brother, in movie form.
Oh god that’s great.
It’s Pet Sounds because that album was a groundbreaking masterpiece. My kid listened to it and said, “It’s cool, but it sounds like a lot of other stuff.” I had to explain to him that a lot of other stuff sounded like it. That’s the point of the music part of the film. To make or hear something great, and not just something popular.
And having characters do shitty things doesn’t mean the creator approves of those things. It isn’t overlooking the problems of the 70s, it is highlighting them.
The point is all of the albums his sister owns are masterpieces, and not just that, but albums considered masterpieces by today’s standards. She doesn’t own one album that’s only okay? She doesn’t have any personal favorites that aren’t popularly respected? No Dionne Warwick? No Monkees? No Tiny Tim? No Tom Jones? No Country Joe and the Fish? No disrespect to any of those artists, but they’re not trendy – why doesn’t she have even one like that? Or, like I mentioned, a band’s album that was more popular back then than the one revered today? It’s cheap and lazy nostalgia.
To say nothing of the fact that he’s in 1969 and Blue was released in 1971, Sweet Baby James came out in 1970, and Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out in 1970. Its a small point, but if you’re trying to tell a story of rock and roll awakening for a 12 year old, the dates will matter to him. I’ll never forget when Metallica or In Utero came out, not because either one is a classic (one of them sure is), but because they had an impact on younger me at the time.
And having characters do shitty things doesn’t mean the creator approves of those things.
No, it doesn’t. But in this movie, the creator clearly approves of them, or at least sees them as a justified part of creating great rock and roll. If he didn’t, at least one member of the band would have suffered some kind of consequence for any of their actions. But they don’t. It’s all “worth it” to Crowe.
She has plenty of “just ok” albums. Dozens. Hundreds. They just weren’t in the movie because you don’t turn to someone and say, “Look under your bed, it will change your life” and it’s a Monkees album.And I didn’t get the impression that the author approves of the behaviors at all. So perhaps one or both of us picked a position and are just sticking with it. Opinions vary.
you don’t turn to someone and say, “Look under your bed, it will change your life” and it’s a Monkees album.
You do if that’s the album that changed your life.
Sure but it’s hacky and unrealistic to just list the most critically acclaimed albums of the decade by modern standards. Like depicting a kid from the 2000s whose iPod is just a Pitchfork decade-end list. It’s not the worst writing choice, but it’s just kinda lame. Compare how this movie handles nostalgia vs. something like Freaks & Geeks. Almost Famous is unfortunately closer to Forest Gump’s nostalgia wankery
These discussions always take me back to Probe Records in Liverpool in the 1980s, where the owner Geoff Davies (name-checked in Elvis Costello’s autobiography amongst other places) would gently steer customers with poor taste towards Love’s Forever Changes as a way of saving their souls. The more confrontational side of the equation was, for a time, delivered by the late Pete Burns (before his own success with Dead or Alive) – a man who was the definition of the word “acerbic”, and whose flamboyant and androgynous appearance was backed up by his ability to beat the crap out of any narrow-minded bigots who took issue with him. Some great reminiscences here:
https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/fans-remember-buying-records-from-pete-burns-1769961
Pavement is such a touchtone for me as well and certainly an indication of another’s potential for friendship/romance. Have used their songs on mix tapes to great effect…continue to have a (years long!) discussion with a bff about how wrong she is for disliking them. But she likes The Smiths so her opinions are already suspect.
It’s a twist of fate funnier than Sonic Death Monkey turning out to be pretty okayAhem. *pushes glasses up nose* By that point in the movie they had moved BEYOND “Sonic Death Monkey” and “Kathleen Turner Overdrive,” into “Barry Jive and the Uptown Five.”
I always saw Penny Lane in two ways..as the teen boy who was the lead saw her, she was pretty and worldly and was probably his first love. But the thing is when I saw the movie you cannot help to see her as an adult would, as kind of a loser who is completely wasting her life and who is in real denial about how these rock stars see her as nothing more than a sex groupie. The real genius was in Crowe having the two exist in your mind simultaneously.
I went to a press preview of High Fidelity after which Stephen Frears did a Q&A. He was extremely funny, very dry, and when someone asked, given the contemporary soundtrack, how he thought the film would look in ten years time replied ‘Sod ten years! It’s the next ten weeks we’re worried about…’
Interesting. I love both these films and the soundtracks for them. But only one has impacted me through repeated viewings and that is Almost Famous. I have probably seen it 50 times or more over the years and it is the extended bootleg version that I watch. I really enjoyed High Fidelity. But I have seen it maybe 5 times. It just leaves me empty inside. Rob has no heart. It just feels like a picture of a depressed man. If I want to see that I can look in the mirror. But for some reason Almost Famous just works and leaves me feeling good. William is so likable and earnest in his love of music. It may be that I like the parts of myself that I see in him vs the parts of myself I see in Rob. Because to be fair both character hit close to home for me. Thank you for the thoughtful piece.
“You’ll meet them again on their long journey to the middle.”Good line.
My friend and I were huge fans of High Fidelity, I can’t tell you how many times you watched that movie, but we were seniors in high school and it came out so the angsty this and relationship stuff was made for us even though Rob was an adult. Almost Famous was good, and it definitely pulled a couple of heart strings when I saw it, it’s by no means a bad movie. I think the problem with Almost Famous compared to High Fidelity is that it’s a young person’s view of the world, so it’s fun to sort of empathize and be nostalgic, but at the same time there’s a few places where the movie feels like Dazed and Confused edited for TV.They’re also good for foils to one another, Rob is an adult who spends the entire movie struggling to be more adult bike and stop chasing the fancy underwear, whereas in Almost Famous he’s a child who is getting his first exposure to the world, and is trying to make sense of what all these adults are doing.