This is an unfair thing to lay on Cameron Crowe, the writer-director of Jerry Maguire. But the script of his latest film, an untitled autobiographical story of his maiden assignment as a rock-and-roll journalist in 1973, isn’t just good. Rich, funny, and emotionally true, smacking of real-life experience and great storytelling craft, it’s easily one of the best scripts I’ve read over the last decade. It took Crowe 10 years to put it together, but it doesn’t feel turgid or fussed over. There isn’t a single muddled line or situation in the entire 168 pages.
Fawning over this script, which Crowe just started shooting last Monday, will raise all kinds of expectations. But my heart says go for it. This may not only turn out to be one of Crowe’s best films (and from the guy who did Maguire, Say Anything, and Singles, that’s saying something) but something really authentic, perceptive, and poignant about the culture of rock and roll.
It’s also a great, vibrant portrait of the life of a rock journalist in the early ’70s, when the music really meant something, and guys like Lester Bangs (of Creem) and the Rolling Stone triumvirate of Jann Wenner, Ben Fong-Torres, and David Felton – all of whom are characters in the film – were taking the form to bold and eloquent heights.
All I can say is, it’s there on the page. Crowe, who called fresh from the second day of shooting to talk about the film, says, “I’m trying to stick really close to the script. It’s right from the heart, and I’m trying to keep it that way.”
If my instincts are right, Brad Pitt is going to regret the day he dropped out of this project. Crowe wanted him to play the second lead – Russell Hammond of the ’70s rock group Stillwater – but after reading it out loud and hashing it over, Pitt “felt it wasn’t his part to play,” says Crowe. “I think sometimes you have a gut instinct about these things. He probably in the end felt he couldn’t wrap himself around it.”
So Crowe cast Billy Crudup (Without Limits), and now he’ll take the glory. It’s a beautifully written role – a struggling, adolescent, mid-level rock star who comes to face the truth about his art and himself over the course of a tour, and in Act 3 does a stand-up thing that won me over totally. Getting to know Hammond this way made me want to go buy a Stillwater CD. (Hammond and Stillwater are fictitious, of course. I still want to buy their CD.)
The lead character is Crowe’s stand-in, William, who’s being played by a first-time actor from Utah chosen by Crowe after a nationwide search. (Crowe has asked me to keep the kid’s name under wraps. “We’re just trying to work under the radar,” he says.)
The story is about Crowe’s actual experience as a 15-year-old journalist from San Diego who managed to land himself a gig for Rolling Stone covering Stillwater on a multicity tour. It begins with William getting the assignment and ends with his submitting it – not, it should be noted, without having to deal with emotional and psychological hurdles that would reduce a seasoned journalist to tears. It’s about a kid trying to cut through the distractions of sex, drugs, falling in love, his mother, and the exotic hurly-burly of a rock tour in order to do his job.
As Crowe puts it, “I will have really done my job poorly if you don’t see this movie and go, ‘Oh, mannn!'”
But what gets me is how the characters gather steam. The dialogue is beautifully measured and phrased, but the script’s finest achievement is the way the seeds of story, theme, and character germinate slowly, gradually . and then pay off like a slot machine over the last 30 pages.
Beat by beat, scene by scene, the script takes William on a voyage of discovery covering not only his own longings and challenges but those of his comrades. We get to know a whole melange of characters, including the Stillwater band members, the groupies (being played by Kate Hudson, Bijou Phillips, and Anna Paquin), and the road manager (Shine’s Noah Taylor).
Hudson’s part, that of the sad-eyed Penny Lane, a groupie who has a bittersweet involvement with Crudup’s Russell Hammond, reads like her breakout role. There’s no way Crudup won’t come out of this smelling good. Frances McDormand has some great moments as William’s mother. Crowe says that Taylor has “turned out to be really amazing” with his relatively small part.
Cameron Crowe Untitled, a DreamWorks film, will probably hit screens in the spring or summer of 2000.
You’d think after writing it off and on for 10 years that Crowe would have a title. “I’m still working on it,” he says. “It might be nice if it had something to do with writing. If you have any ideas, let me know.”
