Taglines: Experience it. Enjoy it. Just don’t fall for it.
Writer and director Cameron Crowe’s experiences as a teenage rock journalist — he was a regular contributor to Rolling Stone while still in high school — inspired this coming-of-age story about a 15-year-old boy hitting the road with an up-and-coming rock band in the early 1970s. Elaine Miller (Frances McDormand) is a bright, loving, but strict single parent whose distrust of rock music and fears about drug use have helped to drive a wedge between herself and her two children, Anita (Zooey Deschanel) and William (Patrick Fugit).
Anita rebels by dropping out of school and becoming a stewardess, but William makes something of his love of rock & roll by writing album reviews for a local underground newspaper. William’s work attracts the attention of Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman), editor of renegade rock magazine Creem, who takes William under his wing and gives him his first professional writing assignment — covering a Black Sabbath concert.
While William is unable to score an interview with the headliners, the opening act, Stillwater, are more than happy to chat with a reporter, even if he’s still too young to drive, and William’s piece on the group in Creem gains him a new admirer in Ben Fong-Torres (Terry Chen), an editor at Rolling Stone. Torres offers William an assignment for a 3,000-word cover story on Stillwater, and over the objections of his mother (whose parting words are “Don’t use drugs!”), and after some stern advice from Bangs (who says under no circumstances should he become friends with a band he’s covering), Williams joins Stillwater on tour, where he becomes friendly with guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) and singer Jeff Bebe (Jason Lee).
William also becomes enamored of Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), a groupie traveling with the band who is no older than William, but is deeply involved with Russell. Lester Bangs and Ben Fong-Torres, incidentally, were real-life rock writers Crowe worked with closely during his days as a journalist. Almost Famous’ original score was composed by Nancy Wilson of Heart (who is also Crowe’s wife).
Almost Famous is a 2000 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Cameron Crowe, and starring Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson and Patrick Fugit. It tells the fictional story of a teenage journalist writing for Rolling Stone magazine in the early 1970s while covering the fictitious rock band Stillwater, and his efforts to get his first cover story published. The film is semi-autobiographical, as Crowe himself was a teenage writer for Rolling Stone.
The film is based on Crowe’s experiences touring with rock bands Poco, The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, Eagles, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Crowe has discussed how during this period he lost his virginity, fell in love, and met his heroes[2]—experiences that are shared by William Miller (Patrick Fugit), the boyish main character of the film.
Although a box office bomb, the film received widespread acclaim from critics, and received four Oscar nominations, one of which led to an award to Crowe for his screenplay. It was also awarded the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. Roger Ebert hailed it the best film of the year, and also the 9th best film of the 2000s. It also won two Golden Globes, for Best Picture and Kate Hudson won Best Supporting Actress. In a 2016 international poll conducted by BBC, Almost Famous was ranked the 79th greatest film since 2000.
Almost Famous had its premiere at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. It was subsequently given a limited release on September 15, 2000, in 131 theaters where it grossed $2.3 million on its first weekend. It was given a wider release on September 22, 2000, in 1,193 theaters where it grossed $6.9 million on its opening weekend. The film went on to make $32.5 million in North America and $14.8 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $47.4 million against a $60 million budget.
Almost Famous (2000)
Directed by: Cameron Crowe
Starring: Billy Crudup, Frances McDormand, Kate Hudson, Jason Lee, Patrick Fugit, Anna Paquin, Fairuza Balk, Noah Taylor, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Liz Stauber, Jimmy Fallon
Screenplay by: Cameron Crowe
Cinematography by: John Toll
Film Editing by: Joe Hutshing, Saar Klein
Costume Design by: Betsy Heimann
Set Decoration by: Robert Greenfield
Art Direction by: Clay A. Griffith, Clayton Hartley, Virginia L. Randolph
Music by: Nancy Wilson
MPAA Rating: R for language, drug content and brief nudity.
Distributed by: DreamWorks Pictures (North America), Columbia Pictures (International)
Release Date: September 13, 2000
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