Every week we check out a basic film that’s endured within the cultural panorama, and bear in mind why we had been all so obsessive about it within the first place, and why it’s price one other look at present
Almost Famous is broadly thought of a basic of the 2000s canon. A heat, sensible and offbeat street film concerning the “dying” days of rock ‘n’ roll, it launched Kate Hudson’s profession and for 22 years has held a spot in viewers’s hearts.
It was kaleidoscopic and intoxicating, evoking a time when the music business nonetheless appeared unfastened and freewheeling, however on the cusp of a second of change. It made you wish to be a “band aid” and go on tour with Stillwater, although there was a unhappiness that underpinned that nomadic, disconnected life.
But the movie wasn’t at all times so beloved. While Almost Famous was an instantaneous vital hit, author and director Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical film truly bombed on the field workplace.
Crowe was coming off the again of the runaway success of Jerry Maguire, which had made $US273 million from a $US50 million and went onto to be nominated for 5 Oscars, successful one.
So, he was sizzling property and the prospect of his semi-autobiographical story – Crowe was 16 when he went on the street with the Allman Brothers for a Rolling Stone characteristic – was sufficient for the studio to stump up $US60 million.
Well, in response to a contemporaneous report from the LA Times, the plan wasn’t to pay $US60 million, that’s how a lot it value after Crowe went over funds by $US15 million.
Given the forged was comparatively low-key on the time – Almost Famous was Hudson’s break-out position so she wasn’t but commanding a lot money – a lot of the funds was spent on the manufacturing.
The LA Times wrote Crowe’s dedication to element necessitated reams and reams of movie for the 172-page screenplay, which was about 50 per cent longer than the common. Principal pictures ran to 92 days, in comparison with the common of fifty to 65 days.
And it didn’t repay – not at first anyway. When the film was launched, it completed its opening weekend in third place, behind a rerelease of The Exorcist.
The LA Times remarked that Crowe went silent as soon as the dismal numbers began rolling in, regardless of his loquaciousness earlier than the discharge – “he refuses to come to the phone now to discuss it,” the paper wrote. It additionally claimed relations between Crowe and the studio, Dreamworks, had been strained.
Almost Famous ended its cinema run at $US47 million in international ticket gross sales, together with $US2.2 million in Australia.
While it might not have made buck in these darkish days, rave critiques and a profitable awards season, together with 4 Oscar nominations and a win for Crowe for his screenplay, ensured Almost Famous had longevity past these early bums on seats metrics.
The movie got here out at a time when the recognition of DVDs surged, and it had a second life on the house leisure circuit. A yr later, the studio even launched an prolonged model of the movie, including one other 41 minutes to the runtime. Remember, Crowe did shoot all that footage.
Within a few years, Almost Famous wasn’t even a “cult” hit, it was a success hit, typically showing on lists of iconic films of that period.
But that memorable close-up picture of Hudson as Penny Lane in her violet-tinted sun shades nearly wasn’t to be. No doubt if Hudson had by no means landed the position, she nonetheless would’ve discovered a approach to be well-known well-known and never simply nearly well-known, however she wasn’t the primary alternative for the position. She wasn’t even the second.
There was a model of Almost Famous that will’ve had three very totally different stars within the roles that went to Hudson, Billy Crudup and Frances McDormand.
Crowe revealed in a 2020 podcast marking the movie’s anniversary that Natalie Portman was initially within the working for the magnetic groupie with a tragic soul. Later on, Canadian actor and now Oscar-winning filmmaker Sarah Polley was connected. And Meryl Streep was being thought of for the position of William’s mum, which McDormand finally performed.
But the large one was Brad Pitt, who was in talks for Crudup’s eventual position of Russell Hammond, Stillwater’s charismatic frontman.
Crowe informed the Origins podcast that he had beforehand met Pitt across the time of his 1989 rom-com Say Anything.
“He was just starting out, and he just really had something,” Crowe recalled. After Jerry Maguire got here out, Pitt, now one of many largest film stars on this planet, known as Crowe and talked about the pair ought to work on one thing. Crowe promised to name him for the subsequent factor.
“So, I called him with this to play Russell Hammond and we spent about four months working on it. He read with Natalie Portman.
“We kind of geeked out about music and everything and he was slowly kind of putting on the Russell Hammond persona. Really funny, really, really funny.”
Pitt was nonetheless connected by the point Patrick Fugit got here on the scene. Fugit was a young person from Utah with no appearing expertise when he auditioned on tape. When he acquired the decision again, he was ecstatic simply to be flying to Los Angeles in top quality, he informed Vulture in 2020.
He informed Vulture he remembered Rachael Leigh Cook was within the ready room, as was John de Lancie’s son Keegan.
Fugit was informed he can be screen-testing with Pitt, and he was, understandably, nervous. Pitt began to speak to him a couple of snowboarding online game known as Cool Boarders to assist him really feel relaxed.
Fugit informed Uproxx, “He was like, ‘Hey, man, I’ve been playing this game, Cool Boarders. Do you play Cool Boarders?’ I, by the way, had been playing a f**kload of Cool Boarders.
“So, I was like, ‘Well, Mr Pitt, I can do these tricks’ and he was like, ‘Wow, you can land that trick? I’ve only got this one and that one’. And he’s like, ‘You’ve got to show me how to land that trick’. Just loosening me up and geeking out about Cool Boarders, but really just spending the time to get to know me, make me feel comfortable.”
But it wasn’t to be. Crowe stated he when Pitt finally left the undertaking, he “wept”.
“I knew [Pitt] had never fully fallen in love with the character,” Crowe informed Origins. “He had fallen in love with the idea of the character. But maybe there just wasn’t enough on the page.
“He told me [the money] wasn’t the case [for his exit]. I think it was probably half and half. I think he was also uncomfortable with the age difference between Russell and Penny Lane.”
That wasn’t the final Crowe noticed of Pitt. A couple of months later, Pitt walked within the door of Crowe’s workplace and stated he was driving previous. “He just wanted to come in and say that we’d always been on his mind and good luck. And I loved him for it!”
So Almost Famous could have had some rising pains, however Crowe’s heady story concerning the seductions and finally empty guarantees of the Nineteen Seventies music scene hit precisely the best chord.
In truth, the filmmaker’s legacy is so wrapped up in Almost Famous, he would get extra probabilities to revisit the world of his seminal movie. In 2016, made a little-seen and swiftly cancelled collection known as Roadies, set on this planet of music touring.
And as with so many beloved films of that point, Almost Famous was tailored right into a stage musical. When it opened on Broadway final yr, it stuffed up 94 per cent of its seats.
Just this week, it was revealed that Crowe has been working with Joni Mitchell on a biopic about her life. No doubt she was a fan of Almost Famous.
Almost Famous is streaming on Binge*, Paramount+ and Stan
*Binge is majority owned by News Corp, writer of this web site
Originally printed as What to Watch Flashback: Almost Famous and its rising pains
Source: www.dailytelegraph.com.au
