Cameron Bruce Crowe (born
July 13, 1957) is an
American
screenwriter and film
director. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe
was a contributing editor at
Rolling
Stone magazine, for which he still frequently
writes.
Crowe has made his mark with character-driven, personal films that
have been generally hailed as refreshingly original and devoid of
cynicism. Michael Walker in the
New York Times called Crowe
"something of a cinematic spokesman for the post-baby boom
generation" because his first few films focused on that specific
age group, first as
high schoolers and
then as
young adults making their way in
the world.
Crowe's
debut screenwriting effort, Fast Times at Ridgemont
High, grew out of a book he wrote while posing for one
year undercover as a student at Clairemont High School
in San Diego, California, USA. Later, he wrote and
directed one more high school saga, Say Anything, and then Singles, a story of Seattle
twentysomethings that was woven together by a soundtrack centering on that city's burgeoning
grunge music scene. Crowe landed his
biggest hit, though, with the feel-good
Jerry Maguire. After this, he was given a
green light to go ahead with a pet project, the
autobiographical effort
Almost Famous. Centering on a
teenage music
journalist
on tour with an up-and-coming band, it gave insight to his life as
a 15-year-old writer for
Rolling Stone. Also, in late
1999, Crowe released his second book,
Conversations with
Billy Wilder, a question and
answer session with the legendary director.
Crowe married
Nancy
Wilson of the hard rock band
Heart,
in July, 1986. They have two children, twin boys William James
Crowe and Curtis Wilson Crowe, born in January, 2000.
Biography
Early life
Crowe was
born in Palm
Springs
, California
, USA. His father owned a real estate and
phone service business, and his mother, Alice Marie, "was a
teacher, activist, and all-around live wire who did skits around
the house and would wear a clown suit to school on special
occasions." She worked as a
psychology
professor and family
therapist and
often participated in peace demonstrations and causes relating to
the rights of farm workers. Crowe had two older sisters, but one
died when he was young.
The family moved around often, spending time
in a desert town called Indio
, best known
as the site of the Coachella
Valley Music and Arts Festival
, which is held every year at the Empire Polo
Grounds in Indio. Crowe commented that Indio was where
"people owned tortoises, not dogs".
His family finally settled in San
Diego
.
Recognizing that Crowe was gifted, his mother pushed him to excel.
He skipped
kindergarten and two grades
in
elementary school, and by the
time he attended Catholic high school, he was quite obviously
younger than the other students. To add to his alienation, he was
often ill because he suffered from
nephritis. This made him something of an outcast
in the tanned surfer culture of
Southern California.
To compensate for his lack of social contacts, Crowe began writing
for the school newspaper and by age 13 was contributing music
reviews for an underground publication,
The San Diego Door. He then began
corresponding with
Lester Bangs, who
had left the
Door to become editor at the national rock
magazine
Creem, and soon he was also
submitting articles to
Creem as well as
Circus.
Crowe graduated from
the University of
San Diego High School in 1972 at age 15, and on a trip to
Los
Angeles
, met Ben
Fong-Torres, the editor of Rolling Stone, who hired
him to write for the magazine. He also joined the Rolling
Stone staff as a Contributing Editor and then became the Associate
Editor. During this time Crowe had a chance to interview some of
the most influential musicians of the day, including Bob Dylan,
David Bowie, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, and the members of Led
Zeppelin. Crowe was, and still is,
Rolling Stone's
all-time youngest contributor.
Rolling Stone
Crowe's first cover story was on
The Allman Brothers Band. He went
on the road with them for three weeks at age 16 and interviewed not
only the whole band, but also the entire
road
crew. On his last night with the group,
Gregg Allman asked Crowe to his room and told
him to bring identification to prove he was not a police officer.
Although Crowe showed him his identification, Allman nevertheless
confiscated all his tapes. Two days later, the president of the
Allman Brothers'
Capricorn Records
label called Crowe to let him know he was returning all the tapes.
Allman later said he did not recall the incident.
Because Crowe was a fan of the 1970s
hard
rock bands that the older writers did not like, he landed a lot
of major interviews. He wrote predominantly about
Yes and the band members, and also about
Led Zeppelin, the
Eagles,
King Crimson,
Linda Ronstadt,
Rory Gallagher, and more. "He charmed a lot
of people," Fong-Torres told Rachel Abramowitz in
Premiere. "He was the aw-shucks
guy. 'I'm glad to be backstage. I love this band.'" In an interview
with
Joel Selvin of the
San Francisco Chronicle
Fong-Torres remarked, "He was the guy we sent out after some
difficult customers. He covered the bands that hated
Rolling
Stone."
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
When
Rolling Stone moved its offices from the West Coast to New York
in 1977, Crowe decided to stay behind. He
also felt the excitement of the career was beginning to wane. Crowe
appeared in the 1978 film
American
Hot Wax, but then returned to his writing. Though he would
continue to freelance for
Rolling Stone on and off over
the years, he turned his attention to a book.
At 22 and still boyish, Crowe came up with the idea to pose
undercover as a high school student and write about his
experiences.
Simon &
Schuster gave him a contract, and he moved back in with his
parents and enrolled as Dave Cameron at Clairemont High
School in San Diego, California. Reliving the senior year he never had, he
made friends and began to fit in. Though he initially planned to
include himself in the book, he realized that it would jeopardize
his ability to truly capture the essence of the high school
experience.
His book,
Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story came
out in 1981. Crowe focused on six main characters: a tough guy, a
nerd, a surfer dude, a sexual sophisticate, and
a
middle-class brother and sister. He
chronicled their activities in typical teenage settings—at school,
at the beach, and at the
mall, where
many of them held afterschool jobs—and focused on details of their
lives that probed into the heart of
adolescence. This included scenes about
homecoming and
graduation as well as social
cliques and sexual encounters.
Before the book was even released,
Fast Times at Ridgemont
High was
optioned for a film. Released
in
1982, the movie version lacked a
specific
plot and featured no major
name stars, and the studio did not devote any marketing effort
toward it. Nevertheless, it became a
sleeper
hit due to word of mouth. It owed its popularity in large part
to its uncannily realistic portrayal of teenagers.
Though reviews of
Fast
Times at Ridgemont High were mixed, the film ended up
launching the careers of some of the previously unknown actors,
including
Jennifer Jason Leigh,
Eric Stoltz,
Judge Reinhold,
Phoebe Cates, as well as now
Oscar-winners
Nicolas
Cage (who appeared in the film under his given name, Nicolas
Coppola),
Forest Whitaker, and
Sean Penn.
Early directorial efforts
Following this success, Crowe wrote the screenplay for
1984's
The
Wild Life, the pseudo-sequel to
Fast Times at
Ridgemont High. Whereas its predecessor followed teenagers'
lives in high school,
The Wild Life traced the lives of
several teenagers after high school living in an apartment complex.
Filmmaker
James L. Brooks noticed Crowe's original voice and
wanted to work with him. Brooks executive produced Crowe's first
directing effort,
1989's
Say
Anything..., about a young man pining away for the affections
of a beautiful girl. Though it could have easily ended up a
formulaic teen love story,
Say
Anything... got a warm reception from critics. They
applauded the way Crowe crafted an intriguing and insightful tale
that also involved the girl's relationship with her father and how
it is threatened when she discovers he is caught up in a shady
business deal.
By this point, Crowe was ready to leave teen
angst behind and focus on his peers. His next project,
1992's
Singles, centered on the romantic
tangles among a group of six friends in their twenties in Seattle.
The film starred
Bridget Fonda as a
coffee-bar waitress fawning over an aspiring musician (
Matt Dillon) and
Kyra
Sedgwick and
Campbell Scott as a
couple wavering on whether to commit to each other. Music forms an
integral backbone for the script, and the soundtrack became a best
seller three months before the release of the film. Much of this
was due to repeated delays while studio executives debated how to
market it.
Singles successfully rode on the heels of Seattle's grunge
music boom. During production, bands like
Nirvana were not yet national stars, but by
the time the soundtrack was released, their song "
Smells Like Teen Spirit" had to be
cut because it was too costly to buy the rights. Also, before they
got big, Crowe signed members of
Pearl Jam
to portray Dillon's fictional band Citizen Dick. Crowe also
appeared in this project, appropriately, as a rock journalist at a
club. Tim Appelo wrote in
Entertainment Weekly, "With ... an
ambling, naturalistic style, Crowe captures the eccentric appeal of
a town where espresso carts sprout on every corner and kids in
ratty flannel shirts can cut records that make them
millionaires."
Jerry Maguire
Branching into a new direction, Crowe wrote and directed
Jerry Maguire, about a
high-powered
sports agent who is fired
after having a moment of clarity in which he writes and distributes
a Mission Statement calling for more service to the athletes and
less money for themselves. He strikes out to form his own agency.
Tom Cruise played the title role and
Cuba Gooding, Jr. played Rod
Tidwell, the up-and-coming football player whose
catchphrase, "Show me the money!", became
ubiquitous for a time.
Renée Zellweger also appeared as the
bookkeeper who leaves her job to follow Maguire into new territory
in both work and love. Crowe's earlier efforts brought him
recognition, but this would send him soaring onto the
A-list. Gooding won a
Best Supporting
Actor Oscar for his role, and the
film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best
Editing, and Best Actor (for Cruise). Cruise also won his second
Golden Globe for his role as
Jerry.
Almost Famous
In 2000, Crowe tapped his rock-writer roots to write and direct
Almost Famous, about the
experiences of a teenage music journalist who goes on the road with
an emerging band in the early 1970s. Newcomer
Patrick Fugit starred as William Miller, the
baby-faced writer who finds himself immersed in the world of sex,
drugs, and rock-and-roll, and
Kate
Hudson co-starred as Penny Lane, a prominent groupie, or, as
the film refers to her, a "Band-Aid." She is based on a real
person, also known as Pennie Lane (sometimes Pennie Trumble), who
headed a group of young female music fans known as the
Flying Garter Girls. Digging into his
most personal memories, Crowe used a composite of the bands he had
known to come up with Stillwater, the emerging act that welcomes
the young journalist into its sphere, then becomes wary of his
intentions. Seventies rocker
Peter
Frampton served as a technical consultant on the film.
Crowe's mother figured prominently in the film as well (often
admonishing, "Don't take drugs!"), and she even showed up at the
film sets to keep an eye on him while he worked. Though he asked
her not to bother
Frances
McDormand, who played her character, the two ended up getting
along well. Also in the film he showed his sister rebelling and
leaving home, and in real life, his mother and sister Cindy did not
talk for a decade and were still estranged to a degree when he
finished the film. The family reunited when the project was
complete.
In
addition, Crowe took a copy of the film to London
for a
special screening with Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and Robert
Plant, who provided some of the inspiration for the feuding
bandmates. Additional inspiration for the inner band turmoil
was provided by Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts of the Allman
Brothers Band from Cameron's travels with them.After the screening,
Led Zeppelin granted Crowe the right to use one of their songs on
the soundtrack—the first time they had ever consented to this since
allowing Crowe to use "Kashmir" in
Fast Times at Ridgemont
High—and also gave him rights to four of their other songs in
the movie itself, although they did not grant him the rights to
"
Stairway to Heaven" for an
intended scene (on the special "Bootleg" edition DVD, the scene is
included as an extra sans the song where the viewer is instructed
by a watermark to begin playing it). Crowe and his wife, musician
Nancy Wilson of
Heart, co-wrote three of the five
Stillwater songs in the film,
and Frampton wrote the other two. Reviews were almost universally
positive, and it was nominated for and won a host of film awards,
including an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Crowe.
Crowe and co-producer
Danny Bramson
also won the
Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television
or Other Visual Media Grammy Award
for the soundtrack. Despite these accolades, box office returns for
the film were disappointing.
Vanilla Sky
He followed
Almost Famous with
Vanilla Sky in 2001, a remake of the
Spanish thriller
Abre los
ojos. Starring
Tom Cruise and
Penélope Cruz (from the original
cast), the film received mixed reviews but still managed to gross
$100.6 million at the US box office, making it his second highest
grossing directorial effort behind only
Jerry
Maguire.
Elizabethtown
He returned in 2005, with
Elizabethtown, which again opened
to mixed reviews, scoring 45 on
Metacritic, the same as his previous effort,
Vanilla Sky.
Future projects
Deep Tiki
It was announced in early June 2008 that Crowe would be returning
to write and direct his seventh feature film, set to star
Ben Stiller and
Reese Witherspoon and be released by
Columbia Pictures. Filming was
expected to begin in January 2009., but this has since been
postponed.
"Untitled Pearl Jam Retrospective Movie"
In an interview with
Pearl Jam on March 9,
2009, bassist Jeff Ament said "... our manager Kelly has had the
idea to do a 20 year anniversary retrospective movie so he's been
on board with [film director] Cameron Crowe for the last few
years." Guitarist Mike McCready also stated in March, "“We are just
in the very early stages of that…starting to go through all the
footage we have, and Cameron’s writing the treatment."
Filmography
Director
Awards and nominations
References
- New
York Times. September 6, 1992.
- Premiere. August 1992, p. 66.
- Cameron Crowe Biography (1957-)
- K, Carolyn. "Grades Skipped and Successful". Hoagies Gifted
Education Page. Retrieved July 22, 2006
- Mai. "CAMERON CROWE: The Legacy of the UNCOOL".
A Quick Fix of Sanity. Retrieved July 22, 2006.
- Cameron Crowe
- Crowe, Cameron. "Eyes and Ears". The Allman Brothers Story, Rolling Stone #149 -
Compiled by Cameron Crowe and Faybeth Diamond - December 6,
1973 Cameron Crowe. Retrieved July 22, 2006.
- Appelo, Tim. "Seattle Night Fever". Entertainment
Weekly. September 18, 1992, p. 46.
- Elizabethtown Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten
Tomatoes
- Fleming, Michael and Tatiana Siegel. "Stiller, Witherspoon fly with Crowe".
Variety. June 8, 2008
- Sciretta, Peter. "Cameron Crowes Deep Tiki postponed".
Slashfilm.com. December 12, 2008
- Q+A session with Pearl Jam
-
http://www.twofeetthick.com/2009/03/mike-talks-to-seattle-weekly/
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