“I didn’t go barefoot in the house,” she told her son. In the end, Alice adored McDormand’s performance, though she had one objection. “Alice,” she told Crowe’s mom, “ is not going to be you, and it’s not going to be me. “I turn around 30 seconds later and she’s got Frances buttonholed,” he said. Crowe begged her not to bother McDormand.
FACE YOUR FEARS AND THEY WILL BACK DOWN!Īlice frequently visited the set during the making of Almost Famous. ‘C,’ NOBLE SON WHO ELEVATES HUMANITY IN A DARK ‘HURLY BURLY’ WORLD: PLEASE SPEED UP CASTING! START DIRECTING AND THE JOY WILL COME! She wrote back: “I would love to be in your love letter to rock.” When Sarah Polley, cast as Penny Lane, withdrew, Spielberg advised, “Cast Kate Hudson.”ĬAMERON-You’re in a rut! REINVENT YOURSELF! TAKE A RISK! FACE YOUR FEARS AND THEY DISSOLVE. Crowe also sent his script to McDormand, who had just won an Oscar for Fargo. “Who’s the best actor for these parts?” Crowe immediately thought of Crudup, just then getting some attention in Hollywood. “The script is the star,” Spielberg told him. When Pitt and Streep decided others would be better suited for their roles, Crowe met with Steven Spielberg, whose company DreamWorks, along with Vinyl Films, was producing the movie.
I’m going to play this tiny sister part.’ ” “And I think people were whispering to her, ‘You’re playing a small side part in this movie? You’re not the star?’ And Kate said, ‘I promised Cameron I was going to be in this movie. “Harvey Weinstein was already trying to get Kate into romantic comedies,” Crowe said. And Kate Hudson signed on to play Anita, Elaine’s rebellious daughter. Meryl Streep was approached to play Elaine. So he ditched the British band and invented the Midwestern band Stillwater.īrad Pitt was originally going to play Russell. “It was kind of burlesquing the British stuff,” Crowe recalled. “It was like the personal was driving the story every step of the way.” As Crowe was writing his movie, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was released. Then, in draft after draft, “the publicist got smaller and the personal story of the reporter got bigger,” Crowe said. There was a young reporter, but he was a minor character. The story was about a British publicist (Crowe wrote the part with David Bowie in mind) who represented a British rock band. Though dependent on a walker and requiring friends to help her get around, she reserved three seats on the aisle for the entire Old Globe run of Almost Famous.Ĭrowe’s original draft of Almost Famous-the movie-had nothing to do with his mother or his teenage years covering bands such as the Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, and the Eagles (Russell is modeled on Glenn Frey). It took Crowe nearly 40 years to get to the theater-detouring through Hollywood with movies such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything…, Jerry Maguire, and Vanilla Sky-but when he finally got there, Alice was thrilled. “You have sadness and romance and humor and character.” “You have it all in this song,” she told her son. While Crowe was falling in love with Joni Mitchell in the early 1970s, his mother was championing Stephen Sondheim, especially his musical Company and her favorite song from the show, “Barcelona.”
I want to stay here and try and sneak rock music into the house while you’re gone.’ ” You’ll brag about it later,’ ” Crowe recalled.
“She would say, ‘Let’s go see these Shakespeare plays. When Crowe was growing up in San Diego-practically across the street from the Old Globe-she took, or rather dragged, him to the theater. She’d been a devoted theatergoer ever since she saw Marlon Brando in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire. But she was even more excited about the musical. Crowe’s mother, a college professor and social activist, loved the movie.
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