Week 26 – Almost Famous (2000)

• Almost Famous
• Released: 9/22/2000
• Starring: Patrick Fugit, Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Jason Lee, Frances McDermott, Zooey Deschanel, Anna Paquin, Jimmy Fallon, Philip Seymour Hoffman
• Director: Cameron Crowe
• IMDB Page

Welcome back to 52 Films, 52 Portraits! It’s Week 26! We’re officially hitting the halfway point! It’s hard to believe, but it’s true!

This week’s film was chosen by Anna, who happens to be my younger brother, Ramsey‘s girlfriend. Anna and Ramsey met in grad school, and she now lives and works in Birmingham, AL.

Anna and Ramsey

When I first talked with Anna about the project, she seemed pretty excited to participate and was one of the people who instantly knew which film she was going to choose.

When we began our conversation, Anna told me that she would consider herself to be a fan of film, but not the “midnight-premiere… hardcore theater-goer” kind of fan. She is the type that prefers to watch a film in the comfort of her own home as opposed to a crowded theater.

Her earliest memory of going to a theater was to see the Disney classic The Lion King. She said that she remembered crying because the hyenas were scary. As she grew up, she began to find her own particular taste in films. She told me about seeing Garden State at around 15 and realizing that she had never felt that way about a film before. It was a film that had a huge impact on her life and has really affected her tastes ever since.

She loved it so much that she actually almost chose it for this project. Based on that, it makes sense that she described her favorite genre as independent films with great soundtracks. She said that she is a big sucker for a film with an awesome soundtrack. That being said, it makes total sense that she would feel that film is best realized when it is perfectly paired with music and photography to create the maximum viewing experience for the audience. She believes that every little bit of writing, every sound, every song should be intentional. At the same time, she added, there has been a trend of films getting longer and longer, and she’s not a fan of that. She feels that if the story can be told in an hour and a half, the film should be an hour and a half. In some cases it feels like films are made longer just for lengths sake and that doesn’t benefit the story or the viewer. She said that she would be much more likely to buy a movie ticket if she wasn’t going to be forced to sit in front of the giant screen for 3 hours at a time.

Anna told me that her favorite director is Cameron Crowe. She loves his work and said that she even loved Elizabethtown, which a lot of his fans didn’t love. She described his work as having the ability to give the viewer a sense of nostalgia for a place that they may have never even been.

Like Garden State, Anna told me that her pick – Almost Famous – is a coming-of-age story supported by incredible music. She said that she sees both films as character-driven adventures – her favorite kind! She remembers watching Almost Famous for the first time when she was around 17 years old. She said that it really spoke to her in a way that no film ever had before. It gave a voice to that part of her that longed for adventures with people who were different from herself and the people that she grew up around. She felt held back by her youth and inability to get out there and have her own adventures, so she buried herself in music and let her self-expression flow out that way. Almost Famous was one of the first times that she really saw a representation of these feelings that she had never been able to fully articulate before.

In closing, Anna said that she doesn’t feel that a film has to have a big impact on the world for it to have an impact on you. There are plenty of films that she loves there were not commercial successes. The simple fact that a work of art can effect a single person’s life should be enough reason to create it in the first place.

I think that going into this week, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Almost Famous is probably one of the films on the list that I knew the least about. I knew that it involved music and was considered a comedy. But I was thinking more Empire Records than 70s rock era adventure. I was looking forward to a change of pace after a few weeks of suspenseful dramas. Ultimately, though, the film ended up being totally different than the few details I was expecting. It was less laugh-out-loud funny and more find-the-humor-in-growing-up funny. It made less side-splitting jokes, and instead explored the main character’s coming-of-age adventures and mined that area for a more subtle humor.

Like Anna, I really enjoyed the film’s soundtrack. It perfectly transported the viewer back into a time that many of us (Anna and myself included) didn’t even experience. It used the music of 1973 to create a reimagining of that era. I loved that aspect of the film.

I also loved the fact that the film’s cast was incredible. Many of them were just starting their careers and have gone on to do so much. But everyone did their job fantastically. I obviously knew Kate Hudson was in the film, but I had no idea people like Jason Lee, Zooey Deschanel, Jimmy Fallon or the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman were in it as well. It was so fun to see all of these actors in roles from nearly two decades ago.

The plot itself was fun as well, and I am also a sucker for a good coming-of-age story, but I will admit that at times I lost the thread a little. There were times that I couldn’t remember what city the characters were in, or why the main character’s mother had let it go as far as it had. But I think that some of this was on purpose, creating the feeling of the whirlwind that the characters were experiencing. We were seeing this rock and roll tour through the eyes of an innocent but enthusiastic and driven 15 year old, and it was at times exciting, hilarious, scary and surreal.

I thought that Kate Hudson was perfectly cast as Penny Lane, and played the part beautifully. You really saw why the men in the story were drawn to her.

Overall, I really enjoyed the film, and it was a welcome break from some of the more dramatic, though enjoyable, films of late. Next week we have an even bigger departure from the dramatic streak!

Coming up next: The Princess Bride