Movie Quote of the Day (‘Almost Famous,’ In Which a Mom Shocks a Rock Musician)

Russell Hammond [played by Billy Crudup]: [swigging Miller Lite in front of groupies, then grabbing the phone away from William Miller] “Hey, mom! It's Russell Hammond. I play guitar in Stillwater. Hey, how does it feel to be the mother of the greatest rock journalist we've met? Hello? Hello...? Look, you've got a really great kid here. There's nothing to worry about. We're taking good care of him, and you should come to the show sometime—join the circus...”

Elaine Miller [played by Frances McDormand]: “Hey, hey, listen to me, mister. Your charm doesn't work on me—I'm on to you. Of course you like him...”

Russell: “Well, yeah...”

Elaine: “He worships you people. And that's fine by you as long as he helps make you rich.”

Russell: “Rich? I don't think so...”

Elaine: “Listen to me. He's a smart, good-hearted, fifteen-year-old kid with infinite potential.”

[Russell listens, stunned]

Elaine: “This is not some apron-wearing mother you're speaking with—I know all about your Valhalla of decadence and I shouldn't have let him go. He's not ready for your world of compromised values and diminished brain cells that you throw away like confetti. Am I speaking to you clearly?”

Russell: “Yes—yes, ma'am...”

Elaine: “If you break his spirit, harm him in any way, keep him from his chosen profession which is law—something you may not value, but I do—you will meet the voice on the other end of this telephone and it will not be pretty. Do we understand each other?”

Russell: “Uh, yes, ma'am...”

Elaine: “I didn't ask for this role, but I'll play it. Now go do your best. Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid. Goethe said that. It's not too late for you to become a person of substance, Russell. Please get my son home safely. You know, I'm glad we spoke.”

[Elaine hangs up]

[Russell stands holding phone in stunned silence.]— Almost Famous, written and directed by Cameron Crowe (2000)

Twenty years ago this month, the dramedy Almost Famous premiered in American theaters. As with other films by Cameron Crowe, the soundtrack represents a source of nostalgic joy for baby boomers like me who entered adolescence in the early 1970s listening to hits like Todd Rundgren’s “It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference," The Raspberries “Go All the Way,” and Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.”

But the heart of the film is Crowe’s Oscar-winning screenplay, a semi-autobiographical account of his time as a teenaged journalist traveling on the road interviewing acts such as The Allman Brothers, The Eagles, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, and Joni Mitchell.

Years later, fans can still recall great scenes such as acid-tripping Russell shouting “I am a golden god!” as he dives into a pool (an incident based on an exploit of Robert Plant’s); a terrifying plane ride that climaxes with a string of hilarious near-death confessions; or William’s encounter with the nubile females who trail the rising rock ‘n’ roll band Stillwater. 

(As explained by one of these ladies, Penny Lane: “We are not Groupies. Groupies sleep with rock stars because they want to be near someone famous. We are here because of the music—we inspire the music. We are Band Aids.”)

I don’t think that Kate Hudson has ever been sweeter, funnier or more moving om film than as the warm-hearted Penny. It’s not surprising that she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance—or, in a case of art imitating life, that Patrick Fugit, much like his Crowe stand-in William, fell for her.

And, in one of the few cases in which he played a real-life person, the late, extraordinary Philip Seymour Hoffman turned in one of his nicely nuanced turns as cynical but compassionate rock journalist Lester Bangs.

Yet, for me, the actor who stands out (and, like Ms. Hudson, a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee for the movie) is Frances McDormand (pictured) as William’s psychology prof mom Elaine—fiercely protective (yes, overly so) of her son (as seen in the above ferociously funny tongue-lashing) but also, in a sense, the moral center of the film. 

(Yes, Elaine is based on Crowe’s mother—who, despite the filmmaker’s concern that she would bother McDormand during filming, ended up getting on very well with the actress.) It is a far cry from the libertine musician she would play two years after the release of Almost Famous in Laurel Canyon.

Maggie Lange’s GQ analysis of the “aggressively, stunningly, transcendently uncool” Elaine captures perfectly both the character’s hilarious Mother Bear instincts (though I suspect that at least a few mothers I know have been tempted to use some variation of Elaine’s “family whistle”) and her belief in her son’s promise and goodness—a belief that Russell, for all his instincts towards that “Valhalla of decadence,” ultimately shares and honors.

It is in keeping with McDormand’s view about other mothers she’s played, expressed in a 2003 New York Times interview with Karen Durbin: “Those roles weren't just mothers in a story about a male protagonist. First they were specific, three-dimensional people."

Almost Famous also reflects Crowe’s ongoing fascination with Billy Wilder. Crowe had conducted lengthy, intense interviews with the Sunset Boulevard filmmaker about his techniques and themes (later collected, like a volume that Francois Truffaut did based on talks with Alfred Hitchcock, into Conversations With Wilder). Crowe had tried unsuccessfully to persuade Wilder to play a character in his hit Jerry Maguire, and a late scene in Almost Famous pays homage to Jack Lemmon’s desperate floor-walking with a suicidal Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment.

I was stunned to read that, despite all of its critical acclaim, Almost Famous underperformed at the box office, clobbered by a re-release of The Exorcist. 

But over the years, it has found its audience—not just the musicians who inspired and appreciated it, but the millions of fans who had their heads blown away by a piece of music (as William is by the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds classic LP) and seek every moment they can from then on to re-experience that sense of youthful transcendence. It has reached cult status, even inspiring its own podcast.

Moreover, as with Crowe’s best other works (Say Anything, Singles, and Jerry Maguire), it celebrates the necessity of idealism and openness to love amid the “compromised values” that Elaine Miller fears, battles, and girds her decent son to withstand.

Quote of the Day (Daphne Merkin, on Cate Blanchett)

“I find myself staring at her skin, which has been justifiably much-commented on by interviewers and is, perhaps, the most divalike thing about her: luminous and poreless and the color of a pale peach. Second only to her skin is her bone structure, which is a gift from the gods, and then come her eyes, which are a piercing blue-gray with tiny pupils. Not to mention her generous, mobile mouth. Together these visual assets can be played up or played down, depending on the maquillage — depending, indeed, on whether she wears so much as a dab of lipstick — which is why Blanchett can look alternately wanly attractive, as she does in the 2005 Australian indie film ‘Little Fish,’ playing a troubled woman trying to rise above her past, or undeniably stunning, as she does later that night when presenting an Oscar for best costume and makeup, dressed in a haute couture Givenchy gown (one of two gowns that she chose between) that made everyone else look tacky.”—Daphne Merkin, “Vanishing Act,” T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Women’s Fashion and Beauty, Summer Issue, April 17, 2011

I’ve been waiting three years to use both this quote and the accompanying photo. Well, nobody can say that I don’t hold onto my ammunition until I see the whites of their eyes—or, in the case of Cate Blanchett—now breathlessly awaiting her second Oscar win—her “piercing blue-gray with tiny pupils” orbs.

This description made my jaws drop. At first glance, the verb one associates with this style of writing is gush. But that style of celebrity journalism or criticism, so common in awards season, usually stops with encomiums to the subject’s talent and, perhaps, a once-over-lightly indication that the person is Long on Looks.

This passage, however, is of another order entirely, with that tribute to Ms. Blanchett’s “gift from the gods.” The right verb, in this instance, is a first cousin of “gush,” but with different starting consonants: crush. “Crush,” as in the intense adoration, as common as acne, of adolescence, somehow, against all odds, lingering into adulthood.

Instances of this are so rare, even in entertainment journalism/criticism, that I can count them on the fingers of one hand. In one case, Roger Ebert used “sexy” or a synonym so often in describing star Frances McDormand, in a review of her Laurel Canyon, that I briefly wondered if this was his way of asking her for a date. (I’m sure that the actress and hubby Joel Coen had a few chuckles over that review.)

The other time dates back to the last years of the last century, when then-New Yorker editor Tina Brown, just as the Monica Lewinsky scandal was erupting, sent a “Fax From Washington” with as ardent a literary come-on as I had encountered—until Ms. Merkin, that is. Describing a February 1998 dinner for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Ms. Brown depicted Bill Clinton thus: “Now see your President, tall and absurdly debonair, as he dances with a radiant blonde, his wife... Amid the cliches about his charm, his glamour is undersung... Forget the dog-in-the-manger, down-in- the-mouth neo-puritanism of the op-ed tumbrel drivers, and see him instead as his guests do: a man in a dinner jacket with more heat than any star in the room."

The question now, of course, is whether Ms. Blanchett is to be punished for director Woody Allen’s assorted sins by being denied an Oscar herself. My guess is that it won’t happen, because Hollywood, like the besotted Ms. Brown, regards lifted eyebrows at transgression as “down-in-the-mouth neo-puritanism.” If Tinseltown could award a Best Director Trophy to Roman Polanski despite his guilty plea to drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl, it is unlikely in the extreme that it would strike out at an actress with no connection to the disputed incident(s) involving Allen and Dylan Farrow.

Instead, I think, the industry will play a game of Kiss Me, Cate—and hold onto their seats, anticipating a speech much like the one she gave (after one glass too many) at the Screen Actors Guild Awards earlier this year, when she hilariously harrumphed about being given the bum’s rush by the teleprompter after “Matthew McConaughey spoke about Neptune.” I’ll bet they’ll find that more endearing, even, than the looks that astonished Ms. Merkin without (obviously) rendering the latter expressionless.