Rock, groupies, golden gods and that Quaalude kiss: Almost Famous at 20 by the stars and director who made it. They ran the story. What no one in the office realised, though, was that the author was only Within two years, this precocious teenager from San Diego had become the youngest person ever to write a cover feature for the magazine, and was following bands from The Who to Led Zeppelin on tour, a buoyant insider high on the fumes of their jet-set lifestyle.
Almost Famous , released on 13 September , was written and directed by that same Cameron Crowe, by then a household name thanks to his Oscar-winning drama Jerry Maguire Thrumming with the exuberance of youth, Almost Famous is a gloriously sweet-minded story, a tie-dyed paean to lost innocence and the music that shaped and defined a generation before the industry was hijacked by marketing men. Winning the Oscar for best original screenplay, the film captures not only the early Seventies rock scene through the eyes of an idealistic kid — the touring, the glamour, the drugs, the groupies — but also the pangs of betrayal and unrequited love.
The things that William Miller goes through connect with people who were interested in journalism; people who fell in love; people who were a genuine fan of something.
Of course, there are dark sides to all these things, but Cameron is this stalwart observer of the romantic. That heart, that romanticism, that optimism permeates Almost Famous. So he did. Or reassembling it, in some cases. At first, Cameron was reluctant to give me Penny; he saw me as the sister.
But Gail Levin [the casting director] was a big cheerleader for me. At the time, I was shooting a film in Ireland, so I was having to fly back and forth to these auditions.
