How do you go from taking a very personal experience or story that you want to tell, want to commit to film, and decide on how to keep it personal and yet still layer on twists, go down different roads and use your artistic license to make it into a movie?
Cameron Crowe: “That’s a really good question. I think that hopefully that happens naturally. There were little things that I guess I always wanted to write about. Seeing a loved one in a casket. I know that doesn’t sound like a comedy moment, but being able to put that scene on film and having it feel the way that it felt and having talked to other people that have been in a similar situation and knowing how indelible that feeling was. I really wanted to try and catch that. And from there, and knowing the music that was in your head, you just keep working on it, and hopefully it’ll flow out in a structure that might make sense, but with this movie the structure was always off which is why up until six days ago we were still editing it. It’s crazy in that you just sort of set high bars for yourself. Like, can you turn this into a movie that ends with a 15-minute road trip? Throw the dice!”
But that’s why it’s worth doing, right?
Crowe: “That’s right. That’s right. Yeah, because if you do pull it off, you remember that a movie actually took you to that place and you weren’t expecting it.”
You’ve already talked about your plans to release a longer DVD version of Elizabethtown similar to the Untitled: Almost Famous release. As a former prose writer, has DVD and that kind of technology opened things up so that you can make a movie for the theaters, but then also have a more novelistic approach, knowing that you can look at it again and blow it up a bit bigger than what the people in the multiplex were seeing?
Crowe: “Yeah. I think that they are two very different kinds of formats. I’m really beginning to crave both experiences, and they are different. In a theater there is one experience. You’re sitting in the dark and there’s a rhythm that happens when you are in a theater and you share that with other people and that’s often really good a comedy because it’s fun to laugh with other people. And then there can be a version of that same movie that’s more of a kick-back, kind of personal experience that you can have with it, and then pause it and go get a beer, go have a sandwich, make a phone call before your friend goes to bed, come back and continue the road trip and continue the journey. And that’s cool. So what I hope is that it doesn’t contribute to a glut of entertainment, because you never want to tax people in that way. What is cool, though, that is naturally on this movie and on Almost Famous there seems to be a different version that’ll be emerging as part of a two disc set for DVD.”
People enjoy that world you create and they kind of want to walk around in it a little bit more, and you’re kind of giving them the opportunity to do that.
Crowe: “Thanks. Hopefully. And you have the stuff shot and often it’s mixed, so why not put it out? I wonder if Spielberg, however, will go back on his pledge to only put out one cut on DVD.”
He’s a traditionalist. You’d think that filmmakers like that would want to bust through those limitations–
Crowe: “Yeah, but maybe he just is so in his head, and so edits a shot before he even picks up the camera that there’s only one version there. That’s a good way to do it.”
I’m trying to connect the dots between some of the characters in your different films. There seems to be a theme with tarnished golden boys, guys who were on the rise quickly then get a bit derailed. Now you were successful from an early age. Did you ever feel the “tarnished” part of it yourself?
Crowe: “Sure. Come on, man! [Laughs] And gently asked, I might say. Thank you. It’s interesting. I felt that I was never more sure of anything than I was sure that people would show up to see Almost Famous. No one showed up at the theaters. It was a brutal Friday night. Someone called me around 6:00 and the last New York screening had occurred on Almost Famous and they already knew. They called me and they said, ‘Dude. It’s over. The movie is a bomb.’ And critics had liked it, and all my friends had said that it was good. Rockers who I knew that had seen it said, ‘That made me remember why I fell in love with music.’ But here was this voice on the phone saying, ‘Dead. No one wants to see it.’ I called home. We were on a promotional tour for the movie and I called home and I said, ‘You know what? It’s a bomb. Our labor of love was a bomb. Whatever. We didn’t do it for that. We did it for ourselves, but it landed with a thud.’ And it wasn’t meant to be, but one of the themes of this movie, I think–Elizabethtown–is that it’s not over when it’s over, because now wherever we go and wherever we’ve gone with Elizabethtown, people want to talk about Almost Famous. They’ve all seen it and it’s really ended up finding it’s audience. And the same thing happened with ‘Fast Times,’ on DVD and video. So that’s how the story ends. It finds its way to the people you made it for, but do you feel tarnished in looking at the eyes of others looking at you? Yeah. You do sometimes. But the lesson of it is not to put your self-worth all on that kind of success. It’s interesting, but I didn’t even think about that as a parallel to Elizabethtown until recently. You’ve got to kind of ride out what’s perceived as a failure, I think.”
As long as you’re happy with it. You want its success, but you must have been happy with it as an artist, right?
Crowe: “I was. And this one, even when we went out on this festival circuit recently, the movie wasn’t finished and I didn’t feel completely happy with it, and that’s why I asked it to be called a work in a progress because, strangely, it was actually a work in progress. That wasn’t code for anything else, and it sort of found itself. I already had another cut of it, but it wasn’t until the last night in Toronto where I was like, ‘I got it. I know the tweaks that I want to make.’ And then it was done.”
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Kirsten Dunst’s character also reminded me of John Cusack’s character in Say Anything, in that it’s someone relentlessly optimistic who’s brought another, unexpected element to someone else’s life and opened it up in one way or another. Have you had people like that in your life? Was there a real version of Kirsten’s character, like there was a real Lloyd Dobbler?
Crowe: “Yeah. I’ve met a few of them, and they are usually the people that you least expect. Life has a really interesting sense of humor, because the people that you expect to be there helping you, if you really feel alone and in need, are rarely there. It’s freaky, because the panorama is empty, and then there’s someone that you don’t even feel comfortable hanging out with saying, ‘I’m here for you.’ And then you begin to realize what that person really is and what they really mean, and I’ve had a few people like that. Warriors of optimism. And Chuck [a minor side character in Elizabethtown] has the theme of the movie. So when someone says, ‘What’s the purpose of Chuck?’ I say, ‘Damn. Chuck is everything.’ Chuck says ‘Death and life and life and death, right next door to each other. It’s all about family, bro.’ Then he disappears down the hall. He, too, is a warrior for optimism, and it’s fun to celebrate those characters. But I love your question because Lloyd is a character that’s really close to my heart and the way that Cusack played him was with such kind of conviction. You really believed that he was thinking of those things while he was saying them, and it’s the same with Kirsten.”
It’s a different spin, but the same personality type. How important is the chemistry between the actors that you chose to play these parts, in this case Kirsten and Orlando [Bloom]?
Crowe: “Pretty important. They say that you have to kind of believe the love story through the camera, and I felt it. I was really nervous, though, because I hadn’t sort of seen them together, but I had already cast them, which I’ve never done before.”
That sounds tricky.
Crowe: “It was tricky, because he was in another country, and she was cast first and not available to get together with him. It was a whole kind of strange scheduling thing, and so I went on instinct, which can be a very scary thing. Then they walked in together for the first read-through having run into each other outside. I was going to be there to introduce them and make sure that everything was comfortable between them, but they sort of found each other on their own and walked in and I saw them together and immediately I was so relieved because they seemed like a likely unlikely couple, and not like ‘They saw each other from across the room and fell in love with their glorious smiles…’ kind of couple. They were just kind of like paling around together, and I thought that the love could grow from that, but you hope that they seemed like they could be a couple that could be together in real life.”
Do you have that “Aha!” moment when you’re shooting a scene and you just know the chemistry is working?
Crowe: “Yeah. And I literally say s**t like that, too, and the people around me go, ‘Okay. Easy, fella. You’ll know for sure in the editing room.’ Like there was a moment when Kirsten was on the bed on the phone call, and I think that it’s when she goes, ‘I think that’s what they say.’ And she was kind of rolling over, and I was going, ‘That’s it. That’s it. Cut. That feels so much like what I would have dreamed of when I wrote the script.’ They were packing up the equipment and going, ‘I guess that means we can move on. Is he happy? Good. Great. I’m glad that you’re happy.’ I’m like, ‘No. This is important.’ I think that it’s good to chase the enthusiasm even when you’re on the set and people might be tired. You just have to remind everyone that it is about those little moments, and that the movie does live or die on how she rolls over and says, ‘I think that’s what they say.’ That’s the magic.”
You were close with Billy Wilder. Can you talk about his influence on this particular film, things that you were able to apply to this film in particular that you learned from him?
Crowe: “He said that with a comedy ‘you have to show it to people and watch it with people,’ and I remembered him a lot when we got out of the editing room. I was like, ‘He’s right. The rhythm of this movie is going to be determined by watching it with people.’ That was a big thing, but I think about him all the time when we’re filming and I think about him all the time anyway, because he’s such an inspiring person. And not just a director, and he is a great director. But as a guy he just stayed so curious and loving of life. It’s great, but I thought about him a lot quoting [ filmmaker Ernst] Lubitch making the movie because his hero was Lubitch and he would always say, ‘ Lubitch always said in your story say two and two, but never add it up to four. Let the audience add it up.’ So we would always say, ‘This is a two plus two moment, and so let them add up four by looking at your face, Orlando.’ And then we’d just do a close up of Orlando’s face–it is so expressive that he could give you four. There is a four moment in the movie when he’s back in Kentucky–and a real guy from Kentucky, by the way, is saying, ‘I’m Russell Marlow from Barstown, and I want you to–‘”
I thought that might be a real guy and not an actor! He was great!
Crowe: “This guy is actually trying to sell Orlando on joining the American Legion in the scene. I was like, ‘Brother, way to go for it.’ He was like, ‘I want you to join the American Legion.’ And he corrects himself because Orlando hasn’t been to war, at least off-camera, and he’s like, ‘Or the sons of the Legion.’ I love it! He goes, ‘I want to give you this hat.’ He starts talking about this hat, and he’s pitching his buddies that put pins on it. He was saying, ‘I’m going to jam my friend’s names into this movie.’ But the reverse of it is that Orlando is just looking at this guy with the hat, and he’s thinking about his dad and he gets lost into the details of what’s actually happened, and that moment is when he adds it up inside himself and you see it. That’s a four moment.”
Music, obviously, is vital to your films. You always have a good anecdotal story about songs for your movies, and your journey to get a certain song for a film. Is there a good story for this one?
Crowe: “[Laughs] Well, I’ll tell you one: I’ve always loved the song ‘Jesus Was A Cross Maker’–The Hollies version. The original version by an artist named Judy Sill, but The Hollies’ version felt like a real pop-faux ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ kind of a song, and a really good song to start the movie and have it feel like an ending. And I just wanted to honor the song in the greatest way, because I love it. And we couldn’t find a copy of it that was anything other than a crackly vinyl copy, which I almost went with, and finally we got a copy and it was so great, and it sounded great. And we got a call that Terry Sylvester, the singer from The Hollies for that period, was in Toronto and wanted to come see the movie. We had this long letter saying that they were available and he’d come with his manager, and that he was available on this night and if we wanted to meet him, he’d be around. Anyway, we invited him and stuff, and he came to one of the screenings in Toronto. I never met him, but we got a very short email from his manager later saying, ‘Really enjoyed the movie. It’s too long, though.’ I was like, ‘Geez. This coming from the guy who sang “Jesus Was A Cross Maker.”‘ And it’s just funny. So you get spoiled sometimes by artists who say, ‘Thank you for the way that you used my song.’ But I guess it’s interesting in that they had the bigger picture in mind, and we ended up cutting some time out of the movie anyway.”
