Cameron Crowe started writing for Rolling Stone magazine at age 15. At 24 he went back to high school undercover and wrote a book about teen mores in the early 80s. He then adapted that book into a script for a high school comedy that helped define the genre. From there it was a short step to directing. Crowe went on to write and direct a series of character-driven films that were popular with critics and audiences. Then he began to fall off. His most recent film was one of the year’s biggest flops and was widely derided for a crucial piece of miscasting.
What the hell happened?
Cameron Crowe was born on July 13 1957 in Palm Springs. He spent most of his childhood in San Diego. Crowe skipped kindergarten and two grades in elementary school so he ended up graduating from high school at 15. He’d already begun writing about music for his school newspaper and for a few underground papers in the San Diego area. Not long after graduating, he met Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres. Fong-Torres hired him to write for the magazine. He soon became a contributing editor. Crowe became the youngest ever contributor to Rolling Stone. If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because Crowe’s Almost Famous was highly autobiographical.
In 1977, Rolling Stone relocated its offices from the West Coast to New York prompting Crowe to move on from music journalism. He would continue to contribute articles to the magazine over the years, but his interests were starting to lay elsewhere.
Specifically, Crowe was interested in going back to high school. He decided to, at the age of 22, pose undercover as a high school student to see what typical high school life was like in the 70s-early 80s. Taking the name “Dave Cameron” (a good way of keeping his actual first name and mixing it with a common first name) he enrolled at Clairemont High in San Diego.
Crowe used his experiences as the basis of a book titled Fast Times At Ridgemont High. Even before the book was published in 1981, Hollywood was interested in adapting it into a movie. Crowe was asked to write a screenplay based on his book. He agreed.
The resulting film was Amy Heckerling’s directorial debut, Fast Times At Ridgemont High. The cast included Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Forrest Whittaker, Phoebe Cates, Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards and Nicolas Cage. Like the book it was based on, the movie chronicled the lives of a handful of high school students. The movie depicted the teens engaging in sex and drug use much to the horror of the parents in the audience.
At the time, critics didn’t care for Fast Times. In a one-star review, Roger Ebert compared the movie to Porky’s and complained that it was “so raunchy” that “the audience can’t quite believe it”.
But Fast Times had more meat on its bones than other raunchy comedies of the day. There was some real substance to the story and characters as opposed to the mindless horniness of Porky’s. So while critics may not have been able to tell the difference, Fast Times has proven to have more staying power over the years. While Porky’s is stuck in 82, Fast Times is still relevant. It’s edgier than many of the John Hughes teen films of the same era.
While Fast Times and Ridgemont High wasn’t as big of a hit at the box office as Porky’s, it ended up grossing about six times its budget over the course of its theatrical run. Four years after its release, it was adapted into a short-lived TV series. Ray Walston and Vincent Schiavelli reprised their roles but everyone else was recast. Heckerling returned to write and direct, but Fast Times was cancelled after only seven episodes.
Crowe’s first effort as a director was the video for the Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker’s song, “Change of Heart” in 1983.
Next, Crowe wrote the script for another film about young people: 1984’s The Wild Life.
The Wild Life was another look at youth in the eighties. Only this time, the characters are recent high school graduates. Instead of starring Sean Penn, The Wild Life starred his brother, Chris Penn. So obviously, it’s a totally different movie. Eric Stoltz, who had a bit part in Fast Times, played Penn’s roommate and Lea Thompson co-starred as Stolt’z ex-girlfriend. The cast also included Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Jenny Wright, Rick Moranis and Randy Quaid.
If critics didn’t like Fast Times, you can imagine how they felt about an obvious knock off. The first movie overcame bad reviews, but audiences didn’t want to live Crowe’s idea of The Wild Life. Despite a promising second-place opening, the movie quickly dropped out of theaters grossing less than half what Fast Times made.
Crowe took some time off from Hollywood. When he returned five years later, it was to direct the coming-of-age drama, Say Anything…
John Cusack starred as a high school senior who desperately wants to go out with his class valedictorian played by Ione Skye. John Mahoney, best-known as Frasier‘s dad, played Skye’s disapproving father. Cusack’s real-life sister, Joan Cusack, also played his sister on-screen.
Say Anything… was produced by director and Simpsons producer James L. Brooks. Brooks met Crowe while he was doing research for Broadcast News. As part of his research, he interviewed Crowe about his experiences with Rolling Stone. Brooks mentioned that he was impressed by Crowe’s voice in The Wild Life and asked if he could write something more personal. Brooks had an idea for a movie about a girl who discovers her father had a criminal background, so he asked Crowe to see what he could do with that.
Periodically, they would meet to discus what was going on in Crowe’s personal life. The topic of conversation was typically Crowe’s relationship with rock star Nancy Wilson from the band Heart. (Crowe and Wilson were married in 1986.) Over that four year period, the story evolved when Crowe told him about a neighbor who was a kickboxer. That neighbor became the basis for Llyod Dobler, the protagonist played by Cusack in the movie.
Originally, Lawrence Kasdan was approached to direct. But according to Crowe, Kasdan backed off. He told Crowe, “You are that main character. You should direct it.”
Say Anything… was not a box office hit, but it was very popular with critics. Roger Ebert named it one of the best films of the year and said it was “a film that is really about something, that cares deeply about the issues it contains—and yet it also works wonderfully as a funny, warmhearted romantic comedy.”
Today, the scene from it that everyone remembers is the one involving Cusack standing outside Skye’s window trying to win her back by holding a boom box playing Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes”.
Of course, Peter Gabriel always adds something. And Cusack’s character picked the right song. Consider what a disaster it likely would have been if he had used “Sledgehammer”.
Gabriel asked to see part of Say Anything… before he would agree to let the song appear in the movie. Crowe had the production company send Gabriel an unfinished cut. Gabriel agreed to let Crowe use the song because he liked the movie, but he was worried about the ending. In the print that Gabriel watched, the main character overdosed at the end. When Crowe heard that, he realized that the production company had sent a copy of the John Belushi bio-pic Wired by mistake.
Next up, Crowe tackled a more mature love story.
Singles follows the love lives of a group of Seattle twenty-somethings, many of whom are connected with the local music scene. It stars Matt Dillon, Bridget Fonda, Kyra Sedgwick and Campbell Scott.
Crowe filmed Singles in 1990. The film was completed in early 1991. But release was delayed as Warner Brothers tried to figure out how to market it. That problem would solve itself later that year with the explosion in popularity of a certain style of rock music beginning with G.
Yes, the breakthroughs of Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and the accompanying arrival of grunge meant that now there was something they could tie Singles into. Pearl Jam members Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament actually appear in the film as members of Citizen Dick, the Dillon character’s band. Pearl Jam also contributed two songs to the soundtrack. So did fellow Seattle rockers Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. The soundtrack also featured non-Seattle rockers Smashing Pumpkins before they really took off. Paul Westerberg, former frontman of The Replacements, also contributed songs to the soundtrack and wrote the films score.
The one unfortunate side effect of the grunge explosion for Singles was that it was no longer possible to use Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in the film because the rights had become too expensive. But oh well whatever. Nevermind.
The buzz of the soundtrack and the Seattle association helped market Singles upon its release in September 1992. Reviews were mostly positive, but the soundtrack buzz ended up overshadowing the movie. It opened in third place at the box office and ended up grossing under $20 million dollars. Its poor box office performance actually became an obstacle for similarly themed Gen-X movies like Reality Bites. However, Singles has gathered something of a cult following over the years and it holds up reasonably well despite the end of grunge.
At one point, there was talk of developing Singles into a TV show. Although that didn’t come to pass, rumor has it that the movie was an inspiration for the sitcom Friends which also centered on six twenty-somethings living in close proximity.
After Singles, Crowe was relatively quiet for the next three years. But when he came back in 1996, everyone felt it. With a scream of “Show Me The Money!”
Jerry Maguire starred Tom Cruise in the title role, Renee Zellweger as the leading female/love interest and Cuba Gooding Jr as a football quarterback who becomes Cruise’s sole client. Cruise plays a sports agent who gets the ax from the top agency he works at for daring to suggest that they should put clients ahead of big bucks. Zellweger is the only one to follow him out the door. Eventually, we know that there will be romance between the two of them and a few life lessons learned.
The movie was inspired by an infamous memo written by Disney studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg. Katzenberg wrote a massive diatribe about the state of the movie industry. This caused great embarrassment to the studio chief when the memo was leaked to the press.
Jerry Maguire introduced a few catchphrases that have joined the general lexicon alongside “Here’s Looking at you kid” and “We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat”. These include “You had me at hello”, “You complete me” and of course “Show me the money!”
the movie was also critically acclaimed and financially successful. Jerry Maguire ended up as the fourth highest grossing film of 1996 and was nominated for 5 Oscars including Best Picture and Cruise for Best Actor. It only ended up winning one however and that went to Gooding for Best Supporting Actor. Sadly it would be more or less downhill from there for Gooding. Crowe was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, but not for Best Director.
Thanks to the success of Jerry Maguire, Crowe had the clout to tell a more personal story. In 2000 Crowe returned with Almost Famous.
Almost Famous is Crowe’s most semi-autobiographical film. It’s based on his own experiences as a rock journalist for Rolling Stone covering bands like the Eagles, Steely Dan and Led Zeppelin. Patrick Fugit played Crowe’s stand-in and Billy Crudup and Jason Lee played members of the band Fugit is following. Phillip Seymour Hoffman appears as Fugit’s mentor, rock journalist Lester Bangs and Kate Hudson played a groupie who inspires both Crudup and Fugit. Anna Paquin and Fairuza Balk played fellow rock groupies.
Reviews were mostly positive. Roger Ebert called it “a lovely film” and picked it as his favorite movie of the year. But despite good reviews, Almost Famous flopped at the box office. It ended up grossing roughly one half of its $60 million dollar production budget.
The movie was largely overlooked come awards season as well. Hudson and Frances McDormand were both nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars. But the only winner was Crowe who was nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Almost Famous was more successful at the Golden Globes where Hudson won Best Supporting Actress and the movie was named Best Film – Musical or Comedy. Crowe was also nominated for Best Screenplay, but he didn’t win at the Globes.
In 2001, Crowe reuinted with Tom Cruise for the psychological thriller, Vanilla Sky.
No, Cruise does not say “show me the money” here. He plays a man who already has a ton of money or maybe he doesn’t. The plot is quite twisty. Vanilla Sky is a remake of the 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes. Crowe cast Penelope Cruz in it, reprising her role from the original. Also appearing were Cameron Diaz, Kurt Russell and Almost Famous alumnus Jason Lee.
The tone of Vanilla Sky is darker than that of any Crowe film to that date. One can tell that he’s trying to branch out. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite the successful break it was intended to be. Vanilla Sky received mixed reviews (many claimed Open Your Eyes was better) and underperformed at the box office. Its box office total doesn’t equal a Vanilla failure of Vanilla Ice proportions. But it wasn’t the smash one expected it to be especially with Crowe and Cruise reuniting.
After Vanilla Sky underperformed, Crowe again took a long break between films. When he returned in October 2005, it was with a film that would introduce another famous phrase into the lexicon. However, this time it would not be a line from the movie itself.
Elizabethtown stars Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon and Alec Baldwin. As I gaze at the credits I find myself reminded that Paula Deen played Aunt Dora. Yet there were no hamburgers made with buns made from doughnuts.
The story itself is about a designer for a shoe company, played by Bloom. After he is fired for a disastrous shoe design, Bloom travels back to his hometown of Elizabethtown, Kentucky for his dad’s funeral. While on the way home, he meets Dunst’s character who figures prominently in the story.
In his review of the film, Nathan Rabin of the AV Club referred to the Dunst character as a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”.
Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime example). The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family.
Unfortunately for Dunst, the phrase has outlived the movie itself. Five years later, Dunst told the AV Club that she didn’t like the term because she found it “weird-sounding”. She also insisted that she was not at all manic, but rather “very chill”.
Today, Elizabethtown is commonly regarded as a fiasco. Most of the critical reviews were pretty negative. Many noted that the basic story was recycled out of elements Crowe had used before to better effect. It opened third at the box office behind Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit which was in its second week in theaters. Like Almost Famous, it grossed about half of what it cost to make. Without the star power of Tom Cruise, Crowe could not deliver at the box office.
In 2009, Crowe teamed up with Pearl Jam to direct the video for their song “The Fixer”, the debut single from their album Backspacer.
Two years later, Crowe would team up again with the Seattle rock band to direct Pearl Jam 20, a documentary that charted the career of the band. It showed the band’s beginning as it rose out of the ashes of Mother Love Bone, their formation and subsequent success followed by their departure from the mainstream and on-going success on their own terms as well as major elements like the battle against Ticketmaster and the tragedy at Roskilde in 2000.
Pearl Jam 20 had a small theatrical release in September of 2011 and was featured on the PBS documentary series American Masters which had previously aired No Direction Home, a Martin Scorsese directed documentary on Bob Dylan.
That same year Crowe also helmed a documentary about an older musical icon. The Union was about the making of Elton John’s album collaboration with Leon Russell, The Union. The documentary aired on HBO.
Both documentaries played to Crowe’s strengths; his storytelling ability and musical knowledge.
Towards the end of 2011, Crowe released his eight feature film.
We Bought A Zoo featured Matt Damon and Scarlet Johannson. Damon plays Benjamin Mee, whose memoir the movie is based on. Mee and his children are looking for a new house after the death of his wife. The house they end up buying has, as the title implies, a zoo as part of the package. Through maintaining the zoo, Mee and his children repair their tenuous relationships. There’s also a romance between Damon and Johannson as the lead zookeeper (this is a Cameron Crowe film after all).
For the first time, Crowe agreed to direct a movie based on someone else’s script. He ended up rewriting the script which had been written by Aline Brosh McKenna based on the book by Mee.
We Bought A Zoo received mixed reviews. While several critics found it contrived and overly saccharine, many reviews were modestly positive. Despite a worrisome 6th place opening at the box office (behind The Adventures of Tintin) We Bought a Zoo improved on its performance in its second week and ended up grossing a not-terrible $75 million dollars.
Four years later, Crowe returned with another star-studded romantic comedy.
Aloha starred Bradley Cooper as a military contractor who returns to Hawaii to help smooth over negotiations with the locals. He ends up reconnecting with his ex played by Rachel McAdams and falling for an Air Force liaison played by Emma Stone. Bill Murray, John Krasinski, Danny McBride and Alec Baldwin rounded out the cast.
The movie was the subject of controversy before it even hit theaters. Hackers leaked internal Sony e-mails in late 2014 that contained embarrassing details about Sony’s upcoming releases. One such e-mail contained references to Crowe’s next movie. Then-current Sony Pictures co-chair, Amy Pascal, wrote that many aspects of the movie’s characters and plot made no sense. In the leaked email, Pascal complained:
I’m never starting a movie again when the script is ridiculous, and we all know it. I don’t care how much I love the director or the actors. It never, not even once, ever works. As much as I want movies [to release], this is way worse. At least the marketing departments at both studios have something to sell [that] looks big and glossy. We have this movie in for a lot of dough and we better look at that. Scott Rudin didn’t once go to the set. Or help us in the editing room. Or fix the script.
Once the movie hit theaters, the controversy grew. This time in regards to the fact that a movie set in Hawaii featured very few actual Hawaiians. More significantly, Emma Stone was cast as a character who’s one-quarter Chinese, one quarter Asian descent. Crowe and Stone both later apologized for this whitewashing.
The film was also ripped part by many critics for having a plot that was basically Elizabethtown in Hawaii. Box office was even more of a disaster, It grossed $26 million against a budget of $37 million. Perhaps, Sayonara may have been a more fitting title.
So what the hell happened?
In some ways, I think Crowe’s primary undoing was that when he ran out of personal stories to tell he had nowhere else to go. Almost Famous was the last Crowe film that truly felt like it was straight from the soul. Vanilla Sky was an attempt at branching out into new territory. But when it didn’t succeed as well as he hoped, he retreated to the formula that had served him well between 1988 and 2000 and followed it to diminishing returns. Elizabethtown and Aloha use the most superficial aspects of the Jerry Maguire formula. But little of the depth or heart.
Since Almost Famous the best things he’s done have been two music documentaries. These play better than his last three narrative features. His next project is the Showtime series Roadies which stars Carla Gugino, Imogen Poots and Luke Wilson. The show’s premise has echoes of Almost Famous in that it deals with a tight-knit group of “roadies” who travel with a popular rock band on tour. The show, which is produced by J.J. Abrams, is set to debut on the premium cable station in 2016.
Thanks for this great write-up. I really enjoy the occasional WTHH Director along with the actors/actresses. It sounds like “Roadies” will be much more up his alley than “Aloha” which just plain wasn’t good. The powerhouse cast couldn’t save that vehicle. (And btw I don’t consider Bradley Cooper an acting powerhouse – he’s only as good as the material, he never is one to transform anything).
I’ve also had it on my radar to revisit Almost Famous and Singles. Saw both back in the day but the memory is a bit hazy.
Should we give up on Cameron Crowe? http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/1/8699897/cameron-crowe-aloha-what-happened He might as well have just said, Keep your expectations low on this one. A landslide of horrible reviews and a sixth-place, $10 million opening weekend later, Crowe’s new film Aloha is dead on arrival — and with good reason. It’s inarguably the worst film of his directorial career, the story of a military contractor (Bradley Cooper) heading up the launch of a satellite in Hawaii, where he ends up romantically ping-ponging between his now-married ex (Rachel McAdams) and a quarter-Chinese, quarter-Hawaiian Air Force pilot named Allison Ng (played, rather inexplicably, by… Read more »
Audience are probably sick of his light fluffy stuff he should try a dark comic book film.
I don’t think he has a comic book movie in him much less a dark one. Making a movie that doesn’t play to your strengths just because it is the genre of the day is a terrible idea.
Where Did Cameron Crowe Go Wrong? http://decider.com/2015/05/29/where-did-cameron-crowe-go-wrong/ In this ongoing franchise of career analyses, we’ve typically focused on A-list actors who were destined for legendary greatness in their respective fields, but have significantly faltered over the last decade (or in some cases, two). Never before have we felt compelled to break down the breakdown of an Academy award-winning director, but alas, Cameron Crowe‘s (already) universally despised Aloha is out today, begging the question: where did he go wrong? Aloha — despite its A-list cast including Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Alec Baldwin, and Bill Murray — has seen a… Read more »
Cameron Crowe, or: When to give up on a director http://moviepilot.com/posts/3397002 Things started to go downhill with Vanilla Sky (2001), which received very-mixed-but-mostly-negative reviews. Yet, it was still a hit(ish) at the box office. This downward trend continued with Elizabethtown (2005), which inspired “meh”s from critics, bombed at the box office, and included a character that is (literally) the very definition of a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” Crowe poked his head above water with the family-friendly (read: “safe”) We Bought A Zoo (2011), garnering mildly-positive reviews and a modest box office, and then followed it up with an even bigger… Read more »
With lifeless ‘Aloha,’ Cameron Crowe blows it (again) http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/movies/2015/05/28/aloha-movie-review/28079571/ Cameron Crowe fans — and that includes most movie critics — have cut him a lot of slack over the years. Our love for “Say Anything,” “Almost Famous” and “Jerry Maguire” made us embrace the big romantic gestures and faint traces of heart in “Elizabethtown,” “Vanilla Sky” and “We Bought a Zoo.” But “Aloha” is a breaking point, a movie that makes you start to see the guy as just, well, full of it. Whatever it was going to be — and editing has been a Crowe problem since 2005’s “Elizabethtown”… Read more »
Say ANything you should mentioned actually flopped in the box office. It only made 5 millions more then its budget. Its amazing movie but no doubt in terms of business aspects it did nothing to enhance cusack or crowe career.
But I feel Crowe has the same problem depp has audience are sick of their trademark movies. I think Depp has his career slump cause have grown tired of his oddball eccentric characters and offbeat movies. Black mass was a step in right direction it was a modest hit but it was a slight break from all his flops. Black mass was by no means a comeback but it first time in years critics did not attack his movies. I am thinking audience have grown warey of Crowes cutesy movies. A lot of directors try new stuff once in a… Read more »
Daily Reads: The Fall of Cameron Crowe’s Idealism, The Unbearable Whiteness of ‘Aloha,’ and More http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/daily-reads-the-fall-of-cameron-crowes-idealism-the-unbearable-whiteness-of-aloha-and-more-20150601 The Decline of Cameron Crowe’s Battered Idealists. Last Friday, Cameron Crowe’s new film “Aloha” opened in theaters to mostly negative reviews and prompted a full-scale reappraisal of his career. Many have said Crowe just lost his way after “Almost Famous,” others said he was never good to begin with. But what happened to Cameron Crowe? The Dissolve’s Scott Tobias argues that it’s his “battered idealist” character that has aged Crowe pre-maturely. Emma Stone’s Eyebrow-Raising Turn as an Asian American in “Aloha”. In “Aloha,” Emma… Read more »
How Cameron Crowe out-Crowed himself with ‘Aloha’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/05/29/how-cameron-crowe-out-crowed-himself-with-aloha/
Review: ‘Aloha’ death knell of Cameron Crowe’s career http://www.citizen-times.com/story/entertainment/movies/2015/06/01/review-aloha-death-knell-cameron-crowes-career/28308415/ Dearly beloved, we gather here today to pay our final respects to the career of Cameron Crowe. After a steady rise from “Say Anything” (1989) to “Singles” (1992) to “Jerry Maguire” (1996) to the practically perfect “Almost Famous” (2000) and its strong follow-up “Vanilla Sky” (2001), the writer-director’s output grew ill with the 2005 release of “Elizabethtown,” a disastrous blow that sidelined him for over six years. Progress was made with “We Bought a Zoo” (2011), a safe yet largely uninspired work that nonetheless exhibited signs of the filmmaker’s former glory… Read more »
In defense of “Aloha”, Emma Stone’s character looking white is part of her character, Bradley Cooper’s character kind of brushes her off when she talks about Hawaiian culture and stuff and makes fun of her at one point for clearly looking white, and later bonds with her partially because he starts to get that her appreciation for Hawaiian culture and myths and stuff is actually legitimate and not just from her overcompensating for her whiteness. You could argue that the film never should have had a character like that to begin with but it wasn’t as simple as taking a… Read more »
I think Johnny Depp does well in gangster-related material, such as “Public Enemies” and “Donnie Brasco”, so I think it was a good move for him.
Degrees of Uncool: Ranking the Narrative Films of Cameron Crowe
http://www.slashfilm.com/best-cameron-crowe-movies-ranked/
Revisiting Cameron Crowe‘s Elizabethtown http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/15336/revisiting-cameron-crowe‘s-elizabethtown Much like his previous effort, Vanilla Sky, Elizabethtown managed to split the critics down the middle (strangely enough, both hold the exact same Metacritic rating) and although it did make its money back at the box office, the numbers were nowhere near as big. Also, unlike Vanilla Sky, Elizabethtown didn’t manage to find an audience in the DVD market. So what went so wrong? Well, firstly, we can look at the story. It is an interesting premise but somehow you just cannot connect with the characters fully enough to care about their plight. This could… Read more »
‘Elizabethtown’ Kicked Off Cameron Crowe’s 10-Year Cold Streak. Let’s Watch It With New Eyes.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/elizabethtown-kicked-off-cameron-crowes-10-year-cold-streak-lets-watch-it-with-new-eyes/
Good read; the Peter Gabriel “Sledgehammer” comment had me laughing pretty good as well. As for Cameron Crowe, he’s somebody who hasn’t had a large output, so when something misses, it looks especially bad on the ledger. Also, I agree with the thought that when he used up his life experiences to tell a story, he didn’t have anything more to say.
Too bad “Singles” didn’t do great at theaters: I did see it at the local AMC , and my friend and I really liked it, and we had no clue about grunge music yet.
I don’t think it’s totally unfair to say that Cameron Crowe has become a one-trick pony over time.
He tried another tick with Vanilla Sky. It didn’t work out. So yeah, one-trick pony sounds fair to me.
Vanilla Sky is still considered a box office hit it was a much needed hit after 4 year break from Jerry magurie when he made the wonderfully but commercial unsuccessful film almost famous. We bought zoo was a box office hit. (at least worldwide) . SO basically outisde his tom cruise films we bought a zoo was his only hit. He could always re team with tom
I’m not sure Tom Cruise would return Crowe’s calls these days.
12 Great Directors Who Helmed Terrible Movie Remakes http://whatculture.com/film-tv/12-great-directors-who-helmed-terrible-movie-remakes?page=8 Cameron Crowe – Vanilla Sky (2001) Before he set about sabotaging his career, writer/director Cameron Crowe made some of the most beloved films of the ’80s and ’90s, including Say Anything, Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire… for some reason, though – and at the height of his popularity, no less – the former music critic turned filmmaker decided to go down the remake route, teaming with Tom Cruise for an American adaptation of an acclaimed Spanish thriller. The original film was 1997’s Open Your Eyes, which tells the story of a… Read more »
His films are great escape. The light tone and upbeat atmosphere gives audiences a good feeling. His films are not always the best but there warm and soothing fun too. I loved Eliztbehttowen it was a cute movie. There are directors who can deliver powerful masterpieces like Martin Scorsese then directors that crowe who movies can be predictable but some audiences do not care cause their guilty pleasures.
IF the right project apples to him why not. Cruise with directors that are not exactly bankable many times. NEil Jordan only had 1 hit when he directed tom in Interivew wiht vampire. Paul Thoamas Anderson was still fresh offf boggie nights when he cast tom in MAgnolia. WHich tom took pay cut for.
Cruise works for A-list directors or up-and-comers he believes in. He doesn’t work with guys in a slump. I don’t think he’d give Crowe the time of day right now.
I assume because they had good working relationship n their 2 films he would. I did not know they where really such thing as a list directors(except maybe Spielberg) i thought people saw movies for actors not directors.
I’m sure Tom Cruise would shake his hand and flash him a million dollar smile. But he’s not going to make another movie with Cameron Crowe just because he likes the guy. The only thing in the world that matters to Tom Cruise is being the biggest movie star in the world. If he had to bludgeon Cameron Crowe to death with his own femur to stay on the A-list, Tom Cruise wouldn’t hesitate to do it. Then he would have his Scientologist goons bury the body in that prison camp they have in Florida and no one would ever… Read more »
For some reason I always think of Cameron Crowe as being about ten to fifteen years younger than he actually is. That might be because I literally am too young to have seen his work from the 1980s or early 90s (Jerry Maguire is chronologically the earliest of his work I’ve seen) but it might also be because Almost Famous feels a lot like an early film – not in a bad way, just not something you’d expect from someone who had been making films for nearly two full decades by that point. Vanilla Sky is underrated and Crowe brought… Read more »
maybe he could team up with ferall for a comedy
Not to drag a dead horse but there are alot worse people then tom. Clint Eastwood had kids with other women during his marriage . HE forced this women to get abortion while he was married to his 1st wife then dumped her he is a notorious womanizer very difficult to work with egomaniac. Cruise is much nicer then clint.
John Cusack holding his boombox up high while blasting Peter Gabriel to win back his girl has become such an iconic piece of pop culture. South Park once parodied this scene in an episode: Stan’s girlfriend breaks up with him and he’s just heartbroken. A friend suggests that Stan show up outside her house with a boom box and some Peter Gabriel, that will surely win her over. So Stan shows up outside, boom box held up high with music blasting out loud enough to get his girlfriend to come to the window….. except that it’s Peter Gabriel’s “Shock The… Read more »
The other night there was a reference on a repeat of Modern Family. In high school Phil wooed Claire with Olivia Newton John instead of Peter Gabriel. Then her dad turned on the sprinklers and shorted out his boom box.
It is iconic scene. But ironically the movie flopped.
Lebeua when tom first work Cameron Crowe he only directed 2 films singles and Say Anything both of which flopped in box office. Yet tom still worked with him so I am sure working a director who`s only 2 films bombed was still risky. Not to mention here is quote by tom why he did Born on 4th of July it does not sound like a guy who cares about staying a list. g with this guy. Don’t trust him. Be careful around him.” There’s that anxiety. [on Born on the Fourth of July (1989)] When I made that film… Read more »
Crowe was an up and coming director.
As far as the quote, most Hollywood guys are full of shit. Tom Cruise more than others. He made Born on the 4th of July because he was chasing Oscar gold and respectability. Top Gun 2 would have been a hit, but it wouldn’t have helped him reach his goals the way working with Stone did. Box office is a piece of the puzzle, not the whole thing.
Exactly Crowe was up and coming director but his only 2 films he made before Jerry maguire flopped. IF Tom was concerned about box office he would say to a guy whos only movies on his resume where not hits becuase it would mean a huge risk meaning the movie he made with crowe huge risk could have been a flop if you think about it teaming up with crowe back then in 1996 was still a liability. Yes not all actors tell the truth. However before Born tom mostly did fun flicks and the only serious film he did… Read more »
I am going to stop you midway through your first sentence. At no point did I say that Cruise was only concerned about box office. I said he was only concerned with being a star. There is a difference. Also, Say anything didn’t flop. It grossed $20 million on a $16 million dollar budget. That’s not a hit, bit it’s not a flop either. Singles grossed $18 million on a $9 million dollar budget. again, not great but not a flop. And both had a lot of buzz which attracted Cruise like a bee to honey. Now Crowe’s buzz is… Read more »
Say anything only made a profit of 4 mill. SOunds like a flop. Singles I was wrong its not a flop. Yes those films did create however a sign of a promising director is at leaving one hit