This is the second in a series of essays about great films from the first decade of the 21st Century. I'll pick a new movie each week leading right up to my final list in December 2009.
Almost Famous is one the most pure collections of cinematic moments of the last decade. Its poetry is expertly directed, marvelously written and carefully acted out by performers who will strive for the rest of their careers to find better roles only to come up short every time.
The fact that it’s partially autobiographical for writer and director Cameron Crowe makes it somehow even more poetic: this story actually happened in some form, and it’s not just the whimsy of some distant Bach-loving writer.
Crowe, who gave us Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Say Anything, was only a teen when he traveled with the Allman Brothers and other rock greats as a writer for Rolling Stone magazine. He witnessed turmoil, success, groupies and drugs from the sheltered perspective of a rock journalist. He grew up, married a rock star (Nancy Wilson of Heart), wrote some film scripts and then directed a few; everything seemed to be building up to Almost Famous, Crowe’s very personal magnum opus. When he finally undertook the film, in that glorious year before 9/11, he was ready. He brought an authenticity to the film and the innocence of that teen-version of himself. No one else could have done it with this passion and insight. The film follows 15-year-old William Miller (Patrick Fugit), whose dream to become a rock journalist is given some legs when Rolling Stone magazine, thinking he’s an adult, gives him an assignment: 1,000 words on Stillwater, America’s newest up-and-coming rock band. The film takes place in 1973, when great music is still emerging from the ’60s for rock’s “death rattle, its last gasp.”
Early in the film William meets Creem magazine writer Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who extols some insightful wisdom to his young apprentice: do not make friends with the rock stars (“Friendship is the booze they feed you”), beware of the “swill merchants” at Rolling Stone, and don’t write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars (“They will ruin rock ’n’ roll and strangle everything we love about it”). Crowe might have been quoting the real Lester Bangs’ work, or he might have been offering his own editorial of the current state of rock. In any case, the film acknowledges in every note that the post-Woodstock pre-disco era was the golden age of rock ’n’ roll and Almost Famous captures all of its electric energy to the point that we sadly grieve its passing from the screen's edges. 
Although music is this film’s lifeblood (more on that later), what really gives it its soul are warm, compassionate performances by Fugit, the floppy-haired “enemy” to the rock band; Billy Crudup, who plays Stillwater’s enigmatic guitarist Russell Hammond; Frances McDormand, who plays William’s paranoid mother; and, most famously, Kate Hudson as the beautiful Penny Lane, Stillwater’s resident groupie or “Band Aid.” Band Aids, we're told, inspire the musicians with their beauty and finesse, and never with sex — "Just blowjobs and that's it," one Band Aid says very matter-of-factly.
When the film was released in 2000, Hudson was an unknown. Almost Famous is what delivered the young actress, daughter of Goldie Hawn, to the masses and launched her entire career. Her Penny Lane is magical, the kind of character we fall in love with — a Grace Kelly performance. You simply can’t take your eyes off her. It’s a big, brave performance with a number of important scenes, including a Quaalude overdose, but watch the little scenes: Hudson shooing off other girls from the Stillwater guitarist in a crowded hallway, ironing clothes during a band fight, dancing on concert trash in an empty venue, her tears when she finds out she was traded to another band for a case of beer. It’s a total performance, and Hudson never stops acting or dials it down. At one point the film frames her eyes in a close-up that it has to be one of cinema’s most beautiful single frames ever photographed. We know what groupies will do for rock stars (anything), and I fear another actress would have made Penny Lane too sexual, whorish even, but Hudson gives the character dignity, morals and confidence, yet retains that sexual liberation and expression. Hudson is absolute perfection, but so are many roles in this marvelous film. I love Jason Lee’s performance as Jeff Bebe, Stillwater’s Robert Plantish lead singer. “I work just as hard or harder than anybody on that stage,” he screams at the guitarist during a band meeting. “You know what I do? I connect. I get people off. I look for the guy who isn’t getting off, and I make him get off.” Or consider Zooey Deschanel — Zooey, glorious, Zooey — as William’s sister who has to sneak her Simon & Garfunkel albums into the house and later provides some good advice: “Listen to The Who with a candle burning and you will see your entire future.” And then McDormand as William’s mother, who believes “adolescence is a marketing tool.” She is one of the many poets of the film, and her warm compassion seems to counter-balance the icy distraction of William’s rock world. She has one of the bigger jokes of the film: outside a concert venue she instructs her son from the family station wagon, "Don't do drugs!" All the concertgoers, some plucking joints from their lips, turn and recite it back in a rowdy chorus, "Don't do drugs!"
The film casts these honestly written characters, and many others — including more Band Aids played by Fairuza Balk and Anna Paquin — in the film’s cross-country journey of concerts, after-parties and tumultuous band meetings in which the only thread holding Stillwater together is seemingly William, the writer who might get the band on the cover of “Rolling Stone fucking magazine.” All along the way he parties a little, falls in love with Penny and interviews the band members with the exception of Russell, who delays and delays until William has missed his high school graduation and driven his mother into a panic (“Rock stars have kidnapped my son,” she tells a classroom of college students). The film builds and builds until finally the tour is over, the Rolling Stone piece is done and the Band Aids have to disperse before the real girlfriends show up. And William returns home to collapse on his bed in defeat after Rolling Stone’s fact checker says the band denied 90 percent of William’s story. There’s more to it that I'm leaving out, of course, but I love the ending. It feels complete in every way. 
I said I would get back to the music and here it is: music is 50 percent of the greatness of this film. Crowe, ever the music fan, knows how to pick appropriate tunes for his characters and scenes. If you’re like me you’ll see scenes of the movie when you hear these songs outside the context of the film: greats like Simon & Garfunkel’s “America,” Elton John’s “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” a number of Led Zeppelin songs including “Tangerine” and “Misty Mountain Hop,” and Cat Stevens’ “The Wind,” which is featured in the lovely scene of Penny Lane dancing on the concert trash. Even Stillwater, the film’s fictional band, has some wonderful era-appropriate music that they play during many of Almost Famous’ concerts. The music ascends past greatness in one scene in particular, a scene that has come to symbolize the power that music and film hold over us: Stillwater, on the verge of a split, rides through Kansas on the tour bus and slowly, one by one, the band joins in on singing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” It’s an act of forgiveness and the music wipes the slate clean. It’s a moving, powerful scene and it represents the height of Crowe’s skills. 
I must acknowledge here that Almost Famous is a very personal film to me. It hit me at a turning point in my life. I had just graduated high school, just started doing rock journalism (and movie reviews) and found myself in many William Miller-like band situations. Almost Famous is truth. It shows a teen with hopes and dreams. All too often teens are written into movies simply to exist in classrooms or at dinner tables with grown-ups. Here’s a film where the kid is as much of the story as any of the adults, and his desires, dreams and fears are given the weight they deserve. Almost Famous is not a perfect movie — few movies are — but it feels like one, especially when you consider your emotions when the film ends. If you're like me, you're floating on a cloud.
