“I grew up with that lampshade.”
Where have you gone Cameron Crowe? As of this post, it’s been 10 years since his last feature, the disastrous Aloha. His last three films leaned hard into something he wove into the fabric of his greatest film, Almost Famous. I’m not talking about the music. He’s often defined by his musical tastes, which he liberally pours over his movies. What I’m talking about are the small moments of absolute truth.
I picked that quote because it’s such a throwaway line, but spoken by the lead singer of Stillwater (Billy Crudup), it carries no dramatic weight but is intriguing piece of his persona. It’s like at the Stillwater concert, when Penny takes away William’s pen so that he’ll just experience the band, and instead he looks at her watching the band. There are the big scenes, like of course the “Tiny Dancer” singalong or any scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman or Frances McDormand, but the film’s greatness comes from the truth within the drama.
Finding the small moments came from a lot of footage. Crowe released a longer cut, Untitled. Obviously the longer runtime made him nervous, (and probably the Studio,) but it’s one of the best Extended Editions ever. There are also a couple of long deleted scenes that show how much he was willing to try anything. One involved Penny Lane saying “Leslie” over and over, and the other involved characters listening to “Stairway to Heaven” in its entirety. A lot of trial and error to get to remarking on a lampshade.
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