The Bill Simmons Podcast - Talking Movies With Wesley Morris, Sean Fennessey, and Cameron Crowe (first appearance!)

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Sean Fennessey and Wesley Morris to discuss the future of film, the lack of traditional American "movie stars," issues with the delivery methods of the film industry, favorite directors, and much more (1:30). Then, Bill talks with Cameron Crowe about some of his films, including 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High,' 'Singles,' and 'Almost Famous,' as well as his time as a music writer for Rolling Stone magazine, his Broadway musical 'Almost Famous,' and more (1:04:50). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Cameron Crowe, Sean Fennessey, and Wesley Morris Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, the big picture with Sean Fennessey. What'd you do this week? 35 under 35? 35 movie stars under the age of 35. Did you find 10 American ones? There were quite a few Irish movie stars, actually. Irish movie stars? Yeah, yeah.

The Australians, they were well represented. Listen to the big picture on the Ringer Podcast Network. It's the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. Football is in full action. FanDuel's highest rated sports book is the best place to bet it all. We've been doing pretty well on million dollar picks this year. I love the first month of the season

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We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. Coming up on this podcast a little bit later, Cameron Crowe, first time ever on this podcast. And we talked about his intersection of music and movies over the course of his career

specifically with three or four movies that you could probably guess but it was an absolute pleasure to talk to this guy that is the heart of this podcast

we're making this an all movie pod it's a big day today in America people they're voting they're listening to political pods whatever

if I could ever just take a Tuesday pod and say, you know what? This one's for me. This is what we're doing. Camera crow coming up later right now. My friend Wesley Morris. Sean Fantasy.

We're going to try to figure out where movies are going as we head into the mid-2020s. It's all next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right. We are taping this. It is a rainy Tuesday here in LA. Wesley Morris is here. Came out to do a bunch of rewatchables for Naughty November.

Sean Fantasy is here. I'm always here. I live here. Every once in a while, we talk about the future of movies on this podcast. Sean has a movie podcast. Wesley writes about movies every once in a while. He's been working on a book that's kind of mostly about movies for the last 17 years. That's not done yet.

The subject of this book is eating the movies. It's so much bigger than the movies at this point. I don't even want to talk about it. But I'm almost finished. All right. Check in. How are we feeling? Movies.

I love them. Okay. I hope they continue forever. How are we feeling? Movies. I love them. Okay. I hope they continue forever. They are my favorite thing. Because we're doing Naughty November this month. And we just recorded the episode for Blowout today. This De Palma movie that came out 41 years ago with John Travolta. And it's just awesome. And every once in a while, we do a movie like that on the rewatchables.

And one of us ends up saying, God damn it, why don't they make these anymore? Why not? What are we doing wrong? So is it gone or is it just kind of gone, but sometimes the switch can go back on, Sean? Yes, Sean. I mean, it's not gone. There are still a lot of really good films coming out every year. And I think really the purpose of the show that I am hosting is to, you know, advocate for them, get people excited about them. It's a contemporary movie show.

I think the challenge is we're coming out of a really big period where all the corporations that owned all the movie studios, that had all the money to all the movies. I just spent the last five years pushing hard on streaming. And the major goal was to build as many subscribers, hook as many people up by a IV to their systems. And the way that they did it is they pushed all of their content into those places. So we saw there was a huge, you know, moment where Warner brothers put all their 2021 movies on their service into those places. So we saw there was a huge moment where Warner Brothers put all

their 2021 movies on their service on HBO Max. And now we see there's this big pullback on the stock market in the last three, four, five months with streaming services where Paramount's taken a massive hit. Netflix has taken a massive hit. Comcast, Disney, all these companies that have

focused a lot of their creative and financial energies towards streaming have gotten killed because streaming is not yet a solvent business. And in the process, one of the major casualties is movie going. Now, obviously, COVID-19 is also a major reason for that. But this was true even before the pandemic. It was. But the 2019 box office was very strong. It was maybe, maybe the going to be the peak of the business to this point. Regardless, there may not, we may not have ever gotten back to it, but when you compound

what I just explained about streaming with COVID-19 with an already kind of wobbly infrastructure, when you look at like what AMC is and what Regal is in these different movie theater companies, we're looking at a totally different world. It's pretty tough. I mean, it's pretty hard to imagine a world in which this becomes the most important, like the centerpiece of our cultural life ever again. So that bums me out. What do you think? I'm curious how you got to 35 movie stars under 35. We had to work pretty hard. The long list actually was encouraging. There were like 100 people, literally,

who I was like, this person could be something. Okay. That's what I want to talk about. Could be. Yeah. Could be. Because I actually, my problem is everything you're saying, Sean, is true.

But it requires, like, what you and I are operating on, although I don't know how much of this you have. I know I don't have a lot, and that's hope, right? Could be, I mean, so I just

wrote a thing, a very long thing that is in the process of maybe being made shorter or maybe being accommodated for its length i can't tell for the paper not the magazine about where the hell all the movie stars are and why we don't have any anymore and what it's going to mean to not have them did you write this because i kept texting you where are movie stars where did they go or was it their different reason? I started writing, I don't know,

you've been doing this for years though, right? No, but especially recently. Like, the last year, it got a little intense because it became undeniable, right? Yeah. But you were, I mean, the Ryan Reynolds, I mean, that's 10 years ago now. Yeah. Peace ran, right? I feel like

the, I mean, first of all, I started writing this over the summer. And then for a variety of reasons, like it didn't run. And then I had to rewrite it. And the rewriting of it, I mean, initially it began, like I wrote it in the wake of Top Gun Maverick, right?

And the thing I left Top Gun Maverick kind of bewildered by, well, I knew why we all wanted to go. I knew why we all wanted to go two or three times. I mean, I didn't want to go two or three times once was enough for me. And it is now my number one airplane movie where I can look around any flight I'm on and everybody starts with Top Gun Maverick. And then half the plane goes to Nope.

And the other half goes to some Chris Pine movie that I can't figure out what it is. I don't know what this movie is. The Contractor? Maybe. Oh, yeah, that's what it is. That's the other half of the plane. And then there's me over in the corner watching Just Go With It. Because that movie's awesome.

You, this is never going to get old. How many times a week do you watch that movie? Best. Good airplane movie. Rusty, what? I'm on an airplane.

I'm half asleep. I'm groggy. One of the strangest movies I have ever seen. So Top Gun Maverick, can you land the plane on that Top Gun Maverick analogy? So I,

I understand why we all went, but the thing that I was fascinated by was the fact that I didn't leave that movie thinking Miles Teller is a movie star. I didn't leave that movie thinking that movie is not interested in anybody

else other than Tom Cruise. There's no room for anybody else to do anything interesting in that movie. There are lots of other movies. There's two movie stars in the movie who are not Tom Cruise. And all they are in the service of is him. And if I'm Tom Cruise, I'm for that. I don't have a problem with that. Because if I'm Tom Cruise, I'm for that. I don't have a problem with that because if I'm Tom Cruise, I also know everything you just said about the business. I know that there is no script I'm

going to be given that's going to allow me to do what I can do in a way that can also not mess with my record as being an unimpeachable movie star because I'm not making any more money, any more mummy movies. I'm not doing that anymore. I think it's really unfair to compare Glenn Powell and Miles Teller with Tom Cruise. I mean, Tom Cruise has a 30-year head start on those guys and is also a once, not just in a decade, but a once in a generation movie star. I'm not blaming Miles Teller or Glenn Powell for this. What I'm saying is there is nowhere for either one of those people to go

that is a movie that isn't a thing that's attached to some other thing that's going to produce or spawn eight other things like it. There's not going to be... Miles Teller isn't going to have his own Top Gun.

And I don't mean Top Gun Maverick. I mean something that can produce in 30 years something that we're all nostalgic to see him do again. I think you're... Because he did it once. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you're basically saying this is pro wrestling. Cruz is

putting the next generation over. No, but if I'm not... He's basically Hulk Hogan early 90s. Like, okay, who's the next person I'm pinning? I don't want to spoil Maverick for anybody who hasn't seen it. 18 people left in America

who haven't seen this movie, but Tom Cruise does not save the day. Glenn Powell saves the day in that movie. That's a purposeful decision to put him in a position to have a big moment

and then the film ends with Miles Teller and Tom Cruise basically coming together so that he could theoretically pass the baton. Now, I'm not saying that Tom Cruise

is literally passing the baton to anyone because the movies that I care about the most next year, one of them is the next Mission Impossible movie. It's going to come out

on my birthday. It's going to be one of the great weekends of my year. I'm going to have a great time with it. But I still, I want to see Miles Teller

do more stuff. So do I. That's what I'm saying. I've been to make my jump out of a window. But I still, I want to see Miles Teller do more stuff. So do I. That's what I'm saying. I've been holding that stock for 10 years now. 10 years. But he's made some good movies. He hasn't,

you're right that he hasn't and probably never will have his own Top Gun. That's probably gone. Could he have done Blowout? Could he have done the Travolta part? Yeah, but he's doing it. Where is he?

He's doing his version of it now and nobody's going to see it. You know, like he's done quality. He did Whiplash. He did the spectacular now. He's been a good actor for 10 years. But those are the things that were establishing him

as a person to watch 10 years from then. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Now we're 10 years out. And what do we have? And that's just, again,

I want to be clear. This is not his fault. I agree. This is the industry's fault because he's just, again, I want to be clear. This is not his fault. I agree. This is the industry's fault because he's just a, for example, right? He is one person

of 35 people that I also could name who are exciting, interesting people. Some of them have been around for a long time. Like,

I would put Michael Pena on a list of people. He might not, like at this point, right? He's not, he's over 35, but he's somebody who, when at this point, right, he's over 35, but he's somebody who,

when it was good, when he made World Trade Center, he was the guy who made me cry. He was the guy who broke my heart. That was the, sorry, that was the guy who, pfft.

End of watch. Five years later, right. He's great in that too. But he never got a chance. And I don't know what the conversations among the executives were, the producers. Like, we can't give Michael Pena his own movie. He's an additive. He's parsley.

He's a side order. He can't be a steak. The steak is Jake Gyllenhaal. The steak is Tom Cruise. The steak is Nicolas Cage. Well, we did a hottest take. This is what started the dialogue with us. We did the hottest take where I said Leo was the last

great American actor, which was a hot take that I also kind of believe. That's not a hot take at all. Because our country doesn't produce great American actors anymore and so I was challenging Sean to come up with somebody under 40. And the best we could do is Adam Driver. Who I love.

I mean, I don't really have a problem standing behind that. I also don't have a problem standing behind Timothee Chalamet and saying like he has the makings of a great movie star who is affixed to a big franchise and also makes interesting, challenging parts like Bones and All. He's made a cannibal drama with the guy who made Call Me By Your Name. That's what interesting movie stars do is they sink their teeth into big franchises so they can get in front of a lot of people. He's also going to be Willy Wonka

in a movie called Wonka coming out next year. But he's also making the cannibal drama. Like, to me, that's great. Is he my favorite actor in America? No. Is he a very talented guy who people will show up for at the movies? He is. He is that. Is he a very talented guy who people will show up for at the movies?

He is. He is that. Is he a person that people who is he a person whose movies people are going to the movies to see? I think he's I think so.

Yes, I do. Yeah, I think for for the under 25s. Yeah. But that's the other thing. I'm saying going to the movies, but do I should I be meaning

just going to see a movie not in a theater? Like just whose movies people are watching. It's a little early. Because we can't quantify. Right. This is what I'm saying. Wait, but hold on.

Go on. I think there's a bigger disparity now between generations with who they think are stars. And I think TikTok has a lot to do with that and the internet and all these different things. Yes, 100%. Euphoria is the dominant show for people under 25. Chalamet has way more importance, I think, to probably people under 25 than maybe it does to people 25 to 50.

But when we look back at some of the movies we do and the rewatchables or just in general, the 70s and 80s, a lot of the people that were setting the taste of who we thought were great were the critics. Now that era is basically gone. The critics don't set the table for anything anymore.

And I don't even think people would, I mean, I would argue Rotten Tomatoes probably has the most outsized version of what might be a tastemaker. But in general, I think we have less of a feel of what does a 20-year-old think is an awesome actor versus what does a 65-year-old, what does a 45-year-old? It seems more splintered than ever. And also, as we've talked about many times, the

scripted TV stuff, I think, has tapped into a lot of this. Those are the two factors. The Miles Teller thing is, so Miles Teller shot Top Gun in 2018 and 2019. So how did he spend 2020 making the offer for Paramount Plus? That was what he did with his time. He didn't make a movie. He'll make more movies,

but that's a constant draw. That's a good point though. Was that worth it for the overall Miles Teller arc for trying to get him to be a movie star? And what happens? I don't know. Pick anyone from the late 70s. Like, let's take Tommy Lee Jones

in like 1983. He's probably on one of those shows if the infrastructure's in place 40 years ago instead of just making movies and playing different parts. To me, it's about managing both. Like, the person who I think

is doing the best job of this in America right now is Zendaya. Zendaya is a formerney star who has a young following that will be with her for a long time in addition to that she hitched her wagon to being mj in the spider-man franchise which is the most successful movies of the last 10 years in addition to that she happens to be on a provocative and really interesting hbo series next year she's making a movie called Challenger set in the world of tennis with Luca Guadagnino that is probably an awards movie. That is triangulation.

It's all about picking projects, aligning with the right people, and being present and also seeming rare. You know what I mean? She never talks. She doesn't do press. She's in paparazzi photos. Is she even dating Tom Holland?

I genuinely don't know. Maybe she is, but that's so unusual to make yourself seem that special and that elusive while also being present all the time. And that's like the myth of stardom. That's the power of stardom. It's helpful that she wants to make movies. It was. Very similar.

Very similar. Is Zendaya the best actress in the world world I like her style of performance but she is laid out the best career strategy

of probably anyone under 40 I also I mean I don't want to make this about Zendaya or Miles Teller I mean

obviously y'all know that I think Zendaya on Euphoria is truly the best performance anybody is giving on a television show, period. There's no contest.

Toni Collette in the staircase and Zendaya. I'm sorry. Toni Collette in the staircase. I've never seen whatever that is. I missed the staircase pod. That was sad for me. I just was two weeks behind. I would have been on the Prestige TV episodes.

I thought it was good. I mean, yeah. She's great. I've never, like what she had to figure out how to do. Anyway, I think that Zendaya,

the problem, I don't, this is not about individual people, right? Right. You're right. This is about an industry that has turned its back

on a way of expressing who we as Americans are in a format, in an art form that used to be central to American culture and self-understanding, that now the movies don't care about because the way we used to do it does not play in China or Brazil or Germany. And it is sort of hindered the way we tell stories about Americans. And so, you know, we have been talking about all these old movies for these Naughty November rewatchables episodes. And the thing that each time we've done one, the thing that one of us comes back to at some point is where the thing is set partially because it's a category but also because it's central

to the movie's understanding of itself right that that one part of American movie storytelling being absent from American movies is as important, as part of the crisis, is as big a prong in the problem as the movie star question. Because there's nothing for these people to do, there's no place for them to go in these stories to dimensionalize the persona. And so, you know, let's just talk about John Travolta in anything, right? Most of the time, he's playing a guy in a place.

He's in New York. What were we talking about yesterday? Last night when we were at dinner and we were talking about movies about the last couple years why don't they exist and how one of the things we loved about movies was they root you in this specific place in this era like even we did cruising for the rewatchables and it's like we were in late 70s like you need packing district in new york this is what it's like in this part

of town in this world in this culture and we are now going to enter that. And why hasn't movies about the last four years come out that have done that? I'm going to tell you about a movie that maybe neither of you will like. Maybe most people listening to this won't like, but it just came out. It's not about liking the movie. It came out about a month ago. It's now streaming on Hulu. It's called Stars at Noon. It's an adaptation.

Oh, I saw it. It's on my list Hulu. It's called Stars at Noon. It's an adaptation. Oh, I saw it. With Amy McDowell's daughter. Yes. It's Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn who is a good actor who is Taylor Swift's boyfriend. Who's not bad.

And he's a good actor. It's an adaptation of a Dennis Johnson novel which is set in the early 1980s in Nicaragua during the revolution. But Claire Denis,

the director of the movie, updated the film to be set in the present day. And it's one of the only movies I Claire Denis, the director of the movie, updated the film to be set in the present day. And it's one of the only movies I've ever seen, kind of regardless of how you feel about the film, that is honest

about what the pandemic was like, which is to say that a lot of people in the movie are wearing masks around their necks and not on their face. And it was the first time I'd really seen a movie

where I was like, oh, people don't even really care about wearing masks. And we're going to be honest about that. I have to wear the mask to get through the door in the fast food restaurant, but once I get in there, I'm taking it off and people won't tell me any different.

It was a very specific, small choice in a movie that isn't really about the pandemic. It's just set during the pandemic that felt similar to the things we talked about when we talked about Blowout, where it's just like every little detail matters. Representing what life is like in this universe of creation matters.

Of the present. Yes. And those modern movies, I feel like, are operating in some sort of like surreality, like what you're describing. Right.

Are we in Idaho or New York? I have no idea. Or we're in some alternate universe or, you know, we're in a comic book world or whatever. Did you see Soft and Quiet? You did, right?

No, what's that? The one about the school teacher who has the group of her and her friends. No. Yeah, you were telling me about this. They get a little white supremacy. Oh, geez. No, I haven't seen that.

Okay. But I thought that was an example of like, this is like a weird indie movie that in 1977, there would have been some version of the same kind of thing. Yeah, I think part of it is everybody has been so fascinated with just creating content that isn't in this world. And I don't know, how would you unpack that, Wesley? Like we're going into comic book universes, alternate universes.

We have Zuckerberg created the metaverse. It's like nobody wants to be here. Nobody wants to be in the present. Which means nobody wants to write movies about being here. I think that the, I mean, think about what all was happening in the 60s and 70s and how, you know, the 60s for a while kept trying to avoid it, kept trying to avoid it, kept trying to avoid it. And then 67 happened and a kind of moral floodgate opens. Now, there were directors who were committed to being in the present, like, you know, hoary,

you know, corny guys. Stanley Kramer. Like Stanley Kramer, right? Stanley Kramer being, like, the perfect example, but he was doing the work. The movies were not always great, but there was a kind of moral greatness to them. Like, somebody's got to do this, America. And here I am doing it.

Elia Kazan, despite everything, same thing, right? People like there was a, there was a, there was a wing of Hollywood, liberal white Jewish Hollywood that was committed to speaking to what was

happening in the moment, talking about racism, talking about antisemitism, talking about, how about conspiracies? Well, think about like the moment. Talking about racism, talking about anti-Semitism, talking about... How about conspiracies? Well, that's... Think about the trilogy. Right.

That comes a decade later where there are no movies set in the past. Yeah. Right? And even the movies set in the past are about the present.

Right? There's this conflation of time. I'll skip 40 years of movie making just to get to the present and how in the last 10 years, there's no regional filmmaking. You see... I can't even...

It's funny that the way that Jordan Peele's movies, for instance, are set essentially at amusement parks. They're arranged around a kind of fun house universe that is as much about a recreation the where the where the amusement park itself is recreating or restaging something about america's past um and i think that it is simultaneously interesting to make that choice where like movies are set in voids or in like nether regions or, um, metaphors as opposed to a filmmaking that is about, you know, Jordan.

And I understand what Jordan Peele is doing. He's again, it's not about Jordan Peele. This is about the fact that there's a whole way of thinking about the movies because Jordan Peel is kind of a special director in some ways. He's an actor and he's got a vision. He's also created an opportunity. He has created allowances for himself because of his success. Very few other

filmmakers are afforded. He has a stamped ticket at a studio that believes in him, that lets him take chances that other directors don't get to take. Now, I love his movies and think it's great that he gets to do that, but that's unusual and that's like kind of

the bigger point that we're making too. It's like, you're not allowed to make the movies that you're citing. Right. And I would say, right,

and I think part of that is that, like, I could list 35 directors who existed in the 90s, 80s, 70s whose movies i didn't really necessarily like

but you know like just let's take lasa holstrom right made a movie every two or three years not always i didn't like them some of them were real big hits they always had movie stars in them and they weren't based on anything other than in most cases or several cases the best-selling novel. The Cider House Rules being like the

example. Went to the Oscars. They weren't always intended to be there although once Harvey Weinstein got his hands on a couple of those movies they were on an express train

to the Academy Awards like Chocolat. But there were he was of a large class of filmmakers who worked all the time and only told stories pretty much about people mostly in the present who were just average people, right? And a lot of people in these movies were stars.

Nobody working now is a Sidney Pollack, who is like, again, a special, like he's the best version of what he was. But like just thinking about from Sidney Pollack on down, people who just, you know, aren't making, there's no opportunity for them to make movies about average people anymore. It's just a very, it's a And those were, that was a universe

that stars occupy, right? That was a movie star making and movie star solidifying world. I think there's a useful example of something that's happening this year that explains some of what's going on. There's a mini trend among four kind of big name filmmakers this year

who all made kind of a similar movie. Uh-oh. I know what you're going to say. There's Sam Mendes who made American Beauty among many other movies called, made a movie called Empire of Light about working in a movie theater as a teenager and growing up and reflecting on his past. James Gray made Armageddon Time about growing up in Queens in the early 80s, surrounded by kind of the rise of Trump and how New York was changing at that time. There's Steven Spielberg, who made The Fablemans, which is coming out next month or later this month, which is about growing up in Arizona and New Jersey and California

and falling in love with movies. And then there's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who's made this movie called Bardo that's coming to Netflix. It's there now. Which is basically just an autobiographical portrait of an artist who's trying to figure out whether he's a fraud or not.

And like these are deeply self-reflective. By the way, Alejandro, the answer is C. I wasn't a big fan of Bardo. I liked some of those movies and not others. And then we have Taylor Swift with Antihero.

That was our fifth piece of art. But the thing is like all these people, especially these really accomplished like best director winning types, And then we have Taylor Swift with Antihero. That was our fifth piece of art. sequences and at the end of close encounters and he's like so your father was an engineer and your mother was a musician and what do the aliens do at the end of close encounters they play music through their computers to communicate is that like your mother and father and steven spielberg in the moment is like you know i wish i could tell you that that's how i thought of it but until you explain it to me now i didn't really put it together that's why i told the story that way that's just a representation of him explaining and exploring his life through his artwork and

almost not even realizing it. Whereas now, and I loved the Fablemans, but when I watch it now, I'm like, this is just pure autobiography. This is just, here's what happened in my life. And so forth. Let's take a break and I want to keep going on this. The NBA season is underway.

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Sign up now. Just search Movember. One thing I was thinking about the future of movies and just where we're going is so, you know, these four movies we did for the rewatchables,

they're all set in this era where we have, what, eight TV channels, right? The dramas are things like Hill Street Blues and Simon and Simon. Falcon Crest. Yeah, and Dynasty. So movies aren't competing against anything.

So all like the art and thoughtfulness and storytelling, like if you want to do it, you're doing it in there. Now we have not just scripted TV, but even like documentaries. You have The Noise from that too. There's so many. I was watching the one on HBO about the Murdoch family last night. It was really good.

Yeah. The South Carolina family where there's crimes and it's just, there seems like there's one of those now every five days, there's another one. Or there's like The Watcher. We just have so much content. And I wonder the combination of that, plus we've made a lot of movies. There's, you know, it's like Nathan Hubbard, my friend who, um, who's a big music guy and he, he always gets worried about rock bands. And I was like, what happened to rock bands? Why don't

we have as many rock bands? Well, we've basically taken the guitar and we've come up with all of these different outcomes for any sort of song. Right. And at some point they start to become derivative of each other. And that's when music, you, these other genres pop up, right?

Rap pops up, hip hop and electronic. And you just like keep innovating. And with movies, there's not really, it can't innovate in the same way. Right. So then it drifts to these other things like documentaries and scripted TV.

And maybe those are the innovations. I don't know. That's my fear. I mean, I think music's interesting because music is operating with a sort of different, like American music is operating with a different synthetic history, right?

Where like it is made, American music is made up simultaneously of so many different things that are pushing it forward at all times. And, you know. Yeah. I was just talking more about like just rock music and basically from, I'm going to say late sixties, early seventies on to now. And now we don't have bands anymore in the same way that we did. Right. So why is that? I think that there is still plenty of room for innovation in movies,

but the way that you get innovation, it's either technical or it's in storytelling, right? And sometimes it's both of those things, but it's like it's the introduction of sound or it's 3D or some sort of technical innovation. But 3D didn't work, right?

Remember, it was like 3D, here we come. Well, it did for a minute. But remember, what was that? 10, 12 years ago? It was like 3D didn't work, right? Remember, it was like, 3D, here we come. Well, it did work in the 60s. Remember, what was that? 10, 12 years ago? It was like, 3D, get your glasses. When Avatar came out, it worked for Avatar. You know what I mean?

Well, it can work for one thing, but then the other version of it is, here's a good example. Found footage. Found footage horror. There is an entire, basically 10-year period where found footage,

which is a storytelling type, a filmmaking type, a filmmaking type that was very involving. And if you liked horror movies. Predicated upon the discovery or something of some old footage. Sometimes they wouldn't even tell you where it came from.

It just would be, that would be the format for the structure of the movie. It's just somebody's old, some old video format that is telling a story without necessarily any like warning about what you're,

what you've been plunged into. Sorry. And it was theoretically cheaper to make. I mean, like the success of Paranormal Activity is one of the most amazing stories in movie history.

That movie went on to make a hundred million dollars and was made for like 25 grand. So that was an example of like an innovative moment. Now, that wasn't the first found footage movie, and that's not what I'm saying. There were many, many before that. But the way that that one was sold to audiences kicked off another revolution that was started previously by Blair Witch and then other things before that in the 80s.

There's still plenty of opportunity for things like that to happen. I think the problem is everything that you outlined. It's not that we've made enough movies and we can't go anywhere else. I do think that might be true for rock music, for what it's worth. But I think it's because it's not just streaming television and it's like,

it's podcasts and TikTok and all of the various things that we are consuming every day that power our daily lives and that are also... It's a little like baseball. Well, but okay. So here's a great thing with baseball.

I think baseball made more sense in 1974 than it does in 2022, just because we had less to do with 1974. But movie watching, even more so than television, in my opinion, is a fully focused, static experience. You can't watch a movie while doing the dishes. You can't watch a movie while driving to the office to start your day. You can do a lot of other things that are your content for the day while doing those things. But movies demand your attention. And if you don't pay attention, you're not really getting anything out of it anyway. So I think that there's also just a broad

focus problem in our country where people are like, I don't really have two hours to sit down. Yeah. And I don't want to. Yeah to yeah like barbarian's a good example right which i think is one of the 20 best horror movies i've seen wesley hasn't seen it yet i haven't seen it yet but the first the first 40 minutes is like the pots on the fucking stove and you have to like we're making mac and cheese but we're making it the old-fashioned way and you got to do everything and we got to wait and it's just like it, it's a slow boil. And pay attention. And you have to pay attention and it's going to move and it zags in a couple of different ways. And you can't like, you know, be on Instagram as you're watching it. Yes, you can. It's just not going to be as

enjoyable. You're not going on the same ride. I think there are a number of interesting things happening with respect to this question of attention. I think that... And all of them are bad? Well, yeah, they're all bad. Especially when we're talking about art. I think that we exist in a time where there are more,

there are so many talented people who can solve a lot of the problems that I'm having with the movies who can't get I feel like I'm about to cry I don't know why I just my eyes just did something weird but I just had a thought about something that I'll get to in a second

as I complete this thought but I think that we have reached a point where there, I mean, we're past all of this water cooler, the idea of water cooler culture, you know, us sort of getting together and talking about a thing

that is positive, by the way. Negative things, we can always get together and talk about that. Which is why I think like maybe we should have a January 6th movie or something. Because that would be huge.

But I think one of the problems is that the industry is confused about what it wants to do and who aspects of it want to be. I think that I think there are people at the studios

who probably are at war with other people at the studios about how sustainable superhero movies are and what is going to happen when we get sick of those. Or go in the other way and be like, not only is it sustainable, what's triple down?

Well, they are. Let's create universes within the universe that's kind of what's happening i think that one of the things that i mean i have i have not seen the black panther movie yet sean i know you have but i know that one of the things that is draw that is that has drawn me to it is the idea that a character from the marvel comic book universe that i found very interesting in Namor slash Sub-Mariner is a major figure in this Black Panther movie,

this new Black Panther movie. But, and that's an opportunity for an actor who, I don't know who this guy is, but it's an opportunity to see an actor, a new actor get born in this world. I don't know if this makes

this person a movie star because you need more than one movie or one lane of movie to solidify the starness, but it's an opportunity, right? It augures something. But conversely, one of the most incredible things I have ever seen, and I know that every time we get together, I bring this person up, but that is because he is one of our most incredible things I have ever seen. And I know that every time we get together,

I bring this person up, but that is because he is one of our great artists. And one of the greatest things I have ever seen in my life that can't be classified as any one thing or any other thing, because that's the world we're in now. And this person found a way to get in the groove between whatever TV is in 2000 whatever and a movie in this period and do something original and and perplexing and moving and

scary and strange and unforgettable is is barry jenkins underground railroad i don't know what that is i don't know what to call it it don't know what to call it. It operates in an episode format, but it is deeply, profoundly cinematic. It also, for a lot of people, I would imagine is unwatchable. They don't want to see another thing about slavery. Even if it was written, even if it's adapted from a Colson Whitehead novel,

they don't, a best-selling Pulitzer Prize-winning Colson Whitehead novel, they don't want to see it. And also, it showed on Amazon, which also didn't know what to do with it. They didn't know how to tell people this thing was there. But at the end of the day, what is sitting on Amazon as we speak is an incredible work of art that just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes because it is, I mean, some of that is what we are asked to look at. And a lot of it is just the utter astounding nature of what that thing is and what Barry Jenkins with these people in that movie,

production design, the score, the cinematography, the editing, all of these sort of minute details that together add up to an experience that I've never gotten from any conventional television show as great as some of them are. And this is a person who, I hate to say it, but it's true, has essentially been relegated to whatever Amazon had room for. And this happened at around the same time that Steve McQueen's Small Axe series showed up on the same, you know,

there's clearly money to make great things and to get great things before us. But in some ways, I felt like with something like Underground Railroad, they were like, Amazon was like, well, we did it. We let this guy make this

weird thing. Our job here is done. I don't know what the point really is of what I'm saying. No, I know what your point is. So you have some great artists being given carte blanche to make this really cool thing that they put all their blood, sweat, and tears into and then it ends up on fucking Amazon.

You don't have anybody to talk to about it. I had one friend I could talk to about it. One friend. And there's also so much content now that... We can talk about it later, Sean. There's so much content that it's tough for us to stand out. I was thinking of something as you were talking like the era

of somebody hustling to make their dream product and with the shoestring budget and nobody believes in it and they're just trying and patching it together and all of a sudden they have this cool movie

that stands out. Is that happening anymore? Well, there's more of those than ever because it's easier to make movies than ever. I think what it, like emerging out of that

I think is harder than ever. I mean, Barry Jenkins did that twice. He made two independent films that, you know, his first independent film got a good amount of attention

and then he didn't make a movie for like 10 years. And then he finally got the chance to make Moonlight and then that obviously changed his career. But, you know,

not to be too cynical about this, but I don't know if you know what Barry Jenkins' next project is. And I'm sure it will be damn good because he's never made anything that isn't interesting. But it's a Lion King movie for Disney. And that is representative of where the movie culture is.

Now, for him, that probably means he gets a huge canvas. And he tells a story in Africa. And he tells something that is relatable content that he probably grew up watching. I'm sure there's a million reasons why he's making that movie. I'm sure the money doesn't hurt either but that's a pretty grim verdict

on everything that you just outlined there about the lack of lack of marketing support for Underground Railroad the maybe the utter disinterest from a mass audience in a

story like the one that he told like there's no getting around that or we have our guy Todd Field just taking 15 years off yeah oh working on things that never get made, right?

Yeah, well, he wrote a ton of things. He tried, he kept trying to make things happen and they did not. All I know is you look at his IMDB and there's a 15-year hole. It's like he went to fight in a war. No, when he comes in

for the job interview and it's like, well, I mean, Mr. Field, where have you been? That's an interesting wrinkle of Hollywood that is still true, which is that he was getting paid. He wrote like 10 movies and he wrote, I believe he wrote the entire adaptation of

Jonathan Franzen's Purity. Oh, Purity, Purity, Purity. And it was going to star Daniel Craig in Beyond Showtime. Best-selling novel, one of the biggest movie stars on Earth, the great filmmaker behind Little Children. And Showtime was like,

actually, no, we're good. And they just spiked it and it didn't happen. This is... Like, that's crazy. This is what I'm saying. Like, I... Do we need more John Grissom novels?

And do we need... No, because those things are sitting there waiting to be adapted. This is not about... Do we need more Stephen King? Are novels? And do we need? No, because those things are sitting there waiting to be adapted. Do we need more Stephen King? Are there 20 more Stephen King movies? There's a reason he's having a revival. There's a reason his stuff gets made all the time.

But Bill, I think that it's not for want of material. There's an infinite number of books that can be turned into the exact kind of movie I am saying is no longer being made. There are dozens of filmmakers who have stories to tell that are interesting, and you give them $30 million with a decent screenplay. I was saying to you yesterday, I would love to talk to Franklin Leonard about what all is still out there begging to be turned into something, screenplay-wise. Because there is obviously even less infrastructure

and will and belief in the screenplay as an art form itself. Because otherwise, you'd see more original screenplays being turned into movies. You don't see, I mean, I'm not kidding. I hate to keep talking about Jordan Peele, but there's like five people in American movies operating from original ideas.

Original observations. Not to step on the blowout pod, but because that's going up next Monday, but we were just talking about just all the ideas in the movie. And that was why even, you know, Licorice Pizza, which I think is a movie that I haven't enjoyed rewatching like I thought, but I was absolutely thrilled by when I saw it in the theater

just because it was so weird. And Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, same thing, where when Brad Pitt pulls up at the ranch and I'm like, I don't know where this is going, but I'm not leaving my seat until I find out what the fuck happens in the next 15 minutes.

I don't want to hear about Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino. They're two of my favorite filmmakers. In their 50s now. They've been doing it. Where is the hard eight of 2022?

Where's that next class? Where's the Reservoir Dogs of 2022? Right? Like, who is, where is, where's that Reservoir Dogs of 2022? Right? Like, who is, where is, where's that filming? Where are those people? Do you guys remember what movie won best

picture at the Oscars this year? I do. Can you name the movie? Oh, stop it. Can you name the movie, Bill? This event happened nine months ago, not even eight months ago. I can't even remember. It's Coda. Coda. It's Coda. Oh yeah, we bet on it. Yeah, yeah. 15 to 1.

It's the movie that, I mean, I told you guys when I, when I, did I text? I texted. I texted you that. I bet on it. I, the minute the minute I, the minute that movie ended, I was I know I texted you this. I was like, it's not fair

that this movie is a Best Picture. Like, it's not fair that this movie is a best picture. Like, it's not fair that this movie is going to win best picture because people are going to watch it and be like, what the fuck is that? And I'm telling you, y'all made this happen, industry, because I watched that movie in my living room

along with every other Academy voter. I'm not an Academy voter, but they all watched it in their living rooms. And that was good. It was good. I'm weeping. Where's my ballot? I'm putting it first.

It's like Joni Mitchell. Check. But this is the problem because CODA as a movie is a thing that we used to get all the time. I'm citing that as an example because it is what you're describing. Right.

Sean Hader's not a young filmmaker necessarily, but she, it's, I've never heard of her before. It doesn't matter how old she is. I've never seen her. I think she came out of the Sundance lab. She basically had the profile of what you're describing, but it is uncommon. And it's so uncommon that one came along and Academy voters saw it and they were like, yes, anoint it. She's in the club. But doesn't that speak to the lack of things

that do what that movie does? It was not invented to go to the Academy Awards. It was just a story that this person wanted to tell, told it, people responded to it, and look what happened. I think it was also a very bad couple of years there and it's a movie that really made people feel good.

I hear that. But, okay, fine, right? You were right. That is true. But it also speaks to a real industrial crisis of storytelling. It does. And this is a story, this is a movie that tells a story really, really well.

But when we don't have the stars in the same way that we used to, it's no different than like if the NBA is going through a drought where there's only like four amazing players instead of like right now they have- Somebody has to win one championship. No matter what. We're in the Glenn Robinson era

of movies right now. Saturday Night Live's having a really, Saturday Night Live's having a really rough season because they don't have like a legitimate star in the cast. So like Amy Schumer shows up. However you feel about Amy Schumer, she's at least a proven comedian. I love Amy Schumer.

And she's blowing everybody else off the table in the sketches. Something I actually thought she did also at the Oscars this year. Yeah. Oh, she's just annihilating everybody because she knows how to work a room. She's way better than anyone on the show and you're watching it going,

this is actually a bad sign for the show. The host shouldn't be blowing away the cast members like this and it's a star power thing and that's why I think SNL feels

inessential when it doesn't have at least the one big star. And I do wonder the same thing with the lack of, sometimes you could just have movies

that maybe they weren't the greatest movie, but the person at the center of it is just fucking awesome. And we want to spend two hours with them. And there's less of those people. Yes. And I think we're talking about two different things. And I just want to be clear about like delineating what they are. One is we have just a basic crisis of,

of, of tour oriented or our tour-derived moviemaking. Rooted in now or somewhere around now. Rooted somehow in the present. Issues that people care about right now. Yes. And then we have a crisis

of moviemaking that is not necessarily a tour-driven, but there are just filmmakers who want to make movies for hire, like the Stephen Frearses and Barbé Schroders and Elaine Mays. I'm just naming people who had good careers doing a kind of mid- Mike Nichols.

You know what I mean? People who aren't visionaries necessarily, but who know how to tell a story and love, love, love. Those people all work in TV. Great actors. They all work in TV. I understand, but Sean... They exist. They work in TV. But none of those people, I don't know who you... I mean,

okay, I'm not going to... I agree with you, but I was about to disagree with you, but actually you're right. And I would say the other, but part of that crisis is that there is no place for Amy Schumer to practice the craft of being Amy Schumer. Yeah. Do you know what I mean?

Like, she had that show on HBO. I don't know if it was at HBO. No, Hulu. Hulu. I don't know if anybody watched it. Life and Beth. Right. Yeah.

No one Hulu. Hulu. I don't know if anybody watched it. Life and Beth. Right. Yeah. No one watched it. I think that Amy Schumer, for a moment, was a movie star. Right? People went to see Amy Schumer. Trainwreck was a hit. In droves. Yes. People went. So was Pete Davidson.

I don't. For a split second. It's different, though. I mean, it's just different. Like, it's an order of... Amy Schumer, to me, was an order of magnitude different in terms of I think if you put Pete Davidson in a movie, people would go.

Well, he's in a movie right now with Kaley Cuoco on Peacock and nobody knows it exists. Well, that's the problem, right? I mean, they just dump this shit there like it's shit. Whether it's good or bad. I mean, there's so many problems in the pipeline of movie production.

There are. I mean, there are. Look, we're in a month where like Tar and the Banshees of Innish Sharon and the Black Panther movie and the Fablemans. Like, there's some stuff coming out that are good films.

Are they like life-changing discoveries? No, no, no. But we're not. But we're not talking about life. Was cruising a life-changing discovery? It was for film. But it's a thing that managed to stand the test of time because it was true to

itself and was telling a story that needed to be told according to somebody. I guess I just figured out where we've all landed. We're used to movies setting conversations. Whatever the movie was about, whether it was the performance

or the actual theme of the thing, actually setting some sort of narrative that then goes for like two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, whatever. Like even going back, like something like Kramer versus Kramer comes out. And it sets off this, not only is there the Meryl

Streep aspect of it and Dustin Hoffman and all the different pieces of just what a great movie that was, but then also like, oh, they made a movie about divorce. And then it's like People Magazine with a cover story of divorce. That whole mechanism that's unleashed, that seems like it's gone now.

It's gone. And do you know where it's gone? It's gone into the world, right? Yeah, maybe it has. The line between the politics of being alive in America now and the art that these people living in America now want to make,

there's no relationship between those two things. The idea that you had a whole decade where it seemed like every movie was about Watergate or Vietnam, even when it was about a drought in Los Angeles, is really deep. And the idea that we are running from that to make movies about law enforcement,

good and bad. How about this? They like, so homelessness in the last six years has become, I think one of the big, it's an American crisis, right? And especially in the bigger cities.

Has there been one good movie about it? Well, I mean, there was a moment before all this shit happened with, with, I mean, Ramin Barani. I mean,

he, like a director like that had tried right right he wasn't working in the hollywood system and 99 homes are basically about his work is essentially about the thing that is happening right now i don't know what ramin is doing with himself and his great talent he has a documentary coming to showtime called second chance that's about a guy who developed gun technology. Well... That's literally what he was doing. I think that the problem is

I don't know if it's the studios sort of steering filmmakers away from these subjects because they're afraid people won't want to touch them, like the audiences won't want to go see them. I think we're overstating it if I'm being honest. Sure. Okay.

In your direction, here's evidence. Fruitvale Station is a movie that is about what you're talking about. It's a personal story about a bigger crisis in our country. Nine years ago. Nine years ago?

Kugler makes that movie. Kugler makes that movie. It's hailed at Sundance. He's an incredible new voice and he inserts himself. He plugs himself pretty elegantly but he does plug himself into

franchise entertainment. Yes. He makes Creed. Yes. He makes Black Panther. But Creed isn't a franchise at that point. Creed's just an

awesome movie man. But it's in an intellectual property. What we loved about that movie was that he made that a movie. And I feel very similarly about the first Black Panther. What we loved about that movie was that he made that a movie. And I feel very similarly about the first Black Panther, that that is a movie that

it does have some of the trappings of a Marvel movie, but that it also, it's one of the only only blockbuster movies that I'm like, this has a profound idea about isolationism and radical politics happening inside. It's like, it's tricking people into understanding a very complex idea

while also having a CGI fight in it. But that's what he chose to do. When he set his path, a thoughtful artist who cares about the world, he was like, I'm going to do it to reach the most people the way I know how. Conversely, I don't know if you guys saw this movie or care about it,

but Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the box office hits of the year it's an independent movie it's by two guys who make very unusual films it's great it's a genre movie that's about what it's like to be a part of an immigrant family a Chinese and Chinese American

and it's really creative and people who liked it loved it it's almost certainly going to be nominated for Best Picture. Along with Top Gun Maverick. Hopefully. And that would be a great dichotomy

of those two movies. It is still possible. Now, everything everywhere all at once is not Kramer vs. Kramer. The stars of that movie are not going to be

on the cover of People magazine. But people really, really like that movie and it made like $70 million. It was a huge hit. So, it's not impossible.

For what it was. It's not impossible. It's not impossible. It's just that there are fewer than ever before. So it feels dire all the time. But I really, I think of it as a personal responsibility to celebrate these movies. And I'm like, something has come along that you should pay attention to.

Because if you don't, that's when they won't make them anymore. There won't be another Everything Ever Royal at once if you don't celebrate them and say why they're special. But we're already at the point of it. We're already in a drought, right? Like we're already in a drought. And sometimes it rains and you really got to get all your buckets out and like capture as much rainwater as you possibly can because who knows when it'll happen again.

And I hear you about Michael. I hear you about Ryan Coogler. I think you're right about the personal nature of these movies in some way. But I think that I am really curious to see what Ryan Coogler does when he leaves the realm of intellectual property. Me too. I hope he unplugs now. Right. I don't know what he wants to do.

He's under no obligation to even do it. But I think that... I like how you said the realm of intellectual property. I mean, I think that... It's like he's trapped under a rock. As soon as he is saved from the realm. Think about... It's like purgatory.

He's a fore example of a person who, he's just one of many people who did the thing that made probably the most industrial sense at that time. Yeah. But I would love to hear the story that some

of these people would tell about their experiences in those realms. Because I think that, I don't know, I mean, I don't know, but I will say that as a person

who is really interested in the stories we are telling about ourselves, we are in a period of high delusion because we're only telling one story in different ways over and over and over again. Well, we were talking last night at dinner. We were talking about gender and identity and just that becoming i think two of the dominant themes intertwined in a lot of ways in the last six

seven years and where has that been in movies well that's the thing i kind of like about tar right that's a part of it that's a fact i mean i mean that's in euphoria too honestly now the euphoria and and right and weirdly billions billions one of the first ones. But yeah, it was TV before movies, which is unusual too. That's a rapidly evolving subject too. So it's very hard to take a snapshot because it feels like something has moved quickly.

But if the thing is true to whoever is making it, I mean, I think a version of that is what's wrong with Till, right? I think Till is the story of Mamie Mobley, who is Emmett Till's mother.

And rather than tell the story of how her son was lynched by a bunch of racist assholes on her son's summer vacation down south, the movie feels it is too,

it must be more dignified than to show another black person dying. And instead it will show a black parent suffering instead at the, because of the death of her child. I think the movie has no core. Like, so, you know, it's,

it's kind of dead in the middle. And its only purpose is this sort of, like, moral and political one. And it requires this actor in the middle to, like, give this very emotional performance. And all she is required to do

is a little bit like what Brendan Fraser is required to do in The Whale. Mm. Which is just inhabit pain and suffering and not really deal with the underlying state of what it is like to be this person in this moment. And that is a huge problem. I thought you were going to say Brendan Fraser in season four of The Affair.

Mallory's favorite. No, but these are movies. I wrote something very similar to a friend after seeing Till. I was like, this is a recitation of anguish and it doesn't really feel like a movie. There's some incredible

performances in it. It's doing reparative work. We don't need that kind of reparative work. That is not, that kind of justice is the opposite of art to me. But that's, okay,

so that's a good example. That movie Till. Daniel Deadweiler, who's also in Station Eleven, is the star of that movie. She might also be nominated for Best Actress this year. She gives a heck of a performance and it's not an easy movie to make. Well, I mean, it's all anyway.

Go on. Maybe it's two dimensional because of what she's asked to do. It's committed. She is committed to the job she's been given to do. But after seeing her in those two things, and I liked her in both of those things, I was like, I have season tickets. I want to see her again. I really like what she does. And she does something

a little different in Station Eleven than what she does in that movie. And again, I think is the apparatus of movie making going to support her becoming someone that you show up for every time they make something? Or is she just going to be the next person that you... What's the name of the

star of Coda? What's the name of the girl who sings in Coda? That's a great one. I agree and I don't remember. It's Amelia Jones. Nobody knows who the fuck that is. That's so crazy. That movie won Best Picture. I think, well, I mean, to go

the opposite direction, if it can't happen for Lupita Nyong'o, it can't happen. I'm just going to say it can't happen for anybody anymore. She's playing the fifth lead in the second Black Panther movie. If it can't happen

for Lupita Nyong'o. Well, we said that about Viola Davis and then all of a sudden she's in The Woman. It did happen. No, no, no. But Viola Davis is different. It took a while.

But Viola Davis is one of the... That's a good movie to talk about around this context. Right, because that, to me, is a classic movie star movie. Yeah. That is a straight-up Victor Mature movie with Viola Davis starring in it.

Yeah, it's like The Robe or something. And it's full of surprises. It's really well-directed for the most part. Yeah. And it's got other people who could also be stars. Yeah. Lashana Lynch was on our list

that we made on the podcast. You have like Tuso Mbede. I think that's her name. Movies are back. But no. But that movie felt like a very rare thing. Well, for like 7,000 different reasons. A black woman making a movie

about black women in Africa who kill men. Plus Black Adam was fucking awesome like we're bad let's not get carried away Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill let's reel it back in

that's a whole other conversation like Dwayne Johnson he could have been could have been a contender he never wanted it he never wanted it

he never wanted to be interested we're wrapping up best movie of the year so far was Sean I rewatched Nope and it's the movie

that has made me think the most so I'm going to say Nope for now. Everything everywhere all at once and Nope

are the two things that really have like managed to work on me. Also I'm not I Maverick is the is like the most fun.

Oh God. My favorite minute of my entire year was the Tom Cruise Jennifer Connelly sex scene in Top Gun Maverick, which was just

him shirtless, cuddling her and laughing hysterically with no making out or anything. Just him maniacally laughing.

He, he, he defenestrates himself, right? Like, to protect the innocence of the, what, what is she, 18 years old? The daughter?

The daughter who shall never know of? Yeah. What is this movie about? It's amazing. It's wild. It's awesome. I want to see it again. Before we go, I will just say, we started having this conversation about, this is a

conversation about the death of movie stardom, but I want to say something that feels really important to me, which is that the reason we all fucking went to that movie is because we wanted to see a movie star. Yeah.

We wanted to see a movie star and he, he over-delivered. He did. He really did. He really did. He gave us

everything he wanted so we wanted. is playing the piano and he's outside the bar and he has the flashback to Goose and does the Tom Cruise face. Yeah. I was like, Tom Cruise,

still fucking crushing it, man. They were plucking your heartstrings off a slash in Guns N' Roses. The second time I watched this movie, I sat next to like three 11-year-olds who seemed to know everything about what was going to happen. The kids loved Top Gun Maverick.

They really did. My kids loved it Gun Maverick. They really did. My kids loved it. And they were so responsive to Tom Cruise. And I just want anybody listening at any studio right now, the lesson is not to make a Top Gun sequel. It is to give us more people who in 30 years, my grandchildren will be clamoring to see something that they never experienced before, because it will have been replayed for them 400 times before they got to that

theater. All right. Wesley, Sean, I'm glad we did this. We did this every two years. Coming up Cameron Crowe we taped this last week

before Almost Famous the musical premiered but so that's why we mentioned how it was premiering it's already premiered but Cameron Crowe's next what does possible

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Alright, the legend Cameron Crowe is here. He's got Almost Famous, one of my favorite movies of all time, premiering on Broadway on November 3rd. And we're going to talk about Almost Famous. You don't have to twist my arm to do that. I want to go backwards, though, because August was 40 years since Fast Times. And I was thinking about doing it as rewatchables, and I still am.

And I rewatched it, and I was like, God damn, what was the movie before Fast Times that was like Fast Times? Was there one? Over the Edge was really good, Bill. Did you ever see that with Matt Dillon? Yeah. Yeah, it was just kind of like loose and rock

and you had like Van Halen music and Cheap Trick music in it. It was kind of edgy and spenters. There was a movie from Denmark that was kind of like a raw youth movie. But Amy Heckerling was like ready to go there

with Fast Times and that was kind of new, you know, tone wise and stuff. Well, so you write a book in 81, I think, where you spend a year at a school in the San Diego area. And you go undercover because you've been writing for Rolling Stone for a while at that point. And I don't know if this would be allowed to happen anymore, would it? What would happen if you did that book now?

You'd get arrested. It was so loose, you know, and it was a public school and I had gone to a Catholic high school and my mom had skipped me all these grades. So I was a youthful 21 to 22 and it was kind of like the public school senior year that I also got to have, which was fun to write about and exist in. But no, it wouldn't happen like that now. It would be, you know, you'd be done on the first ask.

And you're going in there almost like you have your magazine reporter, Rolling Stone brain on, and you're just soaking everything in. You're soaking in anecdotes, characters, pieces of people. What else are you doing? Just, I was mourning the loss of a girlfriend who had dumped me. So I was kind of like, I was the sad reporter guy that just got to like live through all of these other kids, characters, lives, and they were great characters. You know, they were so different

from kind of the rock stars that I'd been lucky enough to write about for Rolling Stone. But it was really cool to kind of just be writing about somebody that didn't have a commercial stake in what you were writing about. You just were kind of writing a living novel, really, which is what it ended up feeling like. Yeah, it's funny. You go back and critically,

I think it was more positive than negative, but it was a little mixed. And now there's been this revisionist history that it was belatedly, it became a thing. I was, I don't know, I was the eighth grade when that movie came out. That movie was a thing. I mean, everybody saw it. There was nothing like it. Just having two females as the lead characters, basically, was pretty unusual for back then. The way the movie talked about sex and wasn't judgmental about it, but it's just Jennifer Jason Leigh's character just going through this journey, trying to figure out who she is, and she's going to make mistakes, and it's clumsy, and that's what high school is. And I think that's why I resonated like it did.

It's so great that you caught on to it early and stuff. I think, Bill, the whole, the making of the movie, we were wracked with this idea that maybe it was never going to come out, that somebody just put it on the books and it was being made and nobody was ever going to do anything with it. And that helped, helped it, you know, cause we felt like all the jokes, I felt like, you know, you have Debbie Harry, you have a joke about Debbie Harry and like how to be cool. They're not going to put this out, you know? Yeah. Cause we were, we were making it on the studio lot at the same time, they were doing best little whore house in texas and it was still

burt reynolds you know and entourage was rolling around and we were kind of like well that's a real movie i don't know what we are and amy had that same kind of like take no prisoners vibe too it was like whatever happens i'm going to put actors in that are fun for me. And our kind of union of her New York sensibility and my California thing made it, it aired out the sentimentality in a really good way. She rocked it. Yeah, because you think like we're at the 40-year mark and all the things that have hit with 25 and under people

and especially like 20 and under people, right? It's happening now with Euphoria. Everybody watches Euphoria, but such an easier way to watch Euphoria because you just need to know somebody with HBO or HBO Max. Back then, if you didn't go to the movie, then it was like the early days of VHS. There was like some HBO and some cable things.

But for the most part, it was like, oh, my friend has a copy of Fast Times. Whoa, we got to go over that. It was that whole era, you know? Yeah. It was almost an X movie. In fact, it was rated X for a while. What?

So it always had this clandestine kind of feel about it. Yeah. Amy had like frontal nudity on Damone in the sex scene and was really ready to fight for it to stay in there. And in the end, we were convinced to trim it. So it barely got an R. And Roger Ebert reviewed it. He didn't like it that much. He didn't like it.

And Bill, he thought that we had kidnapped Jennifer Jason Lee and forced her to do this stuff. And what was amazing was Jennifer Jason Lee was the most outspoken cast member that was like, keep it X, leave that nudity in, man, let's go there. So eventually, Roger Ebert kind of aired out his problems and kind of came to appreciate it. And was definitely a huge force in getting, say anything released in any real way. Yeah. It's an unbelievable treasure from that decade.

And when there's some high school films that I just feel like just nail whatever the specific year was like breakfast club is like that too, where it's just like, it just kind of nails whatever 1985 was. You can kind of get it from that movie. But the Sean Penn piece, which I think has gotten lost over the years because he became Sean

Penn. He won two Oscars. He became an A-plus lister. But he had that and he had Bad Boys in the same year. Bad Boys was an important movie for him too. It was really important for people like me who was like Spicoli was instantly iconic, but then he's this Bad Boys was an important movie for him too. And it was really important for people like me, who was like Spicoli was instantly iconic, but then he's this Bad Boys guy too. He's a juvie.

He's got to fight SI Morales. He's got to fight to the death at the end. Between those two, it was like, that's the guy I'm buying all the stock in for the next 10 years. He was like the LeBron, right? Totally. And I remember his earliest nickname was Sean De Niro.

And he's basically, Bad Boys hadn't come out. So it was just all under the fuel of what he was putting out. Just not letting anybody talk to him as anything other than Jeff. And quietly kind of in love with Pam Springsteen,

Bruce's sister, who played a character in Fast Times, but couldn't approach her because he was supposed to be an outcast. Yeah. So I think the minute the movie wrapped, he was like, hello, Penn, Sean Penn, let's go out. But he was completely strict about that

the whole time we were filming. And Nick Cage was there too, playing a tiny part, as Nick Coppola. Yeah, Nick Coppola. Just wild. The one other thing that stood out re-watching it was the music. And you didn't direct that movie, but music has been such an essential piece of the movies you make

dating back to your Rolling Stone days, which I want to talk about in a second. But it's just where they are, right? It's not classic rock because that's, I feel like that mid-70s stretch. That late 60s, early 70s is its own era. But then like 78 to 81 is, or maybe 79 to 81 is something else. And some of the songs that are in there, it's like Jackson Brown, The Cars.

There's late, late Led Zepp in there. But I don't know what that era is. Blondie's in there. I don't know what it is, and it's never been named. Like Yacht Rock ended up becoming an era belatedly. I don't know what that era was. But what is it? Because it's kind of like, remember the romantics, what I like about you and stuff.

So it had, and of course... There was like a skinny, Thai, kind of early alt-rocky thing. But then there was also punk around 77. So there's Elvis Costello coming up. There's Rockpile. There's Cheap Trick. So it's like pop is morphing

and punk is floating around in there. And Led Zeppelin was still king. And there was like, like Jesse's Girl. There was those kind of songs too. It's almost like, maybe it's like the eight track era. Cause what were the eight tracks were there for like three years.

I don't know. It's something, but I hear the moving in stereo. I'm like, that's just like a classic 1981 song. It makes no sense. Four years later or four years earlier. It has to be that level.

It's right in that pocket. It's so true. Going backwards, you were writing for Rolling Stone when you were a kid. And a lot of those features, Rolling Stone's website, which is improved. Now, they've released some of this stuff in books, but some of the features from the 70s are just, there's two things that are like snapshots of the musicians and the great artists and the great bands from there, right? You have these Rolling Stone features, where if you were like blessed with the Rolling Stone feature, which is like, you know, one of the big pots and most famous. And then there was the Saturday Night Live appearance. And those were really the two things other than somebody passing through town. But, you know, like you look at somebody like Bob Seger, where they had the Rolling Stone feature about him, but it wasn't a cover. And then I think it was like 1980.

It's like, all right, he's cover worthy. It's time for Bob Seger. And it was like this crucial Bob Seger moment. But you came out of that. And it was like, when you spend time with these bands or an artist or whatever, you had one chance to capture them. Nobody else was really doing it. You weren't really competing against anybody. You had Cream, but Cream was

a little more underground. You weren't competing against anybody. So what was almost the burden of having to go in and being like, this is it, man. Somebody's got to capture these guys. I got to do it or it's never happening. Well, you hit it right on the head when you say that was a little bit of a holy grail

for a band to get on the cover. And if a band was floating below and you were covering them and they knew that they might have a shot at the cover, that was a thing. Because they'd always be kind of auditioning. Does Ben Fontouras know that we've got these outfits that would be really freaking amazing man you know and yeah like i don't man i just don't think they have they're not ready to anoint you yet you know well then why are we doing this piece

at all okay we're still gonna do it but when are we gonna be on so there's a whole thing about that and the only thing above that i remember was every once in a while time magazine would put a musician on the cover so rarely and that was also thought to be a curse so like you know paul simon they might put on the cover of time magazine but like maybe it was unlucky so rolling stone was like the safe they anoint you kind of thing. And sometimes you'd be on the road and the band or covering the band and the band would pop and you get that call from Jan or Ben Factor saying it's a cover. And I remember telling people like the Allman Brothers band, it's going to be a cover. And they just sit up a little straighter and and and start you know vetting their interviews a little bit more because they know a lot of people are going to be reading it but it

was such a fun ride to um kind of be in that era when rock and and that whole part of culture was a little more private led zeppelin people never remember Led Zeppelin never took a concert ad out in their entire history. It was all word of mouth. Somebody in a box office hears that the tickets are going to be available for a show like in June. They tell somebody and it spreads and it sells out without an ad. So what you do is you then have an arena filled with people who are essentially looking at each other like, we get it. We're here

because we knew. And that fed into the experience of the show, which you don't get now. No, you know, I mean, obviously music's so different for so many different reasons, but it really did matter when somebody came to your town for a long, long time. And I think YouTube really hurt. Now social media. Now it's like, whatever. I can see any band I want. I can watch hundreds of performances. Like Pearl Jam, it was this, in the 90s,

this incredible experience to have them come to your town. There were bootleg CDs. It's like, oh my God, there's a Pearl Jam live concert from Amsterdam. I just, it's not a great quality, but, and now there's like, you can, you can like, oh my God, there's a Pearl Jam live concert from Amsterdam. I just, it's not a great quality. But, and now there's like, you can, you can like, it's kind of gone the other way. It's like so accessible. That's like the new special.

Back then it was like, I didn't really know anything about anybody I liked. You know, it was like, it was a Rolling Stone feature. It was seeing them in person or if they went on a late night show, which really wasn't even happening until Letterman, right? Dire Straits wasn't going on like the Johnny Carson show, but Letterman, they had a chance to go on, right? So there was way more mystery, which I feel like those features, that's what made them so important.

I was just, you read my mind talking about Pearl Jam because I was thinking about how Eddie, Eddie Vedder tries to kind of protect the fan experience with that cool thing which I think he still does where he'll keep track of what they played when they were in your town oh yeah he's psychotic about it yeah it's fantastic though so he's

got an imaginary not imaginary person who's been to every show in that town and he builds a set over here that works with what they did when they first came to your town. I'll take that as a fan experience. That's cool. That's private in that way.

I thought, Eddie, when you mentioned that Time Magazine tidbit, when Pearl Jam was on the cover of Time Magazine, it sent Eddie into a tailspin. I actually think it determined some of their album choices

and the direction he took the band in the mid-90s because he was like, I never wanted this. This was not supposed to happen. Absolutely true. And I remember when that was bubbling up and it was no bueno.

Like, keep us off. Hilarious. With that Rolling Stone, all these bands you covered, and now it's been, Jesus. I mean, I barely remember what I did three years ago. I'm sure a lot of the stuff blurs together for you. But what was the seminal band?

What was the one, like, if you're at dinner with somebody and they're like, just give us your number one, I can't believe I'm hanging out with this band. Which band was it? I have a really good memory for so much of that. It really seared itself, largely because I was a fan, but also felt like I was representing the people who wanted a front row seat like I would have dreamed of having. So I was like, okay, I'm representing those people behind me in this show. And also, I need to ask the tough questions of the people that are right in front

of me. So that was a really kind of remarkable place to sit and all that. So Led Zeppelin was huge. There was somebody out in front of the theater the other day that said, like, tell us a Led Zeppelin story. I was there for 20 minutes. You know, it was just like, I can't help it sometimes. Joni Mitchell was an interview that I wanted since I was 15, and she didn't do interviews. And there came the Mingus album, where I think she felt it was time to explain the context for this jazz experiment with Charles Mingus. And she was also up to doing an interview like you are so good at,

which is like a career retrospective from a deep tissue point of view. She was like, I'm, I'm ready for the big interview. And, and that was amazing, Bill. That was like somebody who speaks in third draft kind of paragraphs telling

you everything that you had never heard from her life. That was amazing. Wow. But little things I'll discover. I discovered an interview that Jerry Garcia gave me the other day, like one summer when I was just starting to write for Rolling Stone. And the interview is fantastic. And he kind of predicts so much of what was going to happen with the

commercialization of rock and how the grateful dead needed to figure out how to monetize what they were going to do without compromising or corrupting their thing. It was brilliant. And I'm like, man, I was just a kid with a tape recorder rolling in and he didn't have to go to those places, but he did. Cause maybe it was just the look in my eyes that I actually did listen to the music. And so many of those guys really were reporters

whose job was like sports or local stuff. And if they caught you backstage, you were going to get just like a run-of-the-mill interrogation type interview. But I was ready to stick around and ask him anything. And there was no self-awareness at that point. You don't have the ecosystem that we have now where the wrong quote, the wrong sentence can start a three-day news cycle and have everybody coming after you. The same thing was in sports. Really true.

Sports had the glory days of sports features was the 70ies and the early eighties. The best sports book ever written was breaks of the game, which came out, I think in 1981 or 1982, but it was about the 79, 80 Portland trailblazers season. And he just was embedded with that team for a year, like really embedded. There was no best.

I have to deal with agent entourage. He's just, there is on the plane. David Halberstam, the great one. He's on the plane. He's in the locker room. He's at lunch. He's going to dinner after the games. And that was a little like how it worked with you. Like when you were going to go hang out with the band, like you actually hung out with the band. It wasn't like, here's your two hours with Harry

Stiles. You were like, no, you're going on Harry Stiles' plane. You're going to eat with him. You're hanging out with this hotel room at three in the morning. You're going to potentially watch him do whatever the hell he does and maybe not put that in the article. But you had, and he kind of had to decide you're the gatekeeper of, should I put this in? Which is a little, what almost famous is about, but man,

I miss that era. It's so, it's so fascinating to read that, that stuff again. Me too. Sometimes you get it with the documentary sometimes, but not always. Um, but I love the embedded stuff. There was a writer at Rolling Stone named Grover Lewis, who I heard the legend was that he had written himself out, that he had gotten so deep into it and written so many of these really inside profiles that being in the same room with a typewriter freaked him out. He had nothing left. But he would live with Paul Newman for three months or be with Sam Peckinpah in Mexico and just drink

and rage and argue. These would be these profiles in Rolling Stone from movie sets. That was cool. Right. And there was two versions of them, right? And there's this one one the other kind of version really took off in the 80s but it was almost like a long short story that was non-fiction but the writer really went for it and a lot of it was about somebody really writing and really kind of going up but then there's kind you did where it's like i hung out with this band or this artist for three weeks and here's

what they're like. And here's the point. You're almost like staying out of the way of your own story a little bit. You're just like, here's a snapshot of what's going on with this person or this band right now. And I personally like those more. And I just wish there were more of those and less of the other ones. Who would let a reporter do that, a writer do that.

Because Townsend, Pete Townsend is probably the best rock journalist. If you read any of his stuff where he'll do accounts of being in the who, it's fantastic. It's raw, warts and all, aching, savaging himself. It's beautiful. So when he would let a reporter come on the road with the Who, he would let him see all that stuff. Be in the locker room. Be in that dressing room when we're actually

hitting each other. And then we wait to calm down before we bring DJs in. So be nice to DJs. You stay in the room for that. It's the best. And you logged some time with the Eagles too. I mean, there's some out of the DNA

for Stillwater. There's some Eagles, there's some Allman Brothers, Little Led Zepp. Who else is in there? Skinner. Some Skinners. We get Ronnie Van Zant fans coming to the show, and I love talking with them. Simple

Man, a Leonard skinner song simple man is in the play and they're just really hey man you put simple man in play good for you let's talk about ronnie and the the truth is ronnie was one of the very biggest losses like chris cornell where the guy was so vivid that I still have a hard time talking about Vanzant in the past tense I can't imagine that light being put out and I mean his his his widow Judy Vanzant like you know I don't know 15 years after 20 years maybe after the plane crash, I had lunch with her and she said,

we're thinking about doing some projects about Ronnie and the band. I said, I still can't listen to the music. I'm having such a hard time with it because I felt so much for this guy who befriended me as a kid and amazing. She said, you got to get over it, man. I was married to him. You have to get over it. And that was really poignant and powerful. But it's also what it is to be a fan. When you hold it so closely, that guy, Ronnie, was very candid with me and was coming up around the time of the Allman Brothers. They were like the little brothers of the Allman Brothers. Greg was not particularly friendly with Ronnie,

and I had written about the Allman Brothers. So Ronnie would talk about, I feel less than around this guy. How do I act? Just amazing stuff to hear from somebody who's a hero to you, making you an equal. So there's a little bit of Ronnie in Almost Famous, the movie and the play, and rightly so, big loss. And the Eagles, so one of my favorite documentaries ever,

the part one about them, and it dives into their creative process. I mean, so many good things. And the one thing they don't go all the way into is the Fry Henley stuff and how it starts out as Fry's band and then it flips and it becomes Henley's band, which I always felt like you must have borrowed at least just a whiff of that for Almost Famous, right? Of course. This is the Jeff Beebe band.

Of course. It's actually becoming the Russell Hammond band. Sorry, Jeff Beebe, you're getting left behind. But I always felt that was Glenn Frey, right? Big time. Yes, absolutely. Because it's two guys that had bands that were significant in their town,

in their hometown. So those guys have very specific personalities and so they combine their power and that you get all the sparks from it and you get either direction, you know? So this was one of those things, Bill, that you don't get now. They asked me to come live with them when they were doing the one of these nights. Wow. And I actually have the tape.

I have the cassette of them writing Lion Eyes together. And it's all there on that tape. You just see like they just meld, man. And they know their influences. They had the same experience in a place called Tana's just down the hill from where they were living. So Lion Eyes was about women. They had just been around so they were aching about it and longing and also just wanting to like write a song that just had a killer song power element to it

and that was that was their thing it's like we got to put away all of our stuff particularly fry we got to put away all of our petty shit you know because, because like, it's about the song. I mean, Glenn had a shirt that said song power. And that was also, that, that was not a joke. He was about the song. So they, they, they bowed down to the songs, but you know, there was a lot of stuff that went into getting to the moment where you're ready to, to write it and record it. And that, that was cool being around them for that.

Do you feel like all bands have to have a moment where it either keeps going or they break up at some point during the run? Because even Pearl Jam had it. You dipped into it when you did your Pearl Jam documentary. You too had it. I can't think of a band that didn't have it, but they usually break up. It's usually too much,

and they have to at least get away from each other. Maybe they'll come back, but they usually break up. It's usually too much and they have to at least get away from each other. Maybe they'll come back, but they usually break up. Great, great, great question and great observation. And true, like any band that's in it for the right reasons who've spent that time together, they come to that cliff and sometimes they jump off. Here was a theory. Tell me what you think of this theory. There was a theory that English bands stay together and American bands break up in that key moment. Is that true? Let's think about it.

Would that be because Americans are more narcissistic? Answer number one. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I always thought one of my things is, cocaine and drugs seems to be not helping a lot of these things. And the bands that maybe weren't as involved in that stuff probably had a better chance. Like the Eagles, like they even talk about it

in the documentary. They're like, there was drugs and girls everywhere. And, you know, we definitely partook. And cocaine, as we know now is it's going to make you paranoid it's going to mess you up long term you think it's great short term long term it's horrific now we know horrific but nobody knew from like 76 to 83 no and the and before that was kind of the weed the pot phase which and acid and mush oh yeah all that yeah but it wasn't as life threatening or as corrosive in that way or it didn't it was more music forward as a drug

whereas cocaine is is like wait a minute that thing known as your instinct you don't have to have one instinct you can have 500 instincts all at once. Try mixing that record now. That's why you get these bands who are like, you know, five years in the studio to make 10 songs. Whereas, you know, writing about Joni Mitchell, for example, you look at her sessionography, she records, you know, four huge songs that you know today, Big Yellow Taxi, River, you know, like just a blizzard of songs all in one day.

And you ask her like, how did you do that? She's like, like a plumber. You know, I just go in and do it. That's a job I do. I write the song and I get it recorded. Whereas the odyssey of how in a cocaine blizzard,

you're going to manage to capture your possible masterpiece. It's like, you're almost over before you begin. It's crazy you have that lying eyes recording because, I mean, I know you saw the Beatles get back, Doc, but some of the stuff with Lennon and McCartney and that, I think one of the just incredible things that Doc was just not knowing this stuff existed for 50 plus years. It's like, this is everything I ever wanted from a documentary. Why did you hold this out on us and with the best two guys? Yeah. Yeah. Playing some of this stuff solo, offhanded, and it's gorgeously filmed.

And it feels like a miracle. you know and it's gorgeously filmed and you just it feels like a miracle you know it was hard not to think of Almost Famous and Stillwater even watching the Beatles because it was like the not the movie version of it where it's just everything was passive aggressive and Harrison just getting disappointed and then

the next day it'd be like yeah George isn't coming today whereas if you're doing the movie version of that you need the Stillwater t-shirts and you need them to have the screaming match and be like, yeah, George isn't coming today. Whereas if you're doing the movie version of that, you need the Stillwater t-shirts and you need them to have the screaming match and you need Russell to go to the party. In real life, it was just like George's feelings are hurt and he's not coming in tomorrow.

It's so funny. I think that's why a lot of the fictionalized versions of a rock story, they try so hard to not fall into tropes that it becomes one big trope when in fact life of the life of a band has many of those moments um yeah so it's just whatever that mix is that makes you feel like it feels to be in a band and be in that kind of submarine together for years the things that happen in the submarine of a band's life

are often completely ridiculous. And then out of the blue, super resonant and amazing. Yeah, like the last dance with Jordan, that documentary about that last season, even though it's sports, not music, it still felt like it could have been a music band, right? It's this band that's at the precipice of breaking up. They've all been together too long. There's a lot of bitterness. There's resentment for who's number one, number... It was all the same shit that we've seen break up our favorite bands. Great comparison. It was like a

band film. And honest. It felt real honest. You know what it felt like? It felt like it put you in the room. It put you in the room with them. And that's always the dream. If you have the opportunity to be in the room and actually interviewing somebody or be reporting on them, you just got to be aware of the details

and get the details that only life can bring you get your details right and just you know be a one-person documentary documentarian and give people the feeling of what it was like to be in the room because almost famous the movie the goal was to give people the feeling of being inside a musical elixir where music meant a little bit more and these people were all fans living for that feeling of being transported by a song or band that you love so like can the movie make you feel that way and the miracle kind of almost famous which was like a four and a half hour first cut i remember remember showing it to my mom and saying, what is this? And she said, well, it's too long, but there's a masterpiece in there.

So get to work. And, you know, you can debate whether it's a masterpiece, but it did reduce to having the feeling that ultimately, you know, we thought we'd try and see if we could get it in a live theater situation. But the goal was always to be a noble fan and to use the opportunity to make a movie about that. Well, I want to talk about Almost Famous, obviously.

Let's go to singles just because I think singles for good or for better or worse sets up, sets up Almost Famous, right? You have, we can talk about anything, Bill. Well, you have this ride, baby. singles for better or worse sets up almost famous. We can talk about anything, Bill. We're on the ride, baby. You have this idea. First of all, you're in Seattle. We just did this for Rewatchables. So I'm totally versed.

I'm ready. Okay, let's go. You're in the scene. You have this idea. It's right around the same time as we have Melrose Place season one with the characters in the apartment building. We have real world seven cast members thrown together. And you're fascinated by this early 90s, people being thrown together where they become family,

even though they may not even have that much in common. But all of a sudden, that becomes your family. But at the same time, there's this incredible music scene happening and you capture it and you have the movie and they don't release it. And it just sits for months and months and months. And by the time it finally comes out, it's September 92 and it's late, but it's still cool. And now as the years pass, you captured it. But in the moment, if it's, what, 10, 11 months earlier, it's completely different. That would drive me crazy.

I would never get over that. You're absolutely right. But the thing is, the scene that you just mentioned was kind of a joke at the time. There was no Seattle scene. there was just some bands and a great radio station called kcmu and they were all having you know they took jobs in coffee houses and stuff to be able to support their bands but there was no scene like la like i had come from los angeles and it felt not unlike san die. There's no real scene. There's just some bands from here.

So the whole kind of inside joke of the singles, the Seattle that we filmed when we filmed it was, this was like a joke to say, you know, we're a band in the Seattle scene. The weirdest thing was that the music was so good. Soundgarden in particular, Alice in Chains, that it did explode. And I always thought if any of those bands exploded, it was going to be Soundgarden. Because I had been to a Soundgarden show that was like a Black Sabbath combined with

a psychedelic thing combined with Cheap Trick you know or something or led zeppelin houses of the holy and i just thought like this is so much better than the hard rock bands in la that i wanted to do a movie that had that that soundtrack to it and all the bands participated a lot of them worked on the movie as you know pas or jeff amant was was in the art department and it just felt like a group effort that all of a sudden you know that the roving spotlight of like media sensation came and landed on that city after we'd filmed it so it was actually the spotlight that got it filmed that warner brothers was just kind of pissed off that it wasn't what harry met sally you know they just that was what they thought a romantic comedy should be they're like you're giving us matt dylan with long hair

that's not billy crystal man well as you're filming it nevermind comes out becomes a comet and then pearl jam cut the tent comes out a few months after that. Same thing. But when you started filming it, when you did, I remember in the research you'd gotten the cast together and you went to see a show and it was like you went to see Mookie Blaylock. They weren't even Pearl Jam yet.

So you're filming it and the scene hasn't even taken off. I just thought the timing of that was unbelievable. And then by the time it comes out, the scene's happened. Yeah, it's bizarre. I remember Matt Dillon came late to that show. It was Alice in Chains, Mookie

Blaylock, and I think Kristen Berry opening. But Matt Dillon had shown up from pre-wig, of course, from New York. And I remember him sitting there going, I'm into jazz, man. I'm just into jazz.

This sounds good, but I'm into jazz. And the cast was looking at me like, okay, so this is this loud thing that you really love. Okay, well, I'm going to go to bed early. But they started to catch a buzz what it was was a really welcoming community of musicians and and they were lacked you know pretension in any degree and eddie you know eddie was just the shyest guy you could barely look up from this wall of hair yeah um and stone and je Stone and Jeff were a little bit the ambassadors of that scene. It was tiny and beautiful and it became huge and scary, and now it's huge and beautiful again.

I think that band really has a wonderful dynamic now. But for that time, it was scary to put the movie out because the media was making a caricature, as Mudhoney would tell you, out of their city. So when Warner Brothers wanted to do a TV show of singles, I immediately was like, no, no, no, I don't want to be part of that. And that became Friends, which is a whole other thing. I can't wait to talk to you about that. Wait, seattle thing you have lane you have cornell you've eddie and you've cobain and they're all there but i mean those four the those four as just stage performers as to see those four people live and you capture some of it in singles i mean like lane's thing in singles is out of control.

It's like, I could have watched that for like an hour. Me too. But I just, I think that's so unusual and so unique. And New York had a little bit of this in the early 2000s when they had the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Strokes and a couple others, but it wasn't like this. I just don't think it'll ever happen again. It comes from those artists. They were channeling something.

And like I say, Cornell was the most, is the most down-to-earth person. And that's why it's so heartbreaking because he was among the most generous people you'd meet, particularly in the world of musicians who often are very self-obsessed and rightly so and stuff. But Cornell was a really open-hearted guy who supported so many of those bands just with pure fandom. He's Smashing Pumpkins

are on that soundtrack because of Chris. Chris was like, I was in Chicago. We played a show with this band. You really should check this band out. They should be part of your movie. He's that kind of guy. The soundtrack became an all-time, all-time, all-timer. It's all-time.

It really is. It's like, whatever the conversation is, it has to be mentioned. It was interesting doing the research, though, where it didn't seem like you felt like you would kind of... I know it's tough to talk about casting stuff, but it didn't seem like if you had a do-over on a couple things, you probably would have.

And especially the lead character, probably a little too old because I was supposed to be the exact same age as this guy who's in the movie who falls in love with... Kira, yeah. With Kira Sidgwick's character. But he seemed like he was five years older than me, right?

And Matt Dillon, even though I think he's good in singles, he's Matt Dillon. But there's always's Matt Dillon. There's always this Matt Dillon piece to him. Did you ever think if I had to do this over again, I'm going more no names or I'm rolling the dice? Big time.

Big, big, big time. We needed somebody to get the financing, which is often a trap. Sometimes it all works out. Jerry McGuire doesn't get made with an unknown, for example. I can't picture anybody but Tom Cruise in there. That needs to be Cruise.

The perfect marriage. It was originally written for Hanks, but even the Hanks version of Jerry McGuire... You wrote that for Hanks? Yes. He was the first guy to get the script. I think I knew this. He was admiring but passed. In fact, the most seductive

pass you've ever heard. I didn't realize he passed until I hung up. That's how presidential he is. I'll tell you exactly who I originally had gone to. No offense to anybody who was cast in singles, but I went first to Johnny Depp. Yeah.

I wanted young Johnny Depp. I felt it was perfect. And I really tried to talk him into it. But in the end, and this happened to me a couple of times, happened with Johnny Depp. It happened with Leonardo DiCaprio, where it comes down to a moment where they say, I don't want to do a romantic story. I don't want to say I love you and do a whole thing about I love you, I love you. And I'd be like, yeah, it's not the kind of romance I'm interested in. Think of Billy Wilder. Think of the tough aspects of love and think about a real I love you in a movie and what that could mean. They're like, no.

No, I don't want to chase around a romantic relationship for the course of a movie. And sometimes they would openly say to me, I'd rather play somebody with a gun. I just would. And so at that point, I'm unable to cast them because they won't, they're not on board. Campbell Scott really was game to do all that stuff. I saw him, I saw him playing Hamlet at the old globe theater and I thought he was wonderful. And you know, you, you try and put the pieces together. He he, he had to get a haircut right before we were filming singles because he was doing dying young right yeah yeah he got he got a haircut that was a little too short i mean now of course

it's okay you we should have just like dyed his hair like platinum blonde or something i don't know but that length of hair would be okay now but at the time it felt like a little a little out of kilter with the look of that guy who who is an in-between guy between the scenes he felt a little a little bit more of a business guy so you know you try and make it work and everything. We actually did a couple takes with a wig at one point. And it's just a wig is a wig. We're just like, let's do it. Let's just do it the way you are and let's do it. Let's let it rip.

And he and Keira Sedgwick had a very great relationship. And so hopefully there's some truth in there. But it doesn't play like a documentary and that's okay. Well, you had, you wrote a diary thing, like your diaries for making the movie and it was, it has good behind the scenes stuff with, with you and Campbell Scott. I always thought my dream guy for that role would have been River Phoenix. And I don't know what, what kind of state of mind he was at that.

Like he, I know he was starting to have some issues at that point, but the straight version of River Phoenix's career, if he doesn't get sidetracked by stuff, that would have been there. And for all we know, Campbell at the time was kind of developing what his style was going to be, so he could have tilted more to the

River Phoenix of it all. But he has a very kind of a noble stature about his work. He's really a great actor and great director. And, you know, we spent that time together. We lived through it. And sometimes it's perfect and sometimes it becomes perfect. And sometimes it doesn't.

I mean, the casting, like you nailed Jerry Maguire. It's like, it has to be those two people. It has to be. That's the other example of that, right? You just go two for two and then you throw out a script and you shoot it well and now you have an iconic movie. Yeah, but you can't graph how it's going to work though. I mean, Renee Zellweger had come in twice and the last time she came in for

Jerry Maguire, her dog had died, and she was just was not the right frame of mind. And she left for the audition, and none of us even talked about it was that moment in a room where you just don't even bring it up. It obviously wasn't going to work. And then, I don't know, six months go by or whatever. And Gail Levin, our casting director, really super good friend of mine, says, you know, I can't get that girl from Texas with the dog out of my mind. Can I bring her back? I think she's probably not right for you. Probably not right for this story.

Can I bring her back? And really, yeah, let's bring her back. She was a sweetheart you know and so she came back on a day when i think mira sorvino and gwyneth paltrow and a couple of other people i think were around probably joey lauren lauren adams is in there too i'm trying to think of like i think so i think so actually i think you're right and and Cruz was there to read with them and something happened Renee walked into the room and he just made he she she made him laugh and she was she just came in with all that young spirit and there's a moment I think I was even

filming it where Cruz turns around and he looks at me and he looks at her and he looks back at me like wow come on yeah come on what are we doing here yeah but it was also like a real a human in the world saying isn't she something and that was the character and so that was like renee we love renee she still had to do a screen test to get it but that moment galvanized the fact that we could do an unknown against Tom Cruise, the ultimate known, and that would be Jerry Maguire. But we didn't know until that day. I said you nailed the two, but I shortchanged Rod Tidwell,

who is probably one of my top four favorite sports movie characters of all time. And the whole Tidwell family. And it's just so unlike anything. I don't... The sports movie versus the rom-com thing with Jerry Maguire. I think I litigated this once. I can't remember where I landed.

It's both, which I think it's why it's one of the great date movies that's probably ever happened. But Keep Beginning is Rod Tidwell too. Like three for three. Wait, we got to go backwards. Okay. So they want you to do singles.

I didn't realize this until we did the singles pod. They want you to do singles as a TV show. You're like, no way. Maybe a year and a half later, mysteriously, there's a show called Friends. Same production company, the whole, and you could have been even tangentially involved like just put my name in there as an ep and send me some checks but you're like no i don't want that

i'm a movie guy and your mom still makes fun of you or your mom made fun of you for years yeah about that decision i think i think yeah she's still making fun of me. I actually think I had a thought bubble with Mark arm from mud, honey's face, you know, hanging right here when they were talking to me about making it into a TV show. I just had this idea that, you know,

I couldn't hold my head up in Seattle. If, if, if after trying to make this movie that was not about exploitation of the city at all and what could have been an exploitive tv show i just it's like i'll never be able to hold my head up straight here but you know i gotta say friends pretty skillfully you know delivers comedic character comedy and i don't know it all could worked out, but I'm happy with the way things worked

out. I still haven't seen a full episode of Friends because the pain is so acute. Oh my God. It's going to kill you. Do you feel like singles created the coffee setting for movies and TV? I was trying to think. We talked about this when we did the rewatch. What did it before then?

I couldn't come up with one. Seattle did it. Seattle did it before then i couldn't come up with one seattle did it seattle yeah i mean they had already the coffee culture was in full swing no nobody had really written about it right that's why those guys that's that was the easiest job to get if you're in one of those bands you know it's it's like that was the version of the diner that they had up in seattle but partially because it was close to to the the companies that would later be you know pike place etc starbucks and everything that was all coming but these places were so cool because they were so uniquely northwestern and the clientele was kind of rocking so it'd be like

a young community having these cool coffee drinks. And then there'd be other young people serving them. And it was like, this is cool. This is a great setting for the found family of singles. Friends ripped it off. Yeah. I was trying to think when I was in college at Worcester, Massachusetts, and I used to go to a Dunkin' Donuts like 10 minutes away to go try to write notes for a column or handwrite half of a column. There was no place like that. I mean, I lived in Boston after.

There was no place like that. So even just singing in singles, I'm like, whoa, what's this? I totally, same here. I was like, wait, this is the Denny's of Seattle? I'm in. This is the coolest. Alright, so casting Almost Famous, you

and Jim Miller did, our friend Jim Miller did an awesome podcast. So I don't want to rehash all that, but one of the great things in that podcast, which is part of the Almost Famous culture, is just that Brad Pitt's going to be Russell Hammond. And Brad Pitt's

going to be Russell Hammond. And Brad Pitt's going to be Russell Hammond. And he just can't quite get there. And then all of a sudden Brad Pitt's not Russell Hammond. And that's the star of your movie. okay, now what? And I don't want to say he stumbled into Billy Crudup, but he came on this pod and he was just,

I mean, obviously loves that movie and people get mentioned to him the most on anything. But I feel like he ended up with the right Russell Hammond, which is like another thing. Like with movies, you just never know. It's like this door closes, that door opens, and it's actually the better door, but you have no idea in the moment you have no idea in the moment which makes it scary and exciting and all that stuff um one of one of the reasons that billy crudup is russell hammond is steven spielberg he had started dreamworks and wanted to, he really loved, you know, Jerry Maguire and wanted to like support

my voice. And so I gave them and Walter Parks was the producer and Laurie McDonald. They were working with me and I was like, okay, well, they want to support my voice. That's cool. I'm going to give them the voiciest thing I have, which is really what should have been my first movie. Kind of that Almost Famous is pretty much traditionally the first movie you'd make because it's about your family and

growing up and everything. Because of Jerry Maguire and the support of Spielberg and those guys, they were like, do that movie in the best way you know how. And at one point, when Brad Pitt fell out, and Meryl Streep had talked to us about playing

the Elaine Miller part, Bill is the wrong way to go. It was too starry. And Spielberg, to his credit, there was a sad day where it was like, what are we going to do? And he was like, the script's the star. So let's get the best actors for the script and i'm gonna make your movie and so the math of it kind of you know morphed into what ultimately became the right

people sarah polly spent about four months or so as penny lane. We worked on the part a lot. She's fantastic. The same woman that's directing these movies that people love. She was present as, as Sarah Pauly playing Penny Lane, you know, it was very brilliant. And ultimately just chose a different career path and didn't want to do a Hollywood movie, even though I desperately was trying to say, I'm not a Hollywood guy. I'm really not. It's like, well, you know, here we are in Hollywood. So she moved on.

And Kate Hudson, who'd been extremely loyal and hung in to play the sister through all of these delays, rebuffing Harvey Weinstein business-wise, he kept trying to put her in a romantic comedy and pay her more money and say, why are you hanging out in this little part? I can do this for you. She said, no, be loyal to the Cameron Rock movie.

And so when Sarah Pauly fell out, she kind of rose into this position of us saying, well, we got to try Kate out. And she was pure magic. She was magic. I have a little rehearsal tape where she just starts playing Penny Lane. And it's, again, Spielberg said, perfect.

She's wonderful. She lights up the room. Make the movie. We should mention, you had some juice after Jerry Maguire, let's be honest. Jerry Maguire was a massive movie. Gotta use the juice. Yeah.

So this is, if there was ever a time to make Almost Famous, it was going to be after Jerry Maguire. And plus, at 28 years, 27 years after you lived through it, you could still remember a lot of it. I think probably, although you have a great memory, probably a little bit harder to do it now. But I think one of the things, there's so many things I love about that movie, but how meticulous it is. Even just the way Williams' room is decorated and subtle shit like that, where you could just tell you're just a maniac

about it. Every poster had to be perfect in the right spot. All the albums had to be exactly what the albums would be. And it just seems like you probably went nuts trying to figure out every single aspect of this, right? Yeah, I had one of those freak out moments that they tell about directors. What would now be a YouTube moment? I had one of them. I think I've had two. In your career of them. I think I've had two. In your career? In my career, I've had two.

One was at the San Diego Sports Arena when we were doing the Stillwater concert. And we had a good amount of extras and then kind of CGI'd more extras towards the back of the arena. But it was the same night. I mean, people were already seeing the mania of me trying to direct

the movie coming because i think i was i was already i'd already gone through this period where i'm like we gotta have this we gotta have this shot be the cover of the neil young album time fades away there's a guy with a rose here and he's right up here and it's got to be perfect so they're already rolling their eyes but then um they're talking to the extras and they're saying like okay and when the song's over you applaud and so they did it and all these extras were doing like the heavy metal horns ronnie james dio thing and like i love that but that didn't happen until the 80s so they're like we're losing time we're ready to go what Let's do it. And I'm like, no, the heavy metal rock horns are wrong. They're like, if they're looking at the rock horns, you're in trouble.

And I'm like, I would be looking at the rock horns. We have to change it. So that was one of those moments where they were like, oh, okay, he's that guy after all. But now I'm just forever. I see those scenes and I'm forever happy that you can look at that audience and it's pretty literally a 70s audience, which is cool. And Almost Famous needed that. The thing is, the way you did that movie, at some point you have to commit, you're all in in the poker game, right? It's not like you can be like, all right,

we'll cut corner on this. You just can't. You can't. Everything has to be perfect. You've got to be all in. Like in 1973, 74. And dig it. Like into that scenario, you put Billy Crudup, who had only played piano in his life, and he has six weeks to play guitar and learn how to do it. And Frampton, Peter Frampton was helping out as a creative consultant, which was really cool. That was actually the biggest draw for

Brad Pitt in the day. Frampton? Yeah, he was like, oh man, this will be great to have Frampton there to help me do all this stuff and to be with Frampton himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Frampton was really great with Crudup and he had this wonderful thing that Crudup might have

told you about where he said, okay, if you really want to be accurate as that guitarist, you have to pick a moment, whether you're playing the right thing or not, where you just look up like you're summoning it all from the heavens. And so there are moments in Almost Famous where you see Billy doing that. And that's totally Frampton saying like, do that. You'll sell it. But Crudup did learn how to play and he still plays, which is great. Wow. Well, you had that and then you had Jason Lee, which I got to say, I love Jason Lee

in the 90s. He wouldn't have been my first thought for like a front man of early mid-70s, but then he was perfect. It was like, oh my God, how did I not see this? The hair, the beard, he had that skinny. All the lead singers back then had that kind of skinny, looked like they had Neaton in a couple weeks vibe to them.

And he just kind of had it. And waist and shirts that they tuck in and shit. But what he had was the pure hearted narcissism. Why can't, why can't we just look cool? What's wrong with this? It's, I love Jason Lee and I love, you know, Drew Galing in our play is fantastic BB.

And then we put a lot more BB stuff in there because I just can't get enough. Oh, nice. Yeah. We can stay in the timeline, brother. Don't want to throw you off. No, no. I just had a Hoffman. You have Hoffman what, for two days? Yeah. One of the great actors of the last 30 years. No kidding.

And he's sick. And you have to do all the Lester Banks scenes with him. Yeah. And he doesn't feel great. And it ends up, he's like, it's like, I don't know. I don't know what my favorite Hoffman is,

but it's in the conversation. It's like him and Scotty J and maybe two other ones, but his Lester Banks is unbelievable. We're not cool. And he had an instinct on it, you know, that was so smart. His whole big speech, you're going to dig this. His whole big speech about we are the uncool and all that stuff, I wrote it.

I don't know if you ever had that Todd Rundgren album, Something Anything. But there's a picture of Todd, I think it's inside Something Anything, where Todd has his hands out in victory, and he's yelling to the world, you're on his back. And I thought, oh man, this is what that Lester Banks speech is. It's like, because we are uncool. And I wrote it as a victory speech so hoffman on the day is looking at the scene and he says does it have to be that kind of thing it's like no i mean it's written to be that but like what do you have in mind and he goes what if we're just the last two guys on earth who are awake

and on the phone together i'm like thank you philip seymour hoffman let's go and that's what he did wow his he he freaking called that one that was an audible and he was like yeah let's do it like that and john toll lit it and it's perfect and you know we we don't stray too far from that vibe in the play, but that's all Phil. And I didn't spend that much time with him. And I don't know if he left our set knowing if the movie would be good or not. I was never sure if he believed in it as much as I did. I believe he believed in what he did, but, you know, I was a guy playing music and, you know, playing music during actors takes and things. And I don't know what he expected. But when I came to New York to have him loop some of his lines because of noise, he wanted to watch all his scenes.

And I stood next to him watching his scenes in this little recording studio and he turns me and he said so I'm in a play tonight and and it's with John C Reilly and it's called true West and I'm gonna leave a ticket for you and I'd love for you to come and say hi to me after i said sure i'm here to loop you man i'll go see that play i love true west so i go see the play and uh you know fantastic right and i go back to talk to him afterwards and uh there was a whole crowd of people in the hallway and And you knew that Philip Seymour Hoffman's dressing room was at the end of this hall,

but he hadn't opened the door yet. He opens the door, and he looks through all the people, and he points at me and crooks his finger. And everybody's looking at me like, why you? So I walk through, and I go into the room.

He shuts the door, and he goes, you've made a fucking good movie, and I'm proud to be in it. And I know what's that movie is going to be. And I really thank you for it. And if I was sick and, you know, quiet when I was doing it, uh, I'm just really grateful to be a part of it. Thank you for making the movie. And then he called the rest of the people in and he had the, you know, he saw his people, but yeah, he really kind of sat with it and wanted to tell me that.

And I talked to him a couple times after that, but that was kind of the definitive time with Philip Seymour Hoffman, where he just, he kind of ruminated on the whole experience and said, happy I'm in it. Can we go three deep dive,

really dorky, almost famous questions before we talk about the musical? Let's do it. Let's do it. So, um, the fact checker, the Rolling Stone, who's just really mean to William the whole time.

I'm guessing that was based on a fact checker that was really mean to you in the, in the seventies. Oh yes. Several of them. Yeah. Okay. They didn't care for me. That was it.

Just fact checkers in general did not like you. Was your process off? What was it about you that they didn't like? The recordings I made and the places where I did interviews were, were not a place where you had like clean recordings. And some of it was just in my notes because, you know, I'll take my time with jimmy page wherever it

happens sometimes it happens in a huge on cocktail napkins right anything you know so i would i would gather it from all these sources and i think they felt like you know this is the work of a fan which we now have to unravel a little bit and um you know it happened for a while where I think they liked a more traditional approach. They were always eye-rolling. I decided to put the eye-rolling fact checker in there. What's funny is now people come to see the play and they say, that's really funny that there were fact checkers. I'm like, yeah, I guess your blog

doesn't have any fact checkers. That's another way of doing it. So, one of the great deleted scenes of all time, which is on YouTube, it's William and I guess Zooey Deschanel's brother,

who's amazing in this scene. And they're showing Francis McDormand's character, the mother, trying to explain to her why he loves music and they play her Stairway to Heaven. And it's nine minutes long. Yes. And it's not in the movie because Led Zeppelin wouldn't clear the song.

Question one. Yeah. Is it a good thing it's not in the movie because Led Zeppelin wouldn't clear the song. Question one. Yeah. Is it a good thing it's not in the movie? I feel like it probably is at this point, right? Absolutely. That's like a good miss. I think it would have thrown the movie off. But the game changer on that was that we did screen it with the song in there before we officially got denied by Led Zeppelin.

And it did stop the movie experience. I mean, that trippy little fun thing you can watch at home on YouTube didn't work in a big theater of people who had already been sitting there for an hour. But you got to love Frances McDormand, who spent an enormous amount of time coming up with every possible facial expression to get her through a basically wordless reaction to Stairway to Heaven. With my mom co-acting with her, by the way.

That's my mom, who looks like me in drag, on the sofa. But yes, the Zooey Deschanel boyfriend character, the rejected boyfriend character, is probably my favorite in the scene. He's unbelievable. Or close to Francis. What was his name? What's the actor's name?

Jesse Caron. So in a weird way, it's great you filmed the scene because you don't know YouTube culture and deleted scene DVD culture is coming. So you have the DVD, but you're still not allowed to put the music on the DVD. because you don't know YouTube culture and deleted scene DVD culture is coming. Yeah. So you have the DVD, but you're still not allowed to put the music on the DVD. So you have the whole scene. You're like, press play.

You've got to do it yourself. I have multiple DVDs. Yeah, it's like press the song. And now on YouTube, they do it for you. But I think this worked out better. I'm so glad you did it. I did too. Yeah.

Thank you. Now it's the way it is. All right. That was question number two. I love question two. Question number three, you still get Led Zeppelin. For the last song, you get Tangerine, which is one of the most incredible songs you could end a movie with, especially for that point in the thing. How do you get Tangerine but not Stay Right in Heaven?

Well, they were great. I think Robert Plant already felt like he had enough of Stairway to Heaven, or at least felt it was so overexposed that I think I remember him saying, it's become a wedding song. You don't want Stairway to Heaven.

But they said, you get four songs, the other four songs you wanted. Jimmy Page, here's how great they were when they saw the screening of Almost Famous, alone in a little theater in England. Jimmy Page said, I would like the acoustic sides of Led Zeppelin represented a tiny bit more than the songs that are already on this list. Tangerine was on the list and he said, I want to, uh, I think it's North country woman. I can't have that wrong. He, he said, take, take, take this extra song for free and take that so that all of our stuff

is represented. And that was amazing. Jesus. I know. He said that over this little table and this little wine bar across the street from where we'd screen the movie for them on the one day a year where they had a day together to do business decisions. And so he said that. They were just old-time buddies together. They were wonderful.

And here's what they did after we did the little talk about what would go into Almost Famous. They geeked out about Jeff Buckley for about 45 minutes sitting there at the table about how much they both loved Jeff Buckley. And I remember thinking, this is so great because this is a movie about being a fan. And it kind of ends with Led Zeppelin at this little table fanning out about Jeff Buckley. It's like, whatever happens, I'm good. You know? So when it kind of bombed in the theater,

the movie still felt like it was what it was meant to be. And once again, my mom, such a strong voice, she was like, if you're happy with it, people will find it. Don't worry about it. And people did find it. Same thing for The Who. You got Sparks. I mean,

you had to call in some favors, I'm guessing, or cash in on relationships that you had built when you covered these guys. Yeah. And the people that came through always surprised me because some of them were really not real generous with giving their music it's a little different era than now where you can get a you won't get dinged too hard for taking a big chunk of money for giving it to like cadillac or something but right joanie mitchell will never be that person and she she gave us river no questions asked for the play too yeah there's not a lot of joni mitchell songs and movies i'm gonna guess but her stuff is so cinematic when they do appear yeah it matters you know people do well coda will tell you that joni mitchell served served them i

mean she made coda i mean it was great butoda was great, but diving into Joni Mitchell. Joni Mitchell, big resurgence for her because she performed live this year. Big comeback. So Almost Famous comes out and it's successful, but not that successful. Yeah.

But then clearly was going to have this different kind of success that it pretty much achieved quickly. And then over the course of the 2000s, I think it's one of the most rewatchable movies of the last 25 years. It was on a lot. And something started to shift, I would say,

mid 2000s. Could you feel it? Yes, I could feel it. Because at a certain point, I stopped hearing about Show Me the Money and it was all about Almost Famous. Wow. Yeah, that's still the case. So it's five years of just people screaming, Show Me the Money at you and Tom Cruise goldfish meltdowns.

Yeah, replaced by people yelling, Don't Take Drugs at Francis McDormand on the street. Oh my God. It was a baton pass moment. Yeah, because I remember I wrote about it. This is when you reached out to me. I wrote about it, I think in 2009. I grabbed all the quotes from the movie. I did this NBA awards thing.

And the premise was, I think Almost Famous is the best movie of the 2000s. Come fight me, basically. And people went nuts. It was either they completely agreed they're like finally somebody said or they were like fuck you you know but nobody could come up with a better movie but i do feel like you know we're 22 years later now it's a musical now you have a different pressure right because people fucking love this movie so now it's like oh you're going back to the well? You're making a musical out of it? I'm sure not that guy.

My guard's up, but yeah, you're not that guy. So make the case for the musical. I never did a sequel and never, never went down that road at all. And almost immediately after Fast Times,

people wanted to do a Spicoli movie. And I didn't want to do that. I mean, you probably would have never gotten Sean, but you would have gotten somebody. after Fast Times, people wanted to do a Spicoli movie. And I didn't want to do that. I mean, you probably would have never gotten Sean, but you would have gotten somebody. And they would have been happy to do a Spicoli movie or a series of them. But something about Almost Famous being kind of a musical already made me open to it.

Made me open to it, made me open to it. And a buddy of mine who knew theater, we spent some months, he was really great about kind of schooling me a little bit in theater. We worked on what would have been a jukebox version of Almost Famous. Lots of hits, like lots of who hits and stuff like that. But at a certain point, the whole thing just kind of

sagged like a balloon losing air because you don't want to see that yeah you don't want to and that wasn't the spirit of almost famous so i just decided no and uh thanked my buddy and we just kind of moved on and then um another good friend of mine named leo volick who was like the the greatest music supervisor helper person in movies she she's like everybody would always say like you got to work with leo volick man she knows how to secure stuff and help you she has such a great musical sense anyway i met her they were right and she was a broadway person and a theater person so at a certain point she came to me and said like i'm sorry to over answer your question she's like i've known this i'm i'm now in charge of sony

theatricals so i have this cool side job that i'm working on now where i i'm in charge of any movie from our catalog that's going to go on a theater stage. Do you have any interest in Almost Famous? And I said, well, what kind of Almost Famous? And she said, just like a real play, like the story, something that captured the feeling you talk about, about the movie on the stage. So we just kind of tiptoed along for years, basically. And I met a director that I felt really got it. It's a guy named Jeremy Herron, Tom kit,

who's a composer who I really felt got it. And just like one step at a time, we worked on it. And then, um, uh, there was an opportunity to, to do an off Broadway version of it in San Diego,

which I, you know, terrifying myself said, yes, let's do it at the Old Globe Theater. That's a home game for you. Yeah, but a terrifying home game because I very quickly was the guy that was like, oh, great. If this doesn't work, I did it in my

hometown. This is not cool. You know? But my mom, who was a huge supporter of the idea and was a big Broadway and theater fan, and was always trying to bring it into our family when I was really young, she would say, don't give up, don't give up, don't give up. And when she died two days before the first audience came in to see the play,

it was like, oh, shit. Now the stakes are as high as they'll ever be. What's going to happen? And what happened was the kind of, whatever it was, the kind of feeling in the air that we already had combined with the enhanced emotion of what had just happened with one of our lead characters in the cast was all we all had lived together and we were all in on things so it was like a band we were in our own little submarine

and they were kind of like fuck it man we're gonna do the best version of this play ever for lester bangs and alice crowe and uh people showed up every night got standing ovations and we shocked ourselves and thought okay well we well, we should go to Broadway with it. Why not? I mean, come on. And then the pandemic hit. And the cast stayed together throughout the whole of COVID. Jesus.

They didn't take other jobs. We were always in our... They had email chains and chat rooms they were like they stayed together we had weekly get togethers and the weirdest thing happened they stayed loyal in a way that people are often encouraged not to because you know there were agents and managers on their side that were saying get a pb pilot man like you won't make that much money in theater if it doesn't go to Broadway or whatever. It's like, why are you so loyal to these parts? And it was because we had that time together

as music fans, et cetera, et cetera. So then it became something that, a quest. And so here we are for all the right reasons. And people feel it in the theater. And we'll see what happens. But I know that it is true to the very thing that the movie is about. Loving music and my idiosyncratic family.

Well, I didn't know the pandemic thing. That's an unbelievable story. I'm there every night, though. I really love talking to the fans. And a lot of them are exactly as you say. I was scared. I was scared to come here. I drove from Boston and I said to my girlfriend, this is a roll of the dice, but they dig it. So I'm happy to share the pleasant surprise with them. I'm just like them.

November 3rd, Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. Almost famous, the musical is the website, if you want to,.com, if you want to go check that out. I forgot to mention, my craziest psychotic thing you did was writing the entire Stillwater Rolling Stone piece that they read that's on their website. You can read it and it's really good. And it really reads like it was in a feature in 1973. I love how long did you spend writing that and creating it? It's amazing. I got to say, it is amazing. I got to say it's amazing i gotta say i it is amazing i gotta say it's a joint journalistic effort it's it's uh rob sheffield david brown christian horde oh it's a group uh angie morticio it's so funny that it exists you can go look it up right now yeah and they they they gave

it to me and um i i made a few little changes and added some stuff, but it really, it's like group journalism, which I don't know. It seems like that should have been a train wreck, but actually we kind of project some of it behind. And I love it. I love it because the lead, I just love the lead. I'm flying high over Tupelo, Mississippi with America's hottest band and we're all about to die. It's a great lead.

But also it dives in, there's quotes and it just feels like every Rolling Stone piece for 12 years. It's like the, it hits all the beats, it moves. I thought it was really good. All right, I'm going to see the play, I promise. Cool, come. I'm glad we did this.

Thanks for all your time. Congratulations on it. Anytime you want to come on, just tell me. Thanks, man. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for getting me in on the rewatchables. You're welcome. Good luck on the play. Great, Bill.

Talk to you soon. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Wesley and Sean. Thanks to Cameron Crowe. Thanks to Kyle Creighton for producing, as always. Don't forget about the rewatchables. We put up Cruisin', second episode in Naughty November. That is up right now. Prestige TV podcast as well.

It did White Lotus, episode two. I was on that one. And I'm going to be doing episode three. And I will see you on this feed on Thursday.