Almost Famous - Prefatory notes

Ever since Sports Guy Bill Simmons published an indirect argument for _Almost Famous_ as the best movie of the decade (see particularly the opening paragraphs of this article here), I've wanted to revisit the film. Simmons admits that his choice is a bit off-kilter, but my initial reaction was that he was being too kind to himself. I just scanned the Oscar noms for best picture that decade (which Almost Famous didn't crack, so this isn't about AF being a film more recognized by the mainstream), and I come up with at least ten films that I would look at before AF, just on general principle.

1. Traffic (same year as AF)
2, 3, 4. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (pick your poison)
5. The Departed
6. Lost in Translation
7. Brokeback Mountain
8. No Country for Old Men
9. There Will Be Blood
10. Inglorious Basterds

You get my point. And that's JUST the Oscar noms.

Simmons is pretty clear about his criteria (though he fails to elaborate on what each category actually means): excellence, originality, and rewatchability. Simmons figures that the degree of difficulty for AF was "off the charts," that there's no other drama roughly like it in popular cinema and the fact that it's a success makes it that much more of a triumph. Other supporting elements? Best quotes, iconic performance, great conclusion, and a couple of iconic scenes.

As always with Simmons, pop culture is ostensibly a way into sports, in this case the NBA off-season which he dissects using 50 AF quotations. But his definitions remain rather vague. For instance, what exactly connotes excellence? Why is the film iconic? Is there a phrase from this film that's even half as culturally prescient as "You complete me" from Jerry Maguire? (For that phrase's enduring currency, see the Iron Man 2 trailer.)

I want to start today by giving my best shot at a favorable reading of the film in purely evaluative terms, aka should you see the film.

A. Yes, you should definitely see this film, though Simmons implicitly claims that this is the ONE film you should see from the past decade. While I think you should see it, it's probably only a little more necessary than making sure you dust your bookshelves every two weeks if you have allergies. I guesstimate there are probably 40 other movies you could see before this one, particularly if rock n roll is not your bag.

B. Simmons claims that the film is about "the exact time when music lost its innocence and started to go corporate." It's also about the exact moment when a boy becomes a man. It's a bilgunsroman pic with two central heroes: William and Russell. To extend the impact of the title, "fame" is roughly equivalent to adulthood. That is, the turn towards "corporate" rock is exactly the moment rock became "serious" and "mature", specifically the KIND of thing that a serious cinematic drama could take as its subject. We only get AF because of this exact moment, so let's not go nostalgically blowing 74 out of proportion.

C. The film has at least six well-written, well-performed characters: William Miller, Russell Brand, Penny Lane, Mrs. Miller, Lester Bangs, and Jeff Bebe. That's a pretty terrific boast for any film to make. It doesn't take equal screen time to establish each of these personalities. In Simmonsian terms, each of them has a quotable quotation, and Patrick Fugit and Francis McDormand are particularly good (watching back through it, I was not as impressed by Billy Crudup's Brand as Simmons made me expect, but it's still a very good performance).

D. There is something clever about the film in that it is the embodiment of William's fictitious article on Stillwater. Let me put it this way: William can only be true to Stillwater--that is, can only show he loves them--by being merciless in his critiques, in displaying how they "really" behave. Of course, this taste of the Real, the behaviors and habits that are traditionally cordoned off from the public, have the effect of only making them more lovable. And I'm not just trotting out some manufactured critique of realism. This is significant theme in the film (witness, for instance, Russell's commitment to the "reality" of small town teenage life in his "Golden God" sequence). The paradox is that the buffoonish Stillwater gets that much more nostalgically recreated in William's "warm" quotations than they would be had he written a more generic puff piece. And this of course is what the film does to the entire era. Stillwater doesn't exist. They are a compendium of Led Zeppelin, the Allman Bros., Lynard Skynyrd, etc. They are the excessive way to preserve what is the real greatness of the early 70s rock that litters the soundtrack. We see how these rock star guys are all chauvinistic, selfish douche bags, but we love them all the more. That's because they're "real" and by extension William's article (and the film) conveys that reality. To pull this whole complex operation off is no small feat, and I think in scope and in execution this is by far Cameron Crowe's most accomplished film.

So there's the plus side. I'll be back to tomorrow to express my reserves about the film conceptually, and why I'm not willing to admit this into the decade's top 30 films much less its top 5.