The Kwan of Cameron Crowe

“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.” — Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything… 

“It means love, respect, community… and the dollars, too. The package. The kwan.” — Rod Tidwell, Jerry Maguire

The thing about Almost Famous is that William Miller (Patrick Fugit), the precocious teenage journalist who finesses his way into a big assignment for Rolling Stone magazine in 1973, has no interest in doing a hit piece about Stillwater, the up-and-coming rock band he follows on tour. Despite the warnings from his mentor Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who anticipates rock stars feasting on the 15-year-old’s boyish enthusiasm and naivety, William isn’t Lester Bangs and never will be. Bangs gives excellent advice about the distance a journalist must keep between himself and a band angling to look cool in the most influential music publication on earth—“these people are not your friends” is a pearl everyone who covers stars should carry with them—but the kid gets seduced anyway. It’s only when the band’s dysfunction becomes unavoidable that his piece turns in a more critical direction. Otherwise, his instincts would have likely aligned with the wishes of the lead guitarist (Billy Crudup), who wants him to “just make us look cool.” 

Almost Famous is the clearest window we have into the soul of its writer-director, Cameron Crowe, who based William and his experiences as a cub reporter on his own past as a rock journalist, where he wrote many such profiles before segueing into a career as a author and screenwriter, with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and then as a filmmaker. His former editor Ben Fong-Torres described Crowe as the guy the magazine would send to cover “bands that hated Rolling Stone,” which speaks both to Crowe’s ingratiating personality and his reputation for, well, not being as “unmerciful” as Bangs would have liked. It’s a little unfair to talk about Crowe as a “fan,” exactly, but even after William gets through a disillusioning journey with a band that’s often tried to manipulate him, Almost Famous ends with   him finally scoring an interview with Stillwater’s guitarist and getting him to talk at length about the music. The thing both of them care about the most. 

I was thinking about William Miller a lot when revisiting Jerry Maguire, which is getting a small theatrical re-release this weekend for its 30th anniversary. (Never mind that the film didn’t actually come out until December of 1996.) The quotes above from Say Anything… and Jerry Maguire pose an interesting question: How did Crowe, in less than 10 years, go from a protagonist in Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) who wants nothing to do with commerce and capitalism, to Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise), a sports agent who gobbles up four-percent commissions off the contracts he negotiates with teams and shoe companies? Shouldn’t it be galling to understand that Crowe essentially puts these characters on equal footing, even if it’s absurd to think about them in the same room together? 

Back in 2000, when I interviewed Crowe during a press tour for Almost Famous, I asked him what defined “the Cameron Crowe hero” and this was his response: 

The battered idealist. It’s just my favorite character. I write it no matter what I do. It sort of comes from my upbringing. My mom would always say, “Be positive, be positive. It’s rough out there, but don’t succumb. Don’t succumb to the cynicism in the world.” To me, a hero is somebody who’s able to accept the environment of the world, deal with the stuff that’s thrown in their path—or, in Fast Times, the coffee that’s thrown in their face—and somehow keep their heart. 

One of the more compelling aspects of Jerry Maguire is that it isn't about an idealist facing compromise but a compromised man trying to paste together his shredded idealism. A cynic might not be wowed by Jerry’s career transformation into a somewhat nobler model of sports agent, but the real goal in Crowe’s movies is not idealism but optimism, which is how guys as different as Jerry and Lloyd can seem like children of the same creator. Say Anything… is about a typically rudderless teenager who doesn’t think much about future goals beyond spending as much time with the school valedictorian as possible. Jerry Maguire is about a grown man who’s bumped against the dissatisfactions of the career and the lifestyle he’s always imagined for himself. Crowe creates different contexts for them to be their best selves.