ALMOST FAMOUS @ 20

Young William Miller defies the expectations of his youth and the warnings of his mother to take his sister's advice and free himself through the power of rock music. It's 1973 and things like that happened, at least on concept albums. Assigned a piece on Black Sabbath by enfant terrible of rock journalism Lester Bangs he comes to a halt backstage when the mountainous doorman won't let him in. Luckily a sparkle of fairies appear and promise to get him admission as they flood in. Then, a band of journeymen appears and allow him, through his use of magic phrases, admitance under their protection. And, just like that William Miller at fifteen, passing as eighteen, becomes a rock journalist. Well, not quite, but whatever happens is going to change his life from the law career path his mother has been building for him like Lego to meetings with demi-gods and angels. 

Before I wrote that paragraph I hadn't made the connections between this movie's plot and the kind of Tolkeinesque narrative logic it uses. That might be why this film, which to a very susbstanial degree is a standard coming of age story playing dress up, transcends its own stated purpose and becomes something far richer than a plot synopsis could manage. It also comes from the experience of its writer/director Cameron Crowe who really did tour with high profile rock bands in the early seventies when he was well under age, which adds gravitas. So, while the forays into cuteness and cliches from the age of stadium rock make it into this piece the way they get into so many other films like this, it is never overwhelmed by them and there is always something in the writing, the filmmaking and the performances to redress the balance.

The film was produced and released with perfect timing, coming at the end of a revival of '70s pop culture and attempts by new rock stars to be indulged like the old ones were. Crowe's nostalgia is less on show here then his understanding of the longing in the decade's revivalism. When Almost Famous is set there was a similar revival of '50s pop, making it on the charts with Sha Na Na and into the cinemas with American Graffiti and into the lounge rooms with Happy Days. Twenty something years later, the flares and long hairs were back and rock festivals were on the scale of Old Testament conflicts. In a film about a fictional band that name checks real acts like Bowie or Led Zepellin (and gets a former member of Humble Pie to play Humble Pie's road manager) and includes characters from the journalism of the time like Lester Bangs and Jan Wenner, he is giving more than a few hints that his own experience of the rock glamour of the '70s cannot be reproduced in anything but cover versions.

Lest that should land me in a solemn mire I should point out that this is an extraordinarily entertaining movie whose life lessons go down like dessert and whose sheen of fable allows sight of enough grit to keep it flowing and charging. Patrick Fugit shines as William, variously blessed and cursed with intelligence beyond his years yet still a kid when circumstances demand he remember that. Frances McDormand's mother is perhaps the closest the film comes to a persistent stereotype but the veteran actor does lift the role into humanity with a kind of hard-arsed comic turn. Kate Hudson's gliterring Penny Lane also has wisdom but hers has been forged by pain and abuse. Billy Crudup is exactly the kind of charismatic and capricious miasma of someone who doesn't know he is still young and unschooled by his life choices (hello, rock stars). As his foil in the band Jason Lee plays his conscience beneath his would-be rock god persona, controlling the kind of smartarsed character he'd come to be known as from Kevin Smith movies. His performance is in the shadow of Crudup's, reflecting their characters but it is worth your attention. But the cast in this epic memoir-faux, whether one-line bits or starring roles keep the momentum rolling, testifying by deed to their director's skills with them.

I was a crucial few years younger than William in the '70s and didn't know I was just waiting for punk to happen to feel I had a place in the culture. Even though I had good sibling influences that opened doors to the best of early '70s rock music I never quite felt it was mine. When I went to see The Song Remains the Same I dug it but I was watching a band rather than a legend. Punk defined my view of rockstars as stadium gods and I preferred the notion of the musicians and the punters appearing to be the same thing. This why I felt none of the nostalgia that poured from the screen but eagerly followed the wonder and the joy of these people who at their own levels lived on the edge of fame and might well need to accept that as best. All the warmth this film can muster is tempered by that sobering notion.

So, I shouldn't like this film as much as I do. But I like it so much that I chose to watch the much longer cut Crowe produced a few years later for home video. Tellingly, he didn't give it the kiss of death and call it the Director's Cut (that had been released to cinemas) but the Bootleg Version. The title in the opening sequence is given as Untitled. Not just a fun joke on the culture of completist fandom but an admission that if you  liked the original you are going to like having a lot more of it here. Against the tide of negative examples in director's cuts (almost all of them are bloated and obscure the orginals' value) this one actually works better. There is no drag just to have a cute period reference in or the sense that something made it in because a self-styled cinematic genius needed to bare his soul more clearly. The flow of the longer cut is as fleet as the first version. There's just more. 

I had the bootleg version on DVD and even though I upgraded to the recent 4K release (which is utterly stunning) I will be keeping the old disc for the packaging alone. So, yeah, this one still works twenty years later just as it worked twenty years after Cameron Crowe lived it. And for all the hokey cameos, goofy humour and unquestioned rock cliches this remains a triumph of youth and the intensity of its fandom, and something that anyone who sees it will understand: joy.