“We are uncool.”
Untitled, the director’s cut of Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, is one of those movies that just hit me in the gut every time I watch it. The thinly veiled autobiographical story of Crowe’s own youth shows a life that I think a lot of us would have loved to have. It was all about sex,drugs and rock and roll back in 1973. Crowe’s stand-in William Miller gets to live the lifestyle of a rock star without ever really getting to be a part of it. He gets to see everything but ultimately, as the band Stillwater is fond of saying, he’s a journalist and he’s “the enemy.”
William, only weeks away from graduating high school, stumbles upon the chance of a lifetime when Rolling Stone magazine approaches him, looking for a piece for an upcoming issue. When he suggests up-and-coming band Stillwater, he opens himself up to the new world. The timing of this is very important. He still has to finish and graduate high school but before he can do that, he gains a freedom that’s unheard of, especially with his controlling and loving mother. Many of us gained that freedom after high school, whether out in college or in “the real world” but William gets tossed into the crazyness of the rock and roll lifestyle without being part of it and without having “earned” it or even prepared for it. Dreaming of rock bands and suddenly sharing a bus with a rock band are two totally different things. Travelling with Stillwater, he meets two very important people to his growth, the band’s guitarist Russell and Penny Lane, a devotee of the band but not a groupee. With Russell and Penny, William sees America through ampitheaters and hotels, travelling with the band but never really being a part of the band.
Cameron Crowe’s script manages to nostalgic and honest at the same time. No matter what Penny may call herself, she’s a groupee and can never be more than that to Russell, whom she madly and deeply loves. Part of her knows that but tries to deny it over and over again. Even as she knows that Russell can never love her in the same devoted way, she unintentionally strings along William, for whom meeting her was practically love at first sight. Even for the audience (at least the male part,) I think it’s easy to fall in love with Penny. She’s funny, sexy, commanding when she needs to be, vulnerable and she needs protection. That last part is what William can offer her that Russell can’t.
To Russell and even to the other members of Stillwater, Penny and her “Band Aids” (i.e. fellow groupees) are part of the road, they go along with the busses, hotel rooms and the stages. They’re part of the whole tour package and the rock and roll lifestyle. Heck, part of the reason you pick up a guitar in the first place is because “the chicks dig it.” Sex is a large part of the dreams of stardom. But William isn’t from that world. He doesn’t want to be a rock star. He just wants to write. And to write about what he wants to, he has to get sucked into the lifestyle. The impartial journalist he tries to start out at disappears into a friend of the band. Penny and Russell talks about their “love” of the music and perhaps it’s there but William and his mentor/confidante/advisor Lester Bangs are really about the music. The life on the road is just a side effect for what William wants– a story about a struggling blue collar band on the edge of making it big.
Except for one night (”You know, any other city in the world and you’d still be a virgin”,) William isn’t totally seduced by the road or the lifestyle. But he is seduced by Penny. Right from the beginning, she welcomes him into the world, she guides him and teaches him the etiquette of hotel rooms, dealing with roadies and back stage passes. She’s his guide and his muse but he wants her just to be at least a friend, if not more. Unlike the band, he actually cares about her as a person. He even cares about all of the Band Aids, often sharing his room with them. Maybe it’s just because he’s easy to push over but William never complains, never yells and never treats the girls like anything other than what they are– fellow travellers.
Penny Lane is one of those girls that I think you can’t help but fall in love with even when you know you shouldn’t. She just glows whenever she’s on screen. With a smile and a nod, she welcomes everyone and accepts everyone. The way she pulls William into the life shows a grace and maturity even as she barely understands what real life is. She often looks at William and says “If someone in the real world looked at me like that” as if William, the bus and the band aren’t real. She talks about running away to Monocco, to start a new life with new names. She half kids and half begs William to go with her. She tells him that they can be completely different people with completely different names. But Penny Lane is a made up name and no one knows what her real name is. On the road with the band, she’s already very different person than she is at home in San Diego. She’s already ran away to a different life and a different name and can’t understand or doesn’t realize how empty and unfulfilling it is. She wants to leave one dream and made up life for another. She protects William but she is really the one who needs protection. She practically begs for it without even saying a word.
Eventually and only for a brief period, William becomes part of everything. After being there with the band through the highs and lows, he’s accepted as part of the extended family of Stillwater. Earlier, Lester Bangs warns him about becoming too close with the band and that any friendship would compromise his ability to honestly write about them. Even with that advice, William is seduced by the band, the lifestyle and by the music. He welcomes the lifestyle even after Bangs and Rolling Stone told him not to. It’s short and sweet until reality sets in and William sees exactly how Russell treats Penny and has to wonder if he’s as tradable and expendable as Penny was.
The love triangle at the heart of the movie can have no winners and no losers. There is no competition among the characters as they all genuinely like each other but yet can’t understand why they can’t be together. Rock star, critic and groupee are three mutually exclusive things in the end. Friendships can and do exist but can it really go farther than that? Is it possible for two of them to be truly happy together without their different roles creeping into the relationship? William will always be the journalist, the enemy. Russell will always be the rocker and Penny will always be the moral support that the road demands but not the wife or girl friend at home. At least, that’s what they’ll be until they break the cycle which Penny does at the end, leaving the road for a much grander trip.
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