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Kentucky Fried Movie, Entertainment Weekly (US), October 7, 2005
by Christine Spines
scans by The OB Files
After lackluster festival reviews, director
Cameron Crowe scrambles to get his heartfelt romantic comedy ''Elizabethtown''
in shape for general audiences. Will they show him the money?
Cameron Crowe is having a quintessentially Cameron Crowe moment. If he had
written it himself, an Elton John song might be playing over the scene and you,
the fired-up audience member, would suddenly be singing along under your breath,
rooting for the shaggy underdog to survive the firestorm that has engulfed his
world, turning his life from comedy to high-stakes drama without his consent. In
typical Crowe fashion, his rescue would probably come in the form of a soulful,
beautiful woman with great taste in music who shows up with just enough good
humor and good sense to remind him why he loves his life and that none of that
other stuff matters. It's been a rough week for Crowe, 48, who recently screened
his new movie, Elizabethtown, at the Toronto film festival, and watched
critics have at it like a piņata. Crowe, a best-screenplay Oscar winner for
Almost Famous, has been a critics' pet ever since he made his directorial
debut with Say Anything... in 1989; which may be why he felt confident
enough to take the risky step of entering the festival with an unfinished cut.
His much-anticipated wistful black comedy follows a shoe designer (Orlando
Bloom) whose professional fall from grace is cushioned by a new romance with an
eccentric stewardess (Kirsten Dunst) and a reconnection with his Kentucky roots
following his father's death. But reviewers at Toronto reacted with something
close to outrage, complaining the film was manipulative instead of moving,
cloying instead of charming.
There are two gods whom filmmakers aim to please: critics and audiences.
Having faltered with one, Crowe is now counting on regular moviegoers for
redemption. Even before he hit the festival circuit, Crowe had begun assembling
an alternate, shorter cut of the movie, just in case the longer one didn't play.
Now, he has his work cut out for him, with only three weeks to whittle his
135-minute Toronto version into the kind of tight, emotionally resonant
crowd-pleaser his fans have come to expect. But even though Crowe is confident
he'll be able to iron out the wrinkles, the sting of bad reviews lingers,
especially with a film as nakedly personal as this one, which was inspired by
Crowe's experiences in Elizabethtown, Ky., after his own father's death in
1989.
Today, Crowe is peering out the front windshield of an Almost
Famous-style rock & roll tour bus. He's making another pilgrimage to
Elizabethtown, where he's come to premiere the eponymous movie he shot here last
summer. He's excited and a bit nervous as a police escort of four squad cars
form a caravan leading him into town.
Crowe's eyes widen as a crowd of hundreds appears on the roadside, waving
homemade signs and cheering his arrival. (Cue Sir Elton.) There's a guy holding
a boom box above his head paying tribute to John Cusack's lovelorn serenade in
Say Anything.... Two middle-aged women display a banner saying ''Show me
the movie!'' Then there's the teenage girl with a glittery poster bearing the
Almost Famous catchphrase: ''It's All Happening! Thank You,
Cameron.''
For what seems like miles, diehards of all shapes and sizes line the rainy
streets to hail Crowe for speaking to them in ways entirely personal to each of
them. How else to explain a droopy-lidded man standing in the rain with a tiny,
weeks-old infant tucked into the crook of his tattooed arm, holding an
Elizabethtown poster in his free hand, and wearing a T-shirt proclaiming
''BEER: Helping ugly people have sex since 1862.'' Crowe, clearly stirred by the
outpouring, turns to face his wife (and Elizabethtown's composer), Nancy
Wilson, from the band Heart, who came along for moral support. ''Well, I'm glad
you're here,'' he says with a slight strain of melancholy, ''so it's [proof]
that it's actually real.''
For many moviegoers, Crowe is the guy who defined first love (Say
Anything...), the grunge generation (Singles), what it means to be a
man (Jerry Maguire), and the lonely heart of rock & roll (Almost
Famous). They'll forgive him a misfire on Vanilla Sky, a misguided
detour into darkness that ill suited his sunny sensibility. But now it's time to
deliver the goods, and expectations are primed for Elizabethtown, Crowe's
return to what he does best: young love and personal reinvention.
Crowe is one of the few writer-directors making idiosyncratic, personal
movies within the mainstream studio system, and he can scarcely afford another
flop after 2001's Vanilla Sky underperformed at the box office ($101
million is actually peanuts for a Tom Cruise movie) and failed to deliver his
usual rhapsodic reviews. He is a true Hollywood anomaly in that he has
steadfastly resisted all temptation to make a quick buck as a director- or
writer-for-hire in between his personal movies, ā la Steven Soderbergh. Crowe
tells stories that come from the inside out, turning his preoccupations and life
experiences into modern folk tales. Still, after a summer where Hollywood sent
out a desperate APB for more original filmmaking, even brand-name directors like
Crowe only get so many strikes. And after the screening at Toronto, where
Elizabethtown went from festivalgoers' must-see list to the not-for-me
or, at best, the wait-and-see list, the onus is now on Crowe to make sure
Elizabethtown fills theaters and leaves the door open to a future full of
the movies only he can make.
No stranger to doomsday predictions, Crowe takes solace in his experience
with films that have prevailed over a din of bad buzz. ''With Fast Times [at
Ridgemont High], they didn't want to put the movie out and it tested really
poorly,'' says Crowe, who made his screenwriting debut with the teen sex comedy
directed by Amy Heckerling. He was similarly vindicated when he later released a
longer director's cut of Almost Famous on DVD to high praise after the
studio-mandated shorter cut generated lackluster box office. ''It was very
similar [to Elizabethtown]. Many things I've written have had a tough
little curve.''
The illusions of success and failure and the precarious line that separates
them have become recurring themes for Crowe both on screen and off. It's no
wonder, considering he soared to the top of the magazine journalism world at the
tender age of 16, writing cover stories for Rolling Stone, and has
occupied the upper echelons of moviemaking ever since Say Anything.... So
it's probably no accident that both Jerry Maguire and
Elizabethtown revolve around characters whose thriving careers face
sudden death. Even Say Anything...'s Lloyd Dobler was defined by his
failure to have any ambitions beyond love and, similarly, Singles' Steve
Dunne (Campbell Scott) became a depressed shut-in when his work project was
nixed by the mayor. It's almost as if his movies are anxiety dreams with happy
endings, writ large.
For many moviegoers, Crowe is the guy who defined first love (Say
Anything...), the grunge generation (Singles), what it means to be a
man (Jerry Maguire), and the lonely heart of rock & roll (Almost
Famous). They'll forgive him a misfire on Vanilla Sky, a misguided
detour into darkness that ill suited his sunny sensibility. But now it's time to
deliver the goods, and expectations are primed for Elizabethtown, Crowe's
return to what he does best: young love and personal reinvention.
Crowe is one of the few writer-directors making idiosyncratic, personal
movies within the mainstream studio system, and he can scarcely afford another
flop after 2001's Vanilla Sky underperformed at the box office ($101
million is actually peanuts for a Tom Cruise movie) and failed to deliver his
usual rhapsodic reviews. He is a true Hollywood anomaly in that he has
steadfastly resisted all temptation to make a quick buck as a director- or
writer-for-hire in between his personal movies, ā la Steven Soderbergh. Crowe
tells stories that come from the inside out, turning his preoccupations and life
experiences into modern folk tales. Still, after a summer where Hollywood sent
out a desperate APB for more original filmmaking, even brand-name directors like
Crowe only get so many strikes. And after the screening at Toronto, where
Elizabethtown went from festivalgoers' must-see list to the not-for-me
or, at best, the wait-and-see list, the onus is now on Crowe to make sure
Elizabethtown fills theaters and leaves the door open to a future full of
the movies only he can make.
No stranger to doomsday predictions, Crowe takes solace in his experience
with films that have prevailed over a din of bad buzz. ''With Fast Times [at
Ridgemont High], they didn't want to put the movie out and it tested really
poorly,'' says Crowe, who made his screenwriting debut with the teen sex comedy
directed by Amy Heckerling. He was similarly vindicated when he later released a
longer director's cut of Almost Famous on DVD to high praise after the
studio-mandated shorter cut generated lackluster box office. ''It was very
similar [to Elizabethtown]. Many things I've written have had a tough
little curve.''
The illusions of success and failure and the precarious line that separates
them have become recurring themes for Crowe both on screen and off. It's no
wonder, considering he soared to the top of the magazine journalism world at the
tender age of 16, writing cover stories for Rolling Stone, and has
occupied the upper echelons of moviemaking ever since Say Anything.... So
it's probably no accident that both Jerry Maguire and
Elizabethtown revolve around characters whose thriving careers face
sudden death. Even Say Anything...'s Lloyd Dobler was defined by his
failure to have any ambitions beyond love and, similarly, Singles' Steve
Dunne (Campbell Scott) became a depressed shut-in when his work project was
nixed by the mayor. It's almost as if his movies are anxiety dreams with happy
endings, writ large.
Dunst, who first impressed Crowe when she was a runner-up for Kate Hudson's
role in Almost Famous, felt an immediate kinship with her character. She
was cast early, after a typical Crowe audition, in which he played the music
he'd picked out for the film to see how she responded to it and, more important,
how the music sounded played against her image in close-up. ''You have this
video camera in your face and I would react to different songs he would play,''
recalls Dunst, who rarely auditions but agreed because of Crowe's indelible
female characters. ''Cameron wrote a beautiful role. She's messy, wise, and sad.
And the words came easily to me.''
While shooting, Crowe played music to help the actors access the characters'
emotions. It's a technique the director hit upon courtesy of Tom Cruise. ''We
were doing the scene where Jerry Maguire's writing the mission statement and I
started playing this song by His Name Is Alive and Tom was like, 'Keep it
playing!' and he acted to the song and it was great,'' recalls Crowe, who
appointed his assistant to be the on-set DJ, playing mostly Jeff Buckley and
Simon and Garfunkel for Bloom, and Rilo Kiley and Rufus Wainwright for Dunst.
Still, there are risks involved: Play the wrong song and the mood is dead.
''Kirsten came hard with her own opinions on what should be playing,'' Crowe
says. ''I put on the Monkees and Kirsten just stopped and said, 'I can't do
this.' She's a really hardcore music fan so sometimes it felt like being her
DJ.''
Though Crowe puts on a brave face and says he doesn't give much power to
Elizabethtown's naysayers, he reveals flashes of vulnerability when
defending his movie as if it were his child who just got beat up after school.
''This movie is definitely a populist film, not created for cynics,'' says the
director, who insists that non-industry audiences have responded positively in
test screenings. ''It's the nature of this one that it's tough to get all the
pieces right.... And you saying something is a 'work-in-progress' is like
handing everybody a red pencil and saying, 'What are your notes?'''
Even after Toronto, Paramount, the studio releasing Elizabethtown, has
refrained from the usual panicked meddling. ''Reviews are what they are. You
live with them, hopefully learn from them, and move on,'' says Gail Berman,
president of Paramount Pictures. ''We're on the same message since we began. The
populist reaction to the movie is overwhelming. We're going on this journey with
[Crowe] and believing in this process.'' In other words, Crowe has final
cut.
In the new version, Crowe says he's honing the focus on Bloom's character and
trimming the memorial scene, in which Sarandon's character busts out with an odd
stand-up comedy routine. ''It's going to be 18 minutes shorter,'' he says. ''I
cut down a lot of the goodbyes toward the end. There were two choices about how
to do the movie: as a double or a long single CD. The way it was shot suggested
you could make it more of a spell-creating experience [where] you go through
some of this stuff almost in real time.''
Crowe, a self-described ''warrior for optimism,'' continues to battle what
feels to him like an encroaching tide of cynicism, insisting that moviegoers,
the real people, have got his back. His bus arrives at the theater and he is
greeted by three little girls holding a banner that says ''Welcome Back to
E-Town. Small town. Big heart. Just like you!'' He smiles and waves. For now, at
least, his instincts are confirmed: This is humanity putting its best foot
forward. The besieged protagonist of this story has found the warm embrace of an
audience primed to love his movie, right here where it was born when he came to
say goodbye to his father for the final time 16 years ago. ''I like that someone
might come up to me and say, 'Did the father die to save his son's life?' It
sure beats sitting around in a room with buddies, going, 'How do we do the heist
movie for the millionth time?''' Crowe says, before stepping off the bus. ''This
movie chose me. And if it works out that I get slaughtered for a movie that came
from my heart, I can live with myself.''
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