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S I G H T S
When Music Defines
by Jen Chaney
Can you name all the tracks on Led Zeppelin II in alphabetical order? Do you still have every ticket from all the rock concerts you’ve attended, including that embarrassing Joan Jett/Loverboy double bill? Have you ever found yourself in an intense late night conversation about the importance of knowing when to reach the climax on a mix tape? If you’ve answered yes to any of the above questions, then you may well be an "RPMF" - Rabid Pop Music Fan. If you are, the odds are good that you have already seen - or plan to see - writer/director Cameron Crowe’s long-awaited Almost Famous, a cinematic homage to Crowe’s experience as a 15-year-old rock journalist for Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s, and the music and the surrounding rock culture that Crowe discovered for himself. The film, which opened nationwide Sept. 22, has received largely positive reviews and is already generating some admittedly premature buzz about Academy Award nods. While it’s a little early to start whispering Oscar, Famous certainly seems to have everything going for it: great performances, subtle humor and a story that has the ability to appeal to nostalgia-crazed Baby Boomers as well as Gen Y-ers. Now comes the However. Crowe’s knack for generating humor and pathos out of life’s tiny moments is charmingly at play in much of Almost Famous, but it was hard leaving the theater without feeling that the movie lacked something. I wasn’t sure exactly what that something was until I watched for a second time the wonderfully comic High Fidelity, an adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel by the same name that hit multiplexes last spring and was released on video Sept. 19. As an exploration of what it means to really, really love rock ‘n’ roll, Almost Famous and High Fidelity function as two sides of the same album. Famous is Side A, the one that has a few standout tracks but isn’t particularly memorable as a whole, while Fidelity is the B Side that gets better and better the more times you listen to it. The first 15 minutes of Almost Famous are enormously promising. We meet William Miller, played here by Michael Angorino and later in the film by Patrick Fugit, William’s overbearing mother, Elaine (Frances McDormand), and his rebellious older sister Anita (Zooey Deschanel). When Anita comes home with a Simon and Garfunkel album (the horror!), Elaine goes ballistic, gesturing to the album cover with the two nerd poets and declaring that both are "on drugs." Anita soon moves out of the house, but before she leaves she tells William to look at what she’s left under his bed, promising it will blow his mind. Of course, what she’s left is her album collection, including records by The Who and Bob Dylan. And as the young William puts the needle on these treasures, it becomes apparent that his life is about to change. These scenes are absolutely marvelous because they capture an almost universal moment in the lives of millions of youth: the ear-perking discovery of rock music. Still a high school student, William befriends the famous music critic Lester Bangs, gets an out-of-the-blue phone call from a Rolling Stone editor who sends William on tour with an up-and-coming band, Stillwater, and then spends the rest of the movie trying to earn acceptance from the older rock misfits whose lives he is assigned to cover on the road. He also tries to win the heart of Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), a beautiful, young “band aid” - one of several groupies who make themselves sexually available to the band members. Several story telling aspects of the film are awkwardly constructed (how is it that William still manages to graduate from high school despite missing the last several weeks and his final exams? And why does Rolling Stone put him on the payroll sight unseen without even requesting a resume?), but there are some genuinely moving moments that transcend the questionable realism. When William calls his mother from one of Stillwater’s arena concerts, he is distracted by a groupie who invites him up to her room to smoke dope. Alone in her kitchen clutching the telephone receiver, Elaine (who has repeatedly told William, “Don’t do drugs!”) overhears the exchange and breaks down in tears, yet she shares none of this with William; she simply tells him that she loves him and hangs up, freeing him to make his own choices and forge his own path to adulthood. The power of rock - and its own loss of innocence - is conveyed most touchingly by Bangs’ character, brilliantly played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Bangs repeatedly tells William that rock is dead, that people don’t care about the music anymore, they only care about making bucks. Yet the critic clearly has an abiding passion for rock and a belief in its power that cannot be denied, no matter what his cynical alter ego says. Unfortunately, there are not enough dialogues like these. Instead, we see William caught in the middle of Spinal Tap-esque arguments between band members. We know William passionately wants to be a rock journalist, but we never see how much he loves music to the extent that we do in those early frames of the film. In this sense, the film fails to fully engage the RPMF.
High Fidelity, on the other hand, resonates so much it’s almost painful. As we watch Rob (John Cusack) revisit past girlfriends in an effort to understand the demise of his latest relationship, it is the brilliant ongoing commentary on rock fan culture that puts this one a cut above other music films, Almost Famous included.
From the moment the movie starts, the connection between life and liner notes is immediately apparent. Rob talks directly to the camera with a pair of headphones affixed to his cranium as he bemoans his lover Laura’s departure and muses on how his obsession with music fits into his neurosis. "Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" he asks rhetorically. The question is never fully answered, but the movie (like the superior book that came before it) has a blast trying to answer it. At Championship Vinyl, Rob’s used record store, customers eagerly flip through racks of records in search of imports, rarities and those much sought after Smiths singles. Rob and his two employees are party to the same addiction, forever in search of the right song for the moment or the one that will help create - or break - a mood. Barry (Jack Black), brash and opinionated, brings in mix tapes with the hope that they will become "conversation stimulators." Dick (Todd Louiso), as shy as Barry is loud, meets his girlfriend by discussing Stiff Little Fingers’ influence on Green Day. And the three of them spend an inordinate amount of time making top five lists: "Top Five First Tracks on First Albums," "Top Five Songs About Death," etc. Their choices help define their identity. "It’s what you like, not so much what you are like," Rob intones at one point, delivering the line as though it is an unquestionable truth. By the end of the film, Rob seems to have resolved his problem with commitment. How does he acknowledge this breakthrough? By making a mix tape for Laura with her tastes in mind instead of his own. He has matured, but he is still looking to music for a reassurance of who he has become. In Almost Famous the credits roll without ever providing the audience with a sense of what the film’s characters truly like or care about. In defense of why she hangs around the band, Penny tells William, “Famous people are just more interesting.” In High Fidelity, the characters are normal, average people. But I know full well where Rob and his cohorts’ tastes fall on the music spectrum. And because of it, I feel I know them. I like them. And I am destined to come back to visit them again and again. Jen Chaney is a Washington, D.C.-based columnist and feature writer. To comment on this article Related Sites
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