Cameron Crowe Wants 'Almost Famous' Musical to Be 'Portal' to Broadway

Cameron Crowe wrote and directed the iconic 2000 film Almost Famous, based on his experience covering the Allman Brothers Band for Rolling Stone as a teen in the 1970s.

The film follows precocious 15-year-old William Miller, an aspiring music journalist and rock 'n' roll super fan. Will begins a personal and professional journey of self-discovery when Rolling Stone magazine hires him to go on the road to cover one of his favorite up-and-coming bands, Stillwater. While on the road, Will is enchanted by "band-aid" Penny Lane, a young, dedicated rock super fan entangled in an affair with the older Stillwater lead guitarist, Russell Hammond.

Almost Famous is a deeply personal story for Crowe and a love letter to music fans. It is a coming-of-age story that explores the range of emotions that come while one is achieving his or her dreams.

Twenty years later, the beloved film is now a Broadway musical at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.

Before the show opened this week, Crowe sat down with Newsweek to discuss how the musical came to be and what fans can expect from the newest retelling of his story.

Did you ever envision the movie becoming a stage production?

No, but my mom did. And she's such a big part of the story. We were close and I told her when people were kind of sniffing around and asking me about it.

I mean, they want to do a stage version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High back in the day. So it was a thing that people would kind of tiptoe up with an idea from time to time. But [Almost Famous] is such a personal story that maybe it lives just as a story that would be fun to tell. And then bringing in music in the right way became the challenge. But I never was sure it was gonna work.

Are you a fan of musicals or movie adaptations of musicals? Did you have reference points when creating this show?

[Stephen] Sondheim. That was the thing that we learned in our house. I mean, it was kind of taught in our house, [especially] Company. So the idea of happy-sad lyrics that are not cheesy, but are insightful and as good as Joni Mitchell, that gave me a taste for when it could be really good.

And I love jukebox musicals like Jersey Boys a lot. But I never thought [Almost Famous] would be that because it's more about being a fan than the actual replaying of all of the songs. So when it appeared that [director] Jeremy Herrin and [composer] Tom Kitt can be guys that can tell a story about being a fan and the family and then like, this layer that kind of creates a kind of feeling like the movie did it. And that's the music. But mostly, it's a personal story. And, you know, so let's give it a shot. So each step was like, "Oh, OK, let's take another step." That's kind of how it happened.

You won an Oscar for writing the film. Does that put any added pressure on you when you're revisiting material now?

It still freaks me out, actually. But we went back to before the movie in a way....It was like talking to my sister. What was that really like back then? OK, it was a little tougher than it is in the movie, Almost Famous. So let's talk about what that feeling really was. And so we kind of grew it from that, which was good for the songs for sure. And Anika [Larsen] is a lot like my mom. Frances McDormand is like a force and she hung around my mom a little bit and caught the little sparkly parts of my mom. Anika I feel like is what it felt like to be around my mom.

[Crowe said that his mother, on whom he based the character Elaine Miller, died when the show was opening in San Diego.] Did Anika get a chance to meet your mom?

They did meet. They met on the day my mom died.

We were up in San Diego doing the play. And Anika really had wanted to meet my mom. My mom was starting to have failing health and she was shy about being seen. And Anika wrote this beautiful card that I read to her and it sat on this desk right by her bed. And [my mom] was like, "Oh, I'm not ready to meet her yet. I'm not ready to meet her."

[My mom] had seen a tape of the workshops and she loved Anika. But she was shy about meeting her and then when my mom was in the hospital, struggling, Anika said, "Can I just meet her because sometimes people in that state are on receive and can hear things. So I'd love to meet her." I was like, "OK." So I went and picked her up at the theater and took her to the hospital a couple of miles away and they met and Anika sang her songs.

This is the first time I've been able to talk about it without crying. And we didn't talk about it at the time. It wasn't really publicized but I know the cast was like, "Let's pull together because our writer is going through some stuff right now."

The movie has such star-making roles for Billy Crudup and for Kate Hudson. Did you have that in mind when you were casting the show, how much of a life-changing impact a show like this could make?

I think it happens naturally because there are a lot of parts and they're young characters. So generally, you don't have a lot of seasoned people who are playing a 17-year-old, though we got very lucky with Casey [Likes] because he seems like that. And he replaced the guy that bailed out six weeks before we did our performance in San Diego. So it was like, "Oh, no, we're not going to be able to do it." But then we found Casey in Arizona.

Did you have any wisdom that you imparted to [Casey Likes] for playing a character based on you?

Casey came up to me at one point very early on and he goes, "Give me a secret. Tell me a secret, something that Patrick Fugit from the movie didn't know, something that only I can know." And I was like, what a bold cool thing like a 16-year-old, 17-year-old to ask. So I told him my deepest family secret and he turned it into comedy. This guy is amazing. I don't even know why I just answered his question, except he was so sincere about asking.

Was there anything you wanted to do differently with the stage production from what you did in the movie?

More Penny [Lane]. Really just glimpses of what her backstory and family life is. That's really fun. It's been great to just put a few little things in there that are kind of emotional Easter eggs. Like if you know the movie or the character, you hear it and go, "Oh that's where the coat came from." Things like that. But not too much because she lives in the mystique, you know, without being a Manic Pixie.

I just remember those women, and there weren't a lot of them, that just were so about the music and wanting to be close to the flame. But it was about the music. It really was. The main woman that was an inspiration for Penny Lane is still that person. And she never wrote a tell-all book or any of that stuff. But her dogma in the day is how she lived her life for the next 50 years. So I wanted Solea [Pfeiffer] to feel a little bit of that.

Is the controversial age gap between Russell and Penny something that you have thought about? Is that something that you deal with in the show?

Yeah. I mean, it's not through like the modern prism. We're looking at them, but it's the truth about them without sensationalizing the age difference situation. I just thought that it's not about that, so let's kind of remove that. They're all young people.

And I never felt anything more than like, the giddy feeling of we're young, our bodies or ourselves. Roe v. Wade was just passed and there was this feeling of freedom in the air. I never felt like things were being sensationalized as much as people just feeling their oats.

What would you say to people who are huge fans of the movie, if they're theater fans or not, coming to see the show? What should people know?

If you've never been to a Broadway show, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. That's been my pleasant surprise—seeing the kind of union between music fans and the OG theater people.

I'm here every night and so many people come up to me and say, "I've never been to a Broadway show before, I want to see more now, like this is cool." Well, you got Moulin Rouge down the way, you've got Kimberly Akimbo. So for this minute, I get to be in these waters.

But I remember when my mom was dragging me to go see a play, and I wondered if it would be like homework. And so I know there are people like me that have only been to rock shows and to have it emotionally open up for them. And it's as an experience when you see—it's totally over answering your question, but I love the question so much. It's like, you really don't get that much except in a rock show. Right?

So to me, it's like a version of what I first loved about music and so to meet people that are having that experience now coming to see our play, it's great and I hope it's a portal for other shows that they want to go see.