Cameron Crowe Biography

Cameron Bruce Crowe (born July 13, 1957) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes.

Crowe has made his mark with character-driven, personal films that have been generally hailed as refreshingly original and devoid of cynicism. Michael Walker in The New York Times called Crowe "something of a cinematic spokesman for the post-baby boom generation" because his first few films focused on that specific age group, first as high schoolers and then as young adults making their way in the world.

Crowe's debut screenwriting effort, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, grew out of a book he wrote while posing for one year undercover as a student at Clairemont High School in San Diego, California, where he met Geraldine Edwards, who was a student there while he was visiting mutual friends in 1975. He later based part of his Penny Lane character on her in Almost Famous after discovering that she had been going backstage to Rock and Roll concerts. Later, he wrote and directed one more high school saga, Say Anything, and then Singles, a story of Seattle twentysomethings that was woven together by a soundtrack centering on that city's burgeoning grunge music scene. Crowe landed his biggest hit, though, with Jerry Maguire. After this, he was given a green light to go ahead with a pet project, the autobiographical effort Almost Famous. Centering on a teenage music journalist on tour with an up-and-coming band, it gave insight to his life as a 15-year-old writer for Rolling Stone. Part of the dialogue was inspired by comments that were made by Bebe Buell in interviews. Also in late 1999, Crowe released his second book, Conversations with Billy Wilder, a question and answer session with the legendary director.

Early life

Cameron Crowe was born in Palm Springs, California. His father owned a real estate and phone service business, and his mother, Alice Marie, "was a teacher, activist, and all-around live wire who did skits around the house and would wear a clown suit to school on special occasions." She worked as a psychology professor and family therapist and often participated in peace demonstrations and causes relating to the rights of farm workers. Crowe had two older sisters, but one died when he was young. The family moved around often but spent a lot of time in the desert town of Indio. Crowe commented that Indio was where "people owned tortoises, not dogs". His family finally settled in San Diego.

Recognizing that Crowe was gifted, his mother pushed him to excel. He skipped kindergarten and two grades in elementary, and by the time he attended Catholic high school, he was quite obviously younger than the other students. To add to his alienation, he was often ill because he suffered from nephritis.

To compensate for his lack of social contacts, Crowe began writing for the school newspaper and by age 13 was contributing music reviews for an underground publication, The San Diego Door. He then began corresponding with Lester Bangs, who had left the Door to become editor at the national rock magazine Creem, and soon he was also submitting articles to Creem as well as Circus. Crowe graduated from the University of San Diego High School in 1973 at age 16, and then attended City College of San Diego and the University of San Diego studying journalism to hone his craft. On a trip to Los Angeles, he met Ben Fong-Torres, the editor of Rolling Stone, who hired him to write for the magazine. He also joined the Rolling Stone staff as a contributing editor and then became an associate editor. During this time Crowe interviewed Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, The Eagles, Poco, Steely Dan,members of Led Zeppelin and more. Crowe was Rolling Stone's youngest-ever contributor.

Career

Rolling Stone

Crowe's first cover story was on The Allman Brothers Band. He went on the road with them for three weeks at age 18 and interviewed not only the whole band, but also the entire road crew. On his last night with the group, Gregg Allman asked Crowe to his room and told him to bring identification to prove he was not a police officer. Although Crowe showed him his identification, Allman nevertheless confiscated all his tapes. Two days later, the president of the Allman Brothers' Capricorn Records label called Crowe to let him know he was returning all the tapes. Allman later said he did not recall the incident.

Because Crowe was a fan of the 1970s hard rock bands that the older writers did not like, he landed a lot of major interviews. He wrote predominantly about Yes and the band members, and also about Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eagles, King Crimson, Linda Ronstadt, Rory Gallagher, Todd Rundgren, and more. "He charmed a lot of people," Fong-Torres told Rachel Abramowitz in Premiere. "He was the aw-shucks guy. 'I'm glad to be backstage. I love this band.'" In an interview with Joel Selvin of the San Francisco Chronicle Fong-Torres remarked, "He was the guy we sent out after some difficult customers. He covered the bands that hated Rolling Stone."

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

When Rolling Stone moved its offices from the West Coast to New York in 1977, Crowe decided to stay behind. He also felt the excitement of the career was beginning to wane. Crowe appeared in the 1978 film American Hot Wax, but then returned to his writing. Though he would continue to freelance for Rolling Stone on and off over the years, he turned his attention to a book.

At 22 and still boyish, Crowe came up with the idea to pose undercover as a high school student and write about his experiences. Simon & Schuster gave him a contract, and he moved back in with his parents and enrolled as Dave Cameron at Clairemont High School in San Diego. Reliving the senior year he never had, he made friends and began to fit in. Though he initially planned to include himself in the book, he realized that it would jeopardize his ability to truly capture the essence of the high school experience.

His book, Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story came out in 1981. Crowe focused on six main characters: a tough guy, a nerd, a surfer dude, a sexual sophisticate, and a middle-class brother and sister. He chronicled their activities in typical teenage settings"?at school, at the beach, and at the mall, where many of them held afterschool jobs"?and focused on details of their lives that probed into the heart of adolescence. This included scenes about homecoming and graduation as well as social cliques and sexual encounters.

Before the book was even released, Fast Times at Ridgemont High was optioned for a film. Released in 1982, the movie version lacked a specific plot and featured no major name stars, and the studio did not devote any marketing effort toward it. Nevertheless, it became a sleeper hit due to word of mouth.

The reviews of Fast Times at Ridgemont High were positive, the film ended up launching the careers of some of the previously unknown actors, including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Eric Stoltz, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Anthony Edwards, and future Oscar-winners Nicolas Cage (appearing under his given name, Nicolas Coppola), Forest Whitaker, and Sean Penn.

Early directorial efforts

Following this success, Crowe wrote the screenplay for 1984's The Wild Life, the pseudo-sequel to Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Whereas its predecessor followed teenagers' lives in high school, The Wild Life traced the lives of several teenagers after high school living in an apartment complex. Filmmaker James L. Brooks noticed Crowe's original voice and wanted to work with him. Brooks executive produced Crowe's first directing effort, 1989's Say Anything..., about a young man pining away for the affections of the seemingly perfect girl. Though it could have easily ended up a formulaic teen love story, Say Anything... got glowing reception from critics. They applauded the way Crowe crafted an intriguing and insightful tale that also involved the girl's relationship with her father and how it is threatened when she discovers he is caught up in a shady business deal.

By this point, Crowe was ready to leave teen angst behind and focus on his peers. His next project, 1992's Singles, centered on the romantic tangles among a group of six friends in their twenties in Seattle. The film starred Bridget Fonda as a coffee-bar waitress fawning over an aspiring musician, played by Matt Dillon. Also starring Kyra Sedgwick and Campbell Scott who portrayed a couple wavering on whether to commit to each other. Music forms an integral backbone for the script, and the soundtrack became a best seller three months before the release of the film. Much of this was due to repeated delays while studio executives debated how to market it.

Singles successfully rode on the heels of Seattle's grunge music boom. During production, bands like Nirvana were not yet national stars, but by the time the soundtrack was released, their song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had to be cut because it was too costly to buy the rights. Also, before they got big, Crowe signed members of Pearl Jam to portray Dillon's fictional band Citizen Dick. Crowe also appeared in this project, appropriately, as a rock journalist at a club. Tim Appelo wrote in Entertainment Weekly, "With ... an ambling, naturalistic style, Crowe captures the eccentric appeal of a town where espresso carts sprout on every corner and kids in ratty flannel shirts can cut records that make them millionaires."

Jerry Maguire

Branching into a new direction, Crowe wrote and directed Jerry Maguire, about a high-powered sports agent who is fired after having a moment of clarity in which he writes and distributes a Mission Statement calling for more service to the athletes and less money for themselves. He strikes out to form his own agency. Tom Cruise played the title role of Jerry and Cuba Gooding, Jr. played Rod Tidwell, the aging football player whose catchphrase, "Show me the money!", became ubiquitous for a time. Renée Zellweger also appeared as the bookkeeper who leaves her job to follow Maguire into new territory in both work and love. Crowe's earlier efforts brought him recognition, but this would send him soaring onto the A-list. Gooding won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role, and the film was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Actor (for Cruise). Cruise also won his second Golden Globe for his role as Jerry.

Almost Famous

In 2000, Crowe tapped his rock-writer roots to write and direct Almost Famous, about the experiences of a teenage music journalist who goes on the road with an emerging band in the early 1970s. Newcomer Patrick Fugit starred as William Miller, the baby-faced writer who finds himself immersed in the world of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, and Kate Hudson co-starred as Penny Lane, a prominent groupie, or, as the film refers to her, a "Band-Aid". Digging into his most personal memories, Crowe used a composite of the bands he had known to come up with Stillwater, the emerging act that welcomes the young journalist into its sphere, then becomes wary of his intentions. Seventies rocker Peter Frampton served as a technical consultant on the film.

William Miller's mother figured prominently in the film as well (often admonishing, "Don't take drugs!"). The character was based on Cameron's own mother, who even showed up at the film sets to keep an eye on him while he worked. Though he asked her not to bother Frances McDormand, who played her character, the two ended up getting along well. Also in the film he showed his sister (portrayed by Zooey Deschanel) rebelling and leaving home, and in real life, his mother and sister Cindy did not talk for a decade and were still estranged to a degree when he finished the film. The family reunited when the project was complete.

In addition, Crowe took a copy of the film to London for a special screening with Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. After the screening, Led Zeppelin granted Crowe the right to use one of their songs on the soundtrack"?the first time they had ever consented to this since allowing Crowe to use "Kashmir" in Fast Times at Ridgemont High"?and also gave him rights to four of their other songs in the movie itself, although they did not grant him the rights to "Stairway to Heaven" for an intended scene (on the special "Bootleg" edition DVD, the scene is included as an extra sans the song where the viewer is instructed by a watermark to begin playing it). Crowe and his wife, musician Nancy Wilson of Heart, co-wrote three of the five Stillwater songs in the film, and Frampton wrote the other two, with Mike McCready from Pearl Jam playing lead guitar on all of the Stillwater songs. Reviews were almost universally positive, and it was nominated for and won a host of film awards, including an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Crowe. Crowe and co-producer Danny Bramson also won the Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media Grammy Award for the soundtrack. Despite these accolades, box office returns for the film were disappointing.

Vanilla Sky

He followed Almost Famous with Vanilla Sky in 2001, a psychological thriller. Starring Tom Cruise and Penélope Cruz, the film received mixed reviews but still managed to gross $100.6 million at the US box office, making it his second highest grossing directorial effort behind only Jerry Maguire. Vanilla Sky is a remake of the 1997 Spanish movie Abre Los Ojos (Open your Eyes) by Alejandro Amenabar. The female main character of Sofia is played by Penélope Cruz in both the original movie and Crowe's remake.

Elizabethtown

He returned in 2005, with Elizabethtown, which again opened to mixed reviews, scoring 45 on Metacritic, the same as his previous effort, Vanilla Sky.

The Union

In November 2009, Crowe began filming a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the album The Union, a collaboration between musicians Elton John and Leon Russell produced by award-winning producer T-Bone Burnett. The documentary features musicians Neil Young, Brian Wilson, Booker T. Jones, steel guitarist Robert Randolph, Don Was and a 10-piece gospel choir who all appear on the album with John and Russell. Musician Stevie Nicks and John's longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin also appear. On March 2, 2011, the documentary was announced to open the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

We Bought a Zoo

With production on "Deep Tiki" delayed, Crowe set his next feature for the adaptation of the memoir, "We Bought a Zoo", by Benjamin Mee. The screenplay is by The Devil Wears Prada writer Aline Brosh McKenna, and Crowe himself. The book's story follows Mee, who buys and moves into a dilapidated zoo (now Dartmoor Zoological Park) in the English countryside. Looking for a fresh start along with his 7 year old daughter and his troubled 14 year old son, he hopes to refurbish the zoo and run it and to give his children what he calls an "adventure". Crowe changed the location to the U.S.A. The 20th Century Fox film received a wide release on December 23, 2011, with Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson starring. The film has received positive reviews. The music of the movie was composed by Jonsi.

Pearl Jam Twenty

See Pearl Jam Twenty for more information In an interview with Pearl Jam on March 9, 2009, bassist Jeff Ament said "... our manager Kelly has had the idea to do a 20 year anniversary retrospective movie so he's been on board with [film director] Cameron Crowe for the last few years." Guitarist Mike McCready also stated in March, "We are just in the very early stages of that...starting to go through all the footage we have, and Cameron's writing the treatment." Preliminary footage was being shot as of June 2010. The film was scheduled for a 2011 release, and will have an accompanying book and soundtrack. A trailer for the movie, which featured Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder choosing between three permanent markers in a shop before turning to the camera and say "Three's good... Twenty is better" was shown before select movies at the 2011 BFI Film Festival.

Future projects

Deep Tiki

See Untitled Cameron Crowe Project for more information It was announced in early June 2008 that Crowe would be returning to write and direct his seventh feature film Deep Tiki set to star Ben Stiller and Reese Witherspoon and be released by Columbia Pictures. Filming was expected to begin in January 2009, but this was then postponed.

The project resurfaced in 2013. Emma Stone, Bradley Cooper, Rachel McAdams and Alec Baldwin will star in the movie; filming is expected to begin in Hawaii in September 2013.

Personal life

Crowe married Nancy Wilson of the rock band Heart in July 1986. Their twin sons, William James Crowe and Curtis Wilson Crowe, were born in January 2000. Crowe and Wilson separated in June 2008. Wilson filed for divorce on September 23, 2010, citing "irreconcilable differences." The divorce was finalized on December 8, 2010.

Filmography

Year	Film	Oscar nominations	Oscar wins	Credited as
				Director	Writer	Producer	Other notes
1982	Fast Times at Ridgemont High
1983	Change of Heart						Music video
1984	The Wild Life						Also actor
1989	Say Anything...
1992	Singles						Also actor
1992	Dyslexic Heart						Music video
1996	Jerry Maguire	5	1
2000	Almost Famous	4	1
2001	Vanilla Sky	1
2005	Elizabethtown
2009	The Fixer						Music video
2011	The Union						Documentary
2011	Pearl Jam Twenty						Documentary
2011	We Bought a Zoo

As actor

• The Other Side of the Wind (1972)
• American Hot Wax (1978)
• The Wild Life (1984)
• Singles (1992)
• Minority Report (2002)

Awards and nominations

• Academy Award Nominated Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for Jerry Maguire (1996)
• Academy Award Nominated Best Picture for Jerry Maguire (1996)
• Academy Award Won Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for Almost Famous (2000)
• BAFTA Film Award Best Screenplay " Original for Almost Famous (2001)
• DGA Award Nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (2001)
• Golden Globe Award Best Motion Picture " Comedy/Musical (2001) for Almost Famous
• Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media " Almost Famous soundtrack (with co-producer Danny Bramson)