What Happened to Cameron Crowe? He Has Answers.

Cameron Crowe, the writer and director behind Say Anything, Singles, and Jerry Maguire, helped define cinema in the late ’80s and ’90s. Then, in 2000, he released the semi-autobiographical Almost Famous, which David Marchese suggests in this New York Times interview was the culmination of both Crowe’s career and life. Their conversation is easygoing yet deep, moving from Hollywood talk—his upcoming Joni Mitchell biopic, his work with Tom Cruise and John Cusack—to more personal and candid reflections on his post-Vanilla Sky films, and how they simply didn’t make the same impact as his earlier hits. “[L]ife is the best writer,” he tells Marchese of this latter period, “and sometimes you have to let life show you a little bit of what that is.” This is a breezy Q&A about art, growth, and perspective. (Subscription may be required.)

When did your real life start? When Jann Wenner called me in to have a conversation about what I thought was a congratulations for having gotten Led Zeppelin for the cover of Rolling Stone. Led Zeppelin hated Rolling Stone. They were the last band that you would ever expect to see in Rolling Stone. It was a well-known feud. Jann called me in to talk to him and it was, “You did well, but is it a real piece of writing?” This was a day where he had lost his own mentor, Ralph Gleason. He was working his way through a bottle of vodka and didn’t need to see me. He could have blown off the meeting, but he didn’t. He said, “Meet me at my home,” and I met him later and he gave me a copy of Joan Didion’s “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and said, “Read this, read her earlier profile on the Doors, and you’ll see how to write like a real writer.” I was hurt but also challenged. And that day was when my real life started.