Greetings, and welcome to Earthling Cinema. I am your host, Garyx
Wormuloid. This week’s artifact is Almost Famous, written and directed
by Sheryl Crow. Our protagonist is William Miller,
a teen-aged human who loves using his ears to listen to rock and roll
music, which is a very broad genre that has essentially become
meaningless. He meets a rock journalist named Lester Bangs, who
hires William to write an article for him, because that’s how easy
the job market was on Earth. This attracts the attention of The
Rolling Stones magazine, most famous for their issue “Exile on
Main Street.” They ask William to profile an up-and-coming band
called Stillwater despite not knowing who he is or anything about
his background, and just like that, off he goes. He tries to keep it
professional, but he quickly gets sucked into the “riding around on a
bus” lifestyle and falls in love with a groupie
named Penny Lane. The band has a series of adventures
involving electric shocks, tshirts, and swimming pools, and
apparently they never really need to practice their songs. Eventually
the band ditches the groupies and upgrades their bus to an airplane,
which is too scary for them, despite being slower than the speed
of light. Penny Lane gets upset and takes too many quaaludes -- that’s
ludes to you and me -- and William sexually assaults her on the lips
while he waits for the medic to arrive.
William submits his story, but the editors don’t like it because it’s
on napkins. Then he rewrites it in one night and everyone likes it.
Writing is just that easy.
Almost Famous is a movie about image and perception. More
specifically, it’s about what is real vs. what is cool.
Unfortunately, it’s not about ice cream, which is both real and cool.
During the 20th century, humans liked to create fantasy worlds for
themselves in order to escape reality and enhance their own
image. Coolness was the fantasy
and by extention, authenticity was
inherently uncool. Nowhere is this more apparent than on a rock and
roll band music bus tour. Penny Lane is a walking, talking
alter ego. She lies about her age and won’t even say her real name,
which, of course, is Kate Hudson. She keeps telling William they
should travel to a planet called Morocco together and “act like
different people and wear different clothes." She also frequently
refers to their rock and roll life as being separate from “the real
world”, presumably referring to Earth.
The band members are even more obsessed with their image
They freak out about how they appear on the tshirts,
since they’re actually much taller in real life. Russell keeps
putting off his interview with William, telling him in a cool way,
"Hey just make us look cool." They refer to William as “the enemy”
because they’re afraid he’ll reveal that they’re just as flawed and
genetically inferior as all humans, which will ruin the mystique. When
they finally see William’s story, Jeff complains that they look like
amateurs.
Russell responds, "Maybe we don't see ourselves the way we really
are." They are suspended in fantasy because that’s what the cool kids do.
After the fight over the t-shirts, Russell decides he’s “only
interested in what's real," but then at the party, he still can’t
be authentic. He anoints himself a “golden god,” which is the most
valuable type of god per ounce. He denies the validity of the article
because he can't face his reality. It is only after he admits his
feelings for Penny that he is able to make good with William and
finally expose himself in the interview [“What do you love about
music?” “Everything.”]. How insightful.
The most authentic person in the movie is William’s mother, a
college professor who always speaks her mind, something they teach you
to do in college. Indeed, her lack of artifice is so alien to human
society that it freaks people out.
Her influence is apparent in William,
as even though he is the youngest person on the tour, he’s the only
one with any connection to reality. He yells at the band for saying
they’re all about the fans, then discarding Penny, who is their
biggest fan, despite never displaying any knowledge of their
back catalogue. William tells Penny to "Wake up” and that Russell
doesn’t care about her. He chastises her for talking about
Planet Morocco when in reality "There is no Morocco." At least,
not that astronomers have been able to locate.
When Penny makes the resolution to actually go to Morocco at the end,
she is finally being authentic -- making good on her fantasy of
intergalactic space travel.
The band also drops the act and says how they really feel, but only
when they think they’re about to die.
In the end, being cool isn’t
important. Not for us, and not for humans, especially now. As Lester
says, "The only currency in a bankrupt world is what we share
with someone when we're uncool." If we are “honest and unmerciful,”
good things will happen. Now I’m gonna go home and do a bunch of
ludes before my wife gets off work. For Earthling Cinema, I’m Garyx
Wormuloid. If you’re cool, prove it by hitting the subscribe button.