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Cameron Crowe — news, coverage & facts — IJR

1984–1992: Teen films

Following the success of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Crowe wrote the screenplay for 1984's The Wild Life, which critic Austin Trunick calls "a spiritual sequel" to Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Whereas its predecessor follows teenagers' lives in high school, The Wild Life traces the lives of several teenagers after high school living in an apartment complex. About the film and its poor reception, Crowe said, "It started out with good intentions but was marketed as a followup to Fast Times which it wasn’t. Director James L. Brooks was the only one who would talk to me after The Wild Life.”

Filmmaker James L. Brooks (a former journalist himself) began following Crowe's career when he wrote for Rolling Stone, then after seeing Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he and Crowe began spending time together. Brooks and Crowe eventually came up with the premise for Say Anything..., with Crowe eventually writing the screenplay about a young man pining for the affections of a seemingly perfect girl. After six other directors turned down the opportunity to direct the film, Brooks decided to give Crowe the chance to direct for the first time. The film was released in 1989 and was favorably received by critics. Brooks and Crowe later reunited for the 1996 film Jerry Maguire.

Crowe's next project, 1992's Singles, described the romantic entanglements among a group of six friends in their twenties in Seattle. The film starred Bridget Fonda and Matt Dillon. Fonda played a coffee-bar waitress fawning over an aspiring musician played by Dillon. Kyra Sedgwick and Campbell Scott co-starred as a couple wavering on whether to commit to each other. Music is an integral backbone for the script, and the soundtrack became a commercial success three months before the release of the film. Much of this was due to repeated delays while studio executives debated how to market it. In a retrospective interview on the film in Rolling Stone, Crowe said, "I'd seen Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing; I liked the size of his movies and how they were rooted in his experience, his community … how he wanted Brooklyn to be showcased. And I'd always loved [Woody Allen's] Manhattan so much. So that was the beginning of Singles. It was a chance to show what it's like when you have a city that you love, and a group of friends who have become your family."

Singles sat on the shelf until the Seattle grunge music boom made the studio excited about the release. 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 from the film because the rights were too expensive. Crowe had signed members of Pearl Jam, shortly before their burgeoning, nationwide success, to portray Dillon's fictional band Citizen Dick. He also appeared 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."

1996–2000: Established career

Branching into a new direction, Crowe wrote and directed Jerry Maguire. Released in 1996, the film centers on a highly paid sports agent, inspired by sports agent Leigh Steinberg. Maguire is fired after having a moral revelation, writing and distributing a mission statement calling for sincere service to the athletes and less money for the agency. He strikes out to form his own agency. Tom Cruise plays Jerry and Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays Rod Tidwell, an aging wide receiver. His catchphrase, "Show me the money!", became ubiquitous for a time. Renée Zellweger appears as an accountant who sets aside her job security to follow Jerry in both work and love. Gooding won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role. The film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Actor (for Cruise). Cruise won his second Golden Globe for his role as Jerry.

In 2000, Crowe used his music journalism experience roots to write and direct Almost Famous, about the experiences of a teenage music journalist, based on Crowe himself, who goes on the road with an emerging band in the early 1970s. The film starred newcomer Patrick Fugit as William Miller, the baby-faced writer who finds himself immersed in the world of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. Kate Hudson co-starred as Penny Lane, a prominent groupie (or, as other characters call 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 Crowe's 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. He also showed his sister, portrayed by Zooey Deschanel, rebelling and leaving home. In actuality, his mother and sister Cindy did not talk for a decade and were still somewhat estranged when he finished the film. The family reconciled when the project was complete.

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 gave him rights to four 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 without the song where the viewer is instructed by a watermark to begin playing it). Crowe and his then-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 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.

2001–2015: Films and music documentaries

Crowe followed Almost Famous with the psychological thriller Vanilla Sky in 2001. The film, starring Tom Cruise, Penélope Cruz, and Cameron Diaz, received mixed reviews, but grossed $100.6 million at the US box office, making it his second highest grossing directorial effort behind Jerry Maguire (1996). Vanilla Sky is a remake of Alejandro Amenabar's 1997 Spanish film Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes). Sofia is played by Cruz in both Amenabar's movie and Crowe's remake.

In 2005, Crowe directed the romantic tragicomedy Elizabethtown, starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst, which opened to mixed reviews, scoring 45 on Metacritic, the same as Vanilla Sky.

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 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.

In an interview with Pearl Jam on March 9, 2009, bassist Jeff Ament said that their 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." The band's guitarist Mike McCready said 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 shot in June 2010. A trailer for the movie Pearl Jam Twenty, which featured Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder choosing between three permanent markers in a shop before turning to the camera and saying "Three's good... Twenty is better", was shown before select movies at the 2011 BFI London Film Festival. The film premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and had an accompanying book and soundtrack.

With production on the film Aloha delayed, Crowe set his next feature, the family comedy-drama We Bought a Zoo, based on Benjamin Mee's memoir of the same name. He collaborated with The Devil Wears Prada writer Aline Brosh McKenna on the screenplay. 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 seven-year-old daughter and his troubled 14-year-old son, he hopes to refurbish the zoo, run it, and give his children what he calls an "adventure". Crowe changed the location to the United States. The film received a wide release on December 23, 2011, by 20th Century Fox, and starred Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson. It received mixed reviews. The music is by Jonsi.

It was announced in early June 2008 that Crowe would return to write and direct his seventh feature film, initially titled Deep Tiki and Volcano Romance, set to star Ben Stiller and Reese Witherspoon, and to be released by Columbia Pictures. Filming was expected to begin in January 2009, but this was postponed.

The project resurfaced in 2013. Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, Alec Baldwin, Bill Murray, John Krasinski, and Danny McBride joined the cast; filming began in Hawaii in September 2013. The film's final title was Aloha and it was released on May 29, 2015, by Sony Pictures to poor reviews.