[School of Movies 2024]
This one is special on a level I am going to find challenging to articulate in a medium as clumsy as the written word. It is a show that has been promised for well over a decade, it took me four recording sessions and a protracted edit over the month of August. It is so densely and richly layered that I would put it in the same category as our shows on Guillermo del Toro and the Lord of the Rings (ironic, since that was the book the writer/director used to convince his mother Alice Crowe that rock music wasn't all just sex and drugs).
This is the fourth film from Cameron Crowe, after Say Anything, Singles and Jerry Maguire, and you will hear in this show just how much his autobiographical experiences and outlook on the world influenced and resonated with me in the late 90s and early 2000s, in a way that has absolutely informed upon not only my character, personality, writing, editing and philosophy, but the way I engage with music itself. Put simply, this movie goes beyond masterpiece and becomes an experience like no other.
Grab your biggest clamshell headphones, get away from the hustle and bustle of the modern world, and immerse yourself in a time period most of us were not present for. A time between the late 60s and early 70s when art and commercialism were engaged in war for our collective attention. One would nourish our spirit, the other would fixate upon our money. This is the story of a 15 year old boy who somehow convinced Rolling Stone Magazine he was a credible music journalist and went on tour with some of the greatest rock bands who have ever mounted the stage.
And it is, on so many levels... True.
I'm Alex Schul. I'm Sharon Schul. And welcome to School of Movies. Almost Famous. Almost Famous Session 1. Take 1. Marker. This one is very special folks. For the longest time I've been lamenting with that whenever we talk about movies about music, this unutterably special camera and crow film gets mentioned and I am a ghost that we haven't yet covered it. This is the first camera and crow film we've done. It's one of his big three that he made between 1996 and 2001. The other two being Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky also say anything is an absolute classic. And I've been saving it for a camera and crow season but I just wanted to get it done now and in conjunction specifically with Days to Confused. Because now Sharon and I have done all the research and we are finally ready to talk. I don't feel like a veteran podcaster. I feel like a duckling teaching itself to swim in. It is impossible to sum this one up in simple words and I do not envy every writer who has to do that with ink. This is why we will be using tone of voice audio clips, sections of the audio commentary shared by Cameron and his mother Alice Marie Crow. The arpeggio guitar score by Cameron's wife of 24 years, Nancy Wilson of the band Heart. They were married from '86 through the 2010 and of course the soundtrack one of the greatest ever curated. This is an autobiographical portrait of an era during the early 70s when rock was both ascending and declining at the same time. When Crow, a youngster of 15 years but also a gifted insightful journalist and a compassionate sensitive young man who loves and respects women toured with what was in reality a whole bunch of some of the greatest rock bands who ever circumnavigated the globe. Here amalgamated into a single fictional band Stillwater who were named for an actually existing southern rock band also called Stillwater. Originally they were asked can we do this for free because it was the movie studio and they want to do everything for free and Stillwater said no you're still going to pay us but those are not the same as the fictional Stillwater. And there are Gestalt entity composed of memories and fragments of closeness with the Allman Brothers band and Led Zeppelin and Leonard Skinner and the Eagles and Peter Frampton and Humble Pie. Almost famous performed poorly in the cinema in the year 2000 netting 47 million on a very modest 60 million budget but garner in critical acclaim and a bunch of awards. Now it's important to bear in mind it was beaten financially at least by the memorable likes of How the Grinch Stole Christmas meet the parents, scary movie, Naughty Professor to the Clumps, What Women Want, Remember the Titans, Me, Myself and Irene, Hollow Man, Rugrats in Paris, Road Trip, The Cell, 102 Dalmatians, Little Nikki, The Flintstones in Viva Rock, Vegas, The Skulls, My Dog Skip, Juice Bigger Low Mail, Jiggalo and Dude. Where's My Car? But this movie is not about money or commerce it's not about being popular it is in fact kind of perfect that it was almost popular. Because it just so happens to be the greatest film ever made about rock music and indeed the clash between art and consumerism and even our relationship with music and how that is expressed in the albums that we love folding in the musicians along with us. They are us too we never forget while watching that they love music and a keen lens we see the bands through the eyes of are the teenage girls who tag along with them. In the words of Sapphire played by Frouz, a bulk there, honour and burden is to love some band and some silly song so hard that it hurts. This bunch again composite characters based on real life young women that Cameron Crow rubbed elbows and very little else with on the road hate the term groupies preferring instead band-aids and we get none more majestic and memorable than Kate Hudson's Penny Lang, a blonde 16 year old with magic dancing in her eyes holding tight to a romantic version of events as she tries to be as special to lead guitarist with mystique of Stillwater, Russell Hammond played by Billy Crudup as he clearly is to her. Young Cameron or the semi-fictionalized avatar for Cameron, William Miller played with exceptional low-key quiet burn intelligence by Patrick Fugit is bewitched by Penny experiencing intense envy as Stillwater holed off on a long-promised interview for Rolling Stone magazine. An insane responsibility for a kid of his age although of course Rolling Stone have no idea of that particular fact and all the while his loving anti-commercial mother Elaine played by Frances McDormand frets back home terrified that her child will drown in a sea of drugs and debauchery. Look at folks crack a cold one. [Music] Because there's something in the air. We've got to get together so no more later. Because the revolution's here and you know it's right. And you know that it's right. [Music] This is probably going to be record this is definitely going to be recorded in sessions because full disclosure right now I am suffering from one of the worst migraines I have in my entire life and it's been going on since Sunday and today is Thursday and I'm off painkillers because ah they're not doing anything anymore like it's not touching the pain this migraine is not shifting and I'm just trying to find some measure of stability and unfortunately that means going through this cold turkey so to a degree I shouldn't be doing almost famous with that much to say at this point when I am in this much delirium but at the same time I am holding on to almost famous like a life raft to keep myself sane. So we're going to drift in and out so talking about this when we can when I'm able and when in the window before I run out of energy and can speak no more and of course all of these will be punctuated by this amazing soundtrack. So the feel of the movie is it's hyper nostalgic but because we're now so used to nostalgia being between the years of 1982 and 1989 it doesn't have that same flavor of hey remember when the Reagan years of all of that merch all of the Transformers cartoons and all of the movies and just everything connected with the 80s from when America's this is the generation before that or their older brothers and sisters at the very least. 1973 I'm very connected with this time despite having never lived in it so I am nostalgic for a time not so much that never was but a time that I never experienced and it's not just from watching this movie but it helps because it is so evocative because it connects like no other film. I would say in terms of the nostalgia and like you said for people of our age our era the nostalgia of the 80s is a bit more logical. Well yeah because you'd have to be 60 to be nostalgic for this era at the very least yeah but I would say if you're going to mark a distinct difference between the two decades in the 80s they were trying to convince you to buy. So I'd note the 70s nostalgia came 20 years ago when there were a lot of like Charlie's Angels Starsky and Hutch like can we do remakes of those things you liked and remember the punchline to so many gags at the end of the late 90s was disco and it's like and disco. Well the the essence of it is who has tween kids now that they would want to share their own childhood with true the 80s they were trying to convince you to buy stuff the cartoons that we got thrown out as hand over fist were toy commercials. The impression that I get from this and I was around just for the tail end of the 70s although far too young to actually remember them. You were insensible. I was insensible. I met you when you were sensible. Yes very sensible and I have been ever since. More or less but the 70s it feels like they were trying to convince you to love stuff still to get money out of you but there is a they were aware of and it's expressed so wholly in the band-aids and the other younger kids that we see hanging around the hotels just trying to get a glimpse of Bowie. Yeah they the musicians know about what the fans are feeling in part because they felt it themselves and that connection is what they're trying to drive. The first scenario we get is a little William. With his mum clearly getting on like a house on fire although his older sister Anita played by Zoe Duchanel is railing against the strictures imposed by the fairly eccentric mother who has quite strong ideas about what gets handed to kids and not wanting to have her children raised in a way that will leave them vulnerable or will leave them undistcerning. I think her greatest weakness is not having faith that she's actually taught them well. Yeah yeah self-doubt because she has she has made them great people but unfortunately she pushes down so hard in trying to keep them from being like everybody else that she isolates them. There's very much the feel that these kids are home educated even if they do go to school. Yeah they the education continues outside school hours. She is of course a teacher. It's unfair that we can't listen to our music because it is about drugs and promiscuous sex. Simon and Garfunkel is poetry. Yes it's poetry it is a poetry of drugs and promiscuous sex honey they're on putt. First it was butter then it was sugar and white flour bacon eggs baloney rock and roll motorcycles then it was celebrating Christmas on a day in September when you knew it wouldn't be commercialized. What else are you gonna ban? Honey you want to rebel against knowledge I'm trying to give you the cliff notes on how to live life in this world. We're like nobody else I know. I am a college professor why can't I teach my own kids? Use me. Darryl says that you use knowledge to keep me down. He says I'm a yes person and you are trying to raise us in a no environment. Well clearly no is a word Darryl doesn't hear much. I can't live here I hate you even William hates you. I don't hate her. You do hate her you don't even know the truth. Sweetheart don't be a drama queen. Fuck you. Hey this is the house of lies. There it is. Your sister used the F word. I think she said Fek. What's the difference? The letter you. But also that William has been not so much held back but projected forwards to the point where he actually has extra life knocking around. He is 11 when he believed himself to be 13. No he thought he was 12 but he's been accelerated two grades and he thought he was only accelerated one. She skipped kindergarten and put him into first grade when he was five. I mean she does say that she taught him like the kindergarten level when he was four. And he went in early. I had a kind of on the fringes of that experience when I started primary school because I could already read and had already been taught some sort of the basic end stuff. My first primary school got cross with my mum because they said that she taught it to me all wrong and they would have to unpick it all and teach it to me correctly. What actually happened was they very quickly found out that they couldn't keep me happy with Roger Redhat and Jennifer Yellowhat books. And I had to go up to the library for the kids at the top end of the primary school to get fairy tales and Greek myths out of their library. All right do you have any tolls die? Oh for goodness sake fine I'll take ESOP. But anyway I never actually skipped any grades because they don't really do that in England. So there's a strange balance to this. In so far as you could be pointing at William and saying he's way too young to be doing any of this but also he's in liminal space in so far as he's achieved more than he's supposed to at his actual age. And so now he's kind of in his own mother's words, take a couple of years off, go see Europe, explore and William decides that he is in fact going to explore and she doesn't like how because it involves rock music. Educationally he is 17 on the cusp of 18. Right. Chronologically he is 15. And emotionally speaking because of how sheltered he is there is a fragility there which is again excellently acted by Patrick Fugit. Anita leaves unable to deal with her mother anymore and elopes with her boyfriend who only drives her away. Like it's not they're not going off to travel the world together because the boyfriend sticks around, comes back and ends up in the extended version of this. Just wandering into William's room and going man the things we used to do on your bed. Oh that's really uncomfortable. They don't elope them. Elope is specifically to run away to get married. Fine separation divorce on the front lawn. It's running away. She's still wearing colours at this point. She says she's going to run away to become a stewardess. It seems to not actually happen for at least a few years. But she does achieve that dream and she does travel the world clearly. But you've got these amazing eyes of Zoe Deschanel, these bright blue cornflour sources as she stares into William's eyes and our point of view the camera and gives him her old record collection. Which her mother disapproves of but allows William to decide for himself no I do want to listen to this stuff including Simon and Garfunkel who are indeed on pot. It was the 70s. Everybody was on pot. But there's something about the vinyl. There's something even more so about inherited vinyl. Being given this by an older sibling and discovering music. She writes in a little note, listen to Tommy and light a candle and you will see your entire future and there's just this romanticism and wistfulness and wonderlust and hope and possibility all threaded through the early 70s pre-watergate. We are three years out when we resume as William is 15 from days to confused and the kids there are a little more jaded and the actual shit of the watergate scandal is actually happening during this year. So it's kind of appropriate that the this sort of last it's not so much the last gasp of rock and roll but one of William's other mentors does seem to be lamenting the death of rock music. He specifically says you're coming to it at a really strange time like it's over you know that the ship has sailed. Lester bangs a real-life music journal and opiner a loud interviewing opiner on music played by the great departed Philip Seymour Hoffman. Here's a theory for you to disregard completely music. You know true music not just rock and roll it chooses you it lives in your car or alone listen to your headphones with a vast scenic bridges and angelic choirs in your brain. You know it's a place apart from the vast benign lap of America. Did you know that the letter by the box tops was a minute and 58 seconds long? Means nothing nil but it takes him less than two minutes to accomplish what Jeff Throw Tall takes hours to not accomplish. You see that this is a fatuous pseudo-belover. You know I mean which is fine but voiced it off his art you know or the doors or Jim Morrison they said drunken buffoon posing as a poet. Ah give me the guess who come on I got the courage to be drunken buffoons which makes them poetic. It's quite an honor to have the world's greatest rock critic and editor of Cream Magazine back home in San Diego for a few days. Lester bangs. Live American woman. Have you ever the most brilliant piece of gobbledygook ever? Like give me some white light white heat. Ah I just put this on this isn't on your plate let's do either. It just gets a little bit early for that. Not for me. Okay well that was Lester bangs this is Alice wisdom and here's Nicki Pop. He has kind of a straggly punky nerdy like I'm the unpopular kid and I don't care I am going to say this stuff about punk right now thing going on and he just seems to be kind of energized by William just sort of approaching him in a kind of am I like is this kid switched on at all and finding William to be very receptive respectful and knowledgeable about music. And the as he alludes to later on the role that he's played and he's I think he's referred to as a critic. It's quite an honor to have the world's greatest rock critic and editor of Cream Magazine rather than a journalist although that might not be how he describes himself but he is able to. It's a line blurred around this time thanks to Hunter S Thompson who does get name checked. Yeah now listen get it together man we're both professionals here okay I don't need to tell you this you're not out there to join the party we already have one hunter Thompson you're out there to interview and to report you got me now this isn't Cream Magazine this is Rolling Stone we need this story in four days now I want to know how it's shaping up. It's a think piece about a mid-level band struggling with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom. That's great. I like what we're saying let me try and get you a thousand more words. Now it's in consideration for the cover but don't tell the band. The cover of Rolling Stone magazine crazy crazy. The fact that he is not cool means that he can observe in a way that you can't if you're in it. If you are part of the popular crowd you can't see the popular crowd. Yeah yeah certainly not clearly and while I think we've we've it's imperative as you're cool to not be too aware of other cool things because the whole point is it's got to be effortless. Yeah while we've discussed this before that nerds make effort. There isn't necessarily an ability to be completely and utterly objective you will always bring your biases with you but you can't see them or anything else clearly if you're caught up in the drug of friendship and belonging and you are a part of this. There's a comfort zone where you can listen to the music talk about it or pine about it and then start actually approaching that music in a live sense and going to performances and concerts because back in those days it was two dollars for students not two thousand dollars. So you're the kid who's been sending me those articles from the school newspaper. Yeah yeah I've been doing some stuff for a local underground paper also. What do you like the star of your school? They hate me. Well you'll meet them all again on their long journey to the middle. You know your writing is damn good it's just a shame you missed out on rock and roll it's over. Over. It's over. I mean you got here just in time for the death rattle last gasp last grope. At least I'm here for that. Yeah what do you type on? Smith Corona Galaxes Deluxe. And you like the read? The early stuff. In his new stuff he's trying to be Bowie. He should just be himself. Yeah but if Bowie's doing Lou and if Lou's doing Bowie Lou's still doing Lou. If you like Lou. Take drugs? No smart kid. I used to speed on sometimes a little cough syrup. I'll stay up all night writing and writing. I mean like 25 pages a dribble. You know about the faces are cold trained. You know it's just a fucking right. You know because once you go to LA you're going to friends like crazy but they're going to be fake friends. You know they're going to try to corrupt you. You know and you got it on his face and they're going to tell you everything but you cannot make friends with the rock stars. Okay if you're going to be a true journalist. You know a rock journalist. The first number you get paid much but you will get free records from the record company. Fucking nothing about you that is controversial man. God it's going to get ugly man. They're going to buy you drinks. You're going to meet girls. They're going to try to fly you places for free, offer you drugs and I know it sounds great. These people are not your friends. You know these are people want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of rock stars and they will ruin rock and roll and strangle everything we love about it. You know because they're trying to buy respectability for a form that is gloriously and righteously dumb. You know you're smart enough to know that and the day it ceases to be dumb is the day it ceases to be real. Right? And then it just becomes an industry of cool. I mean I'm telling you you're coming along in a very dangerous time for rock and roll. I mean the war is over. They won. And 99% of what passes for rock and roll these days silence is more compelling. That's why I think you should just turn around and go back you know and be a lawyer or something. I can tell from your face that you want. I can give you 35 bucks. Give me a thousand words on black Sabbath. An assignment? Yeah. Yeah. Hey. You have to make your reputation on being honest and you know unmerciful. Honest, unmerciful. Yeah, if you get into a jam you can call me. Let's stay up late. But William is on the cusp of actually starting to meet musicians and roadies and people backstage in front of house and the band-aids. It's not enough to simply lie in a comfort zone just listening to the music. He has to get into it. There's something compelling him forwards. He wants to explore. And because it seems to be opening windows to the world that he had never really fathomed before, he follows that impulse. There's also a little gesture of acknowledgement when Anita hangs over. She doesn't even hand them over. She leaves the albums in a bag under his bed for him to find later because it's something that he needs to explore on his own, not for her to go through them with him and say this is this and that's that. But the note that she leaves in the Tommy album, to say listen to it with a candle burning, Willow noticed she leaves him a book of matches. As if she does perfectly well, he's not allowed matches. Yeah, the real-life Alice seems to be quite strict. I mean, not letting your 11-year-old play with matches is sensible, but it's just a neat piece of understanding that Anita would know what he needed. Whereas when Lester gives him the next metaphorical book of matches, which is the $35 to do an assignment on Black Sabbath, he doesn't tell him how to get into the building. William has to figure it out for himself. Mom, tell me more about Livia. She killed everybody else or her son Tiberius could have heard the throne, just like Nixon. Same story. It's Shakespeare, you know, like those plays with these kids, you'll flow. Anita? Hey, Mom. What's up, Dee? Oh no, thanks, I already ate. Are you sure? I made sweat cutlets. I'm fine, I already ate. Wait, you've been kissing. No, I haven't. Yes, you have. No, I haven't. Yes, you have, I can tell. You can't tell. Not only can I tell, I know who it is. It's Darryl. Boy, I love Zoe Deschanel. She did such a great job playing Anita. And, uh- My daughter Cindy. Yeah. She looks like her. I know. And that's your- that's pretty much one of your dresses, isn't it, that Francis is wearing? That's right. You used to wear those kind of, uh, peasant moo moo things. Very '60s. It's great. This scene actually happened. Nice to happen. She looked in the mirror to see if her lips were puffy and they were. But we never could figure out if you actually knew how to tell that they'd been kissing. Yeah, her lips were puffy. Yeah. She was mystified on how you actually knew. Now, do you remember this? You really did feel Simon and Garfunkel were on pot. I admit to nothing. You know, Paul Simon did an interview on CNN and they played the scene. Really? He said that you may have been right. Yeah, I did. But the- I finally admit it. The wicked, wicked thing is that you saw Simon and Garfunkel play Mrs. Robinson on the Smothers Brothers Show. Yes. And you wrote a letter to NBC and you said, Jesus loves you more than you will know. They're saying that in a sarcastic way. That's true. I got a letter of apology from the president. Wow. Well, it took us a few years, but hopefully we're able to pay tribute. Really? Oh, yes. Yeah, they're great. You are trying to raise us in a no- In a no environment. Oh, it sounds familiar. Now, mom, was it weird seeing this movie for the first time? Oh, yes. Imagine when you're children, you've got a little twin voice, Billy and Curtis. Imagine that what you're telling them now is going to be shown on the screen if they become screenwriters and you're going to sit in the big theater and you're going to hear your words coming back at you. Oh, it's scary. Really? I better get ready. What's the difference? But this, I always love this because you and I were always, we always could bond over intellectual intricacies, you know, and that's what the end of that scene is for me. But then, of course, rock and roll must go. But you are my ally and I needed one. But the movie did bring you and Cindy together, but our family together, so let's just say that. I just talked to her yesterday. I think I always felt, oh, I love this scene. Oh, I'm not skipping me grades, man. This happened. I actually thought I'd be appealing to girls. It never quite worked. These were key years to have skipped, but this happened. Oh, I'm so glad you kept this silly. Thanks. I'm a little sorry that it actually happened in real life. Yeah, that's right. Oh, there was a guy named, well, I can't say his first name because who knows, but his last name was Tobin. And he just ridiculed me for being younger. And for me being slower in the pubes department than he was, he was an adenoidal freak, this guy. But I always remember his face just screwed up in some insane expression going, don't you know? Don't you know you're so young? Don't you know? And it was like, wow, why the anger, man? Anyway, didn't know that folks, um, the real life. Oh, it's coming on Christmas, they're cutting down trees, they're putting up rearing singing songs of joy and peace. So I wish I had a river, I could skate away on. I didn't want to look, I didn't want to know. Where the Alice was still with us. I spent more than two and a half hours last night with these big clamshell headphones on listening to the audio commentary with her yammering in my ear. She had so much to say. She passed away in 2019 in September 11th. Mark that date, folks, see if you can remember it in some other way. Very notably leaving the world just before something that very much resembled the end times began to happen. I noticed on YouTube the other day that several commentators have said that YouTube doesn't like hearing the pandemic mentioned. They now have to be cockettish, not only about life, death, guns, sex, sexuality, gender, fetishes, but even something that affected absolutely everyone on the planet. And was unavoidable for many years cannot now be referred to. Now my guess is giving them the best benefit of the doubt that they don't want to stand by and allow complete amateurs to disseminate misinformation. It will be partly that I think it's probably the other as well. Which is hey stop telling everyone about your problems because they don't want people to be brought down and and switch off out of misery. But yeah, it is it is in part because part of their terms of services that you cannot pass false information about the pandemic, specifically just the pandemic because false information about style for example, that's why but you can see the real life Alice in Cameos in as far as I can tell pretty much all of Cameron Crow's films in the angry women's group in Jerry Maguire. She's one of these ladies talking about her many problems. And in this during the graduation ceremony that William misses because he's on the road, there's a lady in pink sitting up on stage with the other teachers appropriately while Francis McDormand is fretting on her own in the audience. And of course McDormand has immortalised her here, capturing the nuances and mannerisms and pecadillos of this quite extraordinary lady, although she did take issue very specifically with one thing that McDormand did that's just straight up misinformation or defamation maybe, she never went barefoot in the house. She would like that to be not all the other stuff about freaking William out and everyone that she called up on the road. Yeah that's true but just not the barefoot thing. But this scene actually happened and you know I know you had the best intentions busted Cindy just wanted to bring it all out and my memory of it is the shot that you're going to see from the back seat which was a combination of I don't know I kind of had a Coen brothers look at the world from that back seat and I remember this I remember those seats too it was so great to get all the details right. Although sometimes I think the crew behind my back were saying there it is that's that's what I remember. Sometimes I think the crew when I go to like 18 takes of somebody saying some inconsequential thing they kind of look at each other and say you know therapy might have been a little cheaper but there it is. Yeah. Joe Hutching our wonderful editor Sarah Klein, Marco Volsey we worked really yeah we worked really hard on this scene you know when does the kids scream and how loud and all that stuff and we went for loud. Here he goes. This is uh this was one of those days we were parked just parked by the side of the road I think in the valley doing this scene. But Cameron it wasn't my fault that you were skipped you skipped the fifth grade you went to the classroom and someone could switch the signs to fifth and sixth grade and 10 days later you said mom I'm in the sixth grade and I said no you're not you're in the fifth grade he said I'm in the sixth grade I said oh my god they must have made a mistake do you like it are you doing okay and you have some made some friends now and he says I like it and I said do you want to stay or not he said I want to stay and that's what happened that was that was the third bump and that was the third grade I skipped but do you remember saying to me go to Europe take a look around say that's verbatim follow your dream exactly what I said how did you how did you remember oh you know it's only indelibly marked in my psyche so but you did go to Europe and you did take a look around yeah I did with Led Zeppelin and other bands and that's what the movie is about. That's right and Irving Azov. So I was just daddy and I had to go to LA at that time to get your passport. Yeah that's true that's true went with the Eagles that was my shirt that's my actual shirt it was a competition striped shirt where's the $20 we used to keep by the door for your gas money in case you ran out of gas. I put that scene back in we're gonna see it a little later okay all right gee I still don't get bossed around by my mom do I. There's an absence of the father in this which I feel comes through in another of his far less beloved films Elizabeth Town where the poorly chosen actor Orlando Bloom has to go back to said area in Louisville and bury his father so there's the absence in that family but there's such a closeness at least in what mother and son can salvage together in the absence of father and sister they even have a family whistle which you hear her vainly imparting as he goes to his first big rock show and then Michael D Wilhoyt the sound editor along with Colton Coler Doug Hemphill Greg Steele Jeff Wexler and a dozen others music editors alongside Nancy Wilson managed to somehow blend this whistle in with this wonderful discussion between William and Penny as he's leaving and she's talking about the world expanding as the safety features on his life start getting clicked off he's immensely compelled by her there's a really lovely little natural moment where Patrick Fugit says ask me again do you want to come to Morocco that wasn't William that was actually just Patrick but it felt so honest that he left it in and the whistle is part of the music but it's actually happening within the soundscape as well because unseen Francis McDormand's in a car some way off whistling for William to come back to her it's a sound that means home and William's hearing it and looking at Penny there's an echo of that later on as well his mother wears orange a lot when William is trying to convince her to let him go on tour he's wearing an orange t-shirt he doesn't wear orange again while he's away when they're on the bus on the way back on the last leg Penny is carrying an orange blanket and it was the 70s folks there was a lot of orange so this is very careful placement of orange yes indeed oh call me if you need a rescue they live in the same city i think i live in a different world speaking of the world i've made a decision i'm gonna live in Morocco for one year i need a new crowd do you want to come yes yeah yeah you sure ask me you can do you want to come yes yes gotta call me okay it's all happening it's all happening it's all happening you all right yeah yeah almost famous session two marker the closeness William fills with his mother is expertly threaded throughout the beginning of the movie it does a really good job of both critiquing her efforts and also showing the results the positive results of the way she's raised him there's a lot of kickback from Anita played by Zoe Deschanel who seemingly just wants to lead the life of a normal teenage girl but is left with this in her eyes mad mum who shies away from anything commercial anything that people would just lapse into as standard she's constantly pushing her kids to be more and bigger and to enjoy life or to take it by the hands but when they both do it's in ways that she doesn't like which entail fleeing the nest she is a great example of how there is no such thing as perfect parenting yeah that no matter how well intentioned you are no matter how well researched you are no matter how well you plan there will always be some things you get right and some things you get wrong and that the way to feeling at least to a degree that you succeeded at being a parent is that you maximize the good things and build on them and recognize when you've cocked up and repair them as best you can and ultimately hindsight is 2020 in so many situations it is very easy to look back on a parenting journey and think well I did this wrong I did that wrong I did the other wrong but ultimately you can only work with the information that you have in the moment and the thing about how siblings grow up with the same parents is not true because they will always have different experiences with the same parents Anita was an only child for a while and she had two parents and Patrick hasn't sorry William has never been an only child Patrick William Cameron they're blurring between the three of them yeah William has never been an only child and for longer than Anita has his mother has been a widow and also we get to see how incredibly close they are there's this wonderful in the extended edition again sequence where they're coming out of Tequila Mockingbird which is still one of Cameron Crow's favorite films along with the apartment way up the top there and they're just talking about it animatedly and I definitely took that on board in terms of just walking with our child and talking to them about things that interested them in an interesting way and listening to them in particular conversing challenging them but not in a cruel or bulldozing way but asking them to not just take the easy road and to think about and so often when Willow would ask me a question to avoid the whole why why why thing I'd be like so what do you think and I'd get them to start working out possibilities Willow's one I've not so much weakness but a quirk which Willow falls back on still to this day is just guesswork where I say so who do you think this is and they'll go um Led Zeppelin no it's the Ramones you always forget the Ramones but it's you know why that is right why because one of the issues with ADHD and ASD is memory retrieval it's not that the memory isn't there it's that the mechanism by which it can be easily retrieved on command is not as functional as it is in other people however their autism allows them to go I know this voice over artist from three words they've just said yeah absolutely they're even better at that than I am like there have been so many times beyond countless that they've identified someone within a moment as being specifically not so much like that's Dee Bradley Baker but that's the person who voiced Aper or oh okay we got Robin from Teen Titans here they don't know Robin's name they just know it's the same yeah so their memory retrieval is activated by context yeah now both I'd say William and Anita have exceptional qualities to them Anita has a very romantic poetic streak running through her and were Elaine able to harness that and give her more freedom I feel like they would have had a much better relationship in real life this film actually helped the two of them who were still estranged not completely but just like they were it helped them get back together because the real life arguments were much more ugly and stressful as far as her sister was concerned she was leaving the house and the home for survival whereas the film depicts it more as uh righteous wanderlust Cameron presented a much more awkward hello again at the end of the film this almost magical moment of him wandering through an airport and they're just meeting his sister and he's been told that's not going to actually happen like one of the odd chances and it's like no it actually did happen he did become a student at airhouse desk and he did meet her by chance when he was really just wanting to go home and she's part and parcel of the strained little crow family miller family unit represents Cameron's normal life that he's taking a vacation from with those extra years given to him by being held up by being projected forwards several grades in a way that still makes a lane feel like what why is this happening my child is out there he's a baby he's being corrupted by these terrible people out in the world and it's you're presented with the portrait of a mother hen who wants to raise their child to be interested in everything but then freaks out when they go looking for everything oh i wonder what that feels like has a mum not entirely dissimilar well also i am not entirely dissimilar indeed but the the gift of being listened to that Elaine gives to william is something that he finds very difficult to reproduce out in the world and that's one of the things that makes him tired that's one of the things that makes him want to go home there's it is it is said by somebody i can't remember who actually states it but that everyone else is always waiting to talk and that william actually listens to people and how rare a quality that is now feels like something that sapphire would say possibly yeah but it might even have been Russell but the the way the people that the forefront of this story put themselves across we've already mentioned the fact that jeff is is a windbag he is full of constantly talking and doesn't even remember the shit he's come up absolutely but he is kind of the epitome of you can't control who lives who dies who tells your story you don't get to pick jeff which of your waffley words they will reproduce and they will remember down the track when you're not actually there to correct them anymore that sort of controlling of the narrative that he wants to do and Russell is initially a little bit more relaxed about but even though he's like observed the fact that actually listening is a good quality he still doesn't do it the incident with the t-shirt he literally says to jeff okay is it my turn to talk now because i have this to say which suggests that he's falling into the same trap as everyone else but there is a very brief moment where he does offer william that i will now listen to you you tell me about yourself and oh my god the the relief that you can see on william's face as he falls into that and he's any kind of it all comes spiraling out and then he says oh it's good to talk about it even though he hasn't he hasn't really said very much but just you you get that feeling that because he hasn't been able to speak about this to anybody who actually cares i mean Russell doesn't actually care but he has at least said you talk on listen and he has that window it's it's very telling about not like specifically who these two men are as people but the dynamic that it exists only between the two of them and how somebody listening to him to william is very parenting and so it sort of enhances the way that he looks up to Russell there's a lot of big brother energy for Russell it's faintly mirrored in the ex-boyfriend who comes back to the room but he's not particularly interested in sharing anything with william he's just he's engulfed he's indulging in nostalgia yeah sitting in this room that he used to bone william's system there is a deleted scene an extended one if you remember the in the film there's a scene when william is begging his mother elaine to let him go out on the road with this band and we cut to frances Mcdorming saying no no no no no more than two weeks that's four days that's at the end of it's a lot longer than that folks who keeps extending it that's the thing that's at the end of a long scene where william to convey to his mother in and again this is one of those this actually happens scenarios that this isn't all just filth and debauchery and they're not just gonna you know start smoking pot and throwing groupies at him immediately even though those things do absolutely happen it weirdly still water uh like you know we'll have a beer but they are very drug-free uh uh aside you know relative to most rock and roll that except for the very notable incident i am a golden god oh wait well that is just is honestly more opportunity he's like oh don't drink the uh this thing has LSD in it and he's like oh i'm gonna drink it but that's more just like he is pissed off about this whole t-shirt situation he wants to be away and he's also kind of doing a fuck you dad to jeff is not your dad Russell yeah i could be wrong but uh you're right yeah william plays her stairway to heaven now there is a joke in wane's world where wane starts to play stairway and then the music shop guy stops him and points to a sign saying no stairway to heaven which of course would relate to the fact that uh Led Zeppelin definitely don't want that particular track in there and for the deleted scene they were not actually legally allowed to put that track on there however it does sync up with stairway to heaven so if you have access to it and everybody does now you can jury rig your sound system to be able to play it there what you effectively get is a reaction video as william gingerly puts this on for his mother and again the boyfriend the the boyfriend of the sisters there too did to sort of support william and i think isn't there like a lady from school whom william has appealed to yeah so i think it's his guidance counselor doesn't he i know the real allis is sat right there as another helpful teacher yeah something like that or his english teacher so he got an authority figure that his mother would find difficult to argue with that they have his best interests absolutely and somebody who thinks that going on the road and writing a piece about a band is educational and would support his furthering education quite apart from anything else it's fantastic fucking life experience which will then help him in the future and it did there is no debating that after this film he went back to high school and the observation he actually snuck in while much older than the rest kids well much older than the rest of the kids whilst looking younger and documented the kids comings and goings whilst going through high school effectively giving himself that series of events that he missed that those interactions but from that again he kind of puts it in the milieu of what he's doing here in almost famous he was the observer they should make a film about this it will be way better than fast times at ridgemont high which was made as a result of these notes the findings that young camera and crow came up with i'd love amy heckling's work on clueless but if you watch fast times now in the 2020s there's some gross shit in that film and women are treated are pouring around judge ryan hold and fever case yeah i mean there's some great stuff like a young shawn pens a real laugh which you wouldn't expect considering a middle-aged shawn pen but a little harmister hand like he's he's pretty much got the whole bill and ted vibe before ever so slightly before bill and ted but again i think there was actually a uh film semi-sorter based on a similar premise where through barramore went back to high school never been kissed that film's not fantastic either but it does feel like honestly i feel like camera and crow himself should just get around to just doing this almost like an almost famous two or a taste and confused too i know that's not him yeah i feel like whatever actually happened won't be as dramatic but it just feels like that now with this lens would be something that could actually appeal or maybe not make his most recent film aloha was 2015 and he was immediately and justly criticized for employing as a native hawaiian character one of the leads emma stone one of the palest motherfuckers on the planet and she would say the same thing and he hasn't really made a film since it feels like he's just moved on and is now doing other things with his life i want to see more from william even now all these years later i kept frankly in the early to mid 2000s they could have made a sequel to this with patrick fuget he would have been entirely believable as the same guy Francis McDormand maintains being this sort of shadow of the life that william has put on hold and left behind to go traveling on the road uh by calling the various hotels he's going to be at and badgering the various people there the staff to get them to make sure that he doesn't take drugs and uh stays on the right track and there's this wonderful moment after obviously william has been uh told by uh various concierges whose job is not to listen to the shit of elay miller where she talks to russell and smacks him up sharp really really quickly like he's he's about to start charming her but then she comes back in with like a ferocious not so much an attack dog but mother bear a mother bear who immediately puts her paw on his chest and shoves him down to the ground doesn't roar at him but speaks severely and straightforward tarn still water hey how does it feel to be the mother of the greatest rock journalist we've met hello hello look you got a you got a great kid here there's nothing to worry about we're taking good care of them and you should you know you should come to the show sometime join the circle listen to me mr your charm doesn't work on me i'm onto you oh of course you like him well yeah he worships your people and that's fine by you as long as he helps make you rich rich i don't think so listen to me he's a smart good-hearted 15-year-old kid with infinite potential this is not some apron wearing mother you're speaking to i know all about your vahala decadence and i shouldn't have let him go he's not ready for your world of compromise values and diminished brain cells that you throw away like confetti am i speaking to you clearly yes yes ma'am if you break your spirit harm him in any way keep him from his chosen profession which is law something you may not value but i do you will meet the voice at the end of this telephone and it will not be pretty do we understand each other oh yes ma'am i didn't ask for this role but i'll play it now go do your best be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid go to set that it's not too late for you to become a person of substance russell please get my son home safely you know i'm glad we spoke and it always gets a laugh in the cinema because just watching his face go from swaggering rock star to yes ma'am like she has a way because she's a teacher as well and and mcdormann brings that energy she has a way of not infantilizing people but asserting herself as an authority figure who needs to be listened to for the good of everything she's not just you're gonna listen while i tear a strip off you she's coming at it from this is imperative you will listen to me because of this i feel i would love there to be more women like this but women have been told don't say no ever or will tell you you're an overly emotional angry woman honestly i think this is where part of my appeal with librarians comes from because it is very common in librarians because a part of what that tone of voice is about is setting expectations and when a librarian tells you to shush that is setting expectations they're not telling you off they're not castigating you or or abusing you or anything like that but what they are doing is they're saying this is how we behave in here and this is what you will do if you want to stay in here it's for the good of everyone yeah you could look at the entire history of humankind as being the id railing against the super ego in this way where the parent needs to be there and listen to but we need to know when to break away and do our own thing but if we break away and decide no one's ever going to tell us what to do you end up with chaos as the id that doesn't really know what it's doing and doesn't understand nurturing just that it needs to be nurtured and it's not being goes out of control yeah well there are two versions of the parent there's the nurturing parent which sets safe boundaries but is kind and encouraging and then there is the critical parent whose role in life really is only to stop you running out into the road unfortunately we tend to let the critical parent version of the super ego drive and that's why so many people have this streak of i will do all of the things that i know are bad for me because i want to piss off the critical parent it is possible to just not listen to it but it takes a lot of training the critical parent is of course very fucking easy to internalize and turn into this caricature of good advice that you constantly ignore, berate and defy yeah and then vote for when you get so panicky about the fact that you don't appear to have any controls in your life that you want someone to come down with a big stick let's let the angriest dumbest toddlers run the school someone fetch me a librarian stat i want a big purple chair can we put librarians in charge please that would be an idea anyhow i can tell everyone to shush or like your personal favorite phrase of all time please can we just calm the fuck down i would love it if all world leaders shouted that as one and agreed not to do war for just a bit just let us evolve for a bit can we make that Kamala Harris's campaign slogan please for me just calm the fuck down yeah good idea but she cuts Anita to the bone way back in those early scenes when the truth about William's actual age comes to light i know you're expecting puberty but you're just going to have to shine it on for a little while who needs a crowd who put such a high premium on being typical you're unique you're two years ahead of everybody take those extra years and do what you want go to your for a year take a look around see what you like follow your dream he'll still be the end the slayer in the country it was so proud of you he knew that you were a predominantly accelerated child what about me you are rebellious and i'm grateful of my love this song explains why i'm leaving home to become a stewardess we can't talk we have to listen to rock music i love you this is what cuts it down she says you are rebellious and ungrateful of my love now it's true but that as a summation of your child i can understand why i need to go fuck this this is a house of lies so that stems from a conversation where Elaine's been talking about what William's father thought of him she has nothing for Anita in terms of what her father thought of her and by saying that to her what she is effectively communicating is i have given up on trying to make anything out of you yeah to which it is entirely understandable that Anita would then go well then why am i still here let me go and develop myself exactly you're not going to so i need to be out there where i can breathe and again as i said the inherited vinyl she leaves this collection behind four William with notes and it it plants a seed in his head this poetry that she has in her heart i i could definitely stand to hear more about what happened with Anita exemplified by the song America by Simon and Garfunkel which i always use to start my almost famous curated soundtrack rather than i believe the soundtrack album starts with sparks by the who which is great and one of the earliest ones that's played uh the actual chronological first one in the film is actually well wait there's a Nancy Wilson piece as William's writing the notes in the opening credits then there's the chipmunks with the christmas song then there's hugam bugam it takes a while to get to the vinyl collection so i just go straight there but it's the whole the romantic idea of of that that America in this era just after the boom time of the uh because it that when when i need to leave it is still the 60s so it's got that kind of um the the glamour of air flight from catch me if you can that era but the the notion of traveling and the notion of seeing America which kind of surfaces in the movie cars it's that Americans at the time will be encouraged to take more vacations and to travel about the place and effectively feed new industries that were springing up for tourism which America hadn't really played host to in any great capacity before then but it also has a different meaning in the early 70s because that was a point where America was questioning itself in terms of not where it was but what it was so looking for America in the in the 70s is about digging through the shit and seeing if there is anything of substance under there yeah but it's a bohemian perspective in this piece this track it has very much uh all we really need are a couple of absolute bare necessities and a traveling life together is more than sustainable again it uh neatly dodges all of the the realities of what living a life on the road or simply leaving behind the stability of the home and moving to the city where you may be destroyed or the country where you may become Christopher McCandall's would be but again it's not necessarily to be taken entirely literally the idea is to not pin yourself to small town America and then never leave yeah well it's worth recognizing I think tying in with that idea of of America being a who as much as it is a what it's it's a culture that's been pinned like a mask or a sheet to a country that was never yours to begin with so if you can embrace that and examine the layers of culture that have built up through music through film through food that's been pieced together for all of these people who came from different places and pushed out the people who were already there it's it's such a complicated notion to explore that I don't think there is a bottom to it's a it's a work in progress and it always will be so oh oh I've been saying recently that following watching the full guy how come whenever there's a movie being made inside a movie that that movie looks like shit it looks like brain dead crap poorly made poorly acted embarrassingly parodied within sometimes serious films they never get professional poster artists to come in and design their fake posters so they don't conform to the tropes we see all the time simple well observed stuff like you have to have your leading man in the middle leading lady looking sexy on the right support actor on the left villain on the far left slightly elevated and slightly larger but the leading man's name has to always come first from the left so the names never match up no it's dead suddenly this is why Chris Evans is kind of me andering around in the background in all those Avengers 2012 posters they're like who's this guy out of our Captain America it's custom looks stupid it's like writers and directors have contempt for their own craft and there's a list a mile long of instances where this is the case pretend music or at least music composed for the film to make it seem as though it were actually real and going on sale with no film in existence tends to fare better and the music of still water the fictional composite band is i would say a perfect example of peak peak imaginary music from 1973 Peter Frampton served as a technical consultant on the film Cameron himself and his then-wife Nancy Wilson of Hart who provides those wonderful guitar scores to his films co-wrote three of the five still water songs in the film Frampton wrote the other two with Mike McCready of Pearl Jam playing lead guitar in all of the still water songs tell me your story tell me what to do Is it a cure for the young man's broken blue love don't go everybody knows some of us i was thinking about regarding a couple of weeks ago we did the dasening infused episode and rigid link later begged Led Zeppelin for the use of being a long time since i rock and roll to put into the soundtrack and i can't remember which either page said yes and plant said no or vice versa it doesn't really matter does it and i juxtaposed it with just how easily Shrek 3 got misuse of it the fact that immigrant song or specifically the first 42 seconds of it has appeared in so many fucking adverts selling everything and trailers selling everything and as everything pushes towards a kind of a guardians of the galaxy hey 70s rock slash 80s pop uh homogeneity a dad rock skinner box for year after year of Led Zeppelin saying no to the use of their music in films including period pieces is that they have denied filmmakers who were there at the time and actually loved the music and for them it was part of the fabric of existence they've denied them from having access from being able to convey how that felt to people and they've said yes to the money men now which looks like selling out to the progress is we're about to start talking about still water so now kids know immigrant song but they don't know who it's by they just know it's da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da ah even the fact that it was used masterfully in Thor Ragnarok but shot itself in the hammer by doing it twice once at the beginning once at the end it's an emotional climax keep it for the end that fits in with um something i was reading yesterday about how sped up versions of classic tracks are used a lot you can't sit around here listening to classical music well i need around on tiktok on tiktok yeah as backing tracks for various bits and pieces and i like yeah there's a generation of people and it will continue who know the lyrics and are aware of the tune at least the first 16 seconds but don't know what the original sounded like or the context in which it came out or who sang it or who sang it or well i mean you can yeah actually i suppose the tiktok sound credit would go to whoever sped it up okay i was joking but that fucking rocked it sounded like the prodigy man the chipmunks are killing it these days i would imagine a bajillion people know the song lady in red but not many people know that it was sung by the purveyor of infinite filth christer berg christer berg on loose ends he he's stragged me off and net goes edge and nothing went bitty in his way and he goes yes i've heard he's very ugly and he hasn't got much hair was that all that the troll had to work that is a bur all the mono brown freak monster yeah almost browed nanny shagging tossmonger who is inflected is sentimental muleings on a reluctant nation but yeah that that idea that this music is a little bit led Zeppelin in particular could have been immortalised in film in within a particular window yeah but now that window is gone and commerce has taken over he wants to use it for a film these days now just has to pay the music distributor first they just have to pay the music distributor but secondly they're going to want the recognisable version so they might be after the speeded up tiktok version too yeah well they won't be using brony alga or over the hills and far away they'll be using immigrant song and to that end they've if erased themselves from history how do you do that how do you be the biggest band of the 1970s and no one was listening to you according to all those 70s period piece films that's fucked that's insane why didn't they think why didn't they consider the future children picking up films later and going man this is great who is it it's the who and black sabbath who've never had a problem with that you want an honest answer to that question and we want the money no because nobody does nobody does think into the future nobody does think i think it's in the future okay when i say nobody i'm a futurist baby there is a small handful of people out one end of the bell curve who think of projecting things into the future we've talked before about the concept of seventh generation planning where if you make a decision about something it is a moral imperative to consider how that is going to have an impact seven generations down the line almost no one does this yeah uh the Beatles were another band who absolutely abjectly refused to let their music be used in movies or anything and i understand but what they've ended up doing is locking it away and when you're a kid like me in the 80s you watch yellow submarine on vhs and that introduces you to the Beatles and then there's an enormous 20-year gap between the vhs and the dvd release of that when i was reminded about the Beatles i didn't get into the Beatles properly until 2009 and Beatles rock band which wonderfully brings you from please please me all the way through to let it be it is what i said at the time we need more of history games games games which do what stuffy old classes at school cannot and bring history to life in a way that you have to actually engage with or you lose and fail bio games yeah as opposed to bio flicks yeah now that i think about it uh wings that she's uh that only the band the Beatles could have been allowed the use of live and let die in shrek three for the like what does it even mean well like john clays the frog dies and then they play live and let die in a funeral it's like so is this frog like a badass or something at what is he into james bond is there any reason to play this it may be worth looking at if you if you have genuine questions about is it a cover version i think it's a cover version i don't know probably uh for people that we've now forgotten if you have genuine questions about individual bands or artists it might be worth looking to see who owns their catalog because there has been a rash recently of rock stars whose contracts are far behind them who have sold their catalogues for the day we get some so that they can spend their twilight years in comfort and as a result the person who is ticking the box to say yes you can use this music is not the person who has an emotional connection with the atoll and that's why you'll see chicory tips some of my father in an advert for pizza hut greatest rock song red bull ballad ever made everything in the world worth thinking about is contained with it these six notes on a bond tempo you see i would say they could use it for an advert for camp coffee which has chicory in it but that's showing my age because they don't make that anymore well not it only works if you're 70 years old you know i remember chicory tip from top of the pops they came on after roxy music and everybody booed i'm just kidding no one goes after roxy music anyway but i've always loved music it's just what i had access to in the 80s it was just mix tapes and a couple of times my father would cash in his tesico stamps for a michael jackson tape for me so i got bad and thriller that way but then in the 90s i started buying cds and one of the bands i started getting into was the who which brings me to the rolling stones who were used in plenty of uh period pieces and movies and specifically in the 90s there was a rash of rolling stones moments like uh fallen has uh time is on my side fear and loving in Las Vegas has jumping jack flash full metal jacket has painted black so does devil's advocate ruby tuesday is in the world tenon bounds and it plays directly after she smiled sweetly street fighting man is in fantastic mr fox gimme shelter is in layer cake interview the vampire has a cover version of uh sympathy for the devil which by the way the regular version of that was played in such things as suicide squad so you know it's gotten its airplay and of course scorsese is famous for utilizing stones music in a way that crystallizes it in that era effectively what should have been done with lead Zeppelin they should have gotten a director they trusted early on and said yeah you can use i don't know why they make jagger you can use our music provided you just tell us what the context is so it's not going to be over that's something we really don't like heaven for femme brown sugar come off as racist but just allow themselves to be woven into that era but the rolling stones had a thing where i was like no we're not putting them on the sound track you're gonna have to sing for it david geffen they have to buy our albums not funny it got as absurd as you had all these fantastic soundtracks just with the stones tracks missing my rush more sound track on cd lists i think track 18 as i am waiting and it's not on there track 18 is actually track 19 like they had to remove it at the last second because they forgot that that stones don't like their music on cd's but the sleeves had already been printed and as a result i had a best of the stone cd but loads of the who albums you see how like i loved listening to the who in movies uh like remember in the 90s there was a big push back to the 70s because there was enough nostalgia from that era to and people still alive and able to pay money if you remember the beginning of the 90s cinema audiences were kind of just middle-aged people the the popularity of airport novel thrillers and court cases and crime thrillers and just legal disputes and and uh erotic thrillers like it doesn't look at all like cinema now at all and it was earning like oh this this thing got got at two hundred million dollars it's the highest earner of the year like the the earnings of cinema was so much more modest that doesn't mean it was better but it does specifically mean there were a lot of films being made with people who were middle-aged in mind and to that end there was quite a wistful look back into the the music and then soundtracks would became a big deal in the 90s in particular because cd soundtracks could now include more tracks on them than records could previously as could tapes obviously well i mean in the uk at least i would imagine it was a bit different in america by this point but in the uk you usually had to travel to get to a multiquex unless you lived in a city that happened to have a multi-screen cinema yeah you had a small local theatre if you were lucky and it would play one film a week luxury and you would go and see whatever the one film was provided it was one that was in your age range i missed the short-haul admission like a sucker and they generally had a kids film as a saturday morning matinee yeah all this goes to say that when the two thousands came around and the mid-2000s in particular and ipods and itunes were the dominant way of listening to music prior to streaming services that's when my connection to music peaked because you could actually do mix tapes of old but put them on your ipod and that also meant that you could re-incorporate all those stones tracks from their greatest hits into the soundtracks that were missing songs and being able to put them in the right order and excise all of those songs inspired by the movie despite having been released a few years prior to the movie which i loved and i missed that and we've done actually a whole show about my ipod collecting of recent years and kind of looking back on that era that will be out in the next few months so all this comes around to saying still water the fictional band that almost feel like they were real because they were composited of so many genuine experiences that young Cameron Crow got to witness on the road traveling with these bands as they feuded with each other because from the sounds of it very few bands were just all as chill as Derek Smalls all the bands were like Nigel Tuffnell and David St. Harbins you know i think we're stuck with a very very stupid and a very dismal looking album this is depressing this is David you're not putting on your fucking turntech David it's a choice i frankly think that this is the turning point okay i think i think you've got here Billy crude up as the guitarist with mistake he will never play a character as vibrant as this again i don't think i think it seems like he's i know that uh dr manhattan is literally more vibrant than him especially on blue ray and if you dial up the blue but if you bring it down to audio standards uh dr manhattan's actually quite flat and dead and boring to listen to but Russell i'm intrigued the whole time he has this kind of loose shirt rolled up sleeves boot cut jeans long hair mustache but twinkling eyes kind of tall and skinny but a little bit muscular like he's got the whole rock dude no no more than rock dude rock icon he's got that he sells as an actor hi i'm a journalist i write for cream magazine oh the enemy a rock writer right well i'd like to interview you or somebody from your band look i'm sorry but could you please fuck off we play for the fans not the critics Russell Jeff and Larry i really love your band i think the song fever dog is a big step forward for you guys and you guys producing it yourselves instead of glen johns that was the right thing to do and russell russell the guitar sound is in cindy air in in cindy airy way to go well hey man don't stop there you're going yeah i'm in cindy air too come on hey how you doing freddy he's with us come on this way bro he's not on your list of paper do you belong all right red dog hey red dog hey boy you're the one i'm yeah yeah you're brother that's the almond brother's band's number one roadie some people have a hard time explaining rock and roll really explain rock and roll maybe Pete Townsend but that's okay rock and roll is a lifestyle and a way of thinking and it's not about money and popularity although some money would be nice but it's a voice that says here i am and fuck you if you can't understand me and one of these people is going to save the world and that means that rock and roll can save the world all of us together and the chicks are great but what it all comes down to is that thing the indefinable thing when people catch something from your music what i'm talking about is wait what am i talking the buzz the buzz and the chicks or whatever is an offshoot of the buzz like you saying you like fever dog that is the fucking buzz it's uh it's not what you put into it it's what you leave out you listen to listen the marvin gay a song like what's happening brother there's a single whoo at the end of the second verse the you know that whoo that single whoo i know that whoo yeah that's what you remember man it's the little things the silly things the mistakes there's only one of them and it makes the song it's what you leave out should be bad that's rock and roll should we get to leave out when you're supposed to be the enemy what are you waiting yes there you go still young enough to be honest as marvin gay from his eleventh album what's going on track two what's happening brother nothing showed her one of the greatest albums ever made let's find that whoo hey baby what you know whoo i'm just getting back what you knew i would boy's hair when will it be when will people start getting together again all things will make it better like those papers said what else is new my friend besides what i read can't find no work and find no job my friend my name is tighter than it's ever been say man i just don't understand what's born or trust this name what's happened brother hey what's happening what's happening Betsy Hyman was the costume designer for this one also pulp fiction vanilla sky a tomorrow war she deserved better than that one and she does an exceptional job of bringing you back in time not by turning the clothes into a joke like oh could you believe that's what we used to wear but by making everything fit over time so that it actually felt like well it's like visiting another world another version of humanity weirdly this is the era of clothes design that i feel most at home with i think because this is how i used to dress in the 90s revival of 70s clothes blue-cut jeans flares were back stone washing dark blue prior to skinny yeah before skinny jeans came in and then refused to go away that was my era of dress and i have had 70s hair since i was about four years on you do look nice with the fair force at bangs so similarly clad in usually a long-sleeve tea to emphasize his skinniness you've got jason lee as jeff bb the lead singer and the central conflict in still water is that jeff wants to be famous and cool and listened to he wants people to hear what he has to say and he's quite petulant and aggressive about it and Russell is more of a sort of a quiet burn he wants them to be successful when he has a quiet anxiety over that but he doesn't bitch and moan the way that bb does so to a degree they are of a kind in terms of what they both want for the band success it's not a case of Russell wants them to to really be about the music and jeff wants them to be about the spotlight they both want to be famous hence the title of this movie was untitled for the longest time because cameron growe wanted it to feel like a mixtape or specifically an extended bootleg version of an album with all the bits you didn't get to hear or see to give people an idea that they got their hands on a very rare box set just that the whole film was looking back into this era and you could actually kind of glimpse behind the curtain and see what was going on on the bus when they were driving from place to place is the extended version technically called untitled the extended version he called untitled technically they're still legally known as almost famous extended edition but you can call that untitled if you want because that becomes the even more we put everything everything that was worthwhile that we shot is in that extended version it's 39 minutes longer bringing it up to two hours 40 it's definitely better the standard theatrical version is fan bloody tastic and sometimes some nights you just want to put on a film that's two hours long it's not going to eat your whole like you're sleeping time as well but in terms of doesn't matter about the clock let's run it out let's take this smooth and slow the extended version of untitled is magnificent but what's quietly going on underneath that is the fact that William in their presence is representative of the fans who really care about the music about what's being sung and how it's being sung every music fan that wants the best for the band would want them to be at least listened to by people who appreciate them on a similar level i think a lot of the uh conflict comes in with people who were into the shins before garden state there's a certain amount of peevish jealousy guarding the thing that you liked first before everyone started liking it on a superficial level in a way that you detest but also there's a perception that the band then play up to this new larger crowd this coming out in 2000 is intriguing to me because as a reflection of how it was possible to interact with your musicians in those days i would say the early 2000s was the last gasp of being able to interact with musicians in that way because once the internet took over the way specifically musicians and other celebrities frankly were expected to start interacting with their fandom changed radically and these days it's completely different that idea of a guitarist with mystique nobody wants a guitarist with mystique these days they want to know everything about them they want them talking on tiktok constantly about their vulnerabilities and i'm not saying that's a bad thing but it has completely changed how we perceive and what we expect from people who produce our entertainment personally i think these days we expect far too much oh yeah oh yeah it will drive them mad it's a very dangerous game to get into these days i also feel like it's self-defeating because boe in this is briefly glimpsed in a hotel just this flash of orange ziggy stardust hair being run under a coat upstairs as all these boe fans are standing opiling about this and that who then immediately start screaming as this mysterious androgynous demi-god is rushed away from them that sense of mystique and mystery and you can hear what they have to say in interviews and that will be our brief glimpse into them that fueled fame in a way that poking the paparazzi camera up their chuff as they're getting out of a limousine doesn't well that was about bringing them low i think we've said celebrities are just like us then why should we care we've made your point we don't need to buy your shit rag anymore but there is still a sense of wanting to know more about them than they might feel comfortable sharing and this all absolutely ties in with the themes of this film because the band themselves arranged to have an interview with William he goes on tour with them expressly for that reason to study them but at the same time to get what they have to say down on paper and they just keep kicking it down the road and saying we'll do it later not now we'll do it later and it's frustrating for William he feels like he's vestigial but at the same time honored to have this opportunity he's conflicted himself and he doesn't know how to feel about a band he idolized as a result the way the band is presented has to come through his lens because Russell keeps nudging the interview forward and won't engage with him i i don't think through like deliberate i don't want to talk to you reasons just it's never the right time jeff wants to talk to him but once he's done his appining he has very little left to say he's a bit of an empty cam rattling and the chicks are great i sound like an asshole dick sorry i sound like a dick uh but the the other two when William tries to talk to them they literally have nothing to say i'm every bassist ever the bassist and the drummer don't actually really even feature in the film they're there as kind of canvas like when the arguments are happening the bassist is like we'll just get some barbecuing and the drummer he's almost silent bob he only says four words fuck it i'm gay later at the end which seems like that was a major trailer moment that may have got some people coming to the cinema it seems like a really hard moment because of course it was the end of the 90s and gay was a punchline at that point however the fact that he's been presented as not exactly three-dimensional because he doesn't have anything to say but he is a person he's there he's interacting with everybody he is just the same as everybody else and then he turns out to be gay that baby steps it was the year 2000 but i i would say that his progress on how the the gay one of the group was presented through the 90s maybe so but the thing about that slight incongruity between we want to engage with the art but then when our fan icon turns up we descend into screaming mimis happens there's a moment of that very early on in the movie when the girls are stood at the top of the ramp outside the venue and they're talking about how we're not groupies we are here because of the music we are here to engage with the music and then the car goes past and they all start screaming and banging on the window i say all there's like three of them on that point it's a very small crowd fire away and i'm ready you have to be depressed to write a sad song do you have to be in love to write a love song is a song better if it really happened to you like love thing where did you write that and who is it about when did you get so professional gentlemen your first t-shirts have arrived it's a record company's mistake and i will pay t-shirts are gone band happy all right can we just skip the vibe and go straight to us laughing about this yeah okay because i can see by your face you want to get into it how can you tell i'm just one of the out of focus guys here thank you it's like a good look at it all right so you love this t-shirt it lets you say everything you want to say well it speaks pretty loudly it's a t-shirt do you give a shit about a t-shirt i'm just hungry man let's just go ahead and find some barbecue or something i'm always going to tell you the truth are you doing coke again oh yeah all the time this is big stuff man from the very beginning we said i'm the front man and you're the guitarist with mystique that's the dynamic we agreed on page plant mik keith blackmore gillon but somehow it's all turning around we have got to control what's happening there's a responsibility here excuse me but didn't we all get into this to avoid responsibility i can't say anymore with the writer here no no no no no no you could trust him say what you want he won't write it look i work as hard or harder than anybody on that stage you know what i do i connect i get people off i look for the one guy who isn't getting off and i make him get off actually that you can print and yet why do i always end up feeling like i'm a joke to you look you want to pretend this isn't going to be a very big band well it is you call yourself a leader of this band but your direction allowed this t-shirt when you allow dick to manage us because he's your friend don't you see man the t-shirt is everything all right is it my turn now because i think we should for once say what we really mean oh this is the part where you quit right i'm so predictable deal with it and let me just say what nobody else wants to say your looks have become a problem all right okay enough break it up everyone out of the room for five minutes we saw the baz lerman elvis filmed the other day i've been avoiding it for a long time because it's very very long but i liked it it was a sympathetic portrait of him and very notably by the end they could have just gone look at this human wreckage but the point had been made clear and the fact that they didn't linger on the the sad final days and then go look he's turned into a disgusting pig monster a huge hog beast that it was this man is ill and tom hanks his repulsive kernel is the one who's been making him ill this parasitic oh god he's so detestable whilst at the same time protesting his innocence to ask the audience it's uh he's salieri yeah yeah and i think that is what is essentially the the problem what is portrayed as the problem there is something that often gets missed off when we talk about the the life of rocks singers and the drugs and the addiction and the emotional hurt that they're trying to recover from there's a huge piece in all of that which is exhaustion yeah just being expected to be on not necessarily all the time but when someone points at you and says beyond now having to switch that on and off at someone else's command not being able to make your own decisions about where you go when you play when you decide it's time for a break not having any control or say because you have to go with the ebb and flow of of your own popularity there's a a clear delineation of three eras of his life there's the uh fifties era where he's kind of a oh god i'm going to do Elvis impersonations i i did start listening to his music as a result of uh watching that film but just the whole like who the fuck is this guy but this is why i was going to bring it up he is there and we get to see the birth of the suddenly women start screaming movement because this was just prior to the Beatles and they're watching it perform and there's just a bunch of girls who have been used to watching country singers are going oh he's great but then they start like what what what's happening and then one girl starts screaming and then a bunch of girls start screaming and there's a hysteria aspect to that and there's also you can absolutely read into all of this the repression that women have gone through for fucking centuries don't let any of this out and then a pop star turns up and says you can let it all hang out baby and then they all just go i'm gonna live there's also a really sinister note of the business men who make these decisions to take Elvis and put him in front of crowds being acutely aware of the fact that because black music was starting to become easier to pass around they needed to get in on the ground floor would steal it quick well specifically if our girls are going to be shrieking and screaming and dropping a nickel we want them to be screaming and shrieking had a white boy exactly and we want to be able to control the direction that that screaming is going and the idea and this is so fucking pervasive panel your main ads because you're terrified of what will happen if you just let them go yeah it's controlled hysteria yeah controlled hysteria with babysitting money behind it the second era of Elvis being his comeback after in not dissimilar to Muhammad Ali though contextually different because he was white Elvis was shipped off to vietnam then came back for the comeback tour but the fascinating and most tragic aspect is when he gets to vegas because the colonel knows that when he starts singing the girls who screamed in the 50s who are now women will start remembering that main ad frenzy from before and will scream for him again and they will love this icon from their teenage years from when everything seemed so much more open but Elvis is addicted to that too so you've got a shot after shot of this guy kissing all his fan girls on the lips just like fulfilling their lifelong dream because he's just drunk and addicted on this and that serpent of fame and the gratification of the spotlight has coiled itself around Jeff BV and Russell and they don't know whether they want the screaming fans and the money more or to be able to actually tour as a band that they keep telling themselves this is what we want this is what we love but they argue so much that it almost makes the good the positives of this and being on the road uh null and void so when this grotesque beast of a man played by Jimmy Fallon comes sliding into their green room and tells they'll just delivers this business guy 80 suit shark speech when you play an eight show like tonight okay I need everyone's attention please girls I need five minutes with the band alone like right well uh seems the rumors are true uh the record company has sent a big time manager here to try and talk you into replacing me uh his name is Dennis Hope I know you've all heard of him he's got all the big bands in his outside right now when he wants five minutes with you and uh well I think we've got to do this we'll send him in yeah bring him in we'll send him out on a rail all right it will just finish the interview in uh Maryland you could play him from Maryland all right hi hi hi hey we've already got a manager man he's been with us from the beginning respectfully we all have our roots I believe in bands holding onto the roots those roots need to be augmented I'm gonna tell you the truth I may enrage some and throw all others I don't really give a fuck your manager here needs a manager example if you had to run out in your contract in Phoenix we could have sued over Russell's hand but you left negating the contract forfeiting the deposit you effectively traveled a long way to pay that promoter to electrocute you okay your damages will put you away in the hole for this tour right now you owe the record company more than you got but your record selling there's money to be made so I brought a plane in we could add more shows to make up the difference respectfully we we traveled by bus Doris is the soul of this band that bus has been our home since we were the Jeff BB band no way amen I travel on a pogo stick if I thought we could make more money you could play more dates with a plane well it's not about money it's about playing music and turning people on yeah clearly respectfully but on the just tasteful subject of money just know that you're all making it right now and it's all out there I'm just talking about bringing it back here but why should we pay you for something we can do ourselves do you know how to keep from getting charged for the ice below the floorboards of the Chicago stadium do you know how to do a headlining tour do you know claire ruffin at the l.a. forum do you know Bobby Cowan Danny Marcus Lisa Robinson do you know Frank Barcelona this is Cleveland where's kid leah where is he you know how to get a record not not pressed but played I didn't invent a rainy day man I just owned the best umbrella and as much as you may believe that this is gonna last forever it does not your biggest fan right now your biggest fan soon they're gonna want to go to college gonna want to buy some clothes spend that money some other way and you know what they'll tape your record from a friend's copy you got to take what you can when you can while you can and you got to do it now that's what the big boys do if you think Mick Jagger still be out there trying to be a rock star at age 50 you're sadly sadly mistaken yes well thank you Dennis well think about what you said oh no you you don't understand I'll think about it I'm not uh auditioning I came here to decide whether I want to represent you so I'll stand outside for a moment and think about whether I want to stay there's a good show by the way the most recent Rolling Stones tour is their 2024 Hackney Diamonds tour which is focusing on their 24th album of that same name and it's really good Mick Jagger is 81 years old when was the last time you saw an 81 year old just do it shit how is Keith Richards still alive oh god I hope I didn't jinx him when the whole way was against you and you're standing in the rain and you want someone beside you to hold you up a game when the whole world was against you and that's got you up the run and you think the party's about but it's only just only just a figure where the dreary streets of London yeah yeah you want that you want this but we've got a very very brief window and if you don't grab it now if you don't take everything now then you will disappear and he just hits them with fear and fear of missing out on fear of this draining time and it works he gets his claws into them they reject the bus they start traveling by plane you know who else traveled by plane buddy holly richy valance oh just read it patty clime jim croche jon denver glenn miller steve rayvorn alia the big bopper and linared skin it and every single one of them died in a plane crash skinnered camera and crow traveled with he knew them i've no doubt that they seen where still water almost crash in their plane due to adverse weather his camera's way of processing this connection and loss but back to jimmy fallen we must go he's right about a couple of things insofar as he is connected it's not what you know it's who you know he knows all of these people and had still water not bailed after russell got electrocuted on stage they would have been able to get compensation for russell's hand and they wouldn't have reneged on their contract instead they traveled all that way just to buy them a gate and it becomes so much more complicated because some of the stuff that jimmy fallen is saying has a basis in reality and they are reckless and they are not considering broader consequences as they travel but what he's pushing them towards is he's like i travel on a pogo stick if i could make more money it's like if i could make more money is his bottom line the bottom line and everything about it points towards the direction the music industry has gone and gone until it's cannibalizing itself and it has cheapened and strangled rock and roll until it is not even transactional anymore it is something that we give up our attention for as currency so so and we consider that to be gratification we will listen to it free and have it filled with commercials the fact that it's the only way that a lot of kids can hear music it doesn't give them the option of putting on an album putting on a cd putting on a cassette tape or my personal favorite curing one up on your ipod whether to listen with friends or on your own superficially is the same as spotify but you are deliberately letting yourself in for a much more personal experience on a pre invasion device that cannot advertise to you or rush you on to other things classic ipods don't need your attention they've got it they're here for you we had that and we lost it and i heartily encourage anyone who's even faintly curious to get themselves a good quality mp3 player separate yourself from corporate interests at least when it comes to the actual connection to the music listening to a fucking playlist that you made yourself that's not from streaming and doesn't have adverts in the rush to be the next big thing they made everything so much smaller and less meaningful well if okay i used to like the radio i used to listen to the radio a lot when i was a teenager i did not like you tend to collect my own albums i had a few but i didn't really have anything i was massively invested in but i liked listening to the radio if spotify or it's ilk had something where you could turn on a playlist and that's curated by somebody who introduces the tracks for you and talks to you in between you're describing along with the commercials i would probably engage with that maybe so but the commercials may render everything cheap and the the idea of streaming is so that the person who the person the the conglomerate who rakes in the profit from the streaming can just set everything up and then knock the dominoes down and not have to get involved with it anymore it is a hands-off system it is a we need as little human involvement in this as possible it is passive income we want to buy the real estate of the rights to these music this music and then just wait for the benjamins to roll in automated art yep there is something to be said for holding an album in your hands in its purest form the vinyl with the lyrics on the back and the slow gatefold open it's so special the record covered in this paper and it became less special with cassettes and less special again with cds and to a degree it began to hemorrhage special as it became digitized you had to make it special and what i did to ensure that it that i stayed connected to my music was i didn't let itunes sort my music for me because i've mentioned this before when i i put the tazan soundtrack on it went okay so mark mancina that'll be in one folder mark mancina and fill colons that'll be in one folder fill colons that'll be in one folder fill colons and glenn close because she sings two lines that'll be in one folder and they would applewood carefully sequester all of my stuff all over the place and i'd never know where anything was i got a folder called albums a folder called 1960s a folder called rolling stones and then i numbered each individual album with the year and made myself a curated archive of digital music to stay engaged the one thing i was really lacking was constant artwork everything had its own all album cover but if i could somehow have a collage of materials associated with that particular album with that particular era show up every time i browse through that would be magical that would be the museum that it deserves to be but more than museum it's so much more personal than that but there's a coldness associated with museums i love the idea that there are definitely apps and programs that will allow you to with diligence and hard work and careful curation give yourself that visual elements to music honestly museums are having to lean into that these days because they've now reached a point where if they are curating a collection of how human culture has advanced they've got to the point now where it's not hard object things it's not stuff that you can put behind glass and look at show people and that is enough you have to go multi-media you need to be able to demonstrate okay personal computers this is what they were like in the 70s this is what they were like in the 80s people need to be able to get hands on with them so that they can actually see that watch the the loading screen of a spectrum zx there's there's more to it than just here is a plate with rubber keys on it now does that tell you everything about a spectrum that you need to know no of course it doesn't so they are having to find more creative and interactive ways to show people what things were like in an era that is now predating the memory of people who are learning about the world where to have my way i would refocus the music industry to something like the best of what it could have been throughout the 70s 80s and 90s prior to digitization to bring back the sense of connection to the band and to just bring the artists away from the spotlight just a little just give them a fucking life and make hunting popularity something that only some of them feel obliged to do it is nibbling at the edges at the moment the i wouldn't necessarily call it full circle but artists being able to take more control over how their music gets put out having to because they've automated so much no one's going to be involved with them the fact that those record contracts are so nigh on impossible to get because no label will sign you unless they can see at least x million dollars coming off you which means that the people who are destined to be smaller artists are i'm not going to say do it because honestly it's probably better for them in the long run but they will have to produce their own music they will have to make their own marketing the advantage they have now is they've got access to the networks that will allow them to do that because social media for all of its flaws will allow them to bypass those gatekeepers of sign here on the book your lecture and tours the we've talked about this in relation to authors as well and it goes for just about every artist out there you will not be able to walk yourself into a billion-dollar career however you might be able to walk yourself through a lifetime of being able to make your art pay your way and if that is enough then that's available to you but that has to be enough yeah but if we go back to the fans and we go back to the band aids and we go back to Penny Lane this was the first major role for Kate Hudson daughter of Goldie Horn and i think she actually nailed it in an audition when i don't know if it's an audition or not it's in the deleted scenes there's a point in the film where she mentions Russell's ex who's sort of his on again off again girlfriend and i can't even say her name the deleted scene in question is her saying the name Leslie Leslie in 172 different ways over about seven minutes just the name over and over again going through moods and throwing herself around this hotel room to illustrate her range it's hypnotic it's irritating but in a kind of a how long can they keep this up and then it goes full circle around into okay how long could she keep this up why but there's such a magic to this performance and this character this again composite of various girls that Cameron met on the camera met on the road very specifically a penny trombone found you pass thanks i got in with still water oh still water how old are you 18 me too how old are we really 17 me too actually i'm 16 me too isn't it funny the truth just sounds different i'm 15 what's your real name i'll never tell the enemy Russell yes hey hey this is penny lane anyway Russell him pleasure penny lane like the song however there is an unavoidable side to this which is these are very vulnerable girls these are very unprotected girls and these are girls who even the girls we meet in the movie are very aware of have been abused in the past and as we watch the film there's a really discomforting feeling of they're around the band because the band make them feel special and the band want them around because these girls make them feel special if they just wanted sex they'd go into Memphis and go right where's the red light district let's get us some hookers they specifically go for the girls who offer themselves up and over feeding on the ego books exactly and it made me and this is the first time i've done this listen to the lyrics of tiny dancer this morning and girl and this was always a popular song but specifically because they sing it in this film on the bus it's either way of bringing the band back together after Russell has gone to a party on his own after an argument of a t-shirt and they illustrate that they have penny band to rights they can do what they want with penny who keeps telling herself she's the one in control and making all the decisions here they sell her off a case of beer six bucks and a keg a case of beer yes hi nakin a great maybe greatest screenwriter of all time Billy Wilder a mentor and a figurehead of admiration for Cameron Crow watch the film while Cameron sat nervously to one side not sure whether his script and his direction was enough and there is a overt sequence in this which references the apartment a magnificent film by Wilder but it was actually specifically the what kind of beer remark that made Wilder go ah like that was good like there's a certain a pathos in the actresses performance as she goes from broken-hearted to smiling food tears and a kind of this is the only way I know how to live what and she's as fantastic as Shirley Maclean in that film she really wanted the role Kate Hudson wanted this part so bad she turned down other films in order to wait to see if she could get it and ultimately Cameron Crow was very impressed by her loyalty and her dedication to the script and that was one of the reasons that he chose her for it originally Kate Hudson actually auditioned for the role of four was at least put in place for the role of Anita Williams sister who ended up played by Zoe Dashanell the irony being Zoe Dashanell became kind of synonymous in the 2000s with the manic pixie dream girl the girl whose cookie and has a mandolin and is able to spark an interest in the world in a repressed man and absolutely Penny Lane would appear to be that it's just that William is already absolutely fascinated by the music he then just becomes besotted with her he loves what she is and how she comports herself I'm not saying the tiny dancer is insidious and I'm not saying that when you listen to it next you should feel a chill I will always feel warmth for this song and it is coming from a place of appreciation but it speaks of a power imbalance that is starkly there in the lyrics and made plain by the fact that they are able to discard Penny when she becomes no longer convenient certainly when me two first kicked in really kicked in there was a degree of talk about the fact that every rock star from that era had to hold a degree of culpability for the fact that there were a lot of girls in that environment who should not have been there and that whether they directly engaged with them or not they knew it was going on and they did not think I think personally to pick out individual artists for that is harsh because it was a lifestyle that would have taken more than a few men speaking up to change but I can see why it leaves a sour taste in the mouth looking back on it and ultimately when if we are to believe Penny when she says to William that she is 16 as well the fact that she was around last year means that last year she was 15 yep personally I think she's probably a little bit older than that I think she's more likely to be 17 or 18 especially after her birthday she just goes along with William's age to kind of maintain the conversation that's how I read that one and then he lowers it to 15 and she just smiles okay that's a shade too far even for me but like her name we'll never really know lady the crowd will never really know her true name her true age she hides it all because to her it's not important to her it's not important but also if you start talking up she says over and over again if someone had said that to me in real life which angers William because he keeps trying to bring her back to the unavoidable fact this is real life they're just putting a veneer of rasmataz and glam on it it feels like a dream she's participating in and there's definitely that feeling of William being sort of pulled into this fantasy adoringly ensnared in her gravitational field and there's a specific moment when um he's freaking out because he still hasn't gotten this uh interview finished and he's in the bath with a whole bunch of folded up bits of note paper trying to make something usable out of them and he keeps getting distracted by everyone and Penny comes in and sits on the toilet goes number one while talking to him and in a very casual way uh i think chrome mentions that just wearing the big fluffy hat kind of makes that scene she's considering him now as one of the girls like she he is an honorary bandaid he's not having sex with the band but he's there as support in a similar role and that's too casual for William who wants he wants her to see him the way he sees her but he's never pushy about that fact it just makes him very uncomfortable when it's very clear she doesn't see him in this way yeah and i don't think honestly that Mattie is specifically William i think she doesn't see the bandaids as a gendered concept Vic she sees as one of them as well j barris shell there's there's just this level of okay in Penny's world the two genders are rockstar and bandaid and then there's everybody else yeah but then immediately after that the girls who have been lying around suddenly decide let's deflower the kid and burst in drag him out to the bedroom and it's very uh sweet and gentle and fading in and out without actually showing anything lascivius just sort of implying stuff's gonna happen which is tactful for this particular scenario and again this actually did happen but he is sort of sat there as much of a toy to them as they are to the band and Penny walks in and just sort of watches this thing happening with a crooked smile on her face in a kind of i'm glad you're getting this you folks might want to look up compulsion and he looks at her in a kind of a three way and she just sort of turns away in a kind of no this is not for me which shatters him not immediately in the moment but as he wakes up and realizes that he's lost his virginity not entirely willingly and that Penny wasn't anything to do with it when he had kind of fixated on her it turns Russell into the enemy because she is sleeping with Russell and has been the whole time behind this closed door to which he may not enter all his connections to Russell then become Penny at the door sort of gently telling him okay yeah now's not a good time while Russell storms around the room shouting that no not now not now no in a way that makes me fear for Penny but just in a kind of a you know i am i'm in too truthful a mood makes perfect sense to me yeah i never feel like any of the band are going to be violent towards women i think the jeff bb and plexia played by anapakin feels a lot more seedy to me because plexia is a little girl who has not like she talks the big talk but she has no fucking clue how to stay afloat in this sea and there's a point in the extended version untitled near the end when she says goodbye to William and there's like a brief moment where anapakin does her best acting in the entire film when we see the scared little girl in a kind of home going off now with a bunch of rock stars on my own and it hurts to watch her go at this point and there is an undercurrent of the people who were sucked into this machine wrecked and blown out with one of the intakes there is also a discrepancy in the equality between her and jeff in a way that isn't between Penny and Russell Russell may not have a relationship with the real penny but the version of penny that he has in his head is the version that he does have a relationship with he does at least see that as a meeting of relative equals he can drop the real penny for 50 bucks in a case of beer but the the penny that he chooses to engage with he does at least see them as being on the same level but it's all in that being able to drop her it's that ability to just remember that uh you're going back to the real world now and you're coming off the road and you're going to New York and Leslie's gonna be there Leslie and they have such a brittle and like why are you even doing this relationship it would appear some stability and the idea of having a thing you can call home so that's what Leslie is the thing that can be called home sort of asterisk i suppose for her oh and she slept with jeff she did sleep with jeff. Russell is somebody who will bring her up to a lifestyle she would like and for Russell she is an anchor of sorts to a real life that he will inevitably have to go back to the back of the law for the people i found while more than leezers and bad haddles some some bank goods some some lawyers turn around and say good morning tonight more or less they see the skies but they can and that is why almost famous session four marker almost a famous i don't know why i became Alan Rickman one thing i may have mentioned in passing and only really found out about in detail while preparing for this show is the Broadway musical that Cameron Crow put together in 2019 to recreate the movie but to also address some of the slightly more glossy glazed over in love with the past issues such as the relationship between Elaine and Anita there's a whole vanity fair article on how during early workshops for almost famous in new york 2018 Crow sometimes ducked into a room to hide for a while because it stirred up too much stuff the memories of his mother and sister fighting the stage depictions of fights between his mother and sister and his desperate attempts to keep the peace were raw and painful but the more we did it the more i would come back into the room and people would still be talking about it i knew we were pointing in the right direction when it started to have that beautiful happy sad pain i've never seen anyone else use the term happy sad because that's a term as far as i can i'm concerned will i came up with when they were tiny trying to describe melancholy or bitter sweetness as well as the giddy love of the music and where the music takes you but it wasn't always easy to kind of smile through sometimes his mother who at the time was in hospital kept tabs on the musical shid pop up on zoom chats and say don't do drugs she gave her stamp of approval to the morocco scene which i believe is a whole penny lane song that's in the style of um Barcelona which is not the Freddie Mercury one a 70s one everyone's forgotten but happened to be the real life Alice's favorite tune and to anika lassen who was the Francis McDormand of the stage chef crow has a photograph of Alice watching a video of lassen in rehearsal and she's just sparkling it's all in her eyes there she is when the actor originally playing William Miller the adolescent crow left to do a TV show the creative team cast Casey likes who as a high school junior from Arizona in 2019 was a finalist in the national high school musical theater awards Alice saw his performance tape and said don't let Casey likes get away he's great she was into the gorilla warfare to the very end crow said of the fight to keep the show going despite Broadway's long odds during rehearsals in San Diego lassen repeatedly asked crow if she could meet Alice you will you will he told her and then she heard that Alice was in a coma as a result of cardiac arrest lassen emailed crow i don't know if i'm overstepping saying this but could i just go visit her in hospital i know she's not awake but they say people in comers can hear we don't know the next day crow drove lassen to the hospital she introduced herself to sleeping Alice held her hand and sang one of the songs from the show Alice crow never saw almost famous oh fuck Alice crow never saw almost famous at the old globe she died on september 11th 2019 two days before the first preview those acts of god really do stick in and break it off a dramatic exit said crow she'd never been shy about promoting her son as her health began to fail it all as her health began to fail in later years she'd made frequent visits to the Kaiser permanent clinic she'd asked the staff if they'd ever seen almost famous or jerry maguire if they said yes she'd tell them who her son was calling him up and putting them on the fuck calling him up and putting them on the phone with him can one say hi to warren he's looking after me she made so many friends that way crow recalled many people in new Alice in san diego came to see almost famous and would talk to crow about her after the show everybody had a story sitting there night after night in the courtyard of the old globe where his mother had dragged him to see as you like it in which of the third crow had to laugh so this was what the show has become so this was what the show so this is what the show has become he said the Alice crow jamboree [Music] wow ronto can I speak with William please he's still down in the bar with the band they just go back from the radio station is this maryann with the pot hello no this is not maryann with the pot this is Elaine his mother could you give William a message for me please tell him to call home immediately and also tell him I know what's going on all right okay but I'm just gonna say this and I'm gonna stand by it you should be really proud of him because I know men and I'll bet you do too and he respects women and he likes women and let's just pause and appreciate a man like that and you created him out of thin air you know you raised him right he's having a great time he's doing a good job and don't worry he's still a virgin and we're all looking out for him you know that's more than ever even said to my own parents so there you go this is a maid speaking by the way Russell so what is he love about music sit that thing off for a second and I'll tell you the truth all right look uh but I trust you so I'm just gonna lay this right on just make us look cool I will quote you warmly and accurately well that's what I'm worried about you see some of us we got girlfriends back home you know some of us have wives and some of the people that you meet on the road are really amazing people like you eh but some of the stuff that happens it's good for a few people to know about as opposed to say a million people do you understand what I'm trying to say yeah oh I see you're dangerous you see everything most people they're just waiting to talk but you listen see I grew up with these guys I can't play all that I can play I'm past them as musicians but the more popular we get the bigger their houses get the more responsibilities the pressure you know and harder gets for me to walk out on them then you forget forget what it's like to be a fan you hear it in bands all the time it doesn't sound like music anymore you know sounds like lifestyle maintenance or something lifestyle maintenance I used to be able to hear sounds of the world everything to me it sounded like music and now I don't hear it you know anymore but do you understand what I'm trying to say yeah I am telling secrets to the one guy you don't tell secrets to do no no we'll we'll uh we'll do the interview tomorrow okay okay so tonight it's huh friends right we trust you one of the heaviest parts of the movie is when penny after being sold sold to humble pie for a case of beer continues to follow the band getting all the way to New York when they have a gathering which includes Leslie on again off again girlfriend and Leslie herself seems very high strung very kind of gripping on Russell the moment that he gets back the way she handles that situation feels like a flex like she wants to underline the fact that when she's around she is in control of what Russell does and who he talks to we're very much back to reality here which the band since they got their head in the clouds kind of don't sit well with they kind of want to stay in wonderland Leslie is a cold cup of coffee or what ends up resulting from that is penny uh acquiring a big bottle of quailudes William is the only person to knock on her door and inquire as to whether she's okay it's very much an intimate I'm the one who cares about you but it's not coming from a place of you should love me not anyone else it's genuine worry for her and frustration that nobody else is helping him and William is remember 15 years old or just about 16 and very much out of his depth as this poor girl slumps around on the bed staggering about this hotel room about to fall into a uh coma she will most likely not recover from it is not easy to sit with somebody through a crisis of this kind and I could call it a cry for help but she would have to cry for that she would have to contact someone to tell them what she's doing it feels more an impulse decision but it illustrates how brittle her version of reality was at that stage or the the shield holding out reality she is crying for help she's crying to herself yeah it again very much mirrors the scene we're showing her claiming the apartment which makes Patrick Fugit here the Jack lemon but he gets a doctor up there the doctor saves her life through the horrible means in terms of getting a stomach pumped but it's it's a way of William kind of demystifying this um muse this nymph this magical lady who has been too perfect in his eyes and it doesn't completely slam him back down to earth but they then meet afterwards on much more even terms yeah he in witnessing her vulnerabilities he gets to see her as a person which up to this point while not in the same manner that Russell and the rest of the band have been treating her he hasn't been seeing her as a person he's been seeing her as as an idealized version of Penny Lane yeah he gets to see lady here although he doesn't find that out until later Lady Goodman though it's that's by her choice she has maintained that illusion for all this time and now it's a painful dose of reality but I do love the fact that he stays with her and that he's with her in the recovery and afterwards they walk around Central Park together it's a much more quiet intimate real interaction which honestly has been what William's been searching for all along he wanted to know the reality behind the band he doesn't want to be fed a line of this is the glitz and the glamour the whole point as far as he's concerned of the writing is to tell the truth yeah there is a I think we touched on this a little bit when we did the fandom show there was many years ago there is a layer of let's call it perspex between fans and the objects of their fandom you can see them but you will never be able to get truly close to them and you won't see them in their truest form because you can only see them from one angle and that's the one that they show to the front and to really know somebody on a personal level you can't be a fan anymore because the illusion it's not necessarily gone completely but you will never see it the same way that people who don't know them see them real life with all its sharp edges exactly but you can't have a true relationship with somebody without getting through that perspex and I love the implication because they don't say it in so many words it's just a quiet understanding between the two of them that they are now friends like I say on on even territory and when he takes out of the airport so she can go ostensibly home somewhere she has been reticent to go home to because everyone wants to stay at the party nobody wants to go home there's this sweet almost puppy like way he runs through the airport departure lounge watching out of the windows as her plane begins to taxi away more than anyone else camera and crow is able to romanticize air travel I believe in the 90s it was different to what it is now like prior to 9/11 the level of stress you would go through would be considerably less and the level of wait wait wait wait performative security at all times the intensity of that I would say that's true that the romanticism of the 60s and 70s versions of air travel yeah certainly from the having the people who worked on the planes present this very glamorous image had dissolved by the 90s so it wasn't the it wasn't the experience that it used to be but yeah it hadn't quite hit the point where it had become a complete I don't even know what the word is hassle no noise there's more to it than that not just slog just the idea that in order to take all your energy yeah in order to get to the place where you're going to be able to relax you have to go through this it's yeah it's a factory line you have to have this inflicted on you it's why I like going on holiday in the UK because I don't have to go through any of those fucking gates now granted I did a lot of air travel in the 90s were my father and I would living together and he obviously got the you know straight through treatment so I never got to experience in prior to 9/11 what it was like to go through air travel when you're just in economy when you're just stuck with everybody else and it was most likely far less pleasant than that for most people however Jerry Maguire also has that sense of air travel and airports in there as Jerry is on the road a lot and it really comes together in this film illustrating airports as liminal spaces they are a place you at best dreamily at worst exhaustedly travel through in order to get to the thing that will allow you to travel further and faster if they could just let you in the front door at the airport and you just get straight on the plane you wouldn't need all of that space but there's so many procedures and they're getting on and they're getting off and the baggage and this and that and all of the customs and all of the holding you still and making you queue that's all that building is there for otherwise you could just walk to the plane from the street and they do a lot to make airports especially departures not feel like that restaurants and shops and gyms and departure lounges and places where you can actually do stuff rather than just feeling like you're killing time until they'll let you get on the plane but arrivals really feels like that and I remember when we went to Italy the airport we landed at was tiny really really tiny and that did not have any of the accoutrements of a big airport and that really really did feel like a liminal space yeah and for me personally Jerry Maguire happened before this and almost famous happened after this I have made four plane trips that were heavily linked to a romantic relationship that I was in in the early year 2000 late 1999 early year 2000 so I have absolutely been at that place where my heart and brain are racing and I'm getting on a plane and I have those same kinds of feelings of not wanting to go what is this taking me to what is it taking me away from but in and of itself it can't be anything you're waiting for the decisions to be made and things to happen so the scenes in Jerry Maguire came back to me then and then afterwards when I saw almost famous I was like yeah that is exactly how I felt obviously going out was fantastic and coming back was increasingly terrible but then I met you and the increasingly terrible helped me to be shapeable as someone who can be more receptive which wasn't something I was trying to do consciously by the way no but I needed it but there's a juxtaposition there of as Penny's waving goodbye on the plane we then cut to still water with William in tow marching across the tarmac towards their plane like the Beatles playing into the hole we're gonna do Jimmy Fallon's thing now we're gonna abandon our bus and we're gonna go places on a plane we're gonna fucking embody the fantasy versions of ourselves the rock stars that we always wanted to be and then the reality of plane travel which I mentioned before has been the death of far too many musicians as well as just regular people comes literally crashing down upon them as the plane begins to go into a malfunctioning spiral rather emblematic of what's going on in the actual band itself there's still all these tensions built up William needs to tell the rest of the band about what happened to Penny that went on notice by any of them and there's various infidelities that need to get admitted to in the drama's gay haha but the hyper drama of this and it does stand to reason that Jimmy Fallon did kill someone and then just drove away and never heard anymore about it he seems the type to do a hit and run but it's like I said it's crow confronting what happened to limited skinnered and I even traveling by bus doesn't preclude horrendous accidents after making maybe their best album master of puppets Metallica got into a bus crash and their bassist cliff button was killed so there really is no way you could be traveling rock stars and not be in any danger but after this comes the arriving after the life threatening situation somehow manages not to claim their lives and everything just levels out and then they're walking through this liminal space like I mentioned before I just love the way Jason leaks I just punches the wall just gently as he's going through just in a kind of yep it's gonna mark this moment it's a grounding gesture yeah I'm not dreaming I am I did actually make it and this is when William is knackered meets his sister by entire chance and goes home leaving the band behind without having established a really long true interview taking a stop off at Rolling Stone magazine where they all finally realize that he's just a kid and that they've been retaining the services of a kid who immediately they start to mistrust despite the fact that he's got a whole bunch of notes with actual truth in them and then the betrayal is the band saying none of that was true despite the fact that all of it was true and Rolling Stone magazine have to take the side of the band rather than the journalists that they retained well they can't publish what they've been told is made up yeah to them because their portrayed as kind of a hot mess or they're afraid that what William has said will make them seem like a disaster waiting to happen as a band they're too afraid to show their vulnerable sides to the world well that going around yeah over compensation there's a really important scene in the extended edition which I don't believe is in a theatrical after the near-death experience on the plane after William's gone home and after he's been disavowed as a liar Jeff Beebe and Russell Hammond talk quietly at the buffet all right so I didn't like you much if we have to like each other I sort of thought so I think it would have worked against us I really do you know what they say all the great partnerships hated each other we didn't hate each other that much did we no maybe not I could work on it though I just can't picture you with last night I'm the you they get when they can't get you sorry got it I'll get it man see you later on all right see ya all right and Jeff let's go of that anger and resentment Rod you know it was great about you down there for about five minutes you unloaded that rather large ship that resides right there on the shoulder you know what you let people in whilst at the same time being honest about why that resentment is there which that's a huge step in Jeff's development if we didn't get that in the theatrical version the dynamic of still water themselves absent this reconciliation I'm the you they get when they can't get the real you it feels way too broken off that's so important yeah also there is an unspoken implication that all the time he's been hanging around with plexia plexia has had some kind of positive influence on him huh so Anna pack in did do some good in this film she doesn't get the credit nope that's your inference but I'll take it I think the near death experience and realizing what were we fighting about like I just want to be alive and make rock and roll it's a new life being able to appreciate what you could have lost and then penny cunningly tricks Russell into coming to see not her but in fact William and it is so important that Russell tells William when he realizes who's house he's actually in that he called Rolling Stone and told them to do whatever they want with the information it's all accurate and true and effectively getting him back in with his employers which again had he not done that then the and I can only assume that there is some unspoken tension and conflict that may have had to been resolved at the time between some of the real bands the Ormond brothers and Led Zeppelin that crow traveled with guys who wanted to make sure that they were understood as cool but the coolest thing that either of them do in this movie is that reconciliation is that kind of okay here's actually like how it is and do we have to get on in order to make great music now it's notable that John and Paul fought all the time and eventually dissolved the Beatles much to everyone's chagrin and Led Zeppelin kept fighting and eventually stopped touring and crow rather pointedly plays this the rain song by Led Zeppelin while Jeff and Russell are reconciling humility encourages further humility being able to open up about one's vulnerabilities to the people that you clash with heals those wounds incurred when you smashed against each other as hard as you could possibly get to prevent yourself from being hurt it's nonsensical championing your own self-importance is not noble not in the way nobility is understood of as a virtue so you made a point yesterday the one thing you definitely want to talk about which is the the end of this film what has William learned how is he different from when he first started out when he sits down with Russell to finally have that interview and Russell is in a giving and honest mood and will take the consequences of whatever he has to say trusting this guy to be honest and unmerciful part of William's journey through this is to work out what he wants and how he sees the world it's it's a coming-of-age story and it's truest sense that he leaves as a boy and by the end of it he might not quite be a man but he's got one toe over the line he initially part of the the difficulty of of getting the interview is that he doesn't really know what he wants to ask Russell and when he sits down at one point about halfway through and starts asking more specific questions Russell's response is when did you get so professional but it's not really professional it's the very cold questions they don't necessarily mean anything and they're not expansive they're yes no questions at the end here when he says to Russell what do you love about music that is expansive that is I'm giving you the space to share what you want to share and that's a very difficult technique to learn as a person and to stick with but it yields the most amazing results when you give people the space to really let go of their habit of holding things back especially when they are the guitarist with Mystique who's been trying to maintain this perspex image of not necessarily perfection but just idealized an idealized version of themselves you're giving them an opportunity to let that break and for the first time there's the real potential that Russell will allow that to come through but that wouldn't happen unless William now had the maturity to be able to let it so as a growing exceptional observer of people young camera and young William as we close out has learned to get to the heart of the matter there's also the fact that when he first met Penny and she gave him her number and said we live in the same city she very specifically said call me if you need a rescue the fact that he ended up rescuing her means that now Russell's urging to call her might actually have the potential to to become something because she offered to rescue him then he rescued her right back that's part of what contributes to putting them on an equal footing yeah and she travels she does what she's been talking about but travels on her own rather than tagging along yeah to allow herself to become the grown-up version of Lady Goodman Penny Lang absolutely because she's now put herself in a position where she can permit herself to make choices for herself even if they turn out badly the fact that she had the intention to go to Morocco and she decided to do that it wasn't I'm going to New York because Russell's in New York I'm going to Cleveland because the band are in Cleveland I'm going to where the interesting people are because that's where the rest of the band aids are and that's where we're meeting up she's also I live there well yeah but the point that San Diego by the way is the small town America I mentioned earlier yeah yeah but the point being that she's been chasing other people's travel plans this whole time yeah this is the first one that she actually follows through on I think I said about her before she is constantly saying she's made decisions but then doesn't follow through on them this is the first one that she actually takes yeah and she's given up the opportunity to be with the version of Russell that she had in her head because he was offering her I'll come to you let's say all the things we never said to each other well hun she said plenty you're the one who's got stuff to say but she either accepts that it's still not true or decides that it doesn't matter whether it's true or not I can't even say her name means the things that Penny really wanted to say about Leslie but was not allowed to he was giving her carte blanche in that regard I would guess that he and Leslie are over after all of that certainly possible but again it doesn't matter yeah the growth is the important part yeah and a lot of bands never get to have that level of insight nor journalists into themselves nor people generally we are not encouraged not really to actually look at ourselves honestly and make decisions and choices that are purely ours I entitled it the things we think and do not say all of Cameron Crow's best films are about that level of being able to confront the harder truths about yourself and to try to do better that's one of the major reasons why I love his work we'll be back with Jared McGuire at some point soon it's time I've been Alex Shaw I've been Sharon Shaw and School of Movies is funded by patreon thank you once again to everyone who supports us or everyone who has supported us in the past even just for a month or so it all helps it all adds up and the top tier sponsors get credit every episode so thank you to Aaron Burns, Aaron Lecluse, Abel Savard, Alejandro Vargas, Alex Brewington, Angus Lee, Benjamin Biddle, Brian Novak, Cassandra Newman, Chris Finick, Kieran Dachler, Connor Kennedy, Dan Meyer, Daniel Sogarone, Dan Hebner, Dave Hickman, David Shealy, Finn Barnicle, Frankie Punesy, Greg Downing, James Enright, Jesse Ferguson, Joe Crow, Joe Robinson, Johan Clawson, Joe Gluck, Josh Powell's Land, Kevin Vahhey, Lorraine Chisholm, Marti Polmayer, Matthew A. Siebert, Michael Hasko, Sean Doran, Toby Skilzungius, Tim Rosensky, Timothy Green, Tom Painter, Tyler Long, Sarah Montgomery, and Kat Essman. [Music] [Music] We will be back next week with Deadpool and Wolverine. [Music] [Music] Unfolding in the looping, this is the soul, Raycaw says to send me, brush like somber like lanterns below, tonight the way glad me, where the wisdom in heaven's class is a year, where the wind with his memory, where the whiteness with our shadows away, why feel this age shall be flow, that fill us in child, but ending every ending tablets of time, record all we need, I'm fearing all appearing message divine, eases the burning, where the willing witness waits in my mind, where the warm devil's memory, where the whiteness with stairs taught in my sight, why feel this age shall be flow, that fill us in child, [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] In casing hall and bracing meet the repost, and ghost all the senses, using those in parts that don't hold, retire the fences, let their holy heart and life fades away, where their hearts heal the memory, where their holy heart and life fades away, where the whiteness with our shadows away, why feel this age shall be flow, that fill us in child, why feel this age shall be flow, that fill us in child, why feel this age shall be flow, that fill us in child, why feel this age shall be flow,
