Printer-friendly versionThis week, Street talks to Academy Award-winning filmmaker Cameron Crowe about his latest work, Elizabethtown, and the highs and lows of his illustrious career. Elizabethtown is currently playing at The Bridge Cinemas and stars Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst.
Street Film: What inspires you to do the movies you do and were there any personal experiences that you put into this film?
Cameron Crowe: This movie, Elizabethtown, is a tribute to my dad. It is somewhat of a love letter to his home state, Kentucky, and that came from personal experience in knowing how much that was a part of our family heritage. But I found pretty early on that the most personal things are not [what] people respond to the most. Then I would read interviews with other writers where they would say it is good to bare you soul from time to time and write about the things you truly know. So sometimes that stuff comes from personal life and sometimes it doesn't. Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything is a completely fictional character; William Miller in Almost Famous is pretty close to my own experience. So it changes but generally the stuff that comes from your heart is the stuff that other people find most universally true for them too, I am happy to say.
SF: In Elizabethtown, is Drew's attempt to move on after the failure of his shoe design related to something you had to go through after the disappointing reception to Vanilla Sky?
CC: I get asked about Vanilla Sky more than any other movie probably except Almost Famous. It seems like over time that movie has become a little more understood. So that is a good thing. But really I had not gone through a fiasco of that magnitude I am happy to say. Looking back on things that have happened to me for sure I remember really believing in Almost Famous and people really loved the movie when we first started showing it. And a lot of people had high hopes for it being successful in the theater and stuff like that, but it bombed. Nobody showed up to see that movie. I remember getting a call on the Friday that it opened about six and it was nine already in New York, and it was this guy on the phone telling me, "Well, pack up your tent, it is over, nobody showed up." But it never felt like the end of the world to me because I loved the movie so much, [and] sure enough that movie found its audience. But if your whole world was depending on what somebody told you about it, yes, that Friday was not a good Friday.
SF: Many have compared Elizabethtown to last year's hit Garden State. How do you feel about critics comparing your films to other filmmakers' works?
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