Almost Famous (2000)

Writer/director Cameron Crowe has a long, personal history with Rolling Stone magazine.  He worked there as a teenager before deciding to strike out on his own, going undercover as a high school student, and later writing the book that would become the basis for the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, featuring a script by Crowe.  Crowe's affections for that time in his life, and the music he covered, is highly evident in his 2000 film Almost Famous.

Almost Famous tells the semi-autobiographical story of William Miller, a 15 year-old writing prodigy who manages to get a job over the phone for Rolling Stone.  His initial job, getting an interview from Black Sabbath, fails miserably, but he manages to get in to see the opening act, up-and-coming band Stillwater, thanks to help from a few groupies who call themselves "Band-Aids".  The "leader" of these girls, played by Kate Hudson in what may be her best role to date, goes by the name Penny Lane and has a special attraction to Stillwater's lead guitarist, Russell Hammond (played by Bill Crudup).  William, as played by newcomer Patrick Fugit, seems to bond with Penny too, and she may be looking out for him more than anyone else on the tour, though not as much as she is fooling around with the very spoken-for Russell.

Crowe's script created Stillwater as a composite of many of the various bands he used to cover, so the pressures to perform and the pleasures of the flesh all seem to be most of what the band wants.  Petty jealousy from the lead singer (Jason Lee) clashes with the aloofness of Russell on more than one occasion, as drinks and drugs are consumed and the Band-Aids are used as unknowing chips in various poker games.  There's still a great love for the music itself, as William tries to stay out of whatever is going on (mostly successfully), something that would have been a great relief to his overbearing mother (Frances McDormand) who is both a prude and a forward-thinker at the same time (she thinks Christmas is too commercialized and pushes her son to excellence and her daughter out the door, but still thinks rock music is all about drugs and sex).  It's this outsider, forever getting his interviews with Russell put off, who can see that Penny Lane is an actual person, can lecture the band on its failings to its own fans, and come out of the whole experience somehow making all involved better people, and not in a way that comes across as corny or contrived.

Early in the movie, William meets real-life figure Lester Bangs, as played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Lester takes the role of a professional guardian angel, always advising William on how to keep ahead of his deadlines and keep his Rolling Stone editors happy, all while not letting those self-same editors know he's a juvenile.  Lester predicts that rock'n'roll is a dying form of music.  He may be right on that.  Glam rock, disco, hair metal, and the rise of pop are all on the horizon for the fans like William and the bands like Stillwater.  As such, its very nice to be able to see the (minor all told) warts-and-all story from the days where rock was the music of the young as seen through the eyes of someone who saw it up close.