Director Crowe looks at success, failure in new film
Bob Tourtellotte

LOS ANGELES—For “Jerry Maguire” director” Cameron Crowe,” whose new movie “Elizabethtown” debuts on Friday, his Hollywood career is all about time. “Time,” Crowe said, “puts things in proper perspective.” The saying is as appropriate for Crowe as it is for the main character in romantic comedy “Elizabethtown,” a young dreamer named Drew who falls into a funk after an athletic shoe he designs turns into a financial fiasco for its manufacturer.
Crowe told Reuters he suffered a similar fate after his most recent films, 2001’s “Vanilla Sky” and 2000’s “Almost Famous.” Surreal drama “Sky” proved a hit at box offices, but was panned by critics. “Famous,” a personal story about a boy’s first love, was a critical success but a box office flop. From Hollywood’s perspective, Crowe needs a hit from the new movie he wrote, directed and produced to retain his status as one of his generation’s top talents. But the director doesn’t see it quite that way. Over time, he said “Sky” and “Famous” have earned loyal fans, and both have done just fine financially when box office, video and DVD sales are combined.
“Almost Famous” “felt like a public embarrassment, and it kind of mirrors what happens in this new movie,” Crowe said. “But now, however many years later, nobody remembers it was a dud in theatres. They only remember they dug that movie.”
“Elizabethtown” is a personal story, although not as close to Crowe’s own life as “Famous,” in which the main character covers a rock tour for a music magazine much as Crowe wrote about music for Rolling Stone magazine. In “Elizabethtown,” Drew’s depression following the shoe debacle is interrupted by his father’s sudden death while on a trip home to Kentucky. So Drew goes there to arrange for the body to be returned to Oregon where Drew and his family live. Things don’t work out exactly as Drew planned, but he is embraced by his country cousins, aunts and uncles. Their warmth and a budding romance with a flight attendant (Kirsten Dunst) he meets on his trip give Drew a new outlook on life.
LOST IN KENTUCKY
“The powering thing behind the movie was to capture the feeling of being alone and going back to Kentucky and getting walloped by a sense of family I hadn’t realized was so much in place,” Crowe said. “That root system can really surprise you, particularly if you’re caught up in your own little success and failure world, and all the sudden you realize there are bigger issues: family, life and death,” he added.
The idea for making “Elizabethtown” came to Crowe in summer 2002 following the release of “Vanilla Sky” while he was on tour with his wife, Nancy Wilson, who plays with the rock group Heart. The tour bus was driving through Kentucky where Crowe hadn’t been since his father’s death. He was struck by the countryside’s beauty. So, he got off the bus, rented a car and “got lost” on the state’s back roads and highways.
In another parallel to Crowe’s life, Drew goes on a road trip visiting landmarks such as the memorial to bombing victims in Oklahoma City and the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee where Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. So far, “Elizabethtown” has received mixed early reviews mainly from its screening at September’s Toronto Film Festival. Since then, Crowe has said he trimmed 18 minutes from the film’s length. He likens the festival screenings to tests. “It was a work in progress. It was educational to just sit in the theatre and look at it. It is, at its heart, a comedy, and I’ve always felt you tune a comedy by watching it with people,” he said.
Whether “Elizabethtown” is eventually deemed a “Maguire” like hit, a “Famous” style flop, or something in between like “Vanilla Sky,” Crowe said he is not so concerned anymore. From the new movie, he said he is most struck by some words he wrote that are spoken by Drew’s girlfriend, Claire, who tells her moribund beau, “Fail big and stick around and make them wonder why you’re still smiling.” “It’s hard to do,” Crowe said. “But it’s good advice.” And then he grinned.