Cameron Crowe: Something About to Crowe

Q: Was Nancy the big-star bombshell of Heart when you first met?

A: No. It was interesting to see her explode into a sex symbol. When I first met her, her band was a little bit on the ropes and she was wondering if she should maybe be giving guitar lessons. I went through a jealous phase, definitely, but then I kind of found the humor in it. We got together when we were both in a down cycle, so it really makes it easy to laugh.

Q: Tell me a story about life out on the road with a wife who's a sex symbol.

A: I used to play games with the opening acts on tour. Generally there would be one guy in the opening band who was in love with Nancy and I'd hear about it. He would always be hangin' around, trying to say "Hi" to her, and I'd show up and she'd come out of the dressing room in her stage clothes and give me a kiss, and after she walked away I'd say, "Get her off my back, man!" I'd see the look on this poor guy's face and say, "Kidding! Just kidding. Joke."

Q: You had to have known, more or less, what you'd be in for when you married a performer. You'd already seen so much of the rock life out on the road, right?

A: Yeah, I had. I remember one time, when I was sharing a bachelor pad with this rock photographer, this lady called Penny Lane came over. She had a blowjob school and her group of trainees traveled around with her.

Q: Did you benefit from her expertise?

A: No, I actually didn't. A couple of the girls crashed in my room, and I kind of wish I had been a little older and more attractive to them, but I think I made up for it a little bit later, which was cool.

Q: Tell our readers how you became a famed teen rock writer.

A: When I first started working for Rolling Stone, that whole generation that had started out writing about Van Morrison and Dan Hicks, they had gotten older and reached the point where they didn't want to write about Deep Purple. Someone said, "Oh God, there's a kid in San Diego who wants to write about Ritchie Blackmore? Let him!!" That's how I got my foot in the door. I had written for my high-school newspaper, and my sister got me a meeting with an underground paper in San Diego, then I started getting assignments and coming to L.A.--I'd cruise around with my tape recorder looking for David Bowie. The amazing thing is, so many of them opened up to me because I was a fan. You can understand that.

Q: I certainly can. We were the last of a dying breed of rock fans.

A: It was about the last minute when rock and roll was a little more personal, before it was, "Okay, they're off the stage, where's you Bic?" you know? When it was still a little bit of a secret.

Q: When do you think it all changed?

A: In '77, maybe.

Q: I think it was '76.

A: I think you're right. That was the year Frampton, The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac became corporations. How could it be someone's little secret when it's a corporation?

Q: Those earlier icons-like Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix-sure didn't wait around for their paycheck after a gig.

A: Exactly.

Q: So, how did you make the jump from writing about music to writing and directing movies?

A: My mom, who was a teacher, used to always say, "You missed your teen years because you were out on the road with The Allman Brothers," and that gave me an idea-to actually go back to high school, undercover, and write up the experiences as a screenplay. Studio people at the time discouraged me that there was a movie script in that idea. I was told, "You can't write about high-school kids, the only reason something like American Graffiti worked was because it had nostalgia running through it." So I went ahead and went back to school, but I wrote it up as a book, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And then [laughing], Universal asked me to adapt the book into a movie.

Q: Fast Times was the movie that put Sean Penn on the map and started an entire genre of youth-inspired movies. You wrote one of those, the sequel to Fast Times, The Wild Life. How did you handle it when it wasn't a success?

A: Oh, let's just say that I decided to try and direct my scripts from then on.

Q: And you did, with Say Anything... Did you think you'd be an easy director for actors to work with?

A: Yeah, except I can be pretty exacting in getting it to be real. John Cusack taught me something early on. It was my first week on Say Anything..., and there were people whispering, guys watching anxiously over my shoulder. Cusack took me aside and said, "The thing is you and me. After I finish the take, I should be able to look over and see you, and it's all about-did we do it for each other?" And I always stuck to that: we're on a team, we're driving for a basket.

Q: Sounds pretty scary to me.

A: I didn't go to film school or anything, so it's pretty fucking scary sometimes. Say Anything... had, what, three main characters, and Singles has 87 speaking parts. So this time, I had to be a camp counselor, and that's not really my personality.

Q: Did you stick to the script, since you wrote it?

A: [Shaking his head] Not everything in the script worked, because Singles was the movie on which I wanted to try out all sorts of wacky stuff-there are voice-overs and I break reality-so I'd say I used about 50 percent. It can be heartbreaking when something doesn't work. Frankly, you adore your own little ideas. They're your little soldiers, the ones that made it through all the battles, all the drafts and all the days when you drove in your car and thought, "That doesn't work at all, that's terrible, I'm going to throw it all out." You keep this little group of soldiers that have made it to the end, then some of them just explode in the daylight, and you wave good-bye.

Q: I've just recently completed my second book and I'm feeling a little sad about it. Do you ever get the post-partum blues after finishing a project?

A: Sure. I get to deal with it by doing a video like this. It's like the phantom limb is satisfied.

Q: One last question. What part of making a movie is the most exciting?

A: The most exciting thing is when you can take the pages you've just written and heft them-the weight of the work. That's the first excitement, maybe the most exciting. The whole process is not letting down that first feeling, knowing how great it could be from that first heft.

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Pamela Des Barres is the author of the forthcoming book Take Another Piece of My Heart.

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