'My son said, “I dunno, it's very Cameron Crowe...”'

The Oscar-winning director of 'Almost Famous' and 'Jerry Maguire' talks to Adam White about his new memoir and ponders whether there's such thing as a 'Crowe-ian' movie

- Adam White

A few years back, Cameron Crowe had an idea. It'd be a movie. Something funny and romantic. There'd be some music. He told his son William about it, presenting to him his latest big love story. Crowe, damp and with freshly showered hair over video from his home in Los Angeles, takes a pause, as if gearing me up for a punchline. “Eventually [my son] says, ‘Hmm... I don’t know... it’s very Cameron Crowe, isn’t it?”

William, a screenwriting major in university, volunteered some suggestions. “Why don’t you set it in futuristic Japan? And no one can walk on the ground anymore, and there are spaceships flying around, but everyone’s listening to Eighties music. The whole story would work in that context, too.”

Crowe, meanwhile, was still stuck on the first thought. “Very Cameron Crowe?” he gasped. “What the hell are you talking about?”

But, really, he got it. He’s a creature of habit. Crowe’s films - Gen X touchstones including Almost Famous, Say Anything and Jerry Maguire - are about earnest dreamers; overgrown teenagers (or literal teenagers); the flawed if always palatable. His films have a habit of suddenly becoming pop videos, their soundtracks holding just as much importance as the camera lens or the boom mic. Phoebe Cates disrobing to The Cars in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Crowe wrote the screenplay). Jonathan Lipnicki being adorable while Bruce Springsteen growls softly about secret gardens in Jerry Maguire. John Cusack holding up that damn boombox as it plays Peter Gabriel in Say Anything.... You wonder if the only reason “Crowe-ian” hasn’t joined the lexicon alongside “Lynchian” or “Hitchcockian” is because the word sounds so, well, silly.