Hall of Fame

Hollywood director and Rolling Stone veteran Cameron Crowe is taking his rock-movie classic ALMOST FAMOUS to Broadway

- By Michael Riedel. Photographs by Sebastian Kim

Go fishing Cameron Crowe's mother, Alice, said on a sunny September day in 2019.

Crowe, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and director, was reluctant to go fishing. A few days earlier, Alice, age 97, had fallen out of bed, and he wanted to be on hand in case she needed anything. But he had a day off from grueling rehearsals for anew musical he was about to open at the Old Globe Theatre in his hometown of San Diego, and he’d planned to take some colleagues out on a boat.

“I’m going to be fine,” his mother insisted. Have fun with your people. And this year—it’s going to be great. I’m so happy.”

So he went fishing. There was no cell service out on the Pacific, but when the boat came in to dock, Crowe’s phone lit up. His mother had gone into cardiac arrest and was in the hospital. The prognosis wasn’t good, but attendants told Crowe, This woman is a fighter.”

That he knew. There’s a play about to open at the Old Globe about just how much ofa fighter she is,” he told them.

“Then we ve got to keep her alive,” an attendant said.

The play was Almost Famous, a musical adaptation of Crowe’s 2000 autobiographical movie about a 15-year-old aspiring rock journalist Crowe, in 1973, (freelancing for Rolling Stone); Stillwater, the band he’s profiling; and the teenager’s loving but fiercely protective mother, a widow who fears rock and roll will trap her son in a hell of drugs and degeneracy.