Cameron Crowe Quotes

And I'm always surprised at who's there when you fail, ... It's usually not the people you expect to be there. It's easy to have friends when you're winning. And Jerry Maguire was kind of about that. This was about that, but it's like success and failure get trumped by an even bigger issue, which is, 'Are you going to be truly alive, and do you even know what that is?' .

Life sends you angels sometimes when you're in need and, in my theory, it's usually never the people you expect to be there, ... They are often gone the people that appear with a piece of advice or something they want to give to you to help you through are generally surprising people and I wanted Kirsten's character to be that.

The entire story of 'Elizabethtown' arrived quickly, ... a tale of love and loss and the discovery of family roots in the aftermath of a very black turn of events in the life of a young shoe designer, Orlando Bloom. It was a story that would start with an ending and end with a beginning and, I hoped, give a sense of what it was to be truly alive.

I liked the idea of beginning our movie with death, the place most movies end.

The question is where do we go from here? The answer is -- life.

I wanted to make a comment on the obsession with success and failure that we see a lot in America.

I always thought I'd write about my dad, at some point, ... I didn't think it would be like this, but it arrived like this. I'd been listening to a lot of Garrison Keillor at the time. I love that simple story that ends on a grace note and you go, 'Wow, I'm just happy to be alive right now.' That was the feeling I was chasing.

In Southern California, there's that feeling of people in transit. I grew up in Southern California, so whenever I ran across a world where your relatives stayed, and they lived a few miles away, and you have the roots that are really strong in your community, that always felt like a wonderful romantic notion. And this [movie] was about discovering this whole root system that you didn't realize you had.

It blew my mind, ... There were two girls who acted out the poster of the movie. They had a little red sofa by the side of the road. One was dressed up in a black suit like Orlando with a black wig and an urn. And the other was Kirsten with the champagne glass and her legs crossed; it was so sweet. I was truly in shock.

I turned around and she kind of had some tears in her eyes.

Hopefully I've done it, not in a pretentious way, but just as a cinematic mix, ... It is kind of a flourish. I didn't know if it would work. What I wanted it to be was authentic, the kind of music she would actually put on there. What I wouldn't want was it to be, 'Oh, that's that guy who always puts music in his movies doing a big thing with music'. I wanted it to be that girl's taste. And yeah, she would put Pride (In the Name of Love) on it. You do go for some obvious stuff when you make a mix tape because it reinvents itself.

She's an old soul. You will find her to be one of the more mature 23-year-olds on the planet.

Time, ... puts things in proper perspective.

nobody gets a free ride. And nobody should get a free ride.

I knew 'Almost Famous' wasn't playing in theaters at that long length. And really, it wasn't one of those terrible squabbles that you read about, where people want to change their name or anything. Our toughest discussion was, did Kate Hudson dance too long? It wasn't that big of a deal.

It used to be, like, the sanctity of rock was that you could never let a song of yours be used in a commercial. It was like, 'Oh man, we'll never let our music be exploited that way.' Now they'll call you up and say, 'You gotta use this song in your movie, man. It's the new VW ad! People love it.' And you realize, boy, have times changed.

She loves Susan Sarandon and I know my dad (would have loved) being married to Susan Sarandon, ... Susan said she learned more about how to play the part from talking to my mom than to me.

I wonder if I had gone for laughter and tears from the start how sad (the movie) would've been.

It felt like a faraway place that was still home.