[Dreamboat] misc. Wilson sisters stuff

[J. Croft]

I've had a couple of recent media sightings that I wanted to share...

First was a quick phoner that Nancy and Cameron 
did with local station Star 98.7, maybe two weeks 
ago(?), in anticipation of the release of 
Elizabethtown.  This was with morning show hosts 
Jamie, Jack, and Stench... Jamie spent the early 
part of the interview sharing her surprise to 
learn that Cameron was married to one-half of Heart, the sexy one...

She then went on about how cool it was that 
Cameron involved his wife in the movie, and that 
it was great how he featured her so prominently 
in the advertising.  Jamie didn't realize that 
they had worked together on prior films.  They 
talked about Fast Times and how different Sean 
Penn is from the character... Cameron threw in that Nancy was in that film.

I hoped the interview would show up as one of 
their podcasts on itunes but it looks like they 
haven't added an interview since late August.

Then...

I was at the same radio station's "Lounge for 
Life" show last Saturday night.  The show was a 
fundraiser for City of Hope in support of breast 
cancer research.  Before the first band started, 
the video screen came down and a presentation 
played relevant to the cause.  I was still in the 
process of securing a nice spot to watch the show 
and while I was walking down the stairs (at the 
House of Blues/Hollywood), I recognized two very 
familiar voices - Ann and Nancy!  I quickly 
scrambled to see the screen and sure enough, it 
was the sisters.  But all my movement precluded 
me from hearing any substance of their pre-recorded message.

And finally, here is an article I pulled 
off-line, courtesy of the Seattle Times...
Take care everyone!  Jib

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2002557186_crowe13.html

An interview with Cameron Crowe, director of "Elizabethtown"

By <mailto:mmacdonald at seattletimes.com>Moira Macdonald
Seattle Times movie critic

Cameron Crowe understands the flavor of a place. 
Watch "Singles," his 1992 valentine to Seattle, 
and see the details that make it unmistakably our 
town at that time: the slightly grubby 
coffeehouse, where everyone seemed to be in a 
band; the easy camaraderie of a run-down Capitol 
Hill apartment complex filled with 
twentysomethings; the visionary concept, voiced 
reverently by Campbell Scott, of rapid transit.

Or remember how "Almost Famous" sets us firmly 
into the disarming strangeness that is Southern 
California in its opening moments: a goofy 
Christmas song (by Alvin and the Chipmunks) plays 
over the bright sunshine, as a boy and his mother 
step squinting out of a movie theater into the sunny, tinsel-laden streets.

At the Toronto International Film Festival last 
month, Crowe talked about translating the idea of Seattle into film.

"Seattle was the first place that I lived that 
felt like a real community, where everybody 
wanted to stay," he said. "That was sort of the 
original idea of 'Singles,' single people 
becoming their own family, in a place where they 
wanted to stay. That's the way it still is, to 
me." He and wife Nancy Wilson ­ whose band Heart 
helped shape the Seattle music scene ­ still have 
a home here, in Woodinville, though they're now based in Los Angeles.

With his new movie "Elizabethtown" (opening in 
several theaters tomorrow), Crowe takes on a very 
different place: a small Kentucky town. But, like 
many of Crowe's films, it's a place that's 
already in his heart. Crowe's father, who died in 
the late '80s (right after "Say Anything," Crowe 
says), was from Kentucky, and after his death 
Crowe and Wilson traveled there, to get to know the family.

"It felt like a faraway place that was still 
home," Crowe remembered of that trip. "I'd been 
to Europe, but for some reason Kentucky felt more 
far-flung. It feels like another place, and you feel like that to them.

"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."

As its title indicates, "Elizabethtown" is at 
heart about the mood of a specific town, and the 
way a young man (Orlando Bloom) gets caught up in 
its spell. Mirroring Crowe's life, the film's 
hero travels there after his father's death. 
Reeling from a colossal business failure, he 
meets a charismatic young woman (Kirsten Dunst), 
and gradually comes to feel at ease in this very different place.

Though the town seems idyllic, "Elizabethtown" 
hasn't been a smooth journey; there were casting 
changes (Bloom was a late replacement for Ashton 
Kutcher) and last-minute edits after some 
less-than-glowing reviews. In Toronto, just a few 
weeks before tomorrow's release date, Crowe said 
that feedback from festival screenings convinced 
him that "Elizabethtown" needed more trimming.

"I felt, sitting in the audience last night, I 
know what to do," he said. "It was a movie about 
saying goodbye, and last looks, and I knew I had 
a few too many goodbyes and endings." The Toronto 
version clocked in at 2 hours 15 minutes; the new 
version is just under the two-hour mark.

"Elizabethtown" is Crowe's sixth film as 
director, following the 2001 romantic thriller 
"Vanilla Sky." He's looking to do something quite 
different next: a real out-and-out comedy.

"When I was on the plane the other day, I was 
walking past the cabin where all these people had 
their [movie] screens going. There was such 
delight over what they were watching, and I 
turned around and it was almost entirely 
comedies. And it made me think, I'm that way too. I just feel like laughing."

He's eager to return to the Northwest to work on 
the screenplay. "[Seattle] is the best place to 
just kind of be in the world," he said, "out of 
the environment where you generally work really 
hard to get movies finished, just breathe the air 
and feel life and tell new stories."

And while it's too soon to tell where the next 
one will be set, it's clear he still has some 
unfinished business with the city he documented 
in "Singles" and "Say Anything." He speaks, 
tongue in cheek, about how there's no plaque at 
that Capitol Hill apartment house to mark where "Singles" was shot.

"After 'Singles,' it was so funny," he said, 
"because nobody ever said, 'here's where they 
filmed 'Singles.' But they would say 'Sleepless 
in Seattle' was here, 'Sleepless in Seattle' was 
there, the people making 'Sleepless in Seattle' 
once walked through this building.

"Next time, my goal is to really leave a little something behind."

Cameron Crowe trivia

His mother, Alice Crowe (who now lives in White 
Rock, B.C.), has appeared in all of his movies. 
In "Elizabethtown," look for her at the memorial 
scene, in an all-blue outfit with a blue hat.

The Tom Cruise role in "Jerry Maguire" was at one 
point offered to Hugh Grant. "Can you imagine, if 
he'd said yes?" said Crowe. He riffed some lines 
from the film, in a spot-on Grant accent: "Show 
me the money. Show it, to me. Rod. Oh, for God's 
sake, Rod. Show me, please. Let me glimpse the money."

Speaking of casting, Ashton Kutcher was 
originally slated to play Drew, the male lead, 
when Orlando Bloom ­ Crowe's first choice ­ had 
scheduling conflicts. Kutcher left the project at 
the rehearsal stage, at which point Bloom's schedule had cleared.

Crowe and Wilson continued their tradition of 
writing "fake rock songs" ­ begun while writing 
songs for Stillwater in "Almost Famous" ­ in 
"Elizabethtown," by writing a tune for the band 
Ruckus, of which Drew's cousin is a member. "If I 
ever tried to write a [real] song with Nancy, 
we'd never finish it, it would be too 
intimating," said Crowe. "But to write a fake 
song, for a wannabe Southern rock band, it's 'oh, 
right, it would sound like this. ' "



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