Cameron Crowe’s ‘Almost Famous’ Rocks Out on Broadway

Cameron Crowe poses outside the the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York on Oct. 27, 2022. (AP)
Cameron Crowe poses outside the the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York on Oct. 27, 2022. (AP)
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Cameron Crowe’s ‘Almost Famous’ Rocks Out on Broadway

Cameron Crowe poses outside the the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York on Oct. 27, 2022. (AP)
Cameron Crowe poses outside the the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York on Oct. 27, 2022. (AP)

Composer Tom Kitt got a compliment the other day that any songwriter would sing about.

A friend had seen his Broadway stage adaptation of Cameron Crowe's film “Almost Famous” and couldn't tell which songs Kitt had supplied and which ones were classics.

Mind you, those classics included songs by the likes of Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens, David Bowie, Deep Purple, Joni Mitchell and the Allman Brothers.

“I thought, ‘Well, then I’m doing my job,’” recalls Kitt, a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner. “The goal here was in some ways to make it all feel like one voice.”

Kitt has teamed up with Crowe to turn the filmmaker's very autobiographical coming-of-age story for a new audience in a new age. The show, now in previews, opens Nov. 3 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.

“It feels like it’s a companion piece to the movie,” says Jeremy Herrin, the musical's director. “It’s another iteration of that story in another form.”

“Almost Famous” centers on a smart and earnest 15-year-old in the early 1970s who manages to get assigned by Rolling Stone magazine to do a profile of the fictional midlevel rock band Stillwater.

“It’s about a young man discovering that he can express himself with integrity and that life is better for him and those around him when he does so. And that’s a powerful thing to be reminded of,” says Herrin.

Crowe, the writer-director who won an Oscar for the film's screenplay, was inspired by his own experiences growing up and says he wanted the musical to “capture that same feeling that the movie did.”

In many ways, a stage adaptation makes perfect sense: The film is about loving music and had a community constantly bursting into song — something musical theater is built on.

“That communal feeling and that hang that you have going to a concert is also the thing that I experience when I go to Broadway. I’m going to be in a room with a bunch of people, having a shared experience, with storytelling and live music happening. So I think that there’s a real crossover,” says Lia Vollack, lead producer.

The film starred Billy Crudup as Stillwater's lead guitarist, Frances McDormand as the young man’s mother and Kate Hudson as Penny Lane, the band’s chief groupie or, as she prefers to think of herself, its muse.

“At the heart of it, it's a story that many people can relate to, which is finding your own family,” says Vollack. “You have your family that you’re with, who you love and who are a part of you, but also finding community outside of that.”

Kitt supplied 17 original songs, did the orchestrations and arrangements, and collaborated with book writer Crowe on lyrics. He was already a fan of the filmmaker's “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Say Anything,” “Jerry Maguire” and “Vanilla Sky.”

“I love to write about connection and catharsis and what are things that trouble us. What are things that we are in motion on, and where do we settle and find great resolution and hopefully walk out of a theater feeling inspired and excited to talk about what you just experienced?” he said. “That’s a Cameron Crowe film for me.”

The challenge for Kitt was to write new songs alongside such classic rock songs as “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, “20th Century Boy” by T. Rex and “Ramble On” by Zeppelin. The film's score won a Grammy.

“When I was a classical pianist — just starting to study in the ‘80s — it was the music of the ’70s that took me away from Mozart and into Bruce Springsteen and Elton John and Billy Joel at my piano,” Kitt says. “The assignment was to write original music in the style of music that I love.”

The creative team chose to stud the musical with songs that reveal the characters' feelings. So if the film has a close up, the musical gets a song in its place. Kitt often plumbed the film's script for the lyrics.

Take the song “The Night-Time Sky’s Got Nothing On You,” a quiet moment between the muse and the guitarist. Kitt begins the song with dialogue from the film virtually word for word: “The way you turn a hotel into a home/The way you pick up strays wherever you go.”

“That was the goal for me because Cameron is a poet, and he writes poetry about our everyday experience. So it’s a natural for that to become lyric,” says Kitt, who has worked on the musicals “Next to Normal," Green Day’s “American Idiot" and Alanis Morissette’s ”Jagged Little Pill.”

The creators initially considered using only preexisting songs, but that posed a challenge to the storytelling. They also considered all original music but would awkwardly have to plop in John's “Tiny Dancer” — which is sung in a pivotal scene. Kitt, who has worked with originals and written his own, was the answer they needed.

“Tom just made it all flow together in this gorgeous tapestry of this world and created a world with it and it is seamless,” says Vollack. "Tom is very comfortable swimming in both waters."

The creators also took the opportunity to alter some things, like going deeper into the characters of the mom and Penny Lane, or as Crowe says “putting a little more padding in the shoulders of these characters.” Both women get songs, including “The Wind” for Penny and “Elaine’s Lecture” for mom.



So You Saw ‘Conclave’ the Movie. Here’s What It Got Right – And Wrong – About Real-Life Conclaves

This image released by Focus Features shows Ralph Fiennes, left, and Stanley Tucci in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)
This image released by Focus Features shows Ralph Fiennes, left, and Stanley Tucci in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)
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So You Saw ‘Conclave’ the Movie. Here’s What It Got Right – And Wrong – About Real-Life Conclaves

This image released by Focus Features shows Ralph Fiennes, left, and Stanley Tucci in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)
This image released by Focus Features shows Ralph Fiennes, left, and Stanley Tucci in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)

Speculation surrounding a conclave to elect a pope is a time-honored tradition. But for the impending conclave following the death of Pope Francis, the ranks of armchair Vatican experts have swelled thanks to Hollywood.

“Conclave” the film, a moody 2024 political thriller, introduced many laypeople to the ancient selection process with its arcane rules and grand ceremony, albeit with a silver screen twist packed full of palace intrigue and surprise.

Though it has its critics, the film treats the gravity of a papal election with respect and accurately portrays many rituals and contemporary problems facing today’s Catholic Church. But Vatican experts warn the movie doesn’t get everything right.

Here's a look at what “Conclave” does get right — and wrong — about conclaves. (Spoilers ahead.)

Scenery and aesthetics The movie excels at re-creating the look and feel of a conclave.

“The film gets a lot right. They tried to reproduce the mise-en-scene of the Vatican accurately,” William Cavanaugh, a Catholic studies professor at DePaul University in Chicago, said in an email. “They show that a lot of the drama is around the preconclave conversations among cardinals.”

It’s not a perfect re-creation, according to the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior analyst with the Religion News Service and a Vatican expert.

He called the movie’s production values “marvelous,” but noted slight discrepancies in the cardinals' dress.

“The red in the cardinals’ garments was a deep red, while the reality is more orange. Frankly, I like the Hollywood version better,” Reese, a Jesuit priest who wrote “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church,” said in an email.

Papal protocols The movie aligns with real-life expectations for a quick conclave, said Massimo Faggioli, a historical theology professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

“A long conclave would send the message of a Church divided and possibly on the verge of a schism. The history of the conclaves in the last century is really a story of short conclaves,” he said via email.

Reese pointed out other discrepancies. While the voting process was depicted accurately, he said, the ballots are burned not after each vote, but after each session, which is typically two votes.

Holy plot holes There are a few particularly egregious errors that, if corrected, would lead to a very different movie.

A key character in the film, the archbishop of Kabul, Afghanistan, arrives just before the conclave with paperwork declaring the late pope had made him a cardinal "in pectore" — “in secret” — allowing him to vote for the next pope.

“The biggest mistake in the movie was the admission of a cardinal in pectore into the conclave,” said Reese. “If the name is not announced publicly by the pope in the presence of the College of Cardinals, he has no right to attend a conclave.”

Cavanaugh agreed and noted that while the movie's twist about the Kabul archbishop was far-fetched, it does point to a certain truth about conclaves.

“The cardinals do not always know who they’re getting when they elect a pope,” he said. “If the cardinals knew how (Jorge Mario) Bergoglio would be as Pope Francis, many of them wouldn’t have voted for him. Pius IX was elected as a liberal and turned into an archconservative. John XXIII was supposed to be a jolly caretaker pope, and he unleashed Vatican II,” a series of modernizing reforms.

Another of the movie's more outlandish storylines involves the dean of the College of Cardinals breaking the seal of the confessional by revealing to another cardinal what a nun confessed to him, said Reese.

“He committed a mortal sin and would be automatically excommunicated. Such an action would be egregiously wrong,” Reese said.

In addition to that, a cardinal paying for votes, as shown in the film, is unheard of in modern times, said Cavanaugh, and the politicking is exaggerated.

And so are the politics.

The movie errs in making cardinals into either liberal or conservative champions, said Kurt Martens, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

“Those labels don’t help us,” he said because cardinals are very cautious in expressing their opinions and “even someone we think is a liberal cardinal is pretty conservative by secular standards.”

And he added that even in an unusually large conclave like this year’s, the rule requiring the next pope wins at least a two-thirds majority of the vote ensures that “whatever we call extreme” likely won’t get enough votes.