USA: Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst share laughter and tears in Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown"

For "Jerry Maguire" director Cameron Crowe, whose new movie "Elizabethtown" debuts in the United States on Friday (October 14, 2005), his Hollywood career is all about time. "Time," Crowe recently said, "puts things in proper perspective." The saying is as appropriate for Crowe as it is for the main character in the romantic comedy "Elizabethtown", a young dreamer named Drew (Orlando Bloom) who falls into a funk after an athletic shoe he designs turns into a financial fiasco for its manufacturer. Crowe suffered a similar fate after his most recent films, 2001's "Vanilla Sky" and 2000's "Almost Famous". The surreal drama "Sky" proved a hit at box offices, but was panned by critics. "Famous", a personal story about a boy's first love, was a critical success but a box office flop. From Hollywood's perspective, Crowe needs a hit from the new movie he wrote, directed and produced to retain his status as one of his generation's top talents. But the director doesn't see it quite that way. Over time, he said "Sky" and "Famous" have earned loyal fans, and both have done just fine financially when box office, video and DVD sales are combined. "Elizabethtown" is a personal story, although not as close to Crowe's own life as "Famous", in which the main character covers a rock tour for a music magazine much as Crowe wrote about music for Rolling Stone magazine. In "Elizabethtown", Drew's depression following the shoe debacle is interrupted by his father's sudden death while on a trip home to Kentucky. So Drew goes back to arrange for the body to be returned to Oregon where Drew and his family live. The idea for making "Elizabethtown" came to Crowe in summer 2002 following the release of "Vanilla Sky" while he was on tour with his wife, Nancy Wilson, who plays with the rock group Heart. The tour bus was driving through Kentucky where Crowe hadn't been since his father's death. He was struck by the countryside's beauty. So, he got off the bus, rented a car and "got lost" on the state's back roads and highways. "It's a tribute to my dad and I just kind of reached a point where I was in his home state of Kentucky and was really thinking about him and I was working on another script and stuff and certainly wasn't looking for a new idea but it just kind of, it hit, like, 'remember when you came back to Kentucky, his state, years earlier for that funeral, remember how you felt,' because all those feelings, and my dad felt still in the air, and so, here comes another personal movie you know that I didn't expect to write and I'm so glad I did because it's a love letter to that part of the country and also, from a son to a father, I think," said Crowe. Things don't work out exactly as Drew planned, but he is embraced by his country cousins, aunts and uncles. Their warmth and a budding romance with a flight attendant (Kirsten Dunst) he meets on his trip give Drew a new outlook on life. "Cameron makes movies that make you want to laugh, make you want to cry, or both all at the same time, you don't really know which and he depicts America as the America you want to see, you want to believe and you want to know about and you only really experience this America if you go there," said Orlando Bloom. For Crowe, community is at the heart of what Bloom means. "You reach a point in your life, as I did when my dad passed away, it was just that period of your life when you think 'I am alone,' and then something happens to reveal that community that you have available to you, to you, you know and you just go, 'wow, I'm now being hugged by people who are virtually strangers," Crowe said. In another parallel to Crowe's life, Drew goes on a road trip visiting landmarks such as the memorial to bombing victims in Oklahoma City and the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee where Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. So far, "Elizabethtown" has received mixed early reviews mainly from its screening at September's Toronto Film Festival. Since then, Crowe says he has trimmed 18 minutes from the film's length. Whether "Elizabethtown" is eventually deemed a "Maguire" like hit, a "Famous" style flop, or something in between like "Vanilla Sky", Crowe said he is not so concerned anymore. From the new movie, he said, he is most struck by some words he wrote that are spoken by Drew's girlfriend, Claire, who tells her moribund beau, "Fail big and stick around and make them wonder why you're still smiling." "She really was there for Drew and really fell for him, so it's just what love brings out in people, I really think, you know what I mean," said Dunst about her character. "It's that time. She is a super positive interested in life and people and what people are all about." For Susan Sarandon, who plays Drew's mother, all the morbidity of death must be leavened with the laughter of life. "It's about your family, somewhere along the line becoming people and not just being your family and remembering to have a sense of humour about them and remembering to finally make sure your kids understand that you're a person, because I know my kids don't think I existed before they were born." "Elizabethtown" opens in North American theatres on October 14.

ITN Source | October 20, 2005

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