Cameron Crowe Reveals Almost Famous Secrets: Why He Pushed Actors to Tears

The film earned Crowe the 2001 Academy Award for best original screenplay. "I'm just so grateful that we had the gift of being able to make it," said Crowe, whose new memoir, The Uncool, is out.

'Almost Famous', which follows teenage journalist William Miller (Patrick Fugit) as he tours with the fictional rock band Stillwater for a Rolling Stone cover story, was "achingly personal" to shoot, Crowe said. He remembers filming parts of the movie, whose ensemble cast also included Kate Hudson, Frances McDormand and Philip Seymour-Hoffman in San Diego, where he was raised, reported People.

"By the end, Patrick Fugit has lived through all the stuff in the movie in his life," Crowe said. "He's fallen in love with Kate a little bit and realised that that might not work out in this particular part of his lifetime, like Penny Lane is with someone else. It's like all these emotions were there and he was pretty much exhausted -- maybe too exhausted."

But Crowe was working on a particular film sequence, where Hudson's character, the groupie Penny Lane, attempts suicide by overdosing on quaaludes. He also wanted to feature Stevie Wonder's song "My Cherie Amour," which captured William's love for Penny Lane despite the situation.

"Patrick's such a good guy, and I had to do that thing that you hear that directors do. We were trying to get it right," Crowe said, adding, "I was gonna live or die if I didn't get the perfect 'My Cherie Amour' shot."

"I said, 'Patrick, you know these people that love you and [have] been hugging you and singing you songs and just loving you this whole time? You know, of course, they're all going to go away. When the movie's over, you're never going to hear from these people again. And that's kind of the way it is. So enjoy it now, none of this is really real and it's been great, but it's going to be real over, real soon.'"

"He started to get completely emotional, and I was like, 'Okay, let's start,'" Crowe said, adding, "We move in, and that's what's in the movie," according to People.

Despite what it took to get there, Crowe shared that capturing the scene was an "amazing" memory.

"We did whatever it would take to get us to the story that we wanted to tell, which is about loving music," Crowe said. "And everybody in that movie loved music."

The director also noted the joy of working with actors like Billy Crudup, who played Stillwater guitarist Russell Hammond.

"Find me another person on earth who's going to say, 'Yeah, I'll do it, but I don't know guitar at all. So I got six weeks to learn how to play guitar like a rock star. Let's go," he said. "Sometimes if your attitude is right and your purpose is clear, the skies part for you. That was Almost Famous."

Crowe also considers Almost Famous to be a story about his own family, including his late mother Alice and older sister Cathy. He says writing the film prepared him for tackling his own life story in The Uncool.

"I went back to that place where it's like, 'I don't care if anybody ever reads this or doesn't read it or doesn't like it or likes it,'" he said. "Of course, that's fantastic. But I'm not writing it for any purpose other than to summon some feeling that music makes me feel," reported People.

Crowe will also embark on a book tour, which kicks off in Nashville on October 30.

- ANI