The poster seemed to promise that Hollywood would come to town, for one night only, on a tour bus much like that used in the film Almost Famous. It was a benefit for the True West Film Center, presented by an organization called T.O.W.N.—a puzzling anagram for Traveling Off-Season for Wine Night.
If the messaging was a little disconnected, the campaign worked. Hundreds of tickets ranging in price from $75 to $1,500 were sold, seven restaurants each offered their kitchen’s best, seven wineries poured their current releases and the courtyard outside the theater on Friday afternoon was a “scene” in more ways than one: Many were there to see and meet Cameron Crowe and Ben Fong-Torres—legendary names in the rock movie canon—as they enjoyed that famous Healdsburg Hospitality, mixed and mingled, and took in the movie Almost Famous for the umpteenth time.
“It is called ‘on tour’ simply because it’s a relation to the movie which is being screened,” said Art Murray, owner of Flambeaux Winery and one-half of the pair who created T.O.W.N., along with Alexander Harris of The Harris Gallery. “We just felt like that’s the vibe. So whatever the vibe is, that’s what we call the dinner.” Earlier T.O.W.N. dinners included an “apres ski thing” with manufactured snow called Snowed In, a sushi dinner where the food was on paper boats and a Geyserville “Spaghetti Western” event last year.
The movie centers on a 15-year-old rock writer, played in the movie by 16-year-old Patrick Fugit, who is thrown into the whirlwind world of music and romance when a Rolling Stone editor, unaware of his youth, assigns him to go on tour.
That precocious reporter grew up to be Cameron Crowe, who in 2000 wrote and directed the film Almost Famous. That film was made over 25 years after the events it portrayed, so it was a piece of recent nostalgia, a Gen X look back at the Boomers’ finest hour. Crowe’s media career is deeper than this film pic, however—he also wrote and directed Jerry McGuire, and Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise, and is working on a Joni Mitchell biopic.
Bringing Camera Crowe to town was a big coup, but the film’s fans—and there are many—were equally impressed to see Ben Fong-Torres on the bill. Fong-Torres was the Rolling Stone editor who handed young Crowe the plum assignment of covering the Allman Brothers Band and eventually other bands of the era (from Poco to Led Zeppelin to Fleetwood Mac).
The band the young Crowe character covers in Almost Famous is called Stillwater, and some fans in Healdsburg that night even wore Stillwater t-shirts, as if the group had been real. In the courtyard outside True West Cinema the band Dead for Breakfast played soft-psychedelic hits of the era, and a flamboyantly dressed Robin Parvin channeled a free-spirited dancer with a hula hoop. Guests circulated with appetizers before settling down to dinner, wine and finally the movie itself.
True West Executive Director Kathryn Philip swept through the festivities in a colorful, flowing gown. When asked if the event lived up to her expectations, she wasted no time saying, “We’re going to have more of these. This is what it’s built for. To have fun!”
If the attendees were pre-disposed to like the film, it proved a downhill challenge. The soundtrack alone evokes the era, along with the look and dress. The movie is populated by rising stars and now-familiar ones: it was one of Billy Crudup’s first movies, and he plays the too-good-looking lead guitarist of the group. Frances McDormand plays Fugit’s forceful mother, Zooey Deschanel his sister, Philip Seymour Hoffman the abrasive mentor Lester Bangs and newcomer Jimmy Kimmel is the hotshot young manager the label sent to shepherd Stillwater to success.
Kate Hudson plays the beguiling Penny Lane, the soft and sexy young center of everyone’s attention. The role was originally cast to another actress, but it’s hard to imagine Almost Famous without her. In the post-film Q&A at True West Cinemas Crowe, Fong-Torres and True West archivist John Cooper fielded softballs and reminisced about the days that were, this casting choice and others.
Their conversation lasted well past 10pm, making for a solid seven hours of immersion in the good-natured rock era, one that predated even disco and yacht rock. The movie was not a big success upon its release, despite earning several Academy Award nominations and a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Crowe. It has grown more popular over time, and their conversation provided a fresh perspective on a 25-year-old movie that depicts an era roughly 25 years before its story.
And why not? A great cast, a colorful slice of a legendary time, appropriately terrific music and a smart script, written instead of winged. All this while the Healdsburg Museum itself takes a look back to the same decade, the 1970s. As said a couple times in the movie, “It’s all happening.”
