Cameron Crowe’s four guilty pleasure movies
The back catalogue of Cameron Crowe can sometimes be perceived as a treasure chest of guilty pleasure, where one can dive in headfirst whilst always retaining an eye over the shoulder to make sure no one else is watching the enjoyment unfold. Crowe’s work has a real sense of escapism that charms audiences with humour and heart in equal measure.
From the homage to the rock and roll era of the 1970s in Almost Famous to the highly-amusing Jerry Maguire and the uplifting nature of Elizabethtown, Crowe has always delivered the goods to cinema fans when their main aim is to kick back on the sofa and take their minds off their own lives for even a short while.
Even in resistance, there’s something eternally alluring about Crowe’s movies, with their iconic and carefully constructed soundtracks and larger-than-life characters that make them guilty pleasures in every sense of the word. The director himself is no stranger to a guilty pleasure movie or two, having named his four favourites during a feature with Film Comment.
First up is Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, the 1970 American drama starring Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin and Rod Taylor. “You can almost feel the ascot on the ageing Italian maestro who had come to America to capture the youth movement,” Crowe said. “And yet, bizarrely, his cameras catch greatness. I think it’s a classic, but I could be really wrong.”
Crowe followed up by offering his respect to Live a Little, Love a Little by Norman Taurog, one of the several collaborations between Elvis Presley and Taurog and Taurog’s last movie before he went blind. Crowe admitted that “Elvis is in a bad mood for most of this movie,” adding, “He seems irritated by the dialogue, annoyed by his co-stars, angry at the songs he has to sing, and anxious to get back home to his pad in Bel-Air. It’s brilliant.”
The biggest guilty pleasure on the list has to go to William Castle’s 13 Ghosts, as Castle was well-known for his low-budget yet competent B-movies. His films were also known for their gimmicks, which is certainly why Crowe puts the 1960 picture in such a category, calling it “an ass-kicking sentimental favourite. With or without the 3-D glasses.”
Finally, Eric Till’s 1972 Canadian comedy A Fan’s Notes, based on the 1968 Frederick Exley novel of the same name, rounds off Crowe’s list. He said of the unreleased movie, “It was inexplicably screened late one night in a Seattle art house during the ’80s. I was lucky enough to be there. The movie itself wasn’t so great, but somehow, this doomed, overly earnest adaptation whipped up a frenzy of random that caught the very theme of the book. I’ve never seen or heard of the movie since, but that night lives forever.”
Cameron Crowe’s guilty pleasure movies:
- Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970)
- Live a Little, Love a Little (Norman Taurog, 1968)
- 13 Ghosts (William Castle, 1960)
- A Fan’s Notes (Eric Till, 1972)
