Cameron Crowe · 2000 · road
Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical film. William Miller is fifteen, lives with his mother in San Diego, and is sent by Rolling Stone to tour with a band called Stillwater - who do not know how young he is, and who spend the whole tour deciding whether to talk to him.
- 1San Diego
A house with no rock records in it, a sister who leaves hers under the bed, and a fifteen-year-old who talks his way backstage at the Sports Arena and meets both Stillwater and a girl who calls herself Penny Lane.
- 2Los Angeles
The Hyatt on Sunset, known as the Riot House - the tour proper begins here, and Rolling Stone commissions a cover story from a boy they assume is a grown man because nobody has thought to ask.
- 3Tempe
Russell is electrocuted grabbing a microphone and the band walks off mid-set - and the Almost Famous Tour '73 bus rolls on with the fault lines inside the group already visible to the one person writing them down.
- 4Topeka
T-shirts, a fight about whose face is in focus, and the morning after a party where Russell goes off with strangers - and then the whole bus singing Tiny Dancer, which is the scene everyone remembers the film for.
- 5Cleveland
A new manager arrives and the band moves off the bus and onto a plane - the moment the tour stops being a family and starts being a business, and Penny Lane is quietly traded away in a card game.
- 6New York
The cover story is confirmed, Penny Lane overdoses in a hotel room, and William finally understands the difference between being with the band and writing about them.
- 7Tupelo
The plane hits a storm and everyone confesses everything they have been hiding, at volume, in the belief that they are about to die - and then the plane lands, and they all have to look at each other.
- 8San Diego
Home, the article killed and then unkilled, and Russell arriving at the door to face William's mother and finally give the interview - which is the film admitting what it has been about all along.