Cameron Crowe on Grief, Memory and Music
4/30/202639 min
Writer and director of “Almost Famous” among other films, Cameron Crowe, talks about the death of his sister Cathy when he was 10 years old, and how he has come to be "in conversation" with her now, all these decades later. It's a moving conversation about grief, memory, and music. For more of “All There Is with Anderson Cooper” visit cnn.com/allthereis.
Host: Anderson Cooper Showrunner: Haley Thomas Producers: Grace Walker, Emily Williams, Madeleine Thompson Associate Producer: Kyra Dahring Video Editor: Eric Zembrzuski Technical Director: Dan Dzula Bookers: Kerry Rubin and Kari Pricher
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAnderson Cooper· Host0:01
Welcome to All There Is. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, I'm glad you're here. You're not alone. My guest is Cameron Crowe. He wrote and directed amazing movies like Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky. He wrote the screenplay for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and also wrote and directed Almost Famous. He got an Academy Award for the screenplay for that film, which is based on his experiences as the youngest contributor ever for Rolling Stone magazine. It's an [chuckles] amazing story. Cameron graduated high school at 15 and started writing for Rolling Stone, interviewing rock legends like Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, The Who, and a lot of others. He's now written a memoir about his childhood called The Uncool. It's a great read, and as soon as I finished it, I knew I wanted to speak with him for this podcast. Cameron experienced loss early on. He was just 10 when one of his two sisters, Kathy, died by suicide. She was 19. That's where we began our conversation. When you were growing up, after your sister Kathy's suicide- Yeah ... in your family, was it talked about?
Cameron Crowe· Guest1:09
Anderson, it was aggressively avoided. It was more than not talked about. It was a hairpin turn whenever the subject got close.
Anderson Cooper· Host1:20
At one point, you did have a conversation with your mom. You tried.
Cameron Crowe· Guest1:23
I tried. I would try often, and sometimes I'd get, like, 30 or 40 seconds in