Films Greg Wood Should See

Today's post is a bit of a departure from my normal subject matter, i.e. it is not directly related to music. It is however, directly related to a man who is closer to my heart than any other fellow heterosexual male not directly related to me by blood: Greg Wood.



For those of you who don't know Greg, he writes Kick the Amp Over, which is also linked in the Label Mates section of this blog. I have known Greg since the dawn of civilization, which by my calculations happened sometime in the early part of 1998. Throughout our friendship Greg and I have shared women, drugs, needles, sewing materials, underwear, drinks, sweaters, a ridiculous sense of humor, and an unhealthy love of music, among other things. OK, so really only the last three things in that list are true, but you'd never have known that if I hadn't told you so just forget this sentence all together for the purposes of this post.

One thing I know about Greg is that up until the past couple of years, he wasn't a big movie fan. Outside of a bizarre love for Owen Wilson, Zoolander, the collected works of Wes Anderson, and Cameron Crowe Greg always told me he had trouble sitting through movies and thus didn't really like them. All of that has changed now. About two years ago Greg expressed to me a new found desire to watch films and become more familiar with the language of the cinema. Well today's post is dedicated to films that Greg Wood should see. This may or may not become another reoccurring section of the Farm Team similar to Chart Watch, I haven't yet decided. Regardless, today's selections are of relevance to Greg because they had direct influence on Cameron Crowe, and more specifically influenced Crowe's film, Almost Famous.


The Apartment

Directed by Billy Wilder and winner of a whopping five Academy Awards including Best Picture in 1960, The Apartment stars Jack Lemmon as C.C. Baxter, a young entry level business man who's found that he can quickly climb the corporate ladder by allowing his multiple bosses to use his apartment as a safe haven to freely cheat on their wives. All is going according to plan until he falls for CEO J.D. Sheldrake's own mistress, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLane). The film, at first a more or less straightforward screwball comedy, suddenly takes a dark and genre defying turn when Baxter comes home to find that Kubelik has attempted suicide by swallowed a bottle of Baxter's own sleeping pills. From this point on the film is about Baxter's desire to set things right and stand up for both himself and the woman he loves, meanwhile Kubelik must battle between her troubled relationship with Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) and her new feelings for Baxter.

Parallels can be drawn between Baxter and Crowe's Almost Famous protagonist, William Miller as Miller naively allows the members of Stillwater to push him around in hopes that it will eventually get him the story he is desperately trying to write. Also similarities can be seen between Kubelik and Penny Lane, as Lane finds herself the object of affection of both Stillwater's lead guitarist, Russel, and the young Miller. Lane's suicide attempt is actually a direct reference to the scene in The Apartment. Even Lane's memorable fur coat is a reference to a coat worn by MacLane at the end of the film. Crowe was actually such a fan of director Billy Wilder that he wrote a book entitled Conversations With Wilder.

The 400 Blows

The first of five films by director Francois Truffaut to feature actor Jean-Pierre Leaud in the role of Antoine Doinel, The 400 Blows is a fictional story about a troubled adolescent boy's attempts to make sense of a world that rejects him at every turn. More or less an autobiographical piece taken from Truffaut's own childhood, The 400 Blows was instantly hailed by critics and quickly defined Truffaut as France's leading New Wave director, also helping to define the genre and the use of Camera-stylo or the "Camera-as-pen" style of narative. Cameron Crowe did this exact same thing with Almost Famous. Taking another cue from Truffaut (who cast the then unknown Leaud as his lead), Crowe also cast an unknown actor, Patrick Fugit, to play his fictional childhood self. Like Doinel, Fugit's character finds himself in a world where no matter how close he gets to someone, he is inevitably doomed to remain an outsider.


Greg, you love Almost Famous as much as I do. You must see these films to truly see that Cameron Crowe is a bigger genius than we ever previously gave him credit. For everyone else, If you haven't seen any of these three films please do, and then come argue with me about them at great length.