For many moviegoers, Crowe is the guy who defined first love (Say Anything...), the grunge generation (Singles), what it means to be a man (Jerry Maguire), and the lonely heart of rock & roll (Almost Famous). They'll forgive him a misfire on Vanilla Sky, a misguided detour into darkness that ill suited his sunny sensibility. But now it's time to deliver the goods, and expectations are primed for Elizabethtown, Crowe's return to what he does best: young love and personal reinvention.
Crowe is one of the few writer-directors making idiosyncratic, personal movies within the mainstream studio system, and he can scarcely afford another flop after 2001's Vanilla Sky underperformed at the box office ($101 million is actually peanuts for a Tom Cruise movie) and failed to deliver his usual rhapsodic reviews. He is a true Hollywood anomaly in that he has steadfastly resisted all temptation to make a quick buck as a director- or writer-for-hire in between his personal movies, à la Steven Soderbergh. Crowe tells stories that come from the inside out, turning his preoccupations and life experiences into modern folk tales. Still, after a summer where Hollywood sent out a desperate APB for more original filmmaking, even brand-name directors like Crowe only get so many strikes. And after the screening at Toronto, where Elizabethtown went from festivalgoers' must-see list to the not-for-me or, at best, the wait-and-see list, the onus is now on Crowe to make sure Elizabethtown fills theaters and leaves the door open to a future full of the movies only he can make.
No stranger to doomsday predictions, Crowe takes solace in his experience with films that have prevailed over a din of bad buzz. ''With Fast Times [at Ridgemont High], they didn't want to put the movie out and it tested really poorly,'' says Crowe, who made his screenwriting debut with the teen sex comedy directed by Amy Heckerling. He was similarly vindicated when he later released a longer director's cut of Almost Famous on DVD to high praise after the studio-mandated shorter cut generated lackluster box office. ''It was very similar [to Elizabethtown]. Many things I've written have had a tough little curve.''
The illusions of success and failure and the precarious line that separates them have become recurring themes for Crowe both on screen and off. It's no wonder, considering he soared to the top of the magazine journalism world at the tender age of 16, writing cover stories for Rolling Stone, and has occupied the upper echelons of moviemaking ever since Say Anything.... So it's probably no accident that both Jerry Maguire and Elizabethtown revolve around characters whose thriving careers face sudden death. Even Say Anything...'s Lloyd Dobler was defined by his failure to have any ambitions beyond love and, similarly, Singles' Steve Dunne (Campbell Scott) became a depressed shut-in when his work project was nixed by the mayor. It's almost as if his movies are anxiety dreams with happy endings, writ large.
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