Cameron Crowe Quotes - Page 2

That's how I am as a director - if somebody does a really good take, I can't help it, I'm not even aware of it. Actors really, really need positive reinforcement.

I wanted to follow the path of music and feel that power, and I couldn't turn back.

I always loved movies, but I never thought I would presume to be a screenwriter and definitely not a director.

When you listen to the music, you can also see the film or read the article, and it's all part of the same journey that you get to take with the artist you're interested in. It's a balancing act.

So many of us are hungry for stories with more racial diversity, more truth in representation, and I am anxious to help tell those stories in the future.

The current state of music journalism is not bad, but it's not great at all. Some of the hip-hop stuff people get into is exciting, because there's a passion and there's something to explain to a more mainstream audience, so you get these passionate writers who want to express their love for rap and hip-hop, which is cool. But there are too many magazines, and the access has been diminished, so the quality of profiles has gone way down. Internet stuff can be really good, though. I like the dialogue between fans on the Internet. I think that's the best rock writing that's going on right now.

I wanted to make a comment on the obsession with success and failure that we see a lot in America.

Sometimes things you write are messages to yourself. Even though I think my stuff has a particular voice because you are who you are, it's good to switch it up, professionally and personally. The dare to be great situation is always going to be the one that matters the most.

I always loved movies, but I never thought I would presume to be a screenwriter and definitely not a director. I spent a lot of time for no money trying to teach myself how to write a script. It always felt like everybody was looking the other way and sneaking that script through the system, but it did well later on video and got another chance.

I just love when a movie takes a break and gives you a poetic moment, but sometimes it's good when they just happen randomly. If your actors are really comfortable and you let the camera roll, sometimes things happen and you just see something that's visually iconic, or emotionally that way.

You just never know if people out there will relate to things when you write them; it matters to you, and to some people it doesn't. Some people are 'I'm not in the mood for that; thanks.'

I used to see a lot of cocaine. There were journalists who used cocaine and didn't write about it and I didn't write about it. I would never do drugs, so I would always get the same response from people: "Smart kid, more for me." Whether it was a joke or sincere or both, but I was just happy not to be in there partying with the band like some of these other journalists.

Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist.

TORONTO -- When Cameron Crowe was flying to the Toronto film festival recently, he walked down the aisle of the plane and studied his fellow passengers sitting in front of their personal TV sets. They were just having the greatest time, there was so much joy in their eyes, .. And I looked to see what they were watching. And it was all out-and-out comedies. So many people watching The Longest Yard. And I just got the feeling that, 'You know what? People just like to let it all go, and have a laugh'.

I remember that, before John Lennon died, everyone was saying that Rolling Stone couldn't do good reporting anymore. But when he died, they wrote this amazing issue, as they should have about Lennon. They did that when Elvis died, too.

There's several ways to be a journalist. One way is to be combative and take the person to task and what you have is a portrait of somebody defending themselves, which is interesting. The other thing is to slip into their world and really be a representative for all the people that love the experience of that artist, and have them get so comfortable that you become invisible and they're themselves.

Conception of a film starts with the music. Always. I hear the movie before I can ever write it. I would say that 80% of the time, that's the successful stuff. It's the other stuff I have to work for to get right, and sometimes it doesn't work out, but the music is always the beginning. So I'm still a music journalist.

I'm impossible to forget, but I'm hard to remember.

We tried to present an emotional scrapbook of what it felt like to be a band member on this 20-year journey.

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