#stay tuned for eventually hopefully more almost famous related content. specifically regarding led zeppelin.

[lemongrablothbrok]

Was watching my favorite movie, Almost Famous, like a week or two ago. First of all, I'd just like to say, I could blog about this movie all fucking day, every fucking day, and intend to eventually (because I'm a masochist and like a challenge, damnit) do a post on every single Led Zeppelin reference that I could find in the movie (and there. Are. A lot. Probably literally more than there is of any other band or artist. For realsies), as well as an entire post of its own doing a character analysis of Vic, the Led Zeppelin fan (because I feel like he matters a lot more than his maybe two minutes of total screentime might suggest). But anyway...

So, I'm watching the director's cut, like I usually do (the theatrical cut just doesn't do it for me anymore), and there's one scene that (I'm pretty sure?) didn't make it into the regular cut of the film, but...like...

So, it's near the end of the movie, and Russell, the lead guitarist of the fictional band Stillwater, is having a conversation with the band's lead singer, Jeff, after butting heads with him for the entire movie and both of them coming to terms with the fact that...well...they don't like each other very much. And they're discussing whether it really matters if they like each other or not, and I think it's Jeff who says something like he thinks them liking each other might have been a detriment to the band, if anything, and how he's heard that all of the great duos hate each other or don't like each other or don't get along or whatever. Which, you know, cool, is true for maybe some of the most highly regarded rock groups (the Davies brothers in The Kinks, Joey Ramone and Johnny Ramone, and even Lennon and McCartney by the time The Beatles ended), clearly not all of them, though, but you know, hyperbole and all that. The real kicker, though? The fucking irony in that assertion, that none of the great duos in music get along? You know what song is playing in the background while they're talking about this?

"The [motherfucking] Rain Song", that's what. Like...uh...Jeff...you hear that song that's playing right now? Actually, probably not, since it might not be playing in-universe at that moment, though in Almost Famous it's sometimes hard to tell the diagetic (sp?) from non-diagetic music. But...like..."The Rain Song" is playing. Your argument is invalid, Jeff. Do you have any idea. Any fucking idea, Jeff, how much the duo responsible for that song (both in the writing and, quite possibly, the subject matter itself) don't hate each other? Like, pretty much the polar opposite of hate each other? Like, whether or not you believe that Page and Plant ever touched each other's no-no bits, what's not really up for debate is that those two men love each other like woah, whatever the nature of that love may be, doesn't matter, they are, for all intents and purposes, fucking married, they've both said so themselves. Yes, even James Patrick "No-Homo" Page.

I think Cameron Crowe definitely did that on purpose, and I appreciate the irony in the juxtaposition between the dialogue and the background music, is I guess what I'm saying. Listen, he was given special permission from the guys themselves to use a handful of Led Zeppelin's songs in his movie, he wasn't just going to slap them on any old scene all willy-nilly.