Almost Famous

I'm watching bits and pieces of Almost Famous, the semi auto-biography of direction, Cameron Crowe. Crowe was a teenager who wrote for Rolling Stone. I wonder what he thought when they picked Patrick Fugit to play himself.

One realizes that acting is, well, acting. It's not real. When you act, it's an idealization of real life, the emotions are bigger. Fugit, alas, can't really act. It doesn't kill the film, but you realize he doesn't have the chops to pull it off. I read somewhere that Crowe had to improvise.

Fugit has this wide-eyed look about him, and lacks the emotional maturity and range to pull of someone that is, by all accounts, a prodigy (a writing prodigy, to be sure).

Kate Hudson pretty much acts circles around him, though her role is to be some idealized female, so it's really important that she can act and it's less of a problem that Fugit looks mostly googly-eyed throughout.

That is all.