Here’s some potentially happy news: none other than Cameron Crowe is planning a return to features with him potentially signing on to direct a Joni Mitchell biopic. The scoop comes via Jeff Sneider at Above the Line. Crowe hasn’t directed in many years after suffering a huge flop with Aloha, the movie that infamously cast Emma Stone as (part) Asian. He went on to make Showtime’s underrated series Roadies, but it only lasted one season. A Joni Mitchell biopic would be an ideal movie for Crowe, bringing him back to the seventies music milieu of Almost Famous.
It helps that Crowe is long-time friends with Mitchell, going back to Crowe’s famous days as a boy reporter for Rolling Stone. Crowe has interviewed her many times (here’s a recent one commemorating the anniversary of her album Blue) and is frequently seen at her side when she makes infrequent public appearances. Clearly, she trusts him to tell her story, and given his breadth of knowledge of both her music and the era, it sounds like the ideal mix.
The article in Above the Line notes that the movie is not expected to be a traditional biopic but will be a feature, as Crowe has stayed active in the documentary field. He produced an excellent David Crosby documentary which came out shortly before the musician died, called David Crosby: Remember My Name.
While Crowe took a lot of heat for Aloha, it may be time for people to move on. While it was a pricy flop, it’s a pretty harmless little movie. While Crowe has made his share of misfires (I didn’t care for We Bought a Zoo, and Elizabethtown was pretty terrible), he’s also made more than his share of stone-cold classics, including Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous (my choice for one of the greatest films ever made) and Vanilla Sky. Putting Crowe together with Joni Mitchell sounds like a dream pairing. Hopefully, this is the movie that gives Crowe back the credibility he deserves because, for a long time, he was considered one of the greatest directors in the business.