For Cameron Crowe, all roads lead back to San Diego.
On Thursday night at the Magnolia in El Cajon, Crowe took the stage before a packed house to celebrate his new memoir, *The Uncool*. Joined by actress Kate Hudson, he reflected on the moments that took him from a teenage rock journalist to an Oscar-winning filmmaker.
Hudson began by asking why Crowe chose this time to look back on his journey. Crowe spent much of the 1970s writing cover stories for *Rolling Stone*, while many of his peers were still in high school or college. From there, he moved into filmmaking with classics like *Fast Times at Ridgemont High*, *Say Anything*, *Singles*, *Jerry Maguire*, and finally 2000’s *Almost Famous*—a semi-autobiographical story about his almost mythical time touring with the Allman Brothers at age 16.
Two decades later, the movie was adapted into a musical, which premiered at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre in 2019. Returning to his hometown for the production helped crystallize Crowe’s thoughts about telling his life story in print.
“I used to live half a mile away across from the Old Globe Theatre,” Crowe told Hudson. “It was 2019, and we were doing a musical about the year 1973, almost across the street from where I lived at the time. Right next to that was the radio station KPRI, where I met legendary rock critic Lester Bangs. And I thought, you know what? I want to start writing about this feeling. Because it was a huge happy/sad feeling.”
He continued, “I started thinking about what makes your taste in music. Well, your experiences in life—and where you heard the songs that you fall in love with, and when they happened in your life. That’s what makes music so great: It’s a living diary of you.”
Crowe explained the difference between liking a song and truly embodying it: “It’s the difference between ‘I like this song,’ and the realization that ‘I AM this song.’ It made me have the feelings I had and make the choices I did. So I wanted to write a book that told the stories of what made me fall in love with music.”
The hourlong conversation between Crowe and Hudson was illuminating, insightful, thought-provoking, endearing—and both happy and sad. That emotional push-pull has always been central to Crowe’s work, both onscreen and in his writing.
Hudson, who was initially recruited for a smaller part in *Almost Famous* before taking on the co-starring role that earned her an Oscar nomination, helped Crowe reminisce about their experiences making the film. They recalled iconic scenes shot at the San Diego Sports Arena (now Pechanga Arena).
One of the most poignant moments of their discussion centered on the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who portrayed Lester Bangs brilliantly in *Almost Famous*. A brief talk about Joni Mitchell—who is the subject of an upcoming Crowe film—led to a discussion of a scene in *Almost Famous* featuring Mitchell’s song “River,” which elicited a deep emotional response from Hudson.
That scene became a beautiful filmmaking moment, but Crowe noted, “It didn’t always work that way for everybody.” He shared a humorous anecdote about trying to evoke a musical response from Hoffman during filming.
“He’s in San Diego doing his scenes, listening to Iggy Pop in the KPRI studio,” Crowe recalled. “I put on ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ in the middle of his take. I guess I didn’t know him well enough, because he said, ‘Cut!’ And I’m like, ‘I think the director is supposed to say “cut.”’ And he said, ‘What makes you think that the music you’re playing during my scene is better than what I have in my head?’ And I’m like, ‘NOTHING. You will not hear music from me again.’ He was right.”
Crowe is confident that Lester Bangs would have appreciated Hoffman’s portrayal. “I don’t know what Lester’s opinion would have been of me writing about him, honoring him, and feeling so much mentorship from him,” Crowe said. “But I do know that he would have LOVED Philip Seymour Hoffman. Those two? A house afire. They would’ve left and maybe never come back.”
Earlier in the evening, Crowe himself reminisced about his youth in San Diego—the homes where he lived with his parents in Mission Valley and downtown. He recalled writing memorable articles about legends like Kris Kristofferson, whom he interviewed at El Torito, and Jim Croce, whom he spoke with while “driving an endless circle” around Fiesta Island, pulling over at spots to write.
Crowe then read a 20-minute excerpt from *The Uncool*, detailing his 1973 tour experiences with the Allman Brothers—a series of events so extraordinary they begged to be made into a movie. And, a quarter-century later, he did just that.
He praised Hudson for bringing such passion to her role as Penny Lane in *Almost Famous*. “Penny Lane is the spirit of all that we love about music, and that’s what you brought to the story,” he told her.
In the final 20 minutes, Crowe and Hudson opened the floor to audience questions. One attendee asked the quintessential San Diego question: “KPRI or KGB?”—referring to two iconic local radio stations that have shaped the city’s cultural history.
Crowe hedged his bets: “I’m gonna cheat and say KGB in the day and KPRI at night,” he said, smiling warmly at the theater full of familiar faces from his old hometown. “We are definitely in San Diego right now.”
https://timesofsandiego.com/arts/2025/11/14/cameron-crowe-filmmaker-hometown-book-memoir/
