40in40 – Almost Famous

06May09

My Netflix rating: 4/5 stars, dinged for using “Tiny Dancer” as the song that temporarily reunites the group.

How old is she really?  And what IS her real name?  Does it even matter?  All you need to know is that when she beckons, you want her to call you again and again.  And you’ll end up doing things for her that you later won’t admit to doing.  And when you want to go home, she’ll let you know when you’re already there.

At first, you think that Penny Lane represents what life was all about – truth, music, and a reason to live.  She is the idol of all the rock stars and a muse to both the damaged and the clean alike.  Her debonair existence is accented so perfectly by those violet-colored lens.  And then… you realize… it’s all a mirage.  She’s not the answer you thought she was.  Even as she smiles and melts your heart, while you want so badly to believe that she’s it, you know she isn’t.  The shades give it away: she doesn’t experience the world the way you do.

But when you’re coming of age, what the fuck do you know?  In this movie, two lives collide at the junction that is Penny Lane.  One life is that of young William Miller finally growing into his own, the other is that of Russell Hammond who wants more than he’s got.  One wants a taste of the grown up success, the other wants to find something solid in a crazy world.  Both of them are longing for something real, but for some reason both of them are drawn to this dreamlike marvel.

Now check this, there’s a damn good reason why we all want her.  Penny Lane actually is what life is all about.  Looking beyond her beauty and her amazingly poignant one-liners, she is simply everything we want her to be.  Now, don’t give the studio too much credit; she’s not the perfect woman or anything.  Quite simply, Penny Lane is just a blank canvas.  It’s so perfect that she doesn’t have a name, because there’s really nothing to her.  She’s like Tyler Durden, the projection of everything we need to make our lives complete.  For the kid, she exemplifies lust and the classic rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.  For the jaded musician, she’s somebody to finally care about for real.  She’s both!  And she’s real, in effect.

Throughout the movie, we get a heavy dose of her in all aspects.  And by the end, the boy, the rock star, the audience, we all give ourselves completely to her.  When she’s sleeping with the other guy, we forgive her.  When she’s throwing up in the bathtub, we still adore her.  Even as we gamble her away for $50 and a case of Heineken, she’s still in our soul.  That’s because we know that she’s every bit a part of us.  The movie tries to humanize her, but it did too good of a job erecting her as an icon of truth, music, and a reason to live.  This is how one character described music (and by transitive property, Penny) at the beginning of the movie, “Music, you know… It lives in your car, or alone, listening to your headphones, you know, with the vast, scenic bridges and angelic choirs in your brain.”

Penny Lane has no age; we need her to live forever.  She’s always alone because we always need her to be with us.  (At the end of the movie, neither Russell or Williams end up with her.)  And even when you know her real name, you’re still gonna love her.  Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes there beneath the blue suburban skies…

“From here on out, I am only interested in what is real. Real people, real feelings, that’s it, that’s all I’m interested in.” –Russell Hammond

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Tags: almost famous, icon, life, music, penny lane