A Drive Through Kentucky Inspires Cameron Crowe, ‘Elizabethtown’

Travel Blog  •  Michael Yessis  •  09.26.05 | 12:28 AM ET

The promotional onslaught for Cameron Crowe’s new movie, Elizabethtown, is underway. I hadn’t been paying much attention to any of it—I’m a fan of all his movies and I already plan to see “Elizabethtown” no matter what—so I didn’t realize it was a road movie of sorts until I saw this morning’s Los Angeles Times, which features a self-promotional but still terrific piece by Crowe himself about how he selects the music for his films. 

Here’s Crowe on the genesis of “Elizabethtown”:

I had been listening a lot to Ryan Adams, and Patty Griffin’s great album “1000 Kisses,” and was traveling with my wife, Nancy Wilson, and her band, Heart, on a tour in 2002. One morning I woke up on the tour bus to see those electric-blue landscapes of Kentucky, my father’s home state, and felt a wanderlust. I hadn’t been back since his funeral, years earlier, but suddenly I wanted off the bus. Soon I was, lost in Kentucky, driving in a rental car and listening to music I’d brought on CD mixes. I wasn’t looking for creative inspiration, and of course, that’s exactly when it arrived.

The entire story of “Elizabethtown” arrived quickly over the next couple of days, a tale of love and loss and the discovery of family roots in the aftermath of a very black turn of events in the life of a young shoe designer (Orlando Bloom). It was a story that would start with an ending, and end with a beginning and, I hoped, give a sense of what it was to be truly alive. I had been working on a different screenplay idea. Now, I was veering wildly down the Kentucky corridors and byways, making notes as I drove, feeling that rare inspiration.

The songs that Crowe listened to as the movie formed in his head ended up in the soundtrack, and they even play critical roles in the plot. “The movie itself contains a road trip and an elaborate mix-map that Kirsten Dunst’s character makes for Orlando Bloom’s,” Crowe writes. “The map sends him on a trip across part of America, with her detailed instructions to visit specific places and listen to specific songs at specific times.” 

The movie opens in the U.S. October 14.

Tags: Music, News and Briefs


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