With starring roles in Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe's new movie about the '70s music scene, these kids are ready to rock.

Before Jerry Maguire had us at "hello," before Llyod Dobler lifted his boom box like a prizefighter and got the girl, even before Jeff Spicoli slouched into Ridgemont High and defined cool for an entire generation, their creator, Cameron Crowe, was just a '70s teenager who loved rock & roll. Unlike the average 15-year-old, however, Crowe was touring the country with bands like Led Zeppelin and Cream as a writer for Rolling Stone, living out every adolescent music lover's fantasy while dutifully calling home to mom. With his latest film, Almost Famous, the director more than repays the karmic favor by delivering a pitch-perfect rock movie based in his experiences.
Set in 1973, Almost Famous tells the story of the fictional band Stillwater, four guys on the verge of a breakthrough and a possible breakdown, and one terminally uncool 15-year-old, William Miller, who manages to talk his way into an assignment covering their ascendancy for the rock bible. "It said in the script synopsis that William was 'quirky,'" explains Patrick Fugit, the 17-year-old unknown from Salt Lake City who plays Crowe's alter ego in the film, "so my dad gave me this quirky shirt with the ingredients of drink mixes on it, and I wore that to the audition." The shirt may have helped, but it's Fugit's ability to hold his own with such formidable talents as Frances McDormand (a comic tour de force as William's maniacally overprotective mother) and Billy Crudup (giving great rock star as Stillwater's lead guitarist) that makes him such a discovery. Fugit admits that he was pretty much "rock illiterate" before he got the part. "I actually thought that Led Zeppelin was one guy," he says sheepishly.
In the movie, it's William's sister, Anita, played by 20-year-old Zooey Deschanel, who turns him on to music. With her wide, solemn eyes and deadpan delivery, Anita is a kind of adolescent seer. The note she leaves for William when she runs away from home to become a stewardess - "Listen to the album [the Who's Tommy] with a candle burning and you will see your entire future" - casts an unbreakable spell over the boy and sets Crowe's rock & roll fairy tale in motion. Deschanel's part may be small, but it's also pivotal; her flight from and return to the family nest essentially frame the film. "Cameron said he wanted the relationship between me and Frances to be a mini Terms of Endearment," she says with a laugh. "It was hard at times to feel that you're doing the story justice.... I mean, this is basically his mom and his sister."
Indeed, for both Deschanel (who's landed a role in Barry Sonnenfeld's new project, Big Trouble) and Fugit, the themes of the film have definite personal resonance. After their idyllic experience working with Crowe - "You know tough love? Well, Cameron is the opposite of that," effuses Deschanel - both are at critical career turning points. "My mom says that for her, watching scenes from the movie is like watching an amazing memory," says Fugit, "and that's what it's like for me, too."