The Philosophy of Cameron Crowe

I am a huge sucker for any Cameron Crowe movie.  The feel good warm fuzzies that fill my body in one of his movies gets me every time.  I’ll never forget the first time that I saw John Cusack lift that boombox above his head in Say Anything or when Kate Hudson and the rest of the cast of Almost Famous sing “Tiny Dancer” on the bus and I bawl when Susan Sarandon dances to Moon River at her husband’s funeral in Elizabethtown.  Seriously, every time, I cry at that moment and I have no clue why but my body fills with emotion and it just comes out.  It will never be as bad as the first time though.  I was sitting in the theatre at the Grove in Los Angeles with my friend Christina and we had to sit there after the movie was over for me to pull myself together.  Now that I have shared a bit too much, let us move on.

Cameron Crowe’s new movie that will be coming out this holiday season with Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, and Thomas Haden Church is We Bought A Zoo. The reason that I bring it up and share my cronic crying problem with you is because of a quote in the trailer.  In this preview to the movie, Matt Damon’s character says. “All you need is twenty seconds of insane courage and I promise you, something great will come of it.” Now sit with that for a moment.

I know it can easily be pushed as Hollywood media, sell a movie and placate our feelings hoopla but ignore that feeling of vulnerability and move past it for a moment.  In our society, movies are really one of the number one ways we spend our free time.  We look at box office sales constantly and are constantly hitting red box, adding to our Netflix queue or finding a way to download the latest must see film. Within these films comes the language and the language is written by people from their point of view.  This writing is their art and how they want to influence our society; It is their philosophy. 

So, by stating that one modern way that philosophy is expressed is through the writing in movies and television, we can look at this line as a line of literature and not a spoken word in a movie.  All you need is twenty seconds of insane courage and I promise you, something great will come of it. Take another moment to sit in what that means.  Maybe even count to twenty and think about what could happen in those twenty long seconds with some insane courage. Maybe an idea and the frame work for how that idea gets created and the inspiration that motivates others to help with that dream.  That can all happen in twenty seconds.  Possibly, it could be twenty seconds of outrage when you stand up for something that you absolutely know is true and that twenty seconds of standing up forces other people to see what you are saying.

I am not sure that I have had twenty seconds of insane courage but if I had, it would have been the moment I decided to move to Las Vegas during the winter of 2000.  It was before my twenty first birthday and in a moment of outrage, depression and hope, I decided that after I came back from Cuba, I was moving to Las Vegas.  My life has been chaotically perfect ever since that moment.

I would like to leave this blog entry with a bit more of literature from cinema.  This quote is from Anna and the King and says what many great heartfelt movies have also explained. It is also a great follow up to why such a small moment of insane courage can be so monumental.

 “It is always surprising how small a part of life is taken up by meaningful moments.  Most often they’re over before they start even though they cast a light on the future and make the person who originated them unforgettable.”

For more movie quotes check out Reel Life Wisdom