Filmmaker Cameron Crowe on grief, memory and music

[0:01] Welcome to All There Is. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, I'm glad you're here. [0:06] You're not alone. My guest is Cameron Crowe. He wrote and directed amazing movies like Say [0:12] Anything, Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky. He wrote the screenplay for Fast Times at Ridgemont High [0:18] and also wrote and directed Almost Famous. He got an Academy Award for the screenplay for that film, [0:23] which is based on his experiences as the youngest contributor ever for Rolling Stone magazine. [0:29] It's an amazing story. Cameron graduated high school at 15 and started writing for Rolling Stone, [0:35] interviewing rock legends like Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, The Who, and a lot of others. [0:42] He's now written a memoir about his childhood called The Uncool. It's a great read. And as soon [0:48] as I finished it, I knew I wanted to speak with him for this podcast. Cameron experienced loss early [0:53] on. He was just 10 when one of his two sisters, Kathy, died by suicide. She was 19. That's where [1:00] we began our conversation. When you were growing up after your sister Kathy's suicide, in your family, [1:08] was it talked about? Anderson, it was aggressively avoided. It was more than not talked about. It was [1:17] a hairpin turn whenever the subject got close. At one point, you did have a conversation with your [1:23] mom. You tried. I tried. I would try often. And sometimes I'd get like 30 or 40 seconds in [1:29] before the emergency brake got pulled by her throwing her hands up and saying, [1:35] I can't talk about this. I don't want to, don't make me talk about it. Don't make me talk about it. [1:40] And then you just feel like you're this wicked person for delving deeper. A lot of the stuff that's [1:45] been talked about in your amazing interviews, it's the things we bury and how they fester and how they [1:52] never go away. You think they're gone. You think you've outlived them and they're there. When you [1:59] open yourself up to all the questions, then you've got a shot at getting them answered. But what was [2:06] amazing is that Kathy and even my dad, who died at a pretty young age, 65, there were so many [2:15] conversations that we had never had. And what I found was, and I don't know if you found this to [2:21] be the case, but people leave clues behind, sometimes, often on purpose. They leave clues [2:28] behind the songs they loved, the books they loved, the photos they loved. Usually it's not a diary, [2:35] it's the little things. And so I found that I was collecting all these little crumbs that had been [2:42] left behind by Kathy and my dad. My dad left behind a box of slides. And he was in the Korean War, but I [2:49] never talked to him about where he was in the Korean War. And did he ever kill anybody? Or, you know, [2:55] we never talked about it, but he left these slides behind. And using the internet, I was able to like, [3:02] find out where these pictures of him at war were taken. The front line. He was on the front lines of the [3:09] Korean War. Which were very brutal. I mean, it was a very, very difficult fighting. Brutal. And I knew [3:15] him as a real estate man. But I met him as a soldier writing the book, which was amazing. And you said that [3:22] in writing the book, you found yourself in conversation with Kathy. I did. I had a really [3:27] wonderful conversation with Kathy because, again, if you dig, if you look for these crumbs, I found a piece [3:35] in a small local newspaper from Palm Springs, where she had been part of like a weekly book club. And [3:41] she came in with this book and said, this is the best book I've ever read. And was effusive about how [3:49] it spoke to her. So the book was called The Fairy Doll. And I couldn't go fast enough to find this book. [3:55] And I read the book and it was a thinly veiled account of her own feeling like she was not a part [4:02] of most of the lives of the people who judged her because she was bipolar and painfully so at a time [4:11] when people really didn't have room in their hearts or minds for that kind of situation. So she had found [4:17] a book where the salvation for that feeling of being left out and pushed away from crowds and [4:25] friendship was music. That was the theme of this book. There was a sound that delivered this young [4:31] girl who was ridiculed by all the people around her. There was a sound that gave her a transcendent [4:38] feeling. And I read this and I'm like, well, this fits exactly with the way Kathy was with me. Her [4:44] key to salvation was music. You write in the book about Kathy, you said there were periods when she [4:49] was just gone from us, even when she was sitting right there at the table. It was confusing and scary [4:53] for a kid. The house felt different, like something fragile had cracked and we were all tiptoeing around [4:58] it. When Kathy was institutionalized, it changed the energy of the house completely. There was a silence [5:02] that hadn't been there before. My parents were worried in a way that felt permanent. I didn't really [5:07] understand what was happening. I just knew something was broken and nobody could explain it in a way [5:11] that made sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. What was Kathy like? Kathy was a deep feeling romantic and so am I. [5:24] And so much of what I learned about her underlined the things that made me kind of who I am and the [5:34] choices that I made. And so that was an example of an older sister coming through the mists of time, [5:42] loss, grief, being expelled from huge parts of her life when she walked the earth, coming back to speak [5:51] so clearly and so eloquently to me about music. You write that somewhere around first grade, Kathy [5:59] came home and you said it with the words that changed everything. The kids are teasing me about [6:04] not being normal, she said. My parents' lives had become a quest for Kathy's diagnosis. Her emotions [6:10] could swing wildly from sweetness to sadness. What's wrong with Kathy, I asked. My parents, [6:15] who were probably as confused about her condition as I was, would struggle to explain it to me. [6:20] They used the phrase emotionally disturbed. It was a kind explanation for the doctors in Los Angeles [6:25] had also diagnosed as schizophrenic. I remember going through the hallways of these spotless hospitals [6:32] and doctors' buildings in LA. They were searching for a diagnosis on my sister. And I just remember [6:40] the drives home, Anderson. Everybody was so distraught. And there was nobody that kind of [6:47] bent down and said, look, I know what you're going through. Let's look to find some kind of comfort [6:56] for this young girl. I don't think they ever heard a kind voice like that. And a lot of it was the time [7:04] in place. There was a lot of shame involved. So much shame. And she left us without getting that [7:12] kind of a helping hand from a doctor or a program. She had attempted suicide once. She did. Once [7:20] before, you know, she tried to kill herself. You knew she had tried? Yes. There was a conversation [7:27] around the house that I kind of overheard, which was epic and scary to overhear for sure. I remember the [7:35] doctors were like, well, it can't be real. It wasn't a serious effort. Even as a kid, I remember thinking, [7:41] not a serious effort. That's a serious effort. But I just, I couldn't have imagined how comforting it was [7:50] to write the book and kind of have a little get together with the people I loved so much and wanted [7:57] to know better. And they were right there. I mean, even my mom used to say, when I leave [8:05] this plane of existence, I'll still be here. It's just a thin wall. And I'll just be on the other [8:11] side. Do you feel that? Do you feel she is? I do. I feel her voice. I definitely feel her many notes, [8:18] faxes, letters. She's still giving you notes? They're still arriving. I open a box and they're [8:26] just freshly there. There's like an existential or a magical way of thinking about it. And then [8:34] there's also a practical way. I toggle between all of them. The practical way is she really loved me [8:41] and she wanted to keep timely reminders coming my way about lessons she had learned or that the family [8:48] had learned. So it's both. I still feel her. I definitely feel her on, you know, just on the [8:55] other side whenever I'm open to it, for sure. Do you feel that? [8:59] I do. I feel that now with my dad. And it's an incredible feeling. And I talk to him now. [9:05] And I feel that with, I had a nanny who was like my mom to me and very important in my life. And I feel [9:10] her, especially when I'm like holding my kids. [9:13] Oh, wow. [9:14] I don't feel my brother and his death, which was by suicide. It's so even now difficult for me to [9:21] think about without, you know, this weird crack in my voice. And it makes me wonder if I ever really [9:27] knew who he was. And I asked the question about, did you know about Kathy's attempt? Because I had no [9:33] idea my brother was struggling in this way. And, and I wonder if he had attempted and survived how I [9:43] would have, how any of us would have dealt with that, if we would have been even able to deal with [9:48] and face that. [9:49] Did he confide in anybody? [9:51] He didn't. He didn't. [9:53] Wow. [9:53] I think there's more for me to learn there. And I'm just now like literally taking it on as a project. [9:59] And I think he may have to individual friends kind of shown up in their lives in odd times in the final [10:07] weeks, but nobody put pieces together. We thought he was talking to a therapist and that allowed me [10:12] certainly to not give it as much attention as I now obviously wish I had. But the way Kathy's life [10:20] ended, does it impact the way you think of her? [10:23] Well, it's an amazing question. It does. It does. There's a letter that she wrote [10:30] not too long before she killed herself that, that was a very eloquent and helpless cry for help. [10:39] And she didn't know what she didn't know, except she knew there was something there in a life that [10:48] wasn't happening for her. And one of those things was empathy from, from the world around her. And it [10:57] was so heartbreaking to see how helpless that she felt. I do think about her as, as so helpless at the [11:07] end. Was that a letter you found later? My sister Cindy shared it with me. It was a letter home. She [11:13] had tried living in another city and state with other parts of the family and Anderson had gone [11:20] really poorly. So she kind of came home with her hopes and dreams tail between her legs and didn't [11:30] stick around much long after that. So what I think about a lot is that in the time of need, [11:38] when you look to the world for empathy, how do you handle the fact that nobody's taking time to [11:44] show you any empathy? And I just wished I was older and was able to spot that in Kathy, but I wasn't. [11:53] And my memory for a long time was that she used to tousle my hair and mess my hair up and that [12:00] she really got a kick out of me. And I was grateful for that. And used to purr like a kitten [12:06] to you. Yeah, all true. And I loved her little cat's eye glasses. And I just thought, she's so [12:15] pretty, especially when she takes the glasses off. That was a big thing for me. I remembered thinking, [12:21] when I get a little older, I'm going to figure out a way to tell her how beautiful she looks without [12:26] the glasses. That was my dream of where our relationship was going to go. [12:30] It's interesting to say that I said this in my brother's eulogy. I imagined he and I would become [12:36] friends one day as adults, and they would kind of meet on the other sides of our childhood, [12:41] which I think we both felt like we needed to just get through. And I felt like we had a secret pact, [12:48] like we would be friends as adults. And then I, yeah, I think I imagined that. [12:58] Wow. The adult to adult thing is a little bit of a trap. Because you think down the line, [13:05] it's all going to be equal, we're going to be kicking back, we're going to talk about all this [13:10] stuff. And sometimes the time to do all that is right in the moment. This was one of the things that [13:18] I was thinking about knowing we were going to have this conversation, which is so valuable, [13:24] these conversations you've had with deeply soulful feeling people. What can I bring to the table [13:32] of grief and feeling these things and being able to talk about it? The one thing I kept coming back to [13:37] is don't waste the moments that arrive where you have that little voice that says, forget adult to [13:45] adult, you're here now, talk to them now, tell them you love them now. Because this is the moment where [13:52] the little voice inside is telling you to do it and do it now. That really became a thing. Like I wish [14:00] every time that little voice inside had said, this could be the last time you ever see this person, [14:05] tell them you love him. I mostly listened to it. But with my dad, the last time I talked to him, [14:11] I didn't listen to it. So, it was the one time I never told him I loved him in a million [14:18] conversations. And of course, it was the last time. So, say it. [14:23] When you talk about feeling, Kathy, now, is it a good feeling? It's not tainted? [14:30] Another great question. It's a beautiful, close feeling. Like I picked up a cue from her and got it [14:38] just the way she wanted me to get it. It's that sparkle between people when you made a great [14:44] connection. And I felt that before just as a little kid to an older sister. But it's the adult to adult [14:52] connection that I feel we finally got to make. Through music, through emotion, through being able [14:58] to write about it, just listening to you read some of the stuff right there, I go right back to the [15:04] searching. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to know her better. And she gave you the gift of music. [15:09] She introduced you to the magic of it. She did. She said that thing that nobody had said to me before [15:17] in her own deeply personal way, that when words fail you, ride music. It'll take you a long way. And [15:27] it has. It's taken me everywhere I've been able to go. Making movies is a musical experience most of [15:36] the time for me. And I can go back to music as a diary and as a souvenir for the way I felt in a [15:43] certain time. And music was what allowed her to introduce herself to me as an adult. And I go back to [15:51] what you and Patti Smith were talking about. The sacred wounds are not painful necessarily. The [15:58] sacred wounds can be treasures. And these sacred wounds I have for my sister and my dad and my mom [16:08] and friends beyond my family, it keeps the conversation alive with people that understood [16:16] you and vice versa. And I think you do that in these conversations, Anderson. You keep the [16:24] lines of communication open without emotional censorship. It's really important. [16:29] We're going to take a quick break. But before we do, I just want to play what Patti Smith said to me [16:35] about sacred wounds in an earlier podcast that Cameron just spoke about. [16:39] It's not a thing where time heals all wounds. It's just in time you learn to navigate it more, [16:46] because nothing really heals. They're sacred wounds. They're not going to heal. [16:50] They're sacred wounds. Yeah. You just learn to live with them. Don't look to be healed. [16:56] You have a sacred wound, take care of it. Don't let it get infected. [17:00] Welcome back to my conversation with Cameron Crowe. [17:07] Kathy died in your home. You were 10 years old. She was 19. You write, [17:13] they had removed her body from the house while I was asleep. It happened on a Wednesday night, [17:17] less than two weeks after her 19th birthday. My mom found her. We were now living in the house [17:23] where it happened. Yeah. I couldn't shake that feeling, the house where it happened. [17:30] I'm always surprised when people stay in a house where there was extreme sadness or even tragedy. [17:37] A lot of people do. I just feel like the spirits of things that happen in a house or a place or [17:42] even a city sometimes linger in such a powerful way. And I wouldn't want it any other way. [17:50] I think it's important that things don't just disappear. Feeling songs, a legendary event, [17:58] falling in love. I would go back to places where important things happened. Even the San Diego [18:05] sports arena. That's a scene in Almost Famous that's my favorite scene in the movie. [18:09] Kate Hudson as Penny Lane. This amazing concert is over and she's in the full throes of her love [18:20] affair with Billy Crudup's character. But the band is gone. Everybody's gone. And she's dancing [18:26] in the trash of the concert hall where this great event has happened. I feel like so much of my life [18:34] I've done that. I've gone back and danced among the trash of the empty concert hall because it's just [18:42] it's a place where deep feeling resides. The people that we love and care so much about who made such [18:48] an impression on us are still there. And if we open up to them, they're so often there to meet us at [18:56] that crossroads. [18:57] She had taken you to a record store prior to her death. [19:03] We lived in the desert. We lived in Indio. And Indio was a windswept town where nothing [19:10] happened except the date festival once a year. [19:14] Like dates. [19:15] Like dates. [19:15] Like, like... [19:17] Which, as you point out in the book, are the color of cockroaches. [19:19] The color of cockroaches. Anderson, thank you for picking that out. You tend to pick out my favorite [19:25] lines in this book. [19:26] Yes. [19:26] But yes, they had a festival for dates. And the way you got records was to go to this place called [19:32] Custom Classics that was both a music store and also records if you ordered them. So she took me to [19:40] my first record store and showed me that it was a portal to so much and so much feeling. [19:46] She took you because you wanted to impress a girl and she suggested buying some music for this girl [19:52] and you bought Silence is Golden. [19:54] The tremolos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Silence is Golden. But when I did give the record, [20:00] the girl was so impressed she called over her boyfriend who would pat me on the head and thank [20:08] me for being their little mascot and invited me to come along on the date that I'd suggest. [20:12] Wow. [20:14] But I can tell you this is the power of music. Whenever I hear that tremolos record, I ache, baby. [20:22] Let's play a little bit of that. [21:03] It's so painful. [21:05] Do you find it painful? [21:08] I find it beautiful and painful. It's happy, sad. It's my favorite kind of music. It aches, [21:15] but the fact that there's somebody that aches like you makes you feel like you're not alone, [21:19] which makes it joyful. So you get both. It's the happy, sad music. She had another favorite song [21:25] called Rhythm of the Rain by the Cascades. And it was similarly achy and beautiful. Listen to the [21:35] rhythm of the falling rain. And this was Kathy. This was her shining a flashlight towards a place that [21:42] really resonated with me. And I wonder if she created it or if it was always there. That's a [21:48] question I don't know the answer to. I at times wish my brother had left some sort of a note and [21:54] he didn't. And Kathy didn't leave a message for you either, but something happened after she died [22:01] that you felt was like a message from her. The deeply poetic thing was after she died, [22:07] we still were getting the records that she'd ordered. And they were diaries really of her [22:13] and her personality and her life. They were Beach Boys records. They were beautiful pop that some [22:20] people might have discarded as fluff, but it wasn't to her. And it isn't to me. [22:26] It was California Girl and Don't Worry Baby. I just want to play Don't Worry Baby. [23:03] What a message for her to leave you with. [23:05] I know. I know. It'll stay with me always. And just listening to that, it never ceases to be [23:11] powerful and take me to that place where you're just kind of up above seeing the beautiful kind of [23:21] landscape of your life. I go to that place with that record. Forgive me for being a rock [23:26] journalist here for a second. Brian Wilson was not quote unquote cool when he made that record. It was [23:33] thought to be like disposable pop. And he just religiously stayed with making these records about [23:42] feeling and ache and the quick passing of a joyful moment that we hold on to. A lot of the stuff we've [23:51] been talking about. He would put it in a two-minute pop song and wasn't cool for many years. And look at [23:59] what's happened. Pet Sounds is considered to be maybe the greatest record ever made, [24:05] along with Joni Mitchell Blue. And if you're feeling alone and you're feeling some of that stuff, [24:10] that music will meet you wherever you choose to meet it. And it found Kathy and Kathy passed it to me [24:18] and I've passed it to many others and put it in movies too. And you write in the book, [24:23] I wondered why Kathy hadn't left me a message of some kind, not even a suicide note. And then I [24:28] remembered the record she'd ordered. My California girl sister was telling me not to worry, baby. [24:33] Yeah. And I think that was exactly right. She wanted to continue giving me that message. [24:44] And it kept coming to me too, again and again and again, that to be a warrior for optimism [24:52] in your life means that you have to kind of travel through many a buzzsaw. And so many of the lessons [25:02] from grieving her came in the form of like, go get through it, even though she was unable to. [25:10] With the pain is joy. And the ache there is that she gave up on the joy for one day. [25:17] And I feel this a lot about people that have committed suicide, that they might have been [25:26] one day away because moods are so up and down. There's a good chance that terrible day might be [25:34] followed by a day where you laugh at yourself for how seriously you took it all the day before. [25:40] And I wish I'd been old enough to have that conversation with Kathy, but time was not Kathy's [25:46] friend. Had she been born later, there would have been a diagnosis. There would have been [25:52] a path for her. But if you subscribe to that idea, there's a paper thin wall between you and the person [26:01] that you lost. Our relationship has never been better. [26:05] You still have a relationship with her, you feel? [26:07] I really feel it. I really feel it. And I feel like my mom had to exit the stage for it to truly [26:16] happen. I wish I'd been able to talk to my mom about it, but I don't think that ever was going [26:23] to happen. That was how much that loss remained unmet with her. [26:31] That idea that you can still have a relationship with someone who's died was revolutionary to me, [26:35] and I learned it from a documentary filmmaker named Kristen Johnson, who made a film about her dad who [26:40] recently died from Alzheimer's. She brought up that idea, and I literally did not understand the [26:46] words she was talking about. That's how deeply buried I was. But I now understand that, and I [26:53] have a deeper relationship with my dad now than I did before, and I know him in ways I never did before. [26:59] No doubt. The other thing is, when you become the age of the parent, ooh, you've lost. [27:06] Like, when I became the age of my dad when he died, oh, did the gates open to some other stuff? [27:15] Because it's a really basic feeling when you're a kid. It's like you pass into a whole other kingdom [27:21] where you're anointed as an adult, and you lose the feelings that cripple you as a kid. You become, [27:27] ah, an adult. Then you get to be the age of your parent, and you're like, oh, man. [27:36] There's no more answers than there used to be. There's just different questions. [27:40] This is amazing. My dad was just a guy trying to make it. [27:44] Just struggling along like everybody else. [27:47] And trying to appear like he had more answers than he did to the kid who was me. [27:52] So then that secret gets passed along, that there's no secret. [27:56] There is no Oz behind the curtain. [27:59] There is no Oz. [28:00] And there's no champagne in the champagne room, and no Oz behind the curtain. [28:03] But there is your dad going, welcome, brother. [28:08] I love that. [28:12] That's great. That is great. [28:15] You're no longer the child, you're a brother. [28:18] Yeah. [28:18] It's a little of what happened. But viva all of it, because the happy, sad of life, it's riveting. [28:26] An interview with Megan Fowley, whose spouse, Andrea Gibson, was a spoken word poet who recently died. [28:31] And they wrote a poem from the afterlife. [28:33] And it talks about death is only a portal to here. [28:36] I'm more present now than I've ever been before. [28:39] And I'm so close to you. [28:40] And Megan uses the term allegedly when talking about Andrea's death. [28:44] Oh, that's great. [28:44] And Megan's point is, we have no idea what happens when somebody dies. [28:48] So allegedly, they're dead. [28:49] But they could be right here. [28:51] Like, as you said, it could be a veil right here. [28:53] Alleged? [28:54] They're all around. [28:55] It's a legend. [28:55] It's a legend. [28:57] Oh, that's great. [28:58] That's just great. [28:59] After Kathy died, you say her turquoise chair, the one where Kathy used to sit, was still in the kitchen table. [29:05] Her room had been cleaned out. [29:06] Some of her clothes had been given away. [29:08] Removing that turquoise chair from the kitchen felt like injustice. [29:11] And so it remained there. [29:13] The empty chair, nobody wanted to be the one to remove it. [29:17] How long did it stay there? [29:19] It stayed there for about a year. [29:21] And then it went to the garage. [29:22] And I used to go sit in it in the garage. [29:26] But the empty chair was her. [29:28] So you guys couldn't talk about her, but the chair remained. [29:31] And nobody talked about the chair. [29:32] That's why there's an empty chair at the table in Almost Famous. [29:36] It's kind of a little message to those of us who were at the table that somebody can have exited but still be there so clearly and passionately still there in your life. [29:51] Yeah, the empty chair was her, is her still. [29:54] But I feel like I filled it and did the work to find all the clues she left behind. [30:01] So the chair is not as empty to me now. [30:04] And that's really the first time I've realized it is just sitting here talking about it right now. [30:10] That the fact that you and I can even talk about Kathy, she is a real person to us both. [30:15] For this glorious reason that you read the book, Anderson, she lives, and we get to talk about her. [30:25] And her message resonates through the decades. [30:28] It's amazing. [30:29] So that chair is no longer empty for me. [30:32] Thank you. [30:32] One of the other things that you wrote, which really hit me, you're talking about Kathy. [30:37] You said, [30:37] Yeah, she was a kid. [31:01] She was a teenager. [31:03] That realization that your vantage point has been the 10-year-old child you were when she died. [31:09] I mean, God, it resonates so much. [31:13] It's taken a long time for me to not view everything through the eyes of the 10-year-old boy that I was frozen in time. [31:21] Same here. Same here. [31:24] There's a comfort in that, in a way, to get out of that frozen moment and try and live in the feeling. [31:30] And to see it through the eyes of an adult, to hold the grief in the hands of an adult rather than the hands of a 10-year-old boy. [31:37] It's powerful and it's necessary. [31:41] And to take that jump, I think, is heroic for both of you. [31:49] It's listening to them and taking their hand across time. [31:53] And, I mean, that's a gift. [31:56] And a lot of people don't make it to that stage of having the adult-to-adult feeling about somebody you've lost and felt so much for. [32:08] But to do it is huge. [32:12] And they're there waiting for us, I'm sure of it. [32:15] You believe that? [32:16] I know it. [32:18] I believe that, too. [32:19] I don't want to give your mom short shrift here because your mom is such a life force that I'm obsessed with. [32:27] And she, you, my friend. [32:30] When I saw you in New York and we were talking about our moms, boy, could I feel her? [32:36] I have started to quote your mom in my own life. [32:39] Doubt is the devil. [32:40] This one still blows my mind. [32:42] Mind is in every cell of the body. [32:44] What you say will make it so. [32:47] I mean, that's sort of life-changing for me. [32:51] Opportunity favors the prepared mind. [32:54] Anderson, you don't know. [32:55] Hearing these words come out of your mouth, she's going to appear in about 20 seconds. [32:59] I want her in my life. [33:00] It's too much for her to leave behind. [33:01] I want her in my life. [33:03] She is in your life. [33:06] Oh, and you dropped another one in an interview. [33:09] Wait, I wrote it down because I was like, there's another one. [33:11] It was in a note you found. [33:14] My notes are so disorganized. [33:16] Oh, no, no, no, sorry. [33:17] You never know good luck or bad. [33:20] You're amazing. [33:21] I was just going to say that one. [33:24] You never know good luck or bad is such a winner. [33:28] And what you think is bad luck now turns out two months from now or 20 years from now [33:34] to be the best decision you ever made, the best thing that ever happened. [33:38] It's like one door closes, another door opens. [33:40] I love that you never know good luck or bad landed in your life. [33:43] This is their celebration up in heaven. [33:45] But given the force that she was and is, she died in 2019. [33:49] My mom died in 2019 as well. [33:52] How was her death for you? [33:54] I wasn't prepared for it, even though she had left behind files, books, [33:58] notebooks, thick notebooks, thinner notebooks, notebooks in every city where we were. [34:03] If I die here, here's what you do. [34:06] The guy that ran the mortuary looked at my mom's materials and he said, [34:11] I've never met anyone or just missed meeting anyone who was this prepared. [34:16] She was. [34:17] And still, I wasn't prepared for it. [34:20] But there was a great sense of humor that she leaves behind in all of it because [34:26] it's just hilarious how detailed she was. [34:29] I miss her. [34:30] She knew I was going to miss her. [34:32] But as she said, you're going to miss me a lot. [34:34] I want to make it easier for you. [34:36] I want to make you laugh a little. [34:37] And she did. [34:38] She makes me laugh now hearing you quote her. [34:42] I could talk to you for hours, but I know you got to go. [34:45] I so admire you. [34:46] And I so love this book. [34:47] It's The Uncool, a memoir. [34:50] Obviously, you are like the coolest person on the planet. [34:52] But the fact that you feel uncool just speaks to your good character. [34:57] I have a live grief show on Thursday nights, [34:59] and people leave the names of their loved one for me to say out loud. [35:02] And I like this idea that everybody listening to the podcast will say [35:06] the names of these people whose names are now often not spoken. [35:09] So if you just end by saying your dad's name and your mom's name [35:13] and your sister's name. [35:14] James Albert Crowe, Alice Marie Crowe, Kathleen Janice Crowe. [35:21] Cameron Crowe, thank you so much. [35:22] Thank you, Anderson. [35:23] Thank you. [35:25] Cameron Crowe's memoir, The Uncool, is out now. [35:28] And if you haven't watched Almost Famous, it's worth seeing, [35:31] as are, frankly, all of his films. [35:33] Thursday, May 7th, I hope you join me at 9.15 p.m. for my streaming show, [35:37] All There Is Live. [35:38] You can watch it on our grief community page, [35:40] cnn.com slash allthereis. [35:43] It streams live there for free. [35:45] It'll also be free to stream on our community page for a week. [35:48] All the older episodes of the show are available on demand for CNN subscribers. [35:53] On the next episode of All There Is, we'll have a conversation with Today Show co-host [35:57] Chanel Jones, whose husband, Uche, died last May. [36:00] Here's some of what we talked about. [36:02] I feel like I have been able to get a special key, and the key comes at a cost. [36:10] And when you have this grief key, it unlocks the door to a club that you're in, [36:17] and that I'm in, and others are in. [36:20] And it allows us to be in this special matrix of, I think, understanding and clarity, [36:25] or at least the recognition that we're in a search for it. [36:27] And it's just really a beautiful way to live life because it's almost like [36:31] you have another sense that's built into it. [36:35] That's on the next episode of All There Is. [36:37] If there's something you've learned in your grief that you think would be helpful for others, [36:41] leave us a voicemail at 404-827-1805. [36:44] Thanks for listening.