Interview (Written): Cameron Crowe

On the 20th anniversary of his Oscar winning movie Jerry Maguire.

Mike Fleming, Jr. of Deadline does a deep dive into the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire with its writer and director Cameron Crowe. This is one of the best interviews I’ve read in a long while, well worth your time. Here are some excerpts in which Crowe talks about courting famed writer-director Billy Wilder for a specific role in the movie:

DEADLINE: The conscience of the movie is Jerry’s mentor, Dicky Fox, who delivers sporadic moral lessons. Why were you so fixated on getting Billy Wilder to play him?
CROWE: I fell in love with the movie The Apartment while we were developing Jerry Maguire. Two of the movies that we talked about a lot were The Apartment and Best Years of Our Lives, just because of the warmth between all the characters in American stories told from the heart. The Apartment had these great characters, and we loved Fran Kubelik, played by Shirley MacLaine, with whom Jim Brooks has his own wonderful history. We would talk about Billy Wilder, and William Wyler, but we’d always come back to Billy. I feasted on all his movies, and I knew he worked in an office in Beverly Hills. I got this first-edition poster of The Apartment, and I wanted to get it signed. Bob Bookman, my agent at CAA at the time said, I know Billy. I’ll call and get you a meeting with Billy, get him to sign your poster.

DEADLINE: You were after more than a signature, though.
CROWE: I started thinking, Billy Wilder could be so wonderful doing that Dicky Fox character. I built up a whole mythology about how it might work. The appointment is set. I knock on his office door in Beverly Hills. No Billy. An hour goes by. No Billy. Hour and a half, no Billy. Finally I’m getting ready to leave, and I see him walking across the street. He has no idea about a meeting with me, does not recall anything with CAA. He says, why is CAA sending me a poster and not a job? Who is this poster for? I said it’s for me. I’m a director. I realize he thought I was a messenger. So he says, come on in, I’ll sign your poster, and he starts telling these magical stories. And then I tell him about this movie I wanted him to act in.

DEADLINE: How did he respond?
CROWE: He said, ‘I’m not an actor.’ In retrospect, I think he was just trying to get rid of me. But I got him cigars and brought them as a gift and I got so excited that he might be in the movie that I told Tom Cruise and Bonnie Hunt: Dicky Fox is going to be played by Billy Wilder! So now the rehearsals are happening, and it was a rainy day, and some Dicky Fox stuff came up. They’re going, ‘well, where’s Billy Wilder?’ I said, let me call him. He picks up his phone. Doesn’t really remember me, and really doesn’t remember saying he would be in the movie. He says, ‘I am sorry, but I have to piss ice water on you right now and say I am not an actor. Goodbye.’ And he hangs up. I look over at Tom Cruise, and tell him what just happened. Cruise says, let’s go talk him into it. We drive to Billy Wilder’s office. Billy is there, and he lights up when he sees that it’s Tom Cruise. He invites us in. He tells Tom these stories about Cary Grant, and Sunset Boulevard. He’s just magnificent. And I realize he is in full Hollywood director, getting-ready-to-make-another-picture-as-soon-as-possible mode, and he’s got Tom Cruise in his office. And I’m virtually invisible at this point, as that romance is happening. So I say, ‘let’s talk about this part,’ and Tom says, ‘you got to play this.’ Billy Wilder says, no, and he continues to say no in so many different ways. It occurs to me, sitting there, that I don’t think Tom Cruise has heard the word ‘no’ this often, in a really long time.

DEADLINE: How does Cruise respond?
CROWE: This is just making Tom dig in more. Finally we’re saying, come on, Billy, do it. He goes, tell me the story of the movie. They both look at me, and I start telling the story of Jerry Maguire. I could see Wilder is not really buying it, and I realize something as I’m doing this: he’s now going to steal Tom Cruise from me and destroy Jerry Maguire in one move; he was being crafty here. Maybe he wasn’t, but I could see Billy was firing on all his cylinders. So he interrupts, and Billy Wilder says, ‘why would we feel sympathy for such a character as this sports agent?’ And that was a little bit of a stumper because at that point, I’d flapped my wings trying to explain it, that we built in issues that made you care for him, that the kid at the beginning [the son of the hockey player with the concussion] had said fuck you, and the ensuing crisis showed there was a heart inside Jerry Maguire. Billy says, ‘I’m still worried that Jack Lemmon is not sympathetic enough in The Apartment. You know, I wanted to give him a limp. You have to make sure these characters are relate-able. Anyway, he said no, and then he looks at me and says, ‘good to meet you.’ And he leans in to Tom and goes, ‘especially good to meet you.’ He did say, you must hire an actor. The irony is we ended up casting Jared Jussim, who the head of business affairs at Tri-Star.

DEADLINE: Did Wilder see the movie?
CROWE: I did not hear from Billy Wilder again until right after the movie came out. He called me, and he said, ‘I’ve seen your picture. I like it very much. Who’s this guy who took my part?’ Well, he’s not an actor, I said. Billy said he was good and that if I wanted to come over and interview him for a column, he was available. Of course, I had no column, but I went right over. That began these meetings with Billy Wilder that became the book Conversations with Wilder.

So much goodness in this interview. Deep insights into the creative process of James L. Brooks. How Tom Cruise comes off like a really decent human being as well as a true talent as an actor. Again, well worth your time.

For the rest of the interview, go here. A couple of clips from Jerry Maguire to remind us how great the movie is:

Who else loves Jerry Maguire?

For the rest of the interview, go here.

Twitter: @deadlinemike, @cameroncrowe.