supporting roles still dimensional?”
And it’s fucking hard, because you
have limited real estate. You do it
magnificently in that movie.
Crowe: I have a question for you. When
the biggest star in your movie is doing
a scene with a smaller character, and they
say, “Gotta go home early — can you get
so-and-so to do my off-camera [lines]?”
What do you do?
Levy: I am happy to tell you I’ve never
had an actor like that. Because even
the most challenging actors I’ve worked
with — those who I won’t name —
their greatest redemptive quality is
that they have respect and love for
their fellow actors.
Crowe: Tom being so involved in the
other characters and knowing the script
so well just empowered all of them to be
fearless. Jay Mohr, people like that, even
Renée. She’d never done a movie that had
[production] trucks, for example. She
would sit after everybody was breaking
down the stuff and go, “I can’t believe
I’m here.” He’d be, like, “You belong
here, this is how it works.” Winona
[Ryder] — obviously somebody you know
well [she stars in the Levy-executive
produced Stranger Things] — she was in
my mind when I was writing it. I thought,
“Wouldn’t it be great to have Winona
play a blue-collar character, a young
mother?” As it got closer, and it became
Tom for sure, my worry was, did they
look too much like brother and sister?
And it became this quest to get them
together, and it was elusive. We couldn’t
get them together. So it opened up to a
few other actresses, and Renée was the
unknown X-factor of all of them.
Levy: Did it come down to chemistry
reads with Tom?
Crowe: Yes, it did. It came down to
a screen test. And it’s so funny, this is
something I wanted to ask you about.
Doesn’t it blow your mind sometimes
to think how many different versions of
every movie made there are out in the
world? There’s not just this version of
Jerry Maguire. I saw Jerry Maguire with
Gwyneth Paltrow and Tom Cruise, and
you know what? Pretty damn good. But
in the end, Renée took your breath away,
and took his breath away.
Levy: That is as important as taking
the audience’s breath away. You need
to implicitly feel that she would take
Jerry’s breath away. These actors are
our audience surrogates, our on-ramp
to the experience on screen. The scene
where Jerry is giving out gifts in the
kitchen and he hugs her son, that’s
a lovely moment. But it’s Renée looking
at it that makes it land.
Crowe: That’s it, and we felt it in the
moment: that push-in on Renée looking
at her son, giving unschooled love to
a strange date, and playing [Bruce
Springsteen’s] ‘Secret Garden’ while
we’re shooting...
Levy: How much of the music was
curated? Because ‘Secret Garden’ in
that sequence is perfection, and I read
that you play music on set while you’re
filming to convey a note without giving it
in words. I’ve done it my whole career
and I find it works especially well with
kid actors, with whom I’ve worked
a lot, and super-cerebral actors, because
you need to bypass their rational process
to get to something a little more meaty
and guttural. So is this true? Do you play
music on set?
Crowe: Totally true. Pretty much every
scene. There was one actor that wasn’t
down with it: Philip Seymour Hoffman
[on Almost Famous]. He had his own
headset, and thank you, because he
did have better shit in his headphones.
He had Lester Bangs talking. But that
was his process.
Levy: When did you start
that approach?
Crowe: Say Anything... We played
‘Within Your Reach’ by The
Replacements while Joan Cusack was
saying goodbye to John and it was just,
like, “Wow.” And we’ve done it ever
since. The minute after Cruise said,
“I’m in, I’m doing this movie,” we went
to my office, I played ‘Magic Bus’ by
The Who, and he read the narration.
Levy: Was the movie always going to
open with that?
Crowe: After he did it, it was like,
“Fuck, yes!”
Levy: So you had a playlist before you
ever started shooting?
Crowe: Yeah, and on Jerry Maguire,
probably, like, 90 per cent of the songs
were in my head. A playlist is a friend,
not a cheat. When I started, there was“A GROUP OF PEOPLE
WERE LIKE, ‘OH, THEY
WALK OFF INTO THE
SUNSET TOGETHER.’
AND THEY REALLY DON’T!
WE’RE NOT QUITE SURE
HE’S IN LOVE WITH HER.”