Cameron Crowe

And he's lucky that he made it out alive.

A little bit.

I've talked about Penny quite a bit before.

Penny Trumbull is an open book.

She always said at the time, when she got older, she wanted to use whatever money she'd saved to put together an old folks home for old rock stars up in Oregon, which she did, with a little bit of the money that she made, which wasn't that much, to be able to use her story in the movie.

So she loved music and behaved exactly that way.

I was...

pretty young at the time.

And so for Penny and the Flying Garter Girls, who was like her clan, who would fail at not getting emotionally involved with the bands.

It was like, watch out.

They all would fall for some of the guys and get their hearts broken, whatever.

But Penny Trumbull was one of the ones that really opened up to me and told me what it was like emotionally to follow a band.

And to crave that experience of being in an empty arena after you'd seen the show that meant so much to you, and you could still feel the spirits in the air of that empty arena.

That's my favorite scene in Almost Famous, when Kate Hudson is dancing in the garden of trash left behind by...

where Stillwater has played.

And that's what I was left with, not trying to protect them.

I think, you know, I've written about it, and you get the emotional carnage that can happen.

That's in Almost Famous.

But I always felt that Penny Trumbull was an open book and was a friend as well as kind of a, you know, flamboyant figure who was true to her word.

She loved music.