Here’s a scene from “Almost Famous” that occurs smack dab in the middle of the movie. To me, it’s one of my favorite movie moments ever. It is not only fun to watch but there are some wonderful nuggets of wisdom enfused in the scene. It’s amazing that there can be such life lessons crammed in a short couple of minutes in a movie.
In a nutshell, the movie centers around a teenage boy who follows a rock band on tour as a reporter for Rolling Stone. It is based on a true story that the director Cameron Crowe (Jerry McGuire) actually experienced as a young man who followed bands like The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, and Lynyrd Skynyrd and actually wrote for Rolling Stone.
The scene begins when the band members all board the bus in disappointment and anger with their lead singer who nearly killed himself by jumping off a roof into a pool.
As they drive in deep somber silence the song “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John starts to play, cutting the tension like a giant knife. It slowly melts everyone’s coldness and they join in one by one to sing along. While everyone is singing in unison, the teenage boy tells Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), “I gotta go home”. Penny smiles and replies with a simple but profound statement, “You ARE home”. The boy lets it sink in and realizes she was right. He was where he had to be.
That moment, those words, have always hit me hard. It’s simplicity is so profound. “You ARE home”. We can apply this lesson to everything we do at work and in our personal lives.Whenever we feel the least bit lost or anxious about things in our daily hectic lives, we should think of this scene and those simple words. We are where we have chosen to be at that moment in time. All of the decisions that we have made in our lives up until that very moment created the situation you find yourself in and who you are at that time. If you aren’t happy with where you are then simply make the changes to create a more desirable future moment. In the mean time, embrace and accept the moment and the “home” that you created.
Here is the magical and powerful scene: