The year was 1979. Cameron Crowe waiting in the office of Joni Mitchell's manager for the singer/songwriter's first in-depth interview in a decade, an interview that was - along with Marvin Gaye and Neil Young - on the young music journalist's list of dream assignments. It would be Crowe's final cover story for Rolling Stone; his next project, a book about a bunch of high-school kids in California, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, launched him into the world of film.

So while brainstorming how to portray Crowe on the cover of PASTE for his latest movie, Elizabethtown, it was the filmmaker who suggested we approach his friend Joni for an illustration. She graciously accepted the challenge and began pouring over photos from Elizabethtown and footage from the movie's Kentucky shoot. We'd asked her to work in the 'coloring book' painting style she'd last used in the mid '70's for her cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's 'So Far'. "I haven't painted [like that] in years," Mitchell says. But spending the late summer at her residence in Sechelt, B.C. she found the exact painting kit she'd used for those famous portraits. I hadn't seen it in 30 years. I opened up the caps with trepidation. I thought they'd all be dried up. Some colors had, but many hadn't. I had a limited palette! But I think all the elements are there - the black [horse farm] fences, the green grass of Kentucky, and an indication of those flowering fruit trees. It's pretty abstract."

Crowe was an obvious choice for our second film cover story, as much for his ebullience and optimism as for his background writing about rock legends and the musical quality of his filmmaking. Since we launched the magazine, he's been on our own directorial version of that dream-interview shortlist, along with West Anderson (check), Jim Jarmusch (check), and Paul Thomas Anderson (who should expect to hear from us soon). Like everyone else, we have our favorite leading men and women. But with an overemphasis on the celebrity of actors, everywhere we turn, it's the auteurs we're most interested in - the writer/directors who, like our favorite singer/songwriters, tell beautiful stories about what it means (and feels like) to be human.

Considering himself a writer primarily, Crowe avoids the Hollywood scene that his A-list status affords him. "If that's your life, the next step is you're making movies about making movies, and the next step up after that is the abyss," he says. "Because you're not writing and capturing what real life is like."

My Morning Jacket, the Kentucky five-piece Crowe cast as a local upstart band in Elizabethtown, also eschews the hipster scene. "There are so many...people like us when we were kids - who love music, and also love baseball, and also love movies," frontman Jim James told our associate editor Reid Davis, who joined the band for a bus ride from Buffalo, N.Y. to its homebase in Louisville, Ky. "They don't care what the cool clothes are. They don't care what the cool haircut is."