Cameron Crowe's adolescence was, figuratively and literally, the stuff of a Hollywood movie. As a teenager in the '70s, he started writing for Rolling Stone, going on the road and hanging out with the likes of Led Zeppelin, the Eagles and David Bowie. Crowe would eventually turn those experiences into his classic 2000 film, "Almost Famous," which he wrote and directed and which won him an Academy Award for best original screenplay.

Now Crowe, who is 68, is again revisiting those days in a memoir, "The Uncool," which will be published next month. In it he shares the personal dramas - of the rock 'n' roll and family variety - that inspired the tender self-mythologizing of "Almost Famous." But the book's tight focus means there's a lot still left to explore. That includes Crowe's successful transition from wunderkind journalist to writer-director of beloved and big-hearted Gen-X classics like "Say Anything," "Singles" and "Jerry Maguire," as well as some thornier subjects, such as the dissolution of his marriage to Nancy Wilson, the lead guitarist of Heart, and his latter-day career struggles. Simply put, the past few feature films he has made - "Elizabethtown" (2005), "We Bought a Zoo" (2011) and "Aloha" (2015) - failed to capture the magic of his earlier work.

So what happened there? And has any of that tougher stuff chipped away at the sweet idealism at the heart of his earlier successes? There's a lot I wanted to know, both as an admirer of Crowe's best work and as a fellow member of the club of former rock journalists, which, to paraphrase the aforementioned Eagles, is a psychic space from which you can check out, but you can never leave.

"Almost Famous" came out almost 25 years ago. So you've been thinking about this part of your life, these formative experiences, for a long time now. What are you still trying to figure out? I love that time when everything meant life or death emotionally and you really felt things and you hadn't built up layers of leatherlike skin. I wanted to never forget the joyful experience of following your dream and finding your voice in the world, which is sometimes a youthful experience and sometimes doesn't happen until late in your life. I loved the journey of finding that kind of comfortable place where you know, This is who I am as a writer, this may even be who I am as a person, and that happened very vividly in that time.

Was there something you saw in those earliest days that made you think, Oh, I'm seeing something that most people don't see? The hunger of people that weren't understood in their own adolescent life. They chose music because music chose them. Also, there wasn't a feeling that rock was going to last that long. So there was that thing of, Well, we're making hay while the sun shines. I saw a documentary on the Eagles recently where Don Henley basically said, "We don't know what we're gonna do when our real life starts." So everybody was on an adventure not knowing where it would end.

When did your real life start?

When Jann Wenner called me in to have a conversation about what I thought was a congratulations for having gotten Led Zeppelin for the cover of Rolling Stone. Led Zeppelin hated Rolling Stone. They were the last band that you would ever expect to see in Rolling Stone. It was a well-known feud. Jann called me in to talk to him and it was, "You did well, but is it a real piece of writing?" This was a day where he had lost his own mentor, Ralph Gleason. He was working his way through a bottle of vodka and didn't need to see me. He could have blown off the meeting, but he didn't. He said, "Meet me at my home," and I met him later and he gave me a copy of Joan Didion's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" and said, "Read this, read her earlier profile on the Doors, and you'll see how to write like a real writer." I was hurt but also challenged. And that day was when my real life started.

Are there any experiences from the '70s that have lingered for you but you don't know how they fit into the larger story of your life?

Bowie was like that for me. I covered his Thin White Duke period where he was kind of lost in Los Angeles, and he asked me to do a profile on him, and it was a wild glimpse of his own untethered brilliance at the time. But when I re-interviewed him much later and asked him about that story, I think I made him a little melancholy and regretful that I had glimpsed this time when he was untethered. That time that he was slightly embarrassed about was one of my most formative times. He was essentially telling me when I re-interviewed him: "Hey, I'm glad you had a good time, I scared myself to death and almost died. But guess what? I live in SoHo now. I have a beautiful life. I love my children and I love my wife and, like, see you later."

I'm gonna nerd out for a second on Lester Bangs, a legendary rock critic who died in the early '80s when he was still a young man. He was a mentor to you and was played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Almost Famous." In the film, and also in the memoir, Lester cautions you against being seduced by the people you write about: "Don't just make them look like a cool genius." But is that what you ended up doing most of the time in your journalism, the thing that Lester asked you not to do?

Well, the last time I saw Lester - the guy who said, "Don't make friends with the rock stars" - we were hanging out with Bill Spooner from the Tubes. But I think what he was saying is: "Don't sell yourself out. You're gonna be seduced. You can be a so-called friend. It may not last forever, but you can be on almost a confessional basis with somebody and you're not a friend, but you're a sympathetic listener." I always felt like that was a great place to be, particularly if I loved the band or the artist I was writing about, because I was in heaven. But I think what Lester was also talking about is: Don't try and join the band. Don't try to be that person. Study that person from a distance and then, like I always wanted to do, bring people along with me.

Would you say you're friends with Joni Mitchell?

I am friends with Joni Mitchell. Proudly. In the best way. She was my best interview at Rolling Stone. The '79 interview that we did when she was putting out the "Mingus" album was, by far, the best interview I did there.

Where do things stand with the biopic you're making about her?

We're going to make it next year. There's not a lot I can say about it. Soon I'll be able to speak more definitively about who's in it and how we're gonna do it and everything. I actually had a dream of a structure of how to tell that story. So I called her place and told her right-hand person that I'd had this dream, and if somebody comes knocking, come to me first and I'll tell you this idea and we'll see what happens. She's like: "They're knocking all the time, and Joni wonders why you've taken so long to call. So yes, come over and tell us what your idea is." This was about four and a half years ago. Joni said: "Let's spend every Monday night. You come over here, we'll talk. You ask me anything you want." So that's what I've been doing all this time. It's been incredibly inspiring - the most I've interviewed anybody, the deepest-tissue kind of conversations I've had with any artist, and I've found it invigorating and can't wait to make the movie.

Are Meryl Streep and Anya Taylor-Joy playing her at different parts of her life?

Can't confirm that. I wish I could.

What's most important to you to convey in a film about Joni Mitchell that hasn't already been conveyed about her?

Her life from her point of view. Everybody's kind of phobic about the term "biopic," but a biographical story about somebody should give you the feeling - like, a Joni Mitchell movie should feel like a Joni Mitchell album. Be good to the people that have been there as fans all along. That's the best road to telling a biographical story about a musician. That's the Joni Mitchell dream.

Tom Cruise was, of course, in your films "Jerry Maguire" and "Vanilla Sky." But I'm curious for your perspective on Tom Cruise's career over the last 10 years or so. He's really focused on these spectacular films, the "Mission: Impossible" movies, which are very different from the character-driven performances that he gave for you. Do you think his interests as a storyteller have just diverged from the kind of work that he was making with you?

I see that there's a time coming, and it might have already started, where he's going to segue into character roles as strongly as he segued into doing action movies of the highest quality. That Paul Newman character phase is just around the corner and will fry people's minds. I'll tell you one little thing: I have the same lawyer as Clint Eastwood, and he invited me to a dinner party. He sat me next to Clint Eastwood, and I was so nervous. What do you say to Clint Eastwood? So I'm sitting there and Clint Eastwood leans over and says, "Tom Cruise." And I go: "Oh, man, Tom Cruise. I love working with Tom Cruise." And he goes, "In a hundred years, they're gonna look back - that's the career, Tom Cruise's career."

Just on the subject of actors, there's a great quote from John Mahoney, who played the dad in "Say Anything," where he said that film is where John Cusack discovered his "Cusackness."

He wanted to dial down his Cusackness when I met him. He was like, "I can't do another teen movie." I'm like, "It's really not a teen movie, I swear." I think Cusack grew up on that movie in a lot of ways. The first time I saw him, he was facing away from me in a coffee shop in Chicago. He hadn't even turned around and I knew he was Lloyd Dobler. Then he turned around and we started talking and he said, "I'm never gonna do this part because I don't wanna be that John Cusack guy again in that way." We were fighting with that perception of earlier-period Cusack throughout the entire making of the movie - into the session where we worked on sound after the film had been shot. He watched one of the scenes and said, "Oh, yeah, all right, I guess I do get what you were going for."

There's the iconic scene in the film where John Cusack's character holds up the boom box and plays Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" to Ione Skye's character. Is it right that Cusack didn't want to hold the boom box up?

Oh, baby, so right. He felt like it was a subservient act: Why does Lloyd have to be a wuss like that? We struggled with how to get that scene. The legendary cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs knew that we'd been battling. We had actually shot the scene where Cusack had the boom box on the hood of a car and he was saying, "That's more what I would do." Laszlo leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Don't worry, there's no film in the camera." On the last day, as we were losing the sun, he said: "I found a place across the street that would be good, and the car is parked there. Let's get him across the street and see if we can get it." So we ran across the street. [John] said, "OK, I'll do it." So he's holding up the boom box, literally kind of pissed that he's having to do it one more time. And you knew it watching in the monitor: That was the perfect emotion for the scene.

Who's an actor you've worked with who set your journalist bells ringing, who made you think, Gosh, there's something going on there that I'd like to get to know more about?

Penélope Cruz. She was in "Vanilla Sky." Fascinating person; reads a room like nobody you've ever seen. I wish I'd written about Philip Seymour Hoffman. He was very mysterious to me. He didn't want to come in and rehearse, but he was really sweet about it. I said to him: "It's really important to me. You're playing Lester Bangs. I really need you to come to L.A., at least for a couple of days, and work on this stuff." He's like, "You'll find you won't need a couple days." I was like, "Well, I need it." So he got on a plane and he came out. He walked in, sat down, did all the scenes and was on a plane two hours later. He had Lester down. So yeah, writing about that guy, I'm bummed that I didn't get a chance to spend some time with him. I still haven't seen the profile where they really pulled the curtain back on Phil Hoffman.

Your transition to Hollywood started with the screenplay to "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" - inarguably a teen classic. The first movie you wrote and directed was "Say Anything," another teen classic. Then it was a pretty amazing run: "Singles," "Jerry Maguire," "Almost Famous," "Vanilla Sky," which some people might quibble with but made money and is certainly a bold film.

Wears well over time, I feel. Go ahead.

Since "Vanilla Sky," it's been "Elizabethtown," "We Bought a Zoo," "Aloha," the TV series "Roadies." I'm sure they have their fans, but I don't think anyone would argue that they're on the level of the work that came before. Something changed. How do you understand that?

Some of that was taking time to raise two boys and really investing time in that. I actually appreciate the question because I've thought about it, too, and I think there are waves you go through as a writer where you feel connected to things that you really need to write about and have the skills to do it properly. All the movies that you mentioned, they have pockets of stuff that I'm super-proud of and are part of a growth step that I think is still happening. "We Bought a Zoo" speaks more to me over time than many of the other things I've done. My mom thought "We Bought a Zoo" was one of the very best. And I think the Joni Mitchell movie is exactly the right story to be telling right now. So it's one long adventure that I'm very proud of.

I think we can go deeper.

Let's go deeper!

The first thing you said in response to the question was about taking time to raise your sons. Can you unpack that for me? Are you suggesting that what you needed to function as an artist was in tension with being a dad? Why is that where you went with your answer?

Because when you raise a child, you can no longer call yourself a kid. That was entree into what you can do to make the world a better place through these people that you brought into the world, and every day was an important learning process. It was different than waking up in the morning and writing all day long. You have to parcel out the time you're gonna do the work. So that's one thing. But the other thing is, you see what's truly important. I wanted to learn about that for a while and write with that in my heart, and a lot of the stuff didn't come out or hasn't come out. There's a movie about Marvin Gaye -

You tried for years to try to get that made, right?

Yeah, and there's so much personal writing in that. But I believe everything works the way it should. I love being a parent and learning how to schedule your life emotionally. But you're not defined by your hits, nor are you defined by your misses. That's what I learned from Billy Wilder.

You put together a great book of your interviews with him, "Conversations With Billy Wilder." There's a part in that book where you're talking about Jack Lemmon in "The Apartment" and why he's so good in it, and you say something like, "One inch to the right or to the left and the movie is lost in pathos or sweetness." I think that after "Vanilla Sky," for whatever reason, your writing moved that one inch to the right or left. I have three theories about why. Do you wanna hear them?

All three, please.

The first one is that it seems to me that "Almost Famous" was the culmination of your career and, in some ways, your life. It was what you had been working toward as a storyteller, and then you did that film and you'd sang your song - beautifully. After that maybe there was some struggle to figure out the next song you could sing quite so beautifully. How does that theory grab you?

I'm waiting for two and three, man. I want the big picture. Hit me with the deuce!

OK, the next one: "Vanilla Sky" was the first film that you made that was based on pre-existing material. You were working with an idea that you hadn't self-generated, and then the reviews were pretty mixed. I wondered if that experience made you think, OK, I need to do something that's more "Cameron Crowe," and then you were doing cover versions of yourself, writing what you thought the idea of Cameron Crowe was supposed to be writing. That's why some intangible thing about the writing felt different after that. And then the third one?

Bring it, brother! Come on!

The third one: Your ex-wife, Nancy Wilson, worked on the music for a lot of your films. You two divorced in 2010. I wondered if losing the solidity of that relationship, both emotionally and creatively, affected the work in some way.

Here's what I was thinking through a lot of what you were just saying: I love being studied that carefully. By you, by anybody - I'm honored. There's elements of truth in all three. Then there's a truth that would be four. And I would choose four.

What's four?

Four is that life is the best writer, and sometimes you have to let life show you a little bit of what that is. I had been living a life that was pretty stacked with stuff for a long time, and what was important to me post-"Vanilla Sky" was to let life in. I loved François Truffaut because he made movies about growing up. You got to grow up with him. I always thought, God, I want to be one of those guys where people can grow up with you. So in a way, I took time to grow up. But the one quibble I have with your spectacular tray of three theories is, I never wrote to be like Cameron Crowe. I never did that. I've read that. I read where people say, "Oh, he's trying to do a Cameron Crowe thing." I'm not sure I know what that is. Maybe it's something that's heartfelt and dialogue-heavy or something. But I never sat down and tried to write a "Cameron Crowe-type thing." Because I never appreciate artists that I felt did that. I don't know. That's the one thing where I thought, No, that's not true.

You know, even as a younger man, you were writing these battered idealist characters: Jerry Maguire, Lloyd Dobler in "Say Anything." But since you wrote those characters, you've experienced so much more life - more ups, more downs. So I wonder if you think about those characters any differently at 68 than you did when you wrote them? Also, what's the state of your own idealism?

The fires of my own idealism burn brightly. It's kind of how I live. I love all those characters. Is that crazy? I love them because they're part of my family in a way. I lived with them, and I still live with them. They all still speak to me in a way. And sitting here talking, it does make me want to capture things that are happening in my life right now too. I want to be that person that writes about my age group in some way or another, as I get older. I've got some catching up to do.