Almost Famous (2000)

directed by Cameron Crowe

Samantha Merz

Listen to “Tiny Dancer” and “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” with a candle burning and you will see your entire future.

A bus door opens and Russell Hammond, formerly drunk and high, possibly still coming down from an acid trip, loads Doris, the Stillwater tour bus, at the behest of Dick, his friend and manager. Dick raises his arms and says something along the lines of “Ladies and gentlemen, the evening is over. We’ll see you all in 1974! Good evening!” As he steps onto the bus, the opening C Major refrain to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” has already begun to weave into the scene as teenagers wave in an exhausted yet euphoric fashion to their rock star friends. A kiss is blown by the young blonde in the green collared shirt, a send-off as Doris continues on her journey with a full band and their journalist reunited. 

As Doris crawls her way through the flatlands of middle America, the dejected and scorned looks of the members of Stillwater take center stage. However, it’s the shot of William, our young journalist and protagonist, and Penny Lane, the “legendary, original Band-Aid,” that continues to catch my eye. William has to go home: he has to graduate high school, he has to get his interview to Ben Fong-Torres at Rolling Stone before his deadline, and he has to have his tête-à-tête with Russell. The atmosphere is tense with anxieties and stress, yet it takes Ed, the silent drummer, to act as the catalyst toward a cathartic healing moment for this group.

Each member begins singing independently and as the scene reaches its emotional peak, William turns to Penny, whose mouth is open, ready to sing, and says to her, “I need to go home.” She raises her hand, locks eyes with him in a playful yet affectionate way and says, “You are home,” before resting her head on his shoulder while the band finishes singing the chorus with Elton.

It was in this moment that I realized that this was who I wanted to be.

*

When I was 15, I had a next door neighbor who became my version of Anita, William’s older sister. She listened to Nine Inch Nails, taught me who the Beastie Boys were and how I should fight for my right to party. She told me about how terrible the Iraq War was and her house happened to be where I watched the news broadcasts of the Twin Towers falling two years prior. Incidentally enough, she was my neighbors’ mom, twenty years my senior, but that didn’t stop her from granting me admittance to the School of Music and Popular Culture.

Shortly after Almost Famous was released in 2000, she bought the DVD. It was after this that she said without any pomp or circumstance that this movie would “change my life.” And she was right.

When that fateful day rolled around, I sat attentively, riveted to my chair as I watched Patrick Fugit, Kate Hudson, and Billy Crudup move across the screen. As I sat enraptured with the story and characters, I realized in that moment that this film would become my religion. You see, it had a lot to do with how closely tied I felt to William. The similarities were so uncanny  that I was sure Cameron Crowe had traveled ahead to 2003 and adapted components of my life to film.

William and I shared something in common: our overly worried helicopter parent. My mom was similar to William and Anita’s—a young Zooey Deschanel—in that she practiced adjacent forms of censorship. My own was just like Elaine in that she was overly restrictive about music, wouldn’t let my younger sister and I date, and had unusual rules about what we did or who it was with. The only thing William had going for him was that his mother wasn’t religious in the way that mine was. While Frances McDormand’s character made her children celebrate Christmas on a day in September where she knew it wouldn’t be commercialized, my mother didn’t want us to celebrate it because it was a pagan holiday. My mother’s control operated in the realm of delusion, longing for her daughters not to be influenced by the clutches of drugs, sex, alcohol, and rock and roll. At least these women could agree on this together.

Considering my neighbor’s mother knew the dynamic of my relationship with my own parent, I feel she felt I would find liberation in this cinematic comparison. I think this was her way of parting the curtain, allowing for me to see beyond the childhood confines of home and through to the hope of me one day being “cool.” When I think back on my teen years, I can’t help but thank my stars I had someone look out for me the way that Anita did for her brother. The same way she shared her records with William, my neighbor handed the baton to me and said “go.”

From the moment that I saw a young William place the needle down on his sister’s copy of The Who’s Tommy and “Sparks” came playing out of my tinny television speakers, I knew that this was destined to be me. Flash forward to William at 15 etching into the back of his binder with a ballpoint pen the names of bands that became his life, I felt a kindred bond form. He may not have been the coolest kid at his school and was “too young to drive or fuck,” he was still more wholly himself at 15 than I had been. I spent a lot of time struggling to find some semblance of autonomy or rebelliousness that didn’t involve getting in trouble constantly with my mother, much to my own chagrin. I wanted something that could be hidden yet expressed; a passion to take hold of me without repression. Something that I was able to make entirely my own.

William had that. At 15, he became the blueprint for what I wanted to be as an adult: a rock writer for Rolling Stone; a personal friend to the bands that I loved; a relationship based on mutual understanding, respect, and acceptance with my mother in what I wanted to do; to tour the world and fall in love on the road.

Yet, little did I realize that as I grew into the woman I have become, I would veer closer to Penny. It was this woman that would become the eventual model for who I would want to be. The more assured I grew into being authentically myself and in tune with who I truly wanted to be, the more I realized Penny Lane had a personal hand in molding this form.

*

As a teen in the early 2000s, feminism was not a standard metric in which to measure, educate or even engage in for young folks coming of age during the new millennium. Especially in high school. It was cut-throat, mean, toxic, negative, slut-shamey, and competitive. Of course, all of this is based in colonial, white supremacist, and fatphobic heteronormative ideals of relationships between women and men, focused on Eurocentric beauty standards. Understanding this mentality is key to understanding that maybe my original conceptions of Penny were warped at the edges due to this rhetoric preached at us. I may not have seen her as fully realized or having autonomy because of this predilection of associating women who are sexual and sleeping with multiple men as being “whores.” It didn’t help that this narrative was supported by beauty magazines, teen movies throwing the word at women who were sexually active, and the oppressively terrible “abstinence only” sex ed curriculum in most American public high schools. With these nasty missives in place, the character of Penny becomes liberating in how she is eventually shown on screen.

She is first introduced to audiences as William is attempting to gain entrance backstage at a Black Sabbath show, the one that Lester Bangs (an incredible Philip Seymour Hoffman) has asked him to write about. William, flustered and irritated that the bouncer won’t let him in, meets Polexia—a sensational Anna Paquin—and Estrella—Bijou Phillips—at the top of the loading ramp. Their giggles echo down to him between the concrete as he continues to be told he’s “not on the list” and to “wait at the top of the ramp with the other girls.” Wounded and wondering how he is going to pull it off, he retreats to them and begins talking to these girls a little older than himself. Unsure how to approach the subject of entry, William muses that he’s not “a—ya know…” with a pregnant pause. As if summoned from the shadows into the fluorescent light of the arena parking lot, Penny appears in a beautifully intricate jacket of suede and lamb’s wool that’s beyond out of season, and light blue sunglasses. She saunters up and asks, “You’re not a what?” Embarrassed and sheepish, William stutters out, “…a groupie.” Greeted with disgusted groans from the women, Penny states, “We are not ‘groupies.’”

It was in this moment that I realized that Penny was working to push back against the sexist and misogynistic thinking that surrounded women who were fans of rock bands in the 1970s. While yes, they were trying to gain access to the show utilizing their femininity and sexuality, they were doing it on their own terms. Through the creation of her “school for Band-Aids,” Penny served to reinvent the narrative of what it meant to be a woman involved in the close quarters of rock and roll. If these women decided to engage in sexual relationships with the band members, it was not for the sole reason to “be close to someone famous,” it was for the music. Through this assertion that women can be involved in music and love music the same way that men can, Penny has subverted the dialectic and created a new look on feminine autonomy and sexuality in these spaces.

While I didn’t know this at the time, over the countless re-watches throughout the years I have grown to see that Penny possessed more than just good looks, great clothes, and a charismatic personality. Penny was intentional about everything that she did. She was unapologetic in who she was and what she represented, which was living in the moment. She refused to let herself become a victim or forgotten, until it came at the expense of her being traded off tour for a case of Heineken. Even then, she still did it within her control.

*

When reflecting on the power of this character, I can think of four primary points where Penny, or should we say Lady Goodman, instilled in me nuggets of wisdom and life-saving advice. First: women (or anyone) can take control of their narrative and control their sexual autonomy in traditionally masculine spaces. We saw this routinely throughout the public and private environments that she found herself in. Within them, audiences witnessed how she chose to present herself among those she surrounded herself with. Penny showed us that you can be whoever you choose to be, dress however you wish, and still be bestowed with respect and boundaries by those closest to you.

This concept was an anomaly to me and it was a piece of advice that I didn’t really grasp until much later in life. It may be much later than I care to admit, but the truth is that because of my teenage absorption of anti-feminist propaganda spouted off by publications and reinforced through social interactions with my peers as we ascended through adolescence in the 2000s, it took some time to unlearn this thinking. It was only after a handful of failed relationships with men that I thought wanted or cared for me beyond being a vessel for sex that I realized that I had more to offer than that. It was here that I learned that I should respect my body and my heart and that I have worth. I did not exist to just be thrown away or discarded as used parts, only to be picked up when I was needed for sexual male fantasy fulfillment. Penny alludes to this being a lesson she learned in the past thanks to Marc Bolan breaking her heart. However, it is in spite of this pain and experience of being used and thrown away that she is able to come out stronger willed and more in control of herself than she had been before. While her relationship with Russell has its pitfalls, she ultimately engages with him because she wants to, not because she has to. Those words have made all the difference to my own self-worth across all aspects of my life now.

Secondly, platonic love and relationships can save your life. Upon discovering through Dick (Noah Taylor) that Russell’s girlfriend is asking who she is while out to dinner with the band, Penny leaves in a hurry. As Stillwater celebrates the news that the story that William is writing is granting them cover story exposure to the magazine, Penny returns to her hotel room and takes it upon herself to have some of Sapphire’s (Fairuza Balk) Quaaludes. Despite both William and Russell witnessing her exit from the restaurant, it is William who follows after her. His empathy and sadness at her removal and easy exclusion from their touring group doesn’t sit well with him, and ultimately that saves Penny’s life. Looking beyond the trope that William has fallen in love with her, Penny is his closest friend that he has while on the road. Seeing her anguish is all that he needs to direct his steps out of the bar and through the city after her. Ultimately, his love for Penny saves her life as he dances to keep her awake until the hotel doctor arrives to pump her stomach. The harrowing nature of the whole situation brings them both closer together, building a trust between the two that leads to Penny revealing her actual name to William.

It’s within this scene that audience members are able to see how formidable platonic love is in the face of uncertainties and death. It says that the power of platonic love should not be discounted. In this bankrupt world that seems to focus so much on being paired off within romantic love, we as a society often forget the importance of platonic soul bonds. These are just as, if not more important than romantic love. They connect and protect beyond the surface of a romantic partner. If something really falls to shit, you have that one friend who would rush through the city after you and make sure that you are safe.

It has been in the lowest moments of my life that my friends have showed up and saved me. Whether it was a break-up with who I assumed was my soulmate, or suicidal ideation and depression, they held me up when I couldn’t move my own feet across the carpeted floor. It was their love that supported me and made sure that I received the help that I required. Their saving graces took many forms, such as a pizza night in watching movies or deciding to go out dancing. The strongest move has been helping me find a therapist when I didn’t know how to help myself and accompanying me to the first appointment to make sure that I felt safe in a new situation. Regardless of the circumstances, they have come through for me in ways that I have never been able to properly thank them for.

Even now, in the midst of another volatile time of my life (thanks grad school graduation), they have shown up and given me a boost when I have not had the energy and capacity to speak or grant myself grace. In much the same way that Penny connected William and Russell together at the end of the film for a proper interview, I hope I am able to one day repay each of them for their love and kindness in ways that matter the most to them.

It's certain that if we were to exist without these platonic bonds to help unburden our loads as we traverse through this crazy coincidence that is human life, we as a species would all be worse off. I believe that these soulmates created through sisterhood or mutually shared interests succeed and flourish because of the unbridled support and affection for something that can be as simple as a love for another person that isn’t your blood family, or can be as silly as a piece of music.

Penny’s third lesson is old, but one that I have had carry me on through my teen years and into my 30s. This is the unapologetic part; this is authenticity. This is what it means to find yourself. This happens without much warning: one day, you hear a song and the next, it’s your everything. It becomes a part of the fabric that makes you uniquely yourself. For me, it has always been Fall Out Boy and no matter what, they are, in essence, a thread that makes me feel entirely like myself.

Sapphire said it best: all it takes is some “silly piece of music” or “some band” that we love so much that it hurts to remind us of who we are sometimes. Sometimes people can let you down, but a song found at the right place and the right time can save you from the brink. Even if you feel alone, a band can be there to remind you that you are not, no matter the genre.

Penny knew that. She reminded everyone she met of that. She taught me that. That unabashed, unashamed love of some band is what allows for people to find the courage to be true to themselves. While working at a record store, I played music that my co-workers hated openly. It may not have been the “bread and butter” of what makes record store clerks “cool” (yes, it is okay to think of Rob, Dick, and Barry from Championship Vinyl from High Fidelity here), but it made me happy. And that unencumbered love for pop-punk ended up reminding my boss of his unashamed love for 1980s hair metal. To that end, I thank Penny for allowing me to share that with someone I looked up to and cared for. Pretending not to love something to look one way in front of others is not sustainable and can only last as long as you let them have that control. To love without fear, loudly and openly, is strength and that should never be robbed from you.

Penny may have known and been friends with a smattering of musicians and bands, yet she took the time to really fall in love with the art that was being made. She made it her identity. She loved deeply and purely, and it shone through the grey of life that would try to cast a pall over who she was. Within this ability to love something so much that it hurts is what makes us human. As we all struggle to find our own places within this unyielding world, it’s within art and the communities that are created in its wake that we are able to find safety. It’s within this emotion that we are able to locate and identify ourselves with something that makes us feel like a more realized version of us. The strength that this armor creates becomes a superpower, preparing you for whatever comes your way. For Penny, it was knowing the words to every song by every band, “especially the bad ones.” As she shared this passion and love for music with everyone that she met, she reminded them that that was the reason they were all there: the music and the community that was built around it. Through her adoration and appreciation of the magic that was created in studios and on stages throughout the country, Penny reminded people that it was okay to enthusiastically love something more than themselves.

Growing up, I was constantly worried that I was going to be tested on my love for the art and music I consumed. Because of this fear, I made sure to brush up my knowledge so that if I was questioned, I wouldn’t fail. This manifested in obsessively reading over liner notes, memorizing all the words for all the songs on every record, and looking for magazines with articles about the bands. And if I was wearing a band tee that was carefully and intentionally selected off of the Holy Grail Hot Topic T-shirt wall and someone asked if I knew a song by them, I could impress them with my deep back catalogue of trivia. Despite my rigorous training, the time rarely arose for me to unleash this torrent of knowledge that I had amassed (this was not the case, however, when I worked at the record store and every old head record dick would ask if I knew a band). However, this research and preparation allowed me to realize that I wanted to know these facts, these songs, to wear these pieces of merch because they made me feel like myself. It was a chest plate and helmet that allowed me to armor myself against the world and to feel safe in myself. With these protective measures in place, I was able to find like-minded people who felt just as attached and in love with these details as I was.

Over the years of arriving early to shows and camping out in line all day to see Fall Out Boy, I found a community and a base. Today, I am still friends with a huge majority of them, watching them succeed, grow, and flourish in the lives that they are making for themselves. When we used to camp in line, we would find ourselves waxing poetic over the songs that spoke to us, or swoon over the way Patrick Stump can belt out a vocal run live versus on the record. We would (and sometimes still do) complain over the variation of the setlist due to the fact that it hadn’t changed in years (see: they have since changed the setlist on their HellaMega Tour with Weezer and Green Day). We did all this and continue to do so because we know what it feels like to carry around the internalized kick drum that is radiating inside us under our sternum. Their music acts as a metronome in rhythm with our heartbeats and it gives us the strength to be unapologetically ourselves. Some silly little band or some music that we love so much that it hurts…Penny knew.

Even among all of these immensely important lessons, the ultimate and most imperative one is that she taught me you can create a home no matter where you are. Home is less about where you are and more about who makes you feel safe to be yourself. It’s about finding a family outside of the security of blood relatives or of your childhood home. Home is finding people who uplift, encourage, and push you to be better when you feel held down by fear or anxieties. It’s about finding the people you are allowed to be vulnerable with when you feel like you can’t take the pressure or stress anymore. This home is meant to exist when you feel like you’re all alone with no one out there and someone magically appears to remind you that you’re not. It doesn’t have to be a traditional structure, but it can be as simple as turning a hotel room or a tour bus into one. The home that is curated here is less about substance and more about a presence that allows those that are closest to you to feel like they are loved, held, supported, or seen, regardless of what is going on. Penny, whether she intended to become this to so many or not, did this with effortless grace. Watching her make this space and this atmosphere was something that I envied and wanted to be able to do in my own life. Yet it took years to realize that it was already something that I did without even trying.

Growing up in my tower of restrictive religious boundaries, I never felt like I had much of a “home.” I mean, I clearly had one and I turned out pretty well, but I felt disaffected, like an outsider. My mother closely monitored and scrutinized every decision I made and would weigh it in her scale of judgment. Yet unlike the blind eye of Justice that is typically illustrated, it was all-seeing and was guided by whatever God said was “appropriate” or not at that juncture.  Anything that I wanted to do (mostly just buy music and wear certain early-2000s fashions) was covert and taboo. While my peers were out discovering and exploring “typical” teenager-dom, I sat back and observed.

The day that William convinced his mother to let him go on tour with Stillwater through him playing her “Stairway to Heaven” in a deleted scene from the Untitled edition (that also features zero sound due to rights being withheld), I felt a thrill. He won the biggest fight against our biggest critic: our moms. William gave me hope that I could eventually do something that I dreamed of doing and my mom would maybe approve. I worked hard at trying to get her to come around to some of my interests—she eventually buckled on Fall Out Boy, thanks to guitarist Joe Trohman—she was always unanimously supportive of my writing and creativity, much like Elaine was with William. But because of her intense disapproval of what I wanted to do with my free time—listen to “secular” music and see live shows—I never felt comfortable being entirely myself in my childhood home. I was never allowed.

When I eventually moved out in Summer 2008 to transfer to the four-year college that most of my friends attended an hour away, I did it primarily to escape my mother’s suffocating grasp. We clashed intensely and I knew that if I wanted to become who I had always wanted to be, I would have to create distance. That first apartment was distance enough (even though I was horrifically homesick for the first whole year away from home), and with the help of my roommate who had been my best friend from eighth grade, we embarked on this new adventure together.

We somehow decided that the few bands that we knew and were friends with would come and stay with us whenever they were on the road. This was the jumping-off point for another career aspiration: to house bands on the road via an affordable “Band and Breakfast” type deal that would offer a safe and secure place to sleep for small-time touring musicians. While they lived out of vans trying to make their dreams come true, I wanted to make sure that they had a place to sleep, a shower to use, and food to help them melt faces at night. This started out small-scale by letting smelly boys sleep on my floor and feeding them pizza rolls. This lasted only a couple years across two different apartments and only petered out when I was too broke to pay for it anymore on my record store clerk paycheck. It may have also lost steam when I eventually began dating a musician myself? Regardless of why it stopped, this little “home” blended my Almost Famous aspirations with my High Fidelity reality: listen to records, make friends, go to shows, talk about music, repeat.

Despite my William-inspired career chasing, it became evident to me that I was tapping more into Penny and her influence. I was young and naïve for a very long time…foolish, jealous, silly, and with a head full of dreams with feet barely touching the ground. After some heartbreak, I began to figure out what kind of person I wanted to be. During one of these foolish moments, I had taken some bad habits and behavior learned from my mother and used it to damage a relationship with a man I had loved deeply. The severance of that altered my reality and I learned quickly that that was not who I wanted to be. I needed to grow up, fast. In the same fashion that William had to grow up and learn on the fly through his life on the road away from his childhood home and the protective covering of his mother, I followed suit.

Throughout that unlearning process, I still had been curating a community of people that I could be at home with and feel like myself, outside of romantic relationships. It started when I was finally allowed to go to concerts. My first one happened to be a free Switchfoot show at the Norfolk Naval Base in 2005, and that was all she wrote: after that initial bite, I was ravenous. I shared music with everyone I could and that included my next-door neighbors who were six and seven years younger than me. The first show that I took them to without parental supervision was the 2007 Honda Civic Tour with Fall Out Boy, The Academy Is…, and Cobra Starship billed to play. I was 18 and knew that these girls were in my care. That day I made sure that I would do everything in my power to make sure that they had food, water, and were safe. But even more importantly, I wanted to make sure that they had fun.

After we went to that show, I knew that this is what I was going to become: the Concert Friend. This was entirely me now. I became chauffeur, nurse, and mini mom. At 18, I had created a home outside the confines of a suburb using only my car and my deep-seeded maternal energy. My Dodge Neon might as well have been a minivan with how many bodies I would squish in there to take my friends to shows around the area. It became my tour bus, making stops in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Washington D.C., Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, and Richmond. Over the years, I garnered the nickname “Mama Sam” and it is one that I wear with affection and pride. As corny as it seems, I love it. I know that those who bestowed the title to me know I would do whatever I can to make sure that they are safe and looked out for. As I moved into my mid-20s, a transference occurred, however. Even though it came about naturally and was predicated on friends moving away to pursue a collegiate education or launch into new careers, they knew that if ever a need occurred, I would come out of retirement and accompany them on an adventure.

Despite shows with my mini-family growing fewer and far between, a new cast of friends and concert buddies grew from my job at the record store. It was here that I learned a lot of valuable lessons about being a friend, employee, and what makes a home a “home.” During those years, my innate ability to take care of people transferred to these individuals. They became my new family. This new city, for the first time in my life, felt like home. Richmond, Virginia has always been to me a picturesque snow globe, where a single shake of the dome can cause a ripple effect throughout the sprawl of its streets. It’s beautiful, small, strange, complex, complicated, and evolving, yet I find myself falling more in love with its people and places every day.

Over the years, Richmond has been host to some of my most tumultuous and painful experiences of my life, but also some of the greatest and most rewarding. It was here that I have fallen in love, felt hopeless, and was rejuvenated all in a duration of thirteen years. It was here that I finally began to understand the importance of Penny and her character. Living in a small city where everyone knows everyone, it comes down to one simple thing. It’s not about being the best at something or being someone that you can write home about. It isn’t about being someone that knows everyone or a someone that everyone knows—it’s ultimately all about how you treat people. It’s about your heart, your kindness, and the impression that you leave on them at the end of the day. It’s a road that goes both ways and you alone can dictate that path.

One thing that Penny did was make sure of was that everyone she was with felt welcome, accepted and comfortable; that they knew someone in the room and felt secure in being there. She never wanted anyone to feel like there wasn’t a way out of a situation or that they were suffering or struggling alone on an island without a lifeline. She was that for William, for Polexia, Sapphire, Estrella, and Beth from Denver. She was that for Russell, for Dick, for Jeff Bebe (even though he was a bit of an asshole). No matter the person, she was an anchor; she was a guiding light home to anyone who felt like they didn’t belong. A beacon of love, light, support, and friendship to whoever needed it in that moment. While not perfect, she did everything she could to make sure that those she chose to be around and surround herself with were taken care of. Even though she had only met William on the ramp, she went to lengths to find a pass for him to get him into the Black Sabbath show after their first meeting. That was the kind of person she was and that is who she should be remembered as.

And this fictional, magnificent woman is the person that I realized I have become. 

Maybe I was always a little bit like Penny, either by choice or circumstance. I don’t know if it was because I always felt left out or maybe because I was bullied terribly as a kid, but I have internalized the idea that I never want someone to feel out of place. Maybe it was because I always felt like William, the outsider: too innocent, too isolated, too restricted to really fit in the way that we both desperately wanted to. In hindsight, however, maybe we were never meant to fit in with our peers the way that we wanted to in the first place. Maybe we were always meant to defy and push beyond the standard vapidity of adolescence. Maybe our passions were always supposed to be wrapped into music, writing, and giving a shit about something that collectively brings people together instead of dividing them. We know the restorative power of what one song, one band, one live show can do for someone. It’s life-altering and we both knew that after we had our first taste.

Once I embraced the fact that like William, I was never going to be on the same path as my peers, I was able to move on and find strength in dismissing the negative feelings and emotions towards those who didn’t accept me. I realized that it was a better use of my time to be kind and not a bitter, condescending jerk to people for the sake of “being cool.” Between job changes from record store clerk to assistant manager at a toy store, I grew into this mentality. The shop and the people I worked with there became another family, another “home.” The folks I worked with there helped me become a more realized, confident version of myself, and encouraged me to take no shit, but also that compassion and kindness go a lot farther than being an asshole.

Throughout the years of training and working with an array of young folks from different identities, backgrounds, and orientations, I realized that I felt a maternal protectiveness that turned into fierce loyalty toward everyone I befriended. I never wanted to set someone up to fail, or to feel threatened and uncomfortable because of a customer. I refused to not allow them to feel like they were a part of this collective group. I think this was a way of Penny showing up and guiding me, but also maybe it was something that I had carried inside of me since childhood, and I didn’t know I could possess that level of love for someone until then.

Eight years later and after a handful of other life changes, it’s even stronger now. After two years of grad school in the middle of a pandemic, these traits have crystallized, and I don’t think I could break that streak if I tried. I may not be able to turn a business into a home or my car into a tour bus anymore, but I damn sure will try to make sure that anyone I meet feels like they can come to me if they feel uncomfortable, if they feel alone, if they feel like they’re on the edge of losing it. I will do whatever I can to remind them that despite all the pressures of society and life, they are still worthy of happiness, love, and respect. There’s power in being kind and vulnerable. There’s strength in celebrating others’ successes without jealousy or animosity. No good ever comes from rejoicing in the downfall of others, so just be good to others. It’s what Penny would do.

I didn’t realize that I was already this emulation of Penny until a close friend mentioned it. We had been on a Pandemic Walk around Richmond and had chosen to end it by sitting in the shade overlooking the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ sculpture garden. We had somehow gotten onto the topic of Almost Famous and I began saying something to the effect that I just want to be like Penny: her clothes, her hair (my own ringlets matching hers), her enthusiasm for life, making people feel at home. As I went on about this, he turned to me and said, “You already are.” It was the matter-of-factness of his delivery that sent me into silence. I had never considered it. I mean, I knew that I was trying to make every person I spent time with feel like they felt comforted and at home with me, but I didn’t really think that I had accomplished this feat. Not yet. Especially now when the world was (is?) falling into chaos and time with peers or any semblance of a “family,” blood or chosen, was seen as taking a risk. Sometimes when someone important shares with you that you already have become someone you want to be it makes it even more profound. It’s hard to forget that, especially when things seem dark, lonesome, and uncertain. I think Penny knew that feeling well and I think if she heard something similar, she’d respond in much the same way. And I think we’d both still ask, if it was appropriate, “What kind of beer?” just to steer the conversation away from ourselves.

*

I wonder if Penny would like me. I also wonder if she’d be proud of me. She’s clearly a fictional character concocted in the mind of Cameron Crowe, but that doesn’t change the fact that I think at her core, she is an unbelievably real person. Her values, personality, and character speak volumes to the multitudes of other women that she is mirrored off of. Crowe said that she was inspired by the real-life Pennie Ann Trumbull, the founding member of the infamous 1970s group, The Flying Garter Girls. While Trumbull and her sisterhood of women traveled around the music scene attending shows and engaging in consensual meet-ups with famous rock stars throughout their three-year stint, the message and actions of the real Pennie were enough that Crowe made sure that his Penny did not use her name in vain.

Good people come in all shapes and sizes. They are not perfect. They are not angels. They are not without their own shortcomings. Yet, creating a feeling, a sensation, a community of people that are so removed from what is considered “normal” or even “traditional” is akin to a superpower. It’s about cultivating a space or aura that is meant to ensure that people feel safe, secure, loved, and supported. Both Pennys made sure to do that—to never go at it alone without those that made them feel like they had the power to be in control of their narrative, even if the path that they chose was likened to the circus. Life is never what we expect and as long as we have a beacon, an anchor, a guiding light that reminds us that no matter how far we stray from the beaten path, we can always come home and recharge, I don’t think we can go wrong.

What Penny did for William, for the Band-Aids, for Russell, and for me was exactly that. She became a home for the strays. A person to depend on, to seek and find comfort in. To remind us that no matter how far from our physical home we may tread, we will always have someone to come back to and reassure us that we are home. A home is more than just a building with walls and roof, but it is a tie that connects us to other people that we feel comfortable being vulnerable with. It’s about embracing the uncertainties of life with someone next to you reminding you that this will all work out “reasonably well.” It’s giving into the impulse of changing tides and trying not to worry too much and knowing that the person next to you has your best interests in mind. It's about trust, respect, and love. What Penny did for all of us was show us that that is what it means to have a home and a family.

As Penny boards the plane after her almost-overdose, William races through the terminal as her plane taxis out the runway. Sitting at her window seat, looking exhausted yet relieved, mouthing the words of the flight attendant’s instructions that she knows so well, she turns to look back at William. The look on her face says it all: as much as she became a home for him on the road, he became a home to her. It was never just a convenience of situation for her, it was a bond between them and the removal of the physical presence of him from her is palpable. While William and Penny were drawn to each other out of circumstance and then genuine platonic affection, the inevitable outcome was that they needed each other more than they knew. Leaving home is always heartbreaking and this scene is especially difficult to watch. Despite their geographical distance (even if they live in the same city), Penny looks out for William in ways that supersede the standard outlines of friendship. Even if William hadn’t saved Penny that night in New York, I would like to believe that she would have set up Russell coming to William’s house regardless simply because she did not want them to fail each other.

Inside of my own life, my William and my Penny coexist. They are never far from each other and are in constant communication. My pipe dream of writing for Rolling Stone exists but only as a little matchstick flame, glowing and burning, never going out. My internal Penny is there in her green coat with her blue sunglasses on and her red and white tackle box at her feet, waiting patiently for her next adventure where she can take someone under her wing and make sure that they feel at home, wherever that place may be.

Samantha Merz is a recent MA graduate in English from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is still trying to figure out “what it all means” but wants everyone to know that it’s still “all happening.” She’s currently working on a collection of creative non-fiction and hoping that she can one day go to Morocco like Penny finally does. You can find her on Twitter giving out Hot Takes about pop-punk and musing about movies she watches with her partner and cat, Nugget, at @xosamcore. Yes, her handle was made in 2008 and it WAS because Pete Wentz made a Twitter account. This is her brand now.