The season’s notable musical flop proved to be Almost Famous, which after a starburst of publicity and anticipation nevertheless closed on January 8 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, after barely a hundred performances including previews. A massive $18 million investment went the way of Keith Moon and Janis Joplin, and even though the production was grossing three-quarters of a million dollars a week (much more than the sleek and lean Chicago, which continues everlastingly), it wasn’t even typically covering its running costs, according to industry reports. Thanks to a huge cast, intricately complex sets amid which dozens of bodies frantically compete to entertain (one critic compared the spectacle to an “ant farm”), and the high cost of licensing rock classics such as “Tiny Dancer” and “River,” the show met much the same fate as the 2000 movie upon which it was based. Cameron Crowe’s cinematic memoir, despite being inspired by the simplicity of François Truffaut’s frank and personal Antoine Doinel films, lost a packet because it was also really expensive—$60 million plus marketing, thanks in part to the cost of renting some fifty famous rock tracks used to fill out the sonic background. “Imagine there’s no licensing revenue” is not a lyric that would ever pass the lips of any unwashed star-child hippie rock poet.

The film—which did win Crowe an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and made a star of Kate Hudson as the groupie calling herself Penny Lane—rightly became cherished. I think