Almost Famous: Be honest and unmerciful

William meets Lester Bangs for the first time.

LESTER BANGS: "These people are not your friends. These are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of rock stars, and they will ruin rock 'n'' roll and strangle everything we love about it because they're trying to buy respectability for a form that is gloriously and righteously dumb... and the day it ceases to be dumb is the day it ceases to be real, right? And then it just becomes an industry of cool. I'm telling you, you're coming along at a very dangerous time for rock 'n' roll... 99 percent of what passes as rock 'n' roll these days? Silence is more compelling. That's why I think you should just turn around, go back and be a lawyer or something. But I can tell by your face that you won't. I can give you 35 bucks, give a thousand words on Black Sabbath."

WILLIAM: "An assignment?"

LESTER BANGS: "Yeah... yeah... hey, you have to make your reputation on being honest and unmerciful."

• #music
• #almost_famous
• #lester_bangs
• #philip_seymour_hoffman
• #patrick_fugit
• #cameron_crowe
• #rock_n_roll