Joni Mitchell biopic in the making

Director and journalist Cameron Crowe has been working with the folk singer-songwriter on the script in secret for two years.

Canadian musician Joni Mitchell in 1968. Picture: Getty Images

Cameron Crowe, the Oscar-winning director of Almost Famous, is developing a new film with folk legend Joni Mitchell about her life.

Crowe, who has a decades-long friendship with Mitchell after first interviewing her in 1979 for his final cover story for Rolling Stone, has spent the past two years secretly developing the film’s script with the singer-songwriter.

The project is not documentary, sources told Above The Line, rather it’s an unconventional film that straddles the line between biopic and autobiography – given Crowe’s longstanding relationship with Mitchell. According to reports, he has been writing the script with Mitchell’s input, developing a story that is “basically her life from the inside looking out”.

No casting news or release schedule has been confirmed.

“Every journalist has their dream list of interview subjects,” Crowe wrote upon publishing his Rolling Stone cover story in 2000. “Mine was Marvin Gaye, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell. I never got to Marvin Gaye, but Joni Mitchell more than made up for it. My last cover story for the magazine, and still my favourite.”

Director Cameron Crowe and singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell at the opening night of Almost Famous the musical in 2019. Picture: Bruce Glikas / WireImage

Crowe, who made it big as a teenager writing for rock bibles like Rolling Stone and Creem Magazine – experiences that he dramatised in the Oscar-winning film Almost Famous, accompanied Mitchell to her first public appearance, a Grammy Awards gala in 2017, since she suffered a brain aneurysm two years prior.

It’s the director’s first feature film since the box office flop Aloha, which was panned by critics for whitewashing over the casting of Emma Stone as a character with Chinese and Hawaiian heritage; and his first project since Roadies, a short-lived Showtime series that was cancelled after one season in 2016.

In July last year, Mitchell gave her first full live performance since 2002, playing 13 songs in a surprise set alongside Brandi Carlile at Newport Folk Festival. She will play her first concert in 20 years in June.