n my last year of college, still smarting from a break-up that had occurred a year prior (or, perhaps, smarting from some other new break-up or, perhaps, simply smarting with indigestion), I saw "Jerry Maguire." It must have been the first week of its release, because I knew almost nothing about it. All the baggage that would come near to ruining that film--the endless quotables, the eye-rolling regarding its "you complete me" scene, etc.--had not invaded the public consciousness. Which meant I could enjoy it simply for what it was--a smart, and funny, and surprisingly moving romantic comedy. Over the next few weeks, like some kind of cinematic Bible salesman, I took all my friends to go see it. That film had a rare effect on me: It inspired me. Movies are powerful things, capable of sparking all sorts of emotion in the viewer--fear, sadness, a desperate need to be thinner. But movies rarely inspire me. ("Amelie" comes to mind, as does "Harold and Maude.") Perhaps you are wondering what it inspired me to do. I suspect, knowing my propensities, that it inspired me to share a bottle of cheap wine on the porch with my roommate Bryan and weep about the beauty of babies or something. But I don't really remember. The point of this is that it kicked off a preternatural curiosity about Cameron Crowe, a filmmaker whose career has always struck me as impossibly enviable. His films since have been hit-and-miss affairs (not either/or but both/and). Today, I have a piece in Slate about his latest, "Elizabethtown," and the woman he continues to pay tribute to, his mother.