After that last uncalled for little snark, it occurred to me to wonder what Ben Fong-Torres had to say about his portrayal in Almost Famous (something I have meant to investigate ever since I saw the movie, but never got around to). I mean, he came off looking like a king-sized cut of USDA Prime putz, so it made me curious as to whether he’s ever spoken to Cameron Crowe again. It took very little Googling to find my answer, which appears in an interview he did with JournalismJobs.com:

JournalismJobs.com: What did you think about your portrayal in the movie “Almost Famous”?

Ben Fong-Torres: Terry Chen was the actor and I thought he did a fine job. He came to San Francisco and kind of studied me for a few hours. I gave him videotape of myself back in the day that was pretty close to the time frame. You can actually see me in my Rolling Stone office because I used to do intros for interview segments for the TV show called Evening Magazine [in San Francisco] from those offices. They saw me in my loud shirts with my legs propped up on my desk for no good reason, holding the phone in an odd way. He would see all that stuff and bring it with him to the set in Los Angeles a day or so later.

Then I decided to write a story about this experience, so I hopped down to L.A. to the set to watch him playing me. While I was there, Cameron Crowe was able to call on me and Dave Felton, who was also portrayed. He was the guy standing next to me at all times holding his cigarette holder, which is what he did in real life. He always stood by my side, gesturing his thumbs up, thumbs down, shrug, whatever. We both kind of lent on-set guidance to Cameron. In terms of the portrayal, I’m overall okay about it, although my friends and family all have kind of said, “That wasn’t you.” That’s not Terry’s fault. He did what he was directed to do and said the words that were written for him. Where I have dips with the movie is really the portrayal of the way Rolling Stone treated its writers. That is what happened to him in the movie was great for the movie, but it didn’t happen in real life.

Ummm, wow – complete lack of self-awareness, anyone?