Fifteen years later, that tour bus group singalong of Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" still rings in our ears.
"Almost Famous" may not have been a hit when it first opened on September 15, 2000, but over the years, it's come to pluck the heartstrings and echo in the eardrums of millions of fans. It made a star of Kate Hudson, gave an early career boost to Zooey Deschanel, and won writer/director Cameron Crowe (of "Say Anything" and "Jerry Maguire" fame) his only Oscar to date.
In honor of "Almost Famous'" fifteenth anniversary, crank up Stillwater's "Fever Dog" and check out these facts you may not know about Crowe's semi-autobiographical film.
While many moviegoers are looking forward to the November release of "
Don't expect Thomas and friends to be dropped into another isolated experiment with a giant maze in the middle. This time, our heroes will be venturing into the wider world.
Thomas and friends finally encountered the faceless enemy controlling their every action in the climax of the first movie. Look for the sequel to delve much deeper into the mysterious organization that is WCKD, and reveal why they dumped a bunch of teenagers into a giant death trap.
"Scorch Trials" will feature several returning characters from the first movie, including Thomas (Dylan O'Brien), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), Minho (Ki Hong Lee) and the mysterious researcher Ava Paige (Patricia Clarkson).
The first "Maze Runner" didn't seem to want viewers to know much about the true nature of this world, or the reason why dozens of innocent teens were dumped into a giant death trap and forced to build a Lord of the Flies-style civilization. As per usual in these types of mystery-driven stories, the characters with the answers always seemed to be the most tight-lipped.
Book purists might want to brace themselves: The adaptation will be a bit different from its source material - more so than the first movie was.
Two decades later, we're still totally creeped out by "
1. "Seven" screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker has a cameo. He's the corpse seen at the beginning of the movie.
6. Similarly, Brad Pitt was not the first choice to play Somerset's hot-tempered partner, David Mills. But Denzel Washington and 
11. Like Fincher, graphic designer Kyle Cooper was working on just his second film, after "Dead Presidents." His credits for that were based on tabletop shots of paper money on fire. Seeing the word "God" burn up on a bill gave Cooper the idea of using the pages of John Doe's notebooks to generate the opening credits for "Seven" (pictured).
16. John Doe's books -- his handwritten journals documenting his street-level perceptions of humanity -- were handwritten. They took two months to finish writing, and cost a rumored $15,000
Being a loyal "
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Since its release 30 years ago, 
1. Director 
6. Bullying villain Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson, pictured) was named for Ned Tanen, a studio executive Zemeckis and Gale had clashed with during the making of "Used Cars."
12. Yes, that's 
18. For Marty's all-important rock 'n' roll performance at the school dance, Fox learned to mimic the guitar moves with his hands, but his showboating solo was dubbed by guitarist Tim May. His vocals were dubbed by singer Mark Campbell of Jack Mack and the Heart Attack.
23. The film was No. 1 on the box office charts for 11 of 12 weeks throughout the summer of 1985. (It was knocked out of the top spot once, by "National Lampoon's European Vacation," but then it returned.)
27. Crispin Glover also didn't appear in the sequels because of a salary dispute. Glover claims he was being given less than half of what the other principals were being offered. He also has said he believes his notoriously demented guest appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman" scared the filmmakers away. Nonetheless, he eventually reconciled with Zemeckis and played Grendel in the director's motion-capture epic, "Beowulf."
If you've never accidentally confused actors 
1. It took nearly 20 years to get the film made. The main character originated in sketches made by Disney animator Joe Grant in 1937, based on his own spaniel, whose name was Lady. Grant envisioned a short cartoon about a dog who's puzzled by the arrival of his masters' newborn baby.
6. Peggy Lee was perhaps the first major star to sign on as a voice actor in a Disney cartoon. The torch singer voiced the roles of Darling, pound hound Peg, and cats Si and Am. She also co-wrote all the songs (with Sonny Burke) and sang four of them ("What Is a Baby," "La La Lu," "The Siamese Cat Song," and "He's a Tramp").
12. The iconic spaghetti scene almost didn't happen. Walt nixed the idea, assuming that the spectacle of two animals scarfing down pasta in tomato sauce would be messy and awkward. But animator Frank Thomas worked up a rough version of the scene that changed Disney's mind.
16. The CinemaScope process meant that the film was essentially made twice: Once in the standard, nearly square aspect ratio, and once in widescreen, after Walt decided to try the new format that was expected to lure people away from those new square boxes in their living rooms. But Walt learned that many theaters were still not equipped to project CinemaScope movies, so he released both versions.
(SPOILER WARNING: Turn back now if you don't want to know anything about the plot of Arnold's new "Terminator" movie. I mean, more than what the trailers have already spoiled.)
After "Batman Begins," the word "reboot" became the hottest phrase in Hollywood. And "Terminator: Genisys" is the latest product of that craze.
Significant chunks of the film's first act are comprised of recreated scenes and sequences from the first film, with iconic elements from the second film also added in. It's basically a 2015 remix of key moments from the 1984 film; in fact, the film largely plays out like a very expensive "mad lib" to all things "T1" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day."
"Genisys" pulls a Marvel by adding a mid-credits tag that briefly sets up a potential sequel, just as the film's climatic scenes pave the way for a future where, for the first time in over three decades, Sarah Connor is free to choose her own fate.
Not all Hollywood blockbusters are about rampaging dinosaurs, time-traveling cyborgs or spandex-clad heroes.
6. "Apollo 13" reunited "Forrest Gump" co-stars Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise. Weirdly enough, one scene between Hanks' Gump and Sinise's Lieutenant Dan involved the latter promising that he would become an astronaut if Gump became a shrimp boat captain. Sarcastic or not, at least he made good on his promise.
11. This film was one of two times Ed Harris played a character tasked with guiding astronauts back to Earth after a mechanical disaster. He provided the voice of Houston Mission Control in "Gravity."
15. Ron Howard's brother, Clint (pictured above), played a significant role in the film as flight controller Seymour Liebergot.
20. While the line "Failure is not an option" was spoken by Ed Harris in the film, it was never actually spoken by anyone during the Apollo 13 mission.
Think you're a 
Looks like we picked the wrong week to quit celebrating milestones.
5. To play the hero, Ted Striker, Paramount wanted ZAZ to cast a conventional comic lead, like Chevy Chase or Bill Murray. But the filmmakers wanted someone who could work on their deadpan comic wavelength. Among those who auditioned for the role were Bruce Jenner and a then-unknown comic named David Letterman. (Yep, that happened.)
10. Lloyd Bridges, who played air traffic controller McCroskey, had starred on TV in the drama "San Francisco International Airport." ZAZ had sought "Airport" franchise mainstay George Kennedy for the role, but he and Universal felt that appearing in the spoof would damage the franchise.
13. Leslie Nielsen, who had played the doomed ship captain in "The Poseidon Adventure," rounded out the cast as Dr. Rumack. Of course, "Airplane!" launched a second career for him as a deadpan comic leading man in movies from the "Naked Gun" movies to the "Scary Movie" horror spoofs.
20. The ZAZ team themselves have cameos in the film, as do several of their family members. The Zucker brothers are the ground crew at the beginning who accidentally cause a plane to crash through a terminal gate window. Abrahams is one of the religious fanatics Rex Kramer knocks over. Mom Charlotte Zucker is the passenger trying in vain to apply her makeup. The Zuckers' sister, Susan Breslau, plays a ticket agent. Abrahams' mother is the woman initially sitting next to Dr. Rumack.
It's been two decades, and still, the waves from the tsunami that was "
5. If "Waterworld" reminds you a lot of the "
8. Early in the shoot, co-stars 
14. All the turmoil had caused the shoot to balloon from a scheduled 96 days to 157 days, and the budget swelled as a result. By the time distribution and marketing costs were added, "Waterworld" had a price tag of $235 million.
17. At the 1996 Golden Raspberry Awards, "Waterworld" was nominated for four Razzies, including Worst Picture, Worst Actor, and Worst Director. It lost three of the four, but it won Worst Supporting Actor for villain 
After 19 years, 
1. Before locking down 
4. During the film's most iconic set piece, the stealing of the NOC List (above), note the clock on the wall: The time displayed jumps ahead in time (sometimes drastically) in certain shots -- even though the scene is supposed to be occurring in (near) real time.
8. The climactic train sequence (above) took six weeks to shoot, and is made up of 152 shots. Cruise and Voight shot most of the sequence on a London soundstage, duking it out atop a mock-up of the bullet train's roof.
10. Hot off the success of their film, "
13. The opening scene, where Cruise climbs and leaps from a 2,000-foot cliff, was the scariest and most challenging of Woo's career. Cruise did the aforementioned stunt himself, with no safety net on the ground (naturally) but with a safety harness, which was digitally-removed in post. That's just how Cruise rolls.
15. The film's intense opening scene, where villain Davian (
22. "Rogue Nation" writer-director