The iconic film that Michael Stipe turned down: “It didn’t make sense”
Once upon a time, the cameo was a genuinely useful plot device that incited the right level of shock factor. It was an effective way of saying, “Surprise! Bet you didn’t expect this!” No, not the oddly placed ones like Michael Jackson in Men in Black, but the ones that actually made you feel newly engaged, especially when it was a crossover of the music and film world.
It would actually take a while to discuss some of the best roles musicians have played, some of these providing the necessary comic relief needed to go down in history. Obviously, this refers to ones like Dave Grohl’s in Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny and, of course, one of the most iconic, ever – Cher in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. But there have also been some more serious ones that deserve more recognition, too.
In all fairness, some of these are bigger than what could be described as a cameo, but the basis for endearment remains the same, like one of the best of all time: Labyrinth. And, obviously, once you open that door, the names come in thick and fast. Whitney Houston, Prince, Debbie Harry, Billy Idol, and countless others have all tried their hand at their secondary acting skill to varying degrees of success, and when it works, it works.
Lousy, Agent M, not-worth-thinking-about examples aside, this also shines a light on why people feel so excited at the prospect of one of their favourite singers making the jump from the stage to behind the clapperboard, and what also could have been had the ones initially approached to take the plunge said yes, like Michael Stipe. Stipe was asked to originally play John Doe, the serial killer in David Fincher’s thriller Se7en.
However, scheduling conflicts meant it wasn’t to be, though that didn’t stop Stipe from regretting how the storyline played out without him. “I was offered the role of the psychopathic killer in the film Se7en,” he said. “They wanted someone very unexpected, and unfortunately my band was going on tour the same month they were filming.”
He added: “And it required nothing, all I had to do was run down some hallways and look scary. There was no dialogue. I would’ve loved doing it. I didn’t like the way that movie ended. They changed something at the end with Brad Pitt’s rather than Morgan Freeman’s character killing Kevin Spacey, which shouldn’t have happened. It didn’t make sense.”
In all fairness, though, maybe Stipe’s ommission from final product worked out for the best, especially when you think about how much his allegedly silent character would have changed quite a fair bit of the atmosphere, leading up to the main development near the end with Spacey’s dialogue and what it meant for the rest of the story. Who knows, though – maybe Stipe would have added something different, changing its legacy entirely without even having to do much other than “look scary” in front of the camera.
