Apparently, director Cameron Crowe once had big plans to turn Alice In Chains guitar hero Jerry Cantrell into an actor. In 1992, Alice In Chains appeared in Crowe's film Singles, doing the "band plays at a nightclub where the actual characters hang out" bit. Kyra Sedgwick says something about going out dancing, and then we get a hard cut to AIC, which raises the question: When people in early-'90s Seattle went out to see grunge shows, would they refer to it as going out dancing? That has bothered me for decades. Anyway, Cantrell also had a cameo in Crowe's Jerry Maguire in 1996. He's the copy-shop employee who tells Tom Cruise to hang his balls out there.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=pnuGJbKmTe0
In a recent podcast interview, Cantrell says that Crowe also wanted him to play the bassist from Stillwater in Almost Famous. As Loudwire reports, Cantrell recently told The Adamantium Podcast, "He wanted me to be a bass player. One of my biggest regrets is turning Cameron Crowe down for his third consecutive movie... I was in a tough place, and I was also on tour supporting Degradation Trip. But I regret it." Because Cantrell didn't take the role, it went to the very cancelled Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon musician Mark Kozelek, who doesn't do much in the film but whose presence is definitely distracting when you rewatch Almost Famous today.
On the podcast, Cantrell describes what would've been his character: "He had the character written where I was a 'McCartney is God' kind of dude, which he fucking is. In a couple of conversations where bass players would come up, I'd come off the top turnbuckle and say, 'Fuck you, McCartney is a god'." But Cantrell said no, and his main screen credits since than have been cameo appearances on Deadwood.
In other Alice In Chains news, Simon & Schuster has announced the release of a book collecting the band's late frontman Layne Staley's writings, artwork, and photographs. This Angry Pen: The Lost Journals Of Layne Staley, out Nov. 11.
