The amount of moving parts required to make any movie is staggering, and any number of variables could mean the difference between something good or something great. Certainly, David Fincher‘s terrific “Se7en” could’ve been much different: David Cronenberg and Guillermo del Toro eyed the project at various times; Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Costner, and Nicolas Cage were considered for Brad Pitt‘s role as Mills, while Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, and Harrison Ford were possibilities for Morgan Freeman‘s part as Somerset. “Se7en” would be something else if any of those names had signed up instead of Fincher, Pitt, and Freeman, but the same goes for Kevin Spacey as the killer John Doe.
Val Kilmer and R. Lee Ermey were in the mix for the part, but Spacey was undeniably the right choice in the end. However, Fincher and co. did reach out to someone else before him — Michael Stipe. And on Alec Baldwin‘s podcast, “Here’s The Thing,” the R.E.M. frontman talks about why he turned it down and his thoughts on the end of the film.
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“I was offered the role of the psychopathic killer in the film ‘Se7en.’ They wanted someone very unexpected, and unfortunately my band was going on tour the same month they were filming. And it required nothing, all I had to do was run down some hallways and look scary. There was no dialogue,” Stipe said. “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.”
If there really was no dialogue when Stipe took a look, clearly that changed once Spacey boarded, and the musician’s assessment of the ending is intriguing, though I think Mills is given more than enough motivation to explain his actions. Let us know what you think in the comments section, and listen to the full conversation with Stipe below.