So husky-voiced grunge rocker Eddie Vedder is shooting his first video – the track “Guaranteed,” a song he wrote for Sean Penn’s “Into The Wild” film and a song that’s been nominated for a Grammy, a Golden Globe and will be eligible for an Oscar nomination if the Academy deems it worthy enough.
According to Billboard, the clip has been directed by Marc Rocco and will premiere Jan. 7 at 6 a.m. ET on VH1.com. The video was shot in three short hours and like most-dreaded soundtrack related spots, footage from “Into The Wild” will be interspersed throughout. Can’t wait to see the simultaneous juxtaposition of Vedder and Emile Hirsch howling at the moon in the woods.
Of more note and interest (and basically the reason for this post) is the fact that Sean Penn once doggedly pursued the Pearl Jam singer to act in a script he had written. According to a sidebar not online from a Billboard Q&A conducted late last year, as their friendship deepened in the mid-late ’90s (Penn and Vedder both worked on “Dead Man Walking,” Penn began pursuing Vedder to work on a “special project” (what that project was the piece never said)
“I had written a script that I wanted him to act in,” Penn said.
Niceguy Eddie, would invariably agree only to quickly recant by phone and change his mind, but Penn was relentless and kept chasing him, insisting he’d be perfect for the role. Vedder did the only thing he could – write a punk song in protest blasting the message loud and clear: I can’t!
“Every time, I’d say, ‘I hate to do this but i just can’t. Somebody will do it better. [Penn would] say, ‘You can and you will, and I’ll get you through the big waves.’ So the song was called ‘I Can’t’.” he laughed. “It was an aggressive song, kind of L.A. punk-scene aggressive. It took that to finally get through to him.”
So yeah, there you have it, Sean Penn is stubborn, go figure and Eddie Vedder could have starred or at least acted in a Sean Penn film. If you’ve ever seen his laborious Rock N’ Roll Hall induction speech for the Ramones, you’re thanking your stars that the ability to write aggressive L.A. punk songs is within Vedder’s reach.
Download: Eddie Vedder – “Guaranteed” (from “Into The Wild”)
