Variety’s Andrew Stewart is reporting that Alan Rickman has landed what sounds to be his first truly decent role in years…maybe…as downtown Manhattan showman Hilly Kristal in CBGB, which Randall Miller (Bottle Shock) will direct from a script by Miller and Jody Slavin.

Playing a guy like Kristal will allow Rickman to go all madman and ticky and impassioned and tough at the same time…if the script is any good. My concern is that I saw Bottle Shock two or three years ago at Sundance and I didn’t exactly levitate.

I was a half-hearted CGBG attender in the mid to late ’70s. (I wasn’t hip enough to even stick my head in the place before 1975.) I never saw the Ramones or Blondie there, but I caught a Television set once (Tom Verlaine, “See No Evil”), and the great Patti Smith one time. (I also saw her in Westport and in Paris in ’76.) I’ll never forget her singing “Time Is On My Side” — that was heaven. I also remember catching Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics

I never wanted to know that CBGB & OMFUG stood for. I just loved the raunchy, rude sound of it.