Russell Crowe casts friend as Alan-a-Dale in ROBIN HOOD
Brendon Conelly, formerly of the great blog site Film Ick and now taking residence at /film must visit a thousand different websites a day. His reach and grasp for finding news in the most obscure places is just ridiculous. Over the weekend he visited the National Pot's Ampersand column and came across the news that Russell Crowe had cast his friend Alan Doyle, the frontman of Canadian folk band Great Big Sea to play Alan-a-Dale in his next movie ROBIN HOOD. 
(he is the one on the right of this picture) Crowe and Doyle go back about four years when Doyle contributed some music for Crowe's My Hand, My Heart album.
If youre working on a new house and you have friends who know how to plaster, you hire your friends who can plaster. If youre doing a movie and you need a dude who can play the lute, you phone your friend who can play the lute.In classic Hood folklore, Alan-a-Dale was a wandering minstrel who became a member of Robin's band of outlaws, the "Merry Men." He was the musical narrator of Disney's ROBIN HOOD but has left out of the 1991 live action version ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES. He is often the character to be most likely cut from adaptations. From the sounds of things, Doyle will only spend a few days filming as a break from his tour, so I wouldn't expect this to be a big part. Director Ridley Scott still needs to find a Sheriff of Nottingham, a Will Scarlett, a Friar Truck and a Littlejohn before filming can begin.