Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

  The Wizard of Oz  went through many changes from start of production to finished film. Mutiple screenwriters wrote assorted drafts, the original director, Richard Thorpe was fired after a week to have all his scenes reshot by new director Victor Fleming, and the cast could have been quite different.  Before Judy Garland captured the role of Dorothy the studio considered borrowing Shirley Temple from 20th Century Fox. She was closer to age of protagonist in the book but her singing voice wasn't quite right for the songs in the movie. Another consideration was Deanna Durbin, who had a beautiful singing voice and was six months older than Garland.  W. C. Fields was first chosen as the Wizard. I think he could have been great as Professor Marvel and the various disguises of the Wizard but Frank Morgan was so good in the film I feel he was the right choice. Ray Bolger was originally cast as the Tin Man and Buddy Ebsen as the Scarecrow but Bolger wanted switch parts. Buddy Ebsen filmed

  The soundtrack to the first Guardians of the Galaxy  movie really is an awesome collection of songs. They didn't choose the obvious "space" songs. This is what it could have been if they did. I chose twelve songs, the same as on the actual soundtrack, and I stayed with songs between 1969 and 1979 like what was in the movie. David Bowie's "Moonage Daydream" was on the original soundtrack and even though it has a "space" theme I went with the more obvious "Space Oddity". The sequel started with E.L.O.'s "Mr. Blue Sky", for this project I used another song from the same album. I tried to choose a variety of styles like the actual soundtrack as well as ones that might work in the film. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCHnLE0OxajEaTSB91yLknnc8qpuFEOxF&si=LHC0KqDqyPeadQCl

        Considering all the permutations of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young I figured I would do something with them at some point. I chose 1976 because Crosby and Nash put out an album as did Stills and Young. As I dug deeper it seemed a better fit than planned, the Stephen Stills and Neil Young album Long May You Run  was originally going to have all four of them on it. When David Crosby and Graham Nash left while recording to finish the album they were doing together called Whistling Down the Wire . Annoyed by this, Neil Young removed Crosby and Nash's vocals from the tracks. The next year, however, he released the title song extant with all four members on the album  Decade .       For this interpretation I used "Black Coral", "Midnight on the Bay", "12/8 Blues (All the Same)" and "Fontainebleau" from the Stills-Young Band album Long May You Run  but open with the Decade  version of "Long May You Run", from the Crosby-Nash album

  National Lampoon's Animal House  was a huge hit in 1978 so Universal Studios figured a television series based on it would make sense. The producers of the movie, Matty Simmons and Ivan Reitman, produced the series. Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney and Chris Miller, who wrote the movie, also wrote the pilot. James Widdoes, Bruce McGill and Stephen Furst returned as Hoover, D-Day and Flounder. Bruce Bonheim reprised his role from the film (he was one of the Deltas firing the smoke bombs during the parade at the end) as well as Priscilla Lauris as the Dean's secretary. Belushi's Bluto was written out as having been drafted and replaced by Josh Mostel as his brother, Blotto. Boon and Kathy weren't in the series with no explanation given. John Hughes (yes, that John Hughes) and other National Lampoon writers wrote episodes. None of the episodes have ever been released on video. This is my version of what the cover and insert (front and back) could have looked like. Know It Al

  Instead of a CD based on one fictional band I compiled many different fictional bands. I wanted this to look like one of "best music of the decade" kind of CDs. Some are from movies and some are from tv. Some are actually from the 1980s and some are later spoofs of the 1980s. How many do you recognize? https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCHnLE0OxajGPgU6mJECqtnTQPmDRO2gH&si=QoWh19d2F4F7oGkE