Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

       You might be looking at the cast of this movie thinking "why don't I remember this?". The reason is because it was only shown at the Rome Film Festival in 2013 and never released in the theatres, on video or shown on television. The film was based on the popular satirical novel Gods Behaving Badly  by Marie Phillips, about the gods of Mount Olympus living in a flat in London. Since the movie was an American production, the Gods were transplanted to NYC. The critics ravaged the film. What if it was released? Would you be curious to see it?

       Danger Girl was a comic created by J. Scott Campbell and Andy Hartnell for Image Comics. It debuted in 1996 and the intention was to make a comic that felt like an action movie. Instead of the comic credits being on the first page, they appear after a prelude to the story as a two-page spread designed to look like the opening credits of a James Bond movie. One of the characters is even drawn as Sean Connery. When the Avengers cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, it was because that was how the character was drawn in the Marvel comic "The Ultimates". The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen  was a movie based on a comic that made Connery quit acting. What if he did a different comic book movie? Would he continue acting? Who knows?      Although the head on the cover is Charlize Theron the body is of a cosplayer named Becky that was photographed by Michael Rodriguez at San Diego Comic Con.

        National Lampoon's Animal House was originally written with different actors in mind. D-Day was based on Dan Aykroyd. I remember hearing how he would ride his motorcycle from Canada to New York for SNL. a story that I have since heard might be apocryphal. Before SNL, John Belushi and Chevy Chase a stage in National Lampoon's stage show "Lemmings" in 1973. Belushi, Bill Murray and Brian Doyle-Murray had worked with Animal House co-writer Harold Ramis on National Lampoon's next stage show, appropriately called "The National Lampoon Show".        The producers really wanted Chevy Chase as Otter, but director John Landis didn't. According to Landis he used reverse psychology to get Chase to pass, telling to do this instead Foul Play . He told him that the frat comedy is a great ensemble  movie where he could share the screen with Belushi like the Lemmings show. If he did Foul Play , that would be a leading man type of role, with just...

          "The Doctor returns in DOCTOR DETROIT II THE WRATH OF MOM ".  That's what it said at the end of  Doctor Detroit . It might have just been a joke, I don't think anyone expected a sequel to come out but didn't stop me from thinking about it. Just like Animal House and American Graffiti (which did get a sequel) on screen captions said what happened to the characters so I went from there. I figure the only actors to return would be Aykroyd, his wife Dixon, their friend Drescher and Kate Murtagh, who played Mom (and was the waitress on the cover of Supertramp's Breakfast in America ). I would hope for cameos from T. K. Carter, Lynn Whitfield and Lydia Lei.  More high jinks would ensue, and Dan could play some outrageous characters while in disguise.

     This is kind of a double "What If". What if An American Werewolf in London  was made in the 1940s and what if the Universal monster series went a different direction. Since this is the time of Sherlock Holmes in Washington , The Falcon in San Francisco  and The Saint in London , I figure the movie would be called The Wolf Man in London . The original Mummy movie had Boris Karloff as Imhotep but the 1940 sequel had Tom Tyler as the mummy Kharis. The main characters were Steve Banning and Babe Hanson, played by Dick Foran and Wallace Ford, searching for the lost tomb of Princess Ananka. The sequel to that film, The Mummy's Tomb , took place 30 years later (1970?). I imagined the Jack and David characters from An American Werewolf in London  being Steve and babe from The Mummy's Hand . Lon Chaney Jr. would have a small part as Larry Talbot passing the curse to Steve. Since Universal horror movies reused actors in different roles, Claude Rains, who played ...

 One of the first fake movie covers I did for this blog was Scorcher VI  from Tropic Thunder . Now I present to you Jack Slater IV  from another action series that doesn't exist. Last Action Hero was a 1993 action/comedy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was filled with "meta" jakes about action movies in general and Arnold specifically.  Last action hero - Trailer

      The first actor to play James Bond was an American named Barry Nelson in 1954 for an episode of the tv series Climax! . Britain's most famous secret agent was almost played by an American again for Octopussy . James Brolin was set to play J.B. after Roger Moore. He screen tested a fight scene, a love scene and a dialog scene. When it was found that another Bond film, Never Say Never Again , would be competing with their release and it would star Sean Connery, the producers decided to ask Roger Moore to return.      If Connery had not been talked into returning to his famous role we might have seen Brolin's interpretation of the spy. Also, if Never Say Never Again was not made, Barbara Carrera would have been available to play Octopussy. She might have looked more appropriate for someone in India than Swedish-born actress Maud Adams who had already been in the Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun as a different character. James Brolin Screen Test F...

  Jon Peters produced the 1989 Batman movie and in the '90s he got the film rights to Superman. Peters contacted Kevin Smith to write the screenplay. Smith met with Peters and the producer told him what he wanted. Smith found the pitch meeting odd and has told the story of what happened many times.  Nicolas Cage was cast as Superman/Clark Kent and according to him it was he that brought Tim Burton on board. After Smith, Wesley Strick rewrote the script followed by a Dan Gilroy rewrite. Concept art was commissioned, Cage had fittings for various "Supersuits" and it all seemed a go but it never got off the ground. Since the script was based on the "Death of Superman" storyline I wanted to base the cover on the poly bag that covered the comic when it was first released which was black with only a red dripping Superman logo on front. It would also be reminiscent of the original VHS release of Batman  which was black with only the Batman logo extended past the edges....

  Boxing Helena   is a film written and directed by Jennifer Lynch about a doctor wo becomes infatuated with a woman and after he is in an accident amputates her arms and legs so he can keep her with him. This post is not so much about the bizarre movie as it is about unusual lawsuit that came from it. In 1991 Kim Basinger read the script and was intrigued enough to want set up a meeting with Lynch. After talking to the screenwriter Basinger agreed to be in the film. Now that a big name was attached preproduction was started. After her agent and other people she admired in the business told her it would be a mistake, Basinger backed out. That was when Main Line Pictures, the producers, sued her for breach of contract. Even though it was a verbal contract they contended that when she pulled out before shooting they lost nearly $6.4 million in potential domestic and foreign sales.  Basinger lost the case, had to file for bankruptcy and the film was made with Sherilyn Fenn a...

  I really enjoyed National Treasure and its sequel. There have been on again/ off again talks about a third since Book of Secrets came out in 2007. I extrapolated my sequel from dialogue in a deleted scene on the  National Treasure 2 DVD. I was originally going to call this Lafitte's Booty but that sounded too much like a Cinemax after hours movie.

        I am going to be away from my drawing table for a while so I am posting this early.           22 Jump Street is one of the few movies where the audience stayed when the end credits started to roll. Over the credits were clips from 23 Jump Street , 24 Jump Street , etc. Any one of these fake sequels would be appropriate for this blog. I started working on one when I realized that if 21 Jump Street came out in 2012 and 22 Jump Street came out in 2014 then 27 Jump Street would be out this year. Nice bonus for all you Bill Hader fans as well.

  I saw the movie Galaxy Quest  in 2000. As a Star Trek fan I could appreciate the parody but also the performances by everyone involved were great. The movie has actors who played heroes in a television space opera being pulled into space by aliens that think they are really the characters they portrayed and high jinks ensue. For this post I wanted to show what a DVD release of the first season would look like if the series was real. https://youtu.be/4kIavuY5NXw?si=dT70SXzyk5UtTpoY

      Mel Brooks' 1974 comedy  Blazing Saddles had Richard Pryor as one of the writers. Brooks had wanted Pryor to play the lead as well. However, the studio did not want to back the film with him starring because of his various drug arrests. The role went to Cleavon Little who made a memorable character of Bart. Gig Young was cast as the drunken gunslinger but when they started shooting he had the DTs so bad they couldn't continue so Gene Wilder was hired with whom Mel Brooks made the movie The Producers . Two years after Blazing Saddles  Wilder and Pryor were in Silver Streak  and they made such a good comedic double act that they made four films together.

  The series "30 Rock" did a lot of movie spoofs. Usually starring characters from the show like Tracy being Honky Grandma Be Trippin' or Jenna in The Rural Juror but in the episode "Leap Day" they showed clips of a fictional movie starring Jim Carrey and Andie MacDowell. In the 30 Rock universe Leap Day is a big holiday with traditions and the USA network runs a Leap Dave Williams marathon. Since Leap Day is on Thursday I thought I would make this fantasy cover to honor it. here are some scenes from it: https://youtu.be/uK0KTH0ezgc?si=A0RXt0s9qvaWR-kV

  10 Things I Hate About Life  is an oddity. The title sounds like 10 Things I Hate About You  but despite it being written and produced by the people who made that movie and having title art that was designed to look the same, it was not a sequel. Filming had started in December of 2012 but was halted when lead actress, Evan Rachel Wood, got pregnant. Filming was planned to continue in December of 2013. Poster art was made, a trailer was screened, it looked like a sure thing. That is until the lawsuits. The film company sued Wood for breach of contract saying the film wasn't finished because of her. Wood however said that she planned on resuming filming November of 2013 but the producers had run out of money and she had not been paid what she was already owed.  Here's the trailer to give you a peek of what it might have been: https://youtu.be/TFgmolA-uxM?si=pctrBDJrB9AUtZ77

        CQ  is Roman Coppola's Sullivan's Travels . Except instead of taking place when it was made like Preston Sturge's 1941 movie Coppola's 2001 film takes place in 1969 and instead of the protagonist being a screenwriter, it's about a director. Okay, maybe it isn't that much like Sullivan's Travels .       In CQ  Jeremy Davies plays a film editor for a movie being made in Paris called Codename Dragonfly;  part Barbarella  and part Danger: Diabolik . There are many scenes showing how the movie within the movie is being made. Codename Dragonfly  is a movie I would probably watch so here is the DVD cover for this fantastical film. https://youtu.be/xOwLeB2j3p0?si=H_YfQYFQpBhsiKo-

  One of the fun parts of the movie Tropic Thunder  was the fake trailers for characters in the movie. Ben Stiller played Tugg Speedman, a popular action star and Scorcher VI was the latest of his blockbusters This is my interpretation of what the DVD cover would be. https://youtu.be/04B4mi1QfEM

 Since a new Indiana Jones movie is coming out I think it is good time to revisit the first one. However this is the one that almost was. Most people know Selleck was originally cast but there were a lot of changes before it was finally filmed. The synopsis on the back of the DVD cover above will cover some of them. I first heard about Toht's mechanical arm when I got the book "Raiders of the Lost Ark: the Illustrated Screenplay and page 87 had a storyboard drawing of a very different Toht than we know today.  The illustration I used for the front cover is from an old Playboy and I believe Joann Daly is the artist.