A commenter brought up an interesting notion for some holiday pondering… what would have happened by now to the “great stars” who died before their time?
Would Marilyn Monroe be in Rumor Has It?
Would James Dean by married to Barbra Streisand… or Kevin Spacey?
Would John Belushi doing Brian Cox roles or Eugene Levy roles?
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Cannes ’13: What Is This Thing Called Love?
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RT @nigelmfs: Polanski's VENUS IN FUR is an energizing riot. The most purely enjoyable film I've seen at #Cannes2013
RT @gemko: Venus in Fur (Polanski): 61. As elegantly directed as CARNAGE, but with a decent text this time (albeit on a subject I find unin…
RT @JonathanRomney: VENUS - brittle, fun and blimey, a touch nor raunchy than his OLIVER TWIST.
DP: @BumbleWard But I am not a great fan of the cinema of negative drama… plenty of critics feel otherwise
DP: The 6 hr version - w/ a story - might’ve been great RT @BumbleWard: @DavidPoland that makes me sad Dave! The confession scene blew me away.
“The true punk film of the festival.”
~ Romain Blondeau On Claire Denis’ Les Saluds in Les Inrocks
“It’s also defined commercially by the difference between a colorful, Hawaii-set comedy starring George Clooney and a black-and-white, prairie-based old-age odyssey featuring a straggly and unkempt Bruce Dern. All the same, Paramount Vantage should be able to ride accolades for this very fine Cannes competition entry to respectable specialized returns in fall release.”
~ McCarthy On Nebraska
John Belushi would be doing Jim Belushi roles.
Marilyn Monroe would be retired, living alone in a Paris apartment.
Dean would be a legendary elder statesman of cinema. Like Brando, but not as fat.
Imagine John Belushi as Pete Venkman in Ghostbusters.
Or River Phoenix as the interviewer in Vampire.
Or Mark Hamill’s original face in Empire Strikes Back.
…Chris Farley in Elf.
Kevin Spacey can do much better than an old and gray Jimmy Dean.
The last thing I want to even ponder today is John Belushi in the sitcom “According the John”. That’s beyond terrible.
I think Farley would have been a good addition to “Old School”.
The Hamill accident did give the Luke character some added character in the 2 sequels to Star Wars. It was like “they are going thru a lot on this adventure and anything can happen”.
Now, was the “Would James Dean by married…” a typo or a Freudian slip?
I’d rather stay buried six feet under than be married to Babs Streisand.
“I’ll take Marilyn Monroe to block.”
“I might have gone to James Dean for the win, but this might work out…”
Charles Nelson Reilly to win.
I’ve always thought that Monroe and Dean’s iconic status has to do with having died young. Neither of them were great talents. Dean would have gone on to some kind of TV spy series, and Monroe to the sort of pictures they cast Jayne Mansfield in instead. Probably some enterprising European director would have cast one or the other (or both!) in one of his theoretically genre-shattering magnum opi. And eventually it would be Hollywood Squares for the both of them. I’m not being malicious, just realistic.
As for John Belushi, I think he would’ve become a character actor in the same mode as Bill Murray. You can see him trying those shoes on as early as “Continental Divide” and even “Neighbors.” It’s a matter of record that he was curious about stretching his limits even in his SNL years; for all the talk that he hated women writers on the show, it is also true that he just hated bad writing, and collaborated in great detail with the decidedly female Marilyn Suzanne Miller on a sketch (that did air) about a man suffering from impotence (“manly problems,” as the skit had it).
To be fair to Monroe, she might have turned her career and image around with “Woman of Summer,” which she was hired for and then fired from before shooting; it was retitled “The Stripper” and cast with Joanne Woodward. The director, Franklin J. Schaffner of “Patton” fame, might well have brought out a side of her that hadn’t been seen before, but hindsight remains ever so 20/20. Dean, though, I could vaguely see him in his later years lucking into the James Franciscus role in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes.” I bet he’d have done especially well with the line “DAMN your HYPOCRISY!”
“I’ve always thought that Monroe and Dean’s iconic status has to do with having died young. Neither of them were great talents.”
whoa. Dean got two Academy Award nominations from three films and you don’t think he was a great talent? Not to mention that his films are classics…
Monroe I think would have continued to impress throughout the years as she would have been determined to expell her sex bomb image. I can tell from watching several movies of her’s that she had an untapped dramatic force.
Because Monroe was associated with sex and comedy, her abilities as an actress are highly underrated. Just take a look at Bus Stop or Don’t Bother to Knock to see what she was capable of.