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Pop Culture

People are sharing the greatest movie, music and TV projects that never got made

beetlejuice 2, nic cage superman, day the clown cried

Beetlejuice 2? Nic Cage as Superman? They almost happened.

It’s thrilling to wonder “what could have been” when we hear stories of great screenplays that were never shot, incredible musical collaborations that were almost recorded or TV pilots that sounded great on paper but never got the green light.

I sometimes daydream about what would have happened if John Lennon had got on the plane in 1975 and joined Paul McCartney for the recording of his Wings album “Venus and Mars.” Lennon had planned to join McCartney at the sessions in New Orleans for what would have been their first official reunion since the Beatles break-up in 1970, but was told not to go at the last minute by his wife, Yoko Ono.

I also wonder what if director Alejandro Jodorowsky (“El Topo”) had been able to make his epic version of “Dune” starring Mick Jagger, Orson Welles and Salvador Dali in the mid-’70s. That film looked so promising that the making of it became an award-winning documentary in 2013.

There was also a planned sequel to Beetlejuice where the ghost with the most goes to Hawaii.

Michael Jackson asked Prince to duet on his 1987 hit “Bad,” but His Royal Badness refused.


When it comes to TV pilots, a lot of folks couldn’t wait to see the Dwight Schrute-centered "Office" spinoff, “The Farm," that was never picked up by NBC. Or Judd Apatow's follow-up to “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared,” called "North Hollywood," that would have starred Jason Segel as a struggling actor who worked as Frankenstein at Universal Studios.

There are also a whole host of films that could have been a whole lot different. George Lucaswas originally slated to direct Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 masterpiece, “Apocalypse Now.” Instead, he made a space movie called “Star Wars.”

TV writer Dan Chamberlain took to Twitter on Sunday and asked his followers about their favorite "pop culture white whale” meaning the "unreleased/unrealized stuff" they wished they could have experienced. He gave two examples, one "The Day the Clown Cried," an unreleased Jerry Lewis film about a clown during the Holocaust, and a Jay-Z “The Blueprint 3” track "Crispy Benjamins," which supposedly sampled Regina Spektor's "Chemo Limo."

The Lewis film, originally shot in 1972, is allegedly so bad that he donated an incomplete copy of the film to the Library of Congress in 2015 under the stipulation that it was not to be screened before June 2024.

Here are some of the best responses to the pop culture “white whales” people have been yearning to see and hear.

Some of the white whales mentioned seem so incredible that if they did materialize, it’d be hard for them to deliver on their promises. Sometimes it’s more fun to imagine what something would sound or look like than actually experiencing it in real life.

Comedian Harry Shearer claims to have seen a rough cut of the aforementioned Lewis film, “The Day the Clown Cried” and says that most of the time there’s no way these white whales can live up to their expectations. However, Lewis' film is the exception that proves the rule.

“With most of these kinds of things, you find that the anticipation, or the concept, is better than the thing itself. But seeing this film was really awe-inspiring, in that you are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object,” Shearer said.

“This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is. ‘Oh, My God!’—that's all you can say,” he continued.

The gaze of the approving Boomer.

Over the past few years, Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) have been getting a lot of grief from the generations that came after them, Gen X (1965 to 1980), Millenials (1981 to 1996), and now, Gen Z (1997 to 2012). Their grievances include environmental destruction, wealth hoarding, political polarization, and being judgemental when they don’t understand how hard it is for younger people to make it in America these days.

Every Baby Boomer is different, so it's wrong to paint them all with a broad brush. But it’s undeniable that each generation shares common values, and some are bound to come into conflict.

However, life in 2023 isn’t without its annoyances. Many that came about after the technological revolution put a phone in everyone’s hands and brought a whole new host of problems. Add the younger generations' hands-on approach to child rearing and penchant for outrage, and a lot of moden life has become insufferanble.

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Klein Kwagga understood the assignment at his sister's concert.

Some kids are too shy to ever want to get on a stage, some will spend most of a performance staring awkwardly at their shoes, and some kids love the opportunity to show off what they've practiced in front of an audience.

And then there are the kids were simply born for the spotlight. You know them when you see them.

When Dirkco Jansen van Nieuwenhuizen hopped on stage with all of the other brothers and sisters of the dance students at René’s Art of Dance in South Africa, no one expected a viral sensation. According to Capetown Etc, it was the school's year-end concert, and siblings were invited to come up and dance to Bernice West’s Lyfie—a popular song in Afrikaans. And Dirkco, who goes by Klein Kwagga, took the assignment and ran with it.

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True

After over a thousand years of peaceful relations, European semi-superpowers Sweden and Switzerland may finally address a lingering issue between the two nations. But the problem isn’t either country’s fault. The point is that the rest of the world can’t tell them apart. They simply don’t know their kroppkakor (Swedish potato dumpling) from their birchermüesli (a Swiss breakfast dish).

This confusion on the European continent has played out in countless ways.

Swedish people who move to the United States often complain of being introduced as Swiss. The New York Stock Exchange has fallen victim to the confusion, and a French hockey team once greeted their Swiss opponents, SC Bern, by playing the Swedish National Anthem and raising the Swedish flag.

Skämtar du med mig? (“Are you kidding me?” in Swedish)

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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

People share the most practical ways to support new parents

There's a lot of preparation that goes into having a child well before they're even born. First there are the physical changes your body makes to clear up some space for a tiny human roughly the size of a watermelon. Then there's preparing the nursery, buying lots of extremely small clothes, diapers and an expected understanding that while sleep may be your friend, you won't be getting any of it for about a year.

Lots of people give plenty of advice to help you cope in the early days but after the baby arrives, the focus shifts to solely the baby. It's obviously not a deliberate shift. Babies are just more shiny and new that the parents. But not everyone forgets about the parents once baby makes their grand entrance–some go out of their way to make sure the parents feel supported.

Upworthy asked its audience, "what was the best non-baby related gift you received as a new parent," and the answers were a masterclass on how to care for new parents.

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Family

A mom seeks doctor's help for postpartum depression and instead gets a visit from the cops

Too many women lose out on much needed support because of unwarranted stigma.

Canva

Postpartum depression is very common, and treatable.

Jessica Porten recently visited her doctor four months after giving birth to her daughter, Kira. She wasn't feeling quite like herself.

She had been dealing with overwhelming sadness and fits of anger, which she knew was likely stemming from a case of postpartum depression.

In a Facebook post, Porten recounts the story of that appointment.

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Identity

Formerly enslaved man's response to his 'master' wanting him back is a literary masterpiece

"I would rather stay here and starve — and die, if it come to that — than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters."

A photo of Jordan Anderson.

In 1825, at the approximate age of 8, Jordan Anderson (sometimes spelled "Jordon") was sold into slavery and would live as a servant of the Anderson family for 39 years. In 1864, the Union Army camped out on the Anderson plantation and he and his wife, Amanda, were liberated. The couple eventually made it safely to Dayton, Ohio, where, in July 1865, Jordan received a letter from his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson. The letter kindly asked Jordan to return to work on the plantation because it had fallen into disarray during the war.

On Aug. 7, 1865, Jordan dictated his response through his new boss, Valentine Winters, and it was published in the Cincinnati Commercial. The letter, entitled "Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master," was not only hilarious, but it showed compassion, defiance, and dignity. That year, the letter would be republished in theNew York Daily Tribune and Lydia Marie Child's "The Freedman's Book."

The letter mentions a "Miss Mary" (Col. Anderson's Wife), "Martha" (Col. Anderson's daughter), Henry (most likely Col. Anderson's son), and George Carter (a local carpenter).

Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

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