Further to this post on proposed Disney features which were never made, Buzzfeed lists ten which were made and largely forgotten about. (Atlantis, anyone? Dinosaur? Home on the Range?)
I’m not sure how the hugely disappointing Tarzan escaped a place on this list. On the other hand, I maintain that this one – the biggest money-loser in Disney history, until John Carter – is a great film:
Why is there a 37-minute YouTube video featuring all of Yankovic’s polka medleys? Because God loves us and wants us to be happy, that’s why. (via AV Club)
From Mental Floss, an article about 18 proposed Disney animated films which, for one reason or another, was never made. That doesn’t mean they’ll never be made – the idea that became Wreck-It Ralph bounced around the company for years. (Army Ants sounds a lot like A Bug’s Life in any event.)
The Gremlins looks particularly interesting, if its rare tie-in book is any indication:
1. LOUIS THE BEAR
For those of us who adored Louis Prima’s role as King Louie in The Jungle Book, here’s something to be sad about: Disney had a whole film planned that would feature Prima’s distinctive voice. Louis would have provided the voice of a bear (pictured above) who escaped from a zoo, aided by a couple of mice. If this sounds familiar, it’s because the concept was later turned intoThe Rescuers in the years after Walt Disney died and Prima was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
[...]
5. REYNARD
There is, perhaps unknown to many of us, an old folk tale about a rascally fox named Reynard. Walt Disney considered making a movie about Reynard since at least 1937, but never could quite come to the terms with the fox’s ugly deeds. Unlike other harmless Disney scoundrels, the victims of Reynard’s pranks often perished. It was more than a little off-brand for Disney, but he kept trying to figure out how to make it work for nearly 40 years. At one point, they even considered merging the tales of Chanticleer and Reynard into one movie. Eventually, the sly fox was used as the inspiration for the title character in Robin Hood.
[...]
13. THE GREMLINS
Not the version with Gizmo and Co., but a version based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name. Back in the early 1940s, Disney had at least two screenplays written for this project before it was ultimately dropped. What did survive was a promotional book that would have tied in with the movie. Original copies of these—there are fewer than 5000 of them—fetch up to $300 on secondary markets.
TV commercials in a Communist country? Why? Harry Egipt, the twisted genius behind some of the most surreal ads ever made, explains:
During Soviet times advertising had an entirely different purpose than it would have today. For example, it shows the absurdity of Soviet planned economy that the commercials produced by a state-funded agency were sometimes prevented from even being screened. The primary purpose of advertising was not to encourage people to consume, it was not to market a product or service, but rather to inform and educate people and shape their views on society in general as opposed to finding a market for a particular product. Advertisements were targeted at a wider audience, not at a specific group of consumers.
Soviet ads were absurdly twisted in the context of contemporary advertising compared to their capitalist counterparts. Selling a product was not as important as the entertainment value, thus making the ads themselves the product to be consumed. Products often vanished from the shelves without need for any advertising but ads were produced nonetheless. At other times an ad would be produced in hopes that, at the time of airing, a product would be available for sale. Quite often adverts provided a financial basis to make television programs – with less bureaucracy and more creative freedom. To this end my adverts possessed an artistic value and looked like music videos.
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Actually nearly all products or services that were advertised were more or less available (at the time the ad aired – ed.). For example, oranges that were not grown in USSR were rarely sold on the market. But when a cargo ship was about to arrive to Tallinn (the capital of Estonia), the advertisement for oranges was aired on local TV (nr 47 “Oranges”).
Before 1983, advertising for the car Zaporozhets (nr 56) proved to be completely absurd in the context of Soviet culture (the car was only sold for a special purchase card). But in 1983 there was a unique economic turnaround in the Soviet Union and within a month the car was available with no restrictions.
My action was not to be bound by Soviet doctrine. My clips demonstrated that Soviet Estonians are not afraid of capitalist glamour like socialist glamour (nr 82 “Luxury Goods”, nr 40 “Baked Apple in Pastry”, nr 78 “Perfume Plot”), nor young and beautiful dancing girls (nr 24 “Kalev Chocolates Selection”) nor other beautiful naked girls (nr 64 “Mistra Carpets” and nr 28 “Floare Carpets”).
It’s absolutely fascinating, how Eastern Bloc nations preached against the evils of capitalism, while simultaneously trying to replicate Western consumer culture at home. Who wants ice cream?
Via Reason.
Buzzfeed has an interesting article about why some musicians’ albums are recorded, completed, delivered to the record company…and then never heard from again.
If you’ve been waiting for the new JoJo album to drop, well, you’d better be patient:
It’s been almost seven years since JoJo has put out an official release, though that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been trying. “I’ve recorded about three incarnations of this third album,” JoJo tells BuzzFeed. “We’ve chosen the track listing, we’ve done multiple album photo shoots, chosen the cover, chosen the credits, everything.” But every time her team tried to present the album to her label, Blackground Records, they never received a response.
“Blackground Records lost their distribution deal through Interscope, and if you can get the answer from them on why that happened, that would be a miracle,” JoJo says, “because I am sure they would not engage you in that conversation.” While JoJo says she has no problem with Interscope, she says she’s lost all communication with Blackground.
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“[JoJo’s case is] one of those extreme situations where you have a guy like Barry Hankerson, who is one of those guys who would just go to war and say, ‘No, I’m not doing it,’” says David Byrnes, a partner at Ziffren Brittenham, whose firm has represented clients like Michael Jackson, The Rolling Stones, and Fleetwood Mac.
Blackground’s CEO Barry Hankerson is notorious in the record industry for being one of the more questionable label execs in the business. Hankerson was ordered by a court in 2011 to pay his former girlfriend (who was once signed to Blackground as an artist, according to JoJo’s manager Gita Williams) over $3 million in damages for repeated instances “stalking, defamation and the intentional infliction of emotional distress,” and reportedly blowing up her car.
Singer Toni Braxton sued Blackground in 2007 to end her relationship with the label and Hankerson. Timbaland, who was signed to the label as a performer, filed suit in 2009, claiming that Hankerson tried to blackball his producing careerwith different labels.
The Blackground company website is currently a Go Daddy domain page, and according to Williams, they’ve closed up shop, probably don’t have any employees, and can’t be contacted. (BuzzFeed was unable to reach anyone at Blackground for this piece.)
The show is I Married Dora, an ABC series about a guy who marries his housekeeper so she won’t be deported. Seriously. The setup: he’s decided to take a job out of the country, and over the protests of Dora and his kids (including a young Juliette Lewis) he’s just boarded his plane.
Am I seeing things, or is the airline named “Oceanic”?
ESPN.com has a nice profile of NASCAR veteran Joe Nemechek, who keeps plugging away with his own low-budget team:
If the floor of his race shop isn’t swept to his satisfaction, Joe Nemechek sweeps it. If parts need to be fetched from a vendor for either his Sprint Cup or Nationwide series cars, Joe Nemechek will likely be the one doing the fetching, unless he’s busy updating his website with bylined news releases.
Or unless he’s under a deadline machining parts for the Super Late Model car his son, John Hunter, will drive on a given weekend. And then there are sponsor calls. Lots of them.
Times are better, financially, for the 49-year-old driver/owner/everything else, but that doesn’t mean they’re easier, he said.
Such is the life of the modern NASCAR driver/owner/hustler. Few in NASCAR do both as vigorously and consistently as Nemechek in the shadows of the megateams that rule the sport.
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Cobbling together a loyal but small cadre of sponsors and operating a threadbare employee roster is taxing, Nemechek said, but “gratifying.” He employs three full-time workers (crew chief Steven Gray, a head mechanic and truck driver) on his Nationwide team and “six or seven” (crew chief Scott Eggleston, a car chief, couple mechanics and a fabricator, plus occasional part-timers) on his Sprint Cup team, which has made every race this season, and has a top result of 29th at Bristol.
“It’s small, man, I’m telling you,” he said. “It’s a lot of work.”
Nemechek’s goal is to run every Sprint Cup and Nationwide race this season, but funding has yet to be secured for all them. With many huge teams grappling with the same problem, the situation gets no easier.
“We’re basically race-by-race right now,” he said. “We’re looking for some partners to help us. We have a lot going on. We’re talking to some guys about possibly renting a Nationwide ride for some races. My son is running his Super Late Model. He has a lot going on. We’re looking for guys that want to come in and rent a ride on that thing, too.”
