Challenge: Turn Popular People into Has-Beens

LeVar Burton had a career in Children's TV doing Reading Rainbow after TNG, so he in not a "has been" either. And Jonathan Frakes did Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, and has a notable directing career.
You mean a career producing C quality junk? frakes & shatner 2 totally missable egomaniacs.

And of course there is the special kind of has-beens, the one trick ponies, or stuck to typecasting and when they outlive their 'type' there is nothing to fall back on.
One success and back to oblivion, or spending the rest of his/her fame at conventions (like the startrek ones)(nicely portrayed in galaxy quest).

Macauley culkin is a good example of a has-been.
 
John Lennon if he was still alive would be a has-been for much of the 1980s and possibly 1990s, probably would have recovered after Anthology though or had a big-name comeback. People forget his last album pretty-much flopped and had fallen out of the charts before he died.

I disagree very heartily. The 80s was the time when John Lennon was making his comeback, before he was assassinated. I think the 80s would have been a good time for Lennon. It was a period when big names from the 60s and 70s were still doing well, whether through a stable output or reinventing themselves totally (see "Chicago"). Such was the case with Bowie and McCartney, for example. The 80s was also a time where 50s nostalgia was back, which would have suited Lennon's personality. And it was a time when straightforward Rock n' Roll, and many covers of 50s and 60s songs, were huge, both of which would have suited Lennon.

After that, coming into the 90s, his career may have waned. But so what? He's made an ungodly amount of money, and long since has passed into Icon status where he can do whatever he wants. He could retire again, go into another area of the industry such as producing (perhaps at the same time as continuing a music career), could do the greatest hits on various tours like McCartney, or could do what Bob Dylan has done and become an Old Balladeer singing whatever he wanted to in whatever form he wanted.

A living Buddy Holly or Elvis Presley losing all their song rights and descending in drink and drugs owning a seedy strip-club in Miami in the 80s akin to something out of the Grand Theft Auto video game series

No one knows what would become of Holly. With him, you have to go through decades and decades of possible what ifs. "Would Holly's fame continue?", "How would Holly react to the folk scene?","How would Holly react to psychedelia", "How would Holly react to the 60s?", "How would Holly react to Southern Rock and Hard Rock in the 70s?", "How would Holly react to the rise of Country music into mainstream popularity?", etc, etc, etc.

Elvis I tend to think if he avoided dying, he'd redeem himself coming into the 80s, and manage to get things under control. It's hard to sidestep self destruction and not see that you need to change things.
 
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DISCLAIMER: Hörnla is no Trekkie, nor ever was one. He owns no Star Trek memorabilia and has never watched all Star Trek films in a row.

But, by definition, if you have been James Tiberius Kirk, you simply can not be a has-been. ;-) And besides....

DENNY CRANE

Enough said. Concerning the Kulkins, aren't they actually a whole bunch of has-beens?

From what I read in interviews, I think that Daniel Radcliffe is quite aware of what his status and prospects are, so I am fairly certain he will wisely take care of his money and not fall to the trappings of has-been-behaviour.
Miss Watson seems a bit erratic concerning her career. She might become a has-been, rather.
 
After a string of box office bombs, and poorly received films such as Pearl Harbor and The Island, Michael Bay, fades into obscurity following the disastrous performance of Transformers. The movie was hated by critics and audiences alike, and Michael Bay is left a has been, only remembered for his work in the 90's, and jokes about him in pretty much every comedy show/act for his failures in the 2000's.
 
...disastrous performance of Transformers. The movie was hated by critics and audiences alike, and Michael Bay is left a has been, only remembered for his work in the 90's, and jokes about him in pretty much every comedy show/act for his failures in the 2000's.

Shared wishful thinking.

Another Potential has been: a surviving Lady Di.
 
Another Potential has been: a surviving Lady Di.

Definitley. Once she stops 'looking fabuluous (?)' and marries some dodgy businessman, the paparrazzi will lose interest and take less pictures and she occassionally gets into the newspapers for making some dumb remark about dieting.
 
You mean a career producing C quality junk? frakes & shatner 2 totally missable egomaniacs.

And of course there is the special kind of has-beens, the one trick ponies, or stuck to typecasting and when they outlive their 'type' there is nothing to fall back on.
One success and back to oblivion, or spending the rest of his/her fame at conventions (like the startrek ones)(nicely portrayed in galaxy quest).

Macauley culkin is a good example of a has-been.

Beyond Belief is technically schlock, not junk. :) But his directing career is another matter, he is still a "name" in the industry. It's not a situation where people don't return his calls.

Reading Rainbow is neither, it's a well regarded children's series, often seen in reruns, which combined with Roots, and ST:TNG gives LeVar Burton a notable TV career. Most actors would kill to get three successful TV gigs over three decades.
 
Beyond Belief is technically schlock, not junk. :) But his directing career is another matter, he is still a "name" in the industry. It's not a situation where people don't return his calls.

Reading Rainbow is neither, it's a well regarded children's series, often seen in reruns, which combined with Roots, and ST:TNG gives LeVar Burton a notable TV career. Most actors would kill to get three successful TV gigs over three decades.

If you're going to be extreme about it then technically there's no such thing as a 'has been' in entertainment anymore. Someone will call them sometime. Someone will know who they are and thanks to the internet and dvd's any actor in the last 100 years can be seen and appreciated or even ridiculed.

Someone will want to use them at a convention, a supermarket opening or a guest appearance on some show. They can appear in stage plays or direct something on the shopping channel.

IMO a has-been is someone who was once very popular and is now remembered for things they did in the past. Few people are interested in what they do now and nobody is going to cast them in something big because their name is no longer a draw.

By that definition Jonathan Frakes was never a well known actor outside Star Trek (I know his imdb list) and his chance to be a major director was killed when Thunderbirds flopped.

Levar Burton is doing nothing that attracts attention these days. He's the guy with the vizor from Star Trek and some will remember him from a 1970's show called roots. Roots was 35 years ago.
 
I disagree very heartily. The 80s was the time when John Lennon was making his comeback, before he was assassinated. I think the 80s would have been a good time for Lennon. It was a period when big names from the 60s and 70s were still doing well, whether through a stable output or reinventing themselves totally (see "Chicago"). Such was the case with Bowie and McCartney, for example. The 80s was also a time where 50s nostalgia was back, which would have suited Lennon's personality. And it was a time when straightforward Rock n' Roll, and many covers of 50s and 60s songs, were huge, both of which would have suited Lennon.

I don't know whether he would've, look how bad the 80s were for Dylan, John had been out of the music scene being a househusband for 5 years. Perhaps if he had toured as he planned and there's an earlier Beatles reunion fair enough - in honesty, I think it could go either way. It is unlikely though that Wings would've disbanded as they did after John's death.

The fact though, I took issue with from a previous post is that McCartney would be a has-been had Lennon lived, which just isn't true. I can imagine them being on par after he's rejuvenated himself as Macca did with 'Flaming Pie' and 'Run Devil Run' which I'd argue led to the success he's had critically in recent years.

I can imagine John and Paul having a Keith and Mick style relationship, I think by now John would probably be akin to Keith physically :D

What would be interesting though is, McCartney gets some hate for the fact he's still alive, if John's still alive as well and they're both popping up on TV with ageing voices at the Queen's Jubilee or the Olympics, it would be quite funny. :D
 
David Cameron. Maybe if something bad happened during the first stage of the Labour government in 1997-2001, and the Conservatives had elected either Ken Clarke or Michael Howard as leader, instead of William Hague, then maybe they would have made more inroads into Labour's lead in 2001, then 2005.

Because the task in 2010 would have been easier to accomplish, the new Tory leader William Hague could have won a majority, thus becoming Prime Minister.
 
Aerosmith

Without Run-D.M.C.'s 1986 remix of "Walk This Way" renewing interest in the band (and convincing Steven Tyler to hire outside songwriters for the Permanent Vacation album), Aerosmith is just another band from Boston with a string of hits in the 70s and then two failed "comeback" albums in the 80s: Rock in a Hard Place and Done With Mirrors.
 
I'd like to add a good deal of the cast of every Quentin Tarentino movie.

And: Robert Downey jr who could actually just As well Be Dead instead of potentially has been.

Does Mickey Rourke count or is he actually STILL a has-been?
 
John Kennedy lives to do something really boneheaded while President and is impeached. The whole Kennedy name is disgraced (by all and not just a portion of the population) and not a single one is seen is office again. I really don't know what sort of stunt he'd have to pull to get Congress to impeach and remove him from office.

He did cover up banging an East German spy.
 
You could make a case for former VP Dan Quayle as a has-been. After 20 January 1993, he dropped off the radar screen except for a very brief flurry in 2000. According to on-line sources, he's now living in Arizona working (?) as an investment banker, in near-total obscurity.
 
Ah, come ob. Who didn't so that? As Long As the Spy was female...

That was true. Half of Washington was using her services, so that all got conveniently swept under the rug.

The stories of JFK's penis are grossly overstated. He did it a lot, but in the context that so was everyone else in politics.
 
As far as the Beatles were concerned, while the energy in this thread has focused on John Lennon, it's worth remembering just how bad the period immediately following the Beatles breakup actually was for Paul McCartney. Yes, he still was able to sell records, but during that period, he had lost much of his critical reputation and even his sales were arguably on a downward slide by late 1971. After all, Imagine outsold Wild Life when they were released.

Now the luster of his Beatle years could never entirely have gone away, but if Wings had been the failure they seemed to be when they released their debut album, if he isn't able to regain his reputation to a significant extent with Live and Let Die and Band on the Run, if the subsequent Wings albums were just as poorly received as Wild Life was, McCartney could have cemented a reputation in the 1970's as a has been at least among music critics. That is, someone who once had been utterly brilliant, but had lost his original spark entirely.

Albeit, given his immense talents, it stands to reason he would have recovered from his slump eventually, and it's hard to imagine him continuing to put out material that was received as Wild Life was. But McCartney's position was surprisingly precarious between the completion of Abbey Road and 1973. Again, I think he was bound to recover eventually and reestablish himself, so this is probably horribly unlikely, because the period in question probably went as poorly as it reasonably could have.
 
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