Sterling New Silver on the Silver Screen: An Alternate Hollywood and Pop Culture Timeline

Sterling New Silver on the Silver Screen
An Alternate Hollywood and Pop Culture Timeline
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1922’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, directed by the German filmmaker F.W. Murnau was long thought to have been lost for quite some time, and lost on purpose, with it having been banned not just in Germany during the rise of the Nazis, but also by conservatives all across the globe mainly due to its mature, macabre themes for their period.

Starring Milton Stills and Louise Brooks as Lisbeth Salander, the titular “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, it primarily followed Milton Stills, who played a private investigator as he is hired and partially bribed, by an old and wealthy nobleman, one whom was played by Max Schreck under heavy make-up, to solve a mystery of the disappearance of his daughter, all the while his brother, played by Emil Jannings, is a veteran of the still recent First World War plots in the background, who may know more than he is letting on...

The film is notable for featuring, not only implied sexual assault and implied child abuse, but an on screen gay kiss between Lisbeth Salander and another woman, along with scenes depicting Louise Brooks in varied states of undress, mainly in showing the titular dragon tattoo on her back, though to the modern cinema goer, the scenes are tame. But censors back then were far less than accepting of F.W. Murnau.
For a long period, it was believed that the film had been lost forever, that the reels were burned either by accident or on purpose, however, reels were found to have survived, one of which would actually be found in Dikemark Hospital of all places, a mental institution outside Oslo, Norway, along with another lost film, "The Passion of Joan of Arc".
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2001: Odyssee Im Weltraum, written and directed by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou back in 1928, considered by many to have been their magnum opus, other than Metropolis and the many other films the two of them collaborated.
Following the discovery of a strange monolith on the lunar surface, a space ship called Entdeckung 1 and its crew of two, played by Gerda Maurus and Willy Fritsch, along with an advanced "Thinking Machine" named DREX are sent out unravel its mysterious origin, in a film which had polarised critical opinion, receiving both praise and derision from the critics and cinema going public of the time, with many praising the spectacle, the incredible visuals which brought to mind the films of Georges Méliès and the art of surrealist painters, especially around the climax of the film, which had made use of an early technicolour process as Gerda Maurus and Willy Fritsch's characters, Bowman and Poole are pulled into a strange, multicoloured vortex, carried across vast distances of space, while viewing bizarre cosmological phenomena and strange landscapes of unusual colours before being brought into this of "Garden of Eden"
"Where they bring forth a new age", creating "Das Sternenkind" who'd proceed to appear over the planet Earth in the final shot of the film, teasing the bringing of a new age.

The film would be among the first to ever be nominated at the 1st Academy Awards on February 2nd, 1929, nominated for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, Art Direction, Cinematography, and for Outstanding Picture, winning in Art Direction, and narrowly being beaten by Wings for Outstanding Picture, although there was some controversy.

Among those reported to have loved the film were Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels of the Nazi Party, who saw the film as an endorsement of their ideals, both men seeing "Das Sternenkind" as the films depiction of Friedrich Nietzsche's "Übermensch", however, both seemed to have not noticed that DREX, the antagonistic super computer who attempts to kill Bowman and Poole, is named after Anton Drexler, the founder of the Nazi Party, and that the original name for this villain was to be either "HIT" or "GOEB".​
 
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Count me in. Not an expert in cinema history, but I might be able to suggest a few good ideas. I wonder if the Hays Code gets butterflied.
 
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1925's Mad Max & The Fury Road is considered by some to be the first blockbuster, and watching it, one can't help but feel the immense adrenaline pulsing through their veins, as the film is in essence, one long chase that lasts almost an hour and forty minutes, focusing on Buster Keaton's iconic character of "Mad Max" a wandering nomad in what was cinemas earliest examples of a post apocalyptic setting "The Wasteland".
More specifically, the plot focused primarily on Max's encounter with a woman named Furiosa, played by Maria Falconetti, who is transporting not only a large truck full of fuel, but smuggling the brides of Rudolf Klein-Rogges character, "Immortan Joe", a wicked and ruthless dictator, who sees himself as a god, and rules over an army, among this army is the oddly comical Nux, who finds himself an ally of sorts to the heroes as they venture through the wasteland in search of a safer place at the end of the harrowing Fury Road.

Among the performances praised were that of Maria Falconetti, whom had claimed that her performance as the strong and independent Furiosa was almost therapeutic to her.​
 
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"Take my hand, do not fear, we all float down here, you come with me, you'll laugh and scream, and I won't shed a tear", a quote both from the Robert W. Chambers shorty story "Pennywise the Clown" and 1935's "The Little Rascals meet Pennywise", the film serial being a debatably (Thankfully) loose adaptation of the horror story, the production of which was a troubled one with the writer Hal Roach reportedly getting into heated arguments with the director Robert F. McGowan over the tone of the serial series, which would only consist of about six chapter, and intended to be played repeatedly.

Most of their arguments boiling down to: "No, we need to be scarier, spookier"

"No! I don't want to traumatise the kids!" all the while the actual kids were having a blast, oh sure they were a little nervous, but Peter Lorre, whom only recently immigrated to the United States from Germany, and was already famous for playing a child murderer in the movie "M", joked that the kids were among the far more professional people on set.

Then again, seeing how the serial was about The Little Rascals encountering an evil clown who intended on capturing them, and if the book was anything to say, eat them, there was of course going to be some controversy and discomfort behind the scenes and in the studio, but Hal Roach was adamant on getting the project done... Then again, the studio also wanted to cash in on the success of horror films like Dracula, Frankenstein and the other Universal horror films, and had wanted to make what was essentially a parody of it.

The early poster you see on screen is actually an early draft, for the poster, as originally, the story was going to simply be called "IT", a reference to another story by McGowan.

The serials were a moderate success, and would eventually see Roach going on to work on more serious films and serials, and with the rise of television, would find himself working along with Rod Serling on a project of his', an anthology series that would delve into elements of suspense and horror along with other things... A story for another day.​
 
Any reason why this theme can't work with serials, too?
Such as RKO Pictures "Firefly", a 14-chapter serial from 1937 that follows Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Allan Lane) and his ragged tramp steamer "Serenity" as it plies the Caribbean. The sharp-witted sailor (and sometime smuggler) is continually stymied by corrupt local officials, honest local officials, tropical storms, his own unreliable ship, and a mysterious cabal of ruthless submarine pirates known only as "Reavers". But with the help of his plucky crew, including helmsman Wash (Andy Devine) and goofy-yet-brilliant engineer Kaylee (Lucille Ball), the Serenity always manages to make the next port and deliver her cargo.
 
Any reason why this theme can't work with serials, too?
Such as RKO Pictures "Firefly", a 14-chapter serial from 1937 that follows Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Allan Lane) and his ragged tramp steamer "Serenity" as it plies the Caribbean. The sharp-witted sailor (and sometime smuggler) is continually stymied by corrupt local officials, honest local officials, tropical storms, his own unreliable ship, and a mysterious cabal of ruthless submarine pirates known only as "Reavers". But with the help of his plucky crew, including helmsman Wash (Andy Devine) and goofy-yet-brilliant engineer Kaylee (Lucille Ball), the Serenity always manages to make the next port and deliver her cargo.
That... Could actually work.

Were there any followups to The Little Rascals meet Pennywise?
Not really, they would go back to making their usual 20 minute shorts up until Hal Roach left.
 
Just a suggestion for the Blade Runner posters, have it so the Blade Runner staring Humphrey Bogart and the Blade Runner 2049 staring Bruce Lee take place in the same universe.
 
Can't wait for the Skyfall and Weapon of Choice (the one featured in the NBC alternate history/time travel series Timeless) posters, which belong to the Sean Connery series of films.
 
Can't wait for the Skyfall and Weapon of Choice (the one featured in the NBC alternate history/time travel series Timeless) posters, which belong to the Sean Connery series of films.
I'm not sure if I will include Weapon of Choice, as this isn't exclusively the works of Peter Stults.

But Skyfall could happen.
 
Some ideas:

The poster Stults made for V For Vendetta indicated that V was played by George Lazenby. You could talk about how him getting that big role affected his career. Something to consider with that one is that Audrey Hepburn (who he listed as Evy) actually worked with the resistance during World War II. Maybe you could imply it was a passion project for her.

For his Get Out poster, I feel like you could suggest it actually came out after Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, mostly because I feel that's the only way the movie could get made.
 
For his Get Out poster, I feel like you could suggest it actually came out after Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, mostly because I feel that's the only way the movie could get made.
I was thinking about having Get Out actually having Rod Serling and Hal Roach involved in its creation, with it originally being a rejected and slightly modified script for that anthology show of theirs... One of my next projects will involve a horror film, one which you'll see may be a little more toned downed for blatantly obvious reasons...

The poster Stults made for V For Vendetta indicated that V was played by George Lazenby. You could talk about how him getting that big role affected his career. Something to consider with that one is that Audrey Hepburn (who he listed as Evy) actually worked with the resistance during World War II. Maybe you could imply it was a passion project for her.
That will be fun for me to work on, having seen the film last month.
 
Also, I can't find it currently, but I remember Stults did a poster for Birdman that starred Adam West and John Candy. I feel like it would certainly be interesting to see how Adam West would handle having a career renaissance like that.
 
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