Along comes Miss One, the Good Witch of the North (Thelma Carpenter), who apparently runs a gambling racket. It is weird a white filmmaker was at the helm for this, though his relevance as a very New York-centric director makes some sense (who else should have done it? http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/files/2015/08/10/6357476658062859301695594367_IMG_0396.JPG. Thats the Austin J. Tobin Plaza between the towers repurposed as, I guess, the Emerald City plaza, and the central orb featuring the OZ letters is the Great Spherical Caryatid sculpture (aka The Sphere), which mostly survived the 9/11 attack and now stands in Battery Park as a memorial. 4. Thats a big part of why I love it somuch. She then comes across the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion on her journey to Oz, so that she can see the Wizard who will hopefully take her back home again. I can write anything down on paper, the veteran arranger said. In October of 1978, The Wizard of Oz was flipped, reversed and remixed to feature an all-black cast, with musical heavy hitters like Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Lena Horne. On that wonderfully logical premise, the classic Wizard of Oz was transformed into a Broadway musical named The Wiz, and then the most expensive movie musical ever made. This movie was so iconic . How this guy isnt a steampunk icon, I dont know. NYCs Film Forum didnt even include the musical in its otherwise exhaustive retrospective of his work a few years back. Maybe I just love subway scenes! The original director, John Badham ( Saturday Night Fever ), withdrew once Ross was cast. The Wizard of Oz went flat-out for the heart of its story; there are times when The Wiz has just a touch too much calculation. It's set to return to Broadway in spring 2024. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list. The gay side of the dance floor would stop, Cohen says, and the hetero side would stop., During lunch on The Wiz set, Lumet, the director, told an oblivious Michael that women around him were like ricocheting bullets all over the place.. Cohen recalls glumly. I live here all alone. The other was the Australian Twentieth Century Oz (1976). In the original Oz novels, L. Frank Baum, they were unnamed. The final barrier was Joe Jackson, who wasnt thrilled about Michael doing a project that separated himself financially from the rest of his siblings. Oooh yeah! This subway scene freaked me out too and for years I didnt know what movie it was from! At 53, Lumet was an old Hollywood hand with fast-talking charisma, ending sentences with darling sweetheart. To give The Wiz an orchestral punch, Lumet sought out an old friend to request a favor. It may represent the part in the book where Dorothy . Warder decided KING 5's Angela Poe Russell would perform in the first act of the. He looked at Michael the way a jaguar looks at a goat, Cohen says. An adaptation of "The Wizard of Oz" that tries to capture the essence of the African-American experience. The Jackson 5's a Vegas act," the director told Cohen. The 1985 sequel RETURN TO OZ has its Wheelers and decapitated heads and THE WIZ wields a truly alarming subway scene. Astroland at Coney Island was used for the Tinman scene with The Cyclone as a backdrop, while the World Trade Center served as the Emerald City. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense, John Kenneth Muir's Reflections on Film/TV. Magical tornadoes can strike down anywhere, I guess, and spin you off to the land of Oz. Dorothy asking the guards of the gate how to get to Evilynn's. See answer (1) Copy. If youre going to create a work inspired by L. FRANK BAUMs THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ chances are you are going to end up with something kindertraumatic. With Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Ted Ross. Jones liked only three songs from the Broadway showHome, Brand New Day, and a funky ensemble number called Ease On Down the Road. But he felt indebted to Lumet, whod hired him for many film scores in the past. At one point, he took Michael aside to explain a Scarecrow bit in the scriptthat the Greek philosophers name is pronounced Sock-ra-tees and not Sow-cray-tees. As Jones would tell the story, he asked Michael right then if he could take a shot at producing his next solo album. They were on the line for 45 minutes, the experienced producer doing most of the talking, about studio equipment, Star Wars, the newest synthesizer models, and unfinished Wiz clips hed seen. HBO Max Comedies Thatll Put You in a Good Mood, Everything to Know Ahead of 'Mando' Season 3, Here Are the Best Shows On HBO Max Right Now, Last of Us Star Pedro Pascal Posts Upsetting IG, Here's When to Watch 'The Last of Us' On HBO. Jimmie 'JJ' Walker was originally considered the part of the Scarecrow. His costume, stuffed with newspaper and bits of trash bags, was more cumbersome, but Jackson made it work. Our heroine, Dorothy, has been transformed from a Kansas teen-ager to a twenty-four-year-old black schoolteacher. Woody Allen? It's good that the Scarecrow is the first traveling companion she meets; Michael Jackson fills the role with humor and warmth. That's a big part of why I love it so much. In case you cant tell, the NYPL building is not actually employed for this scene, which would have been too difficult to manage. 1. Stanley Kubrick never directed a musical film probably because as talented as he was, musicals weren't his thing, so I wouldn't be surprised if he would end up doing Lumet's similar mistakes had he ever made one. When erstwhile Harlem kindergarten teacher Dorothy (Diana Ross) finally reaches The Wiz, the flimflam man said to be the solution to all her problems, he's not the all-powerful wizard she anticipated. To finish Lady Sings the Blues, Gordy had to sink in $2 million of his own money because Paramounts top executive, Frank Yablans, had told him the maximum a studio could spend on a black film at the time was $500,000. The cultural/racial differences are telling, the modern 70s stylings, the sympathetically cool casting of Ross (my late-to-the-party new crush), & the change to make Dorothy afraid to leave her home. Another major location from the film that no longer exists, this former home of the New York Mets has been destroyed and replaced by Citi Field. The scenes in the subway, where Dorothy and her friends are chased by enormous, menacing trash bins that snap their jaws ferociously. The Tin Man says that he was once made of flesh and blood, but a spell turned him into the man of tin that he is now. At the end, the Wiz reveals he lives a lonely, fearful life, and begs Dorothy and her friends not to leave: The Wiz: " Please . If the metaphor for our present collective journey is a little heavy-handed, I hope you'll forgive me. The simple, cheap special effects used in it actually make it eerier to me. Possible reasons include using Baum as source material, not The Wizard of Oz (1939), and silver slippers better matching Diana Ross' complexion and costuming. The Jackson 5s a Vegas act, the director told Cohen. He lived a normal life, except for a strange habit Cohen happened to discovertaking baths in Perrier water. Fitzstephens, Jack Music Editor & Guru. (The Wiz/Soundtrack Version) Its also the musical number youre all most familiarwith. And the subway scene is creepy as hell. Our heroine, Dorothy, has been transformed from a Kansas teen-ager to a twenty-four-year-old black schoolteacher. So the writers. Michael Jacksons a Vegas act. The Tin Man is the last of Dorothy's friends, and he is seeking something that we all seek daily: a good heart. It's quite unnerving as a first impression of Oz. And their personalities are completely different. Also, the trash cans and support column walls attack,too. https://medium.com/media/3e1c5a36e386d82c31c7a3c16d4f4fb7/href. (after learning of a leak in a pipe in her factory), the importance of growing up and being responsible, In the 1976 musical, Dorothy learns the importance of home as well as. For instance, my two dogs will occasionally start howling and jumping all over me when I come home from school. (It cut from RIchard Pryor peeking out to the time clock at the sweat shop). Must have been a set, no subway was that clean in 1978. The Scarecrow, described in one review as looking like he escaped from an especially creepy. The CBS Television Network's eyeball logo, slightly modified with an O and a Z in the middle of the walking microphone and camera, was used in the Emerald City dancing scenes. An adaptation of "The Wizard of Oz" that tries to capture the essence of the African-American experience.An adaptation of "The Wizard of Oz" that tries to capture the essence of the African-American experience.An adaptation of "The Wizard of Oz" that tries to capture the essence of the African-American experience. Maybe you can build a set at home. Simultaneously with the release of the film, Congoleum, the flooring company that designed the look of the Yellow Brick Road for the film, also marketed the same design (also called Yellow Brick Road) for home use. However, Diana Ross lobbied intensely for the role. Christopher Campbell began writing film criticism and covering film festivals for a zine called. Get a load of a masked puppeteer whose puppet offspring transform into giant slinky ghouls, trashcans that develop sharp teeth and tiled columns bent on crushing anyone hapless enough to walk by. Now, let's look at how they did it. The New York State Pavilion from the 1964 New York World's Fair was used as the set for Munchkinland. Social commentary is woven into the fabric of The Wiz; Dorothy is going through a magical crisis, yes, but she's also facing down systemic injustice. Here are some other slices of WTF? While Pepper, on the other hand, is occasionally a little mean and aggressive. Some of the dancing and the Poms sequence with the Munchkins (it cut from them going down the stairs to some of them doing acrobatics). Sorry, cat people, but I just dont get you. One of the fascinating things about The Wiz is that it is a strange, delightful hybrid: a super-soul fantasy and a pointed gloss on '70s black life in reality. Lumet stocked The Wiz with top-tier African-American talentRoss, Richard Pryor, Lena Horne. All dogs. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. The Wiz cost $22 million and did not perform well at the box office. At night, the young cast went out to play in New York City. The Snow Babies in all of the closeup shots were related to the stars of the movie. My love for dogs makes me do things like walk up to strangers on the street to pet their dog or cry uncontrollably when a dog dies in a movie. TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. It all happened. Ross was 33 when The Wiz was filmed, two decades older than 14-year-old Dorothy. A run-in with a roller coaster. And it had Michael Jackson, a year before he would start his solo career with immortal dance hits such as Dont Stop Til You Get Enough and Off the Wall. But The Wiz was most important for what happened behind the scenesveteran producer Quincy Jones, Lumets longtime film-score colleague, was musical director, and he met his future Thriller collaborator MJ by correctly pronouncing Socrates to the young singer on set. Magical tornadoes can strike down anywhere, I guess, and spin you off to the land of Oz. I imagine it'll be exactly like the "A Brand New Day" scene in The Wiz: After Dorothy melts Evilene (Mabel King), the Wicked Witch of the West, all the workers she imprisoned in her sweat shop (they make sweat) transform from misshapen ogres into lithe, well-moisturized ballet dancers, leaping and prancing in their underwear. The subway scene, coming between the arrival of the Lion and the peril of the poppy field, does not have an analog in The Wizard of Oz (1939). In the Emerald City sequence, Quincy Jones is shown as the pianist, but the actual piano player on the soundtrack is Richard Tee. When The Wiz began filming in New York, the 27-year-old producer moved Michael and La Toya into a Manhattan apartment, and Michael was on his own for the first time. Recently, the music licensing platform Artlist gave a behind the scenes look at how they built a fake subway set and used sound design, practical effects, and lights to make it feel real. Finally, at the very end of the journey, there's Richard Pryor as The Wiz, coward at heart, filled with doubts, hiding behind the electronic gadgets he uses to enslave the Emerald City and keep Evillene at bay. 2/The Wiz/Soundtrack Version) Quincy Jones 2:00 3 The Feeling That We Have (The Wiz/Soundtrack Version) Theresa Merritt 3:30 4 Can I Go On? 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