The Wizard of Oz movie- Page 3

[jasonf]

Posted: 10/22/06 at 8:44pm

It's always been one of my favorite movies. The witch scared the crap out of me when I was younger -- probably well into my teens actually. I'm fascinated by Oz trivia (have heard most of the stories told on here already at some point, but still love hearing them again).

Question -- do you think anyone would ever DARE to try to make a new Wizard of Oz film?
I wouldn't have a problem with it if they tried sticking closer to the book (a la Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), but a remake would be a disaster. The biggest problem would be that no one today would buy Jim Carrey or whoever in a lion suit -- even though even that conceit doesn't seem dated at all watching the film now. They would go CGI probably, and THAT would be depressing.

[Fiction Writer]

Posted: 10/22/06 at 8:59pm

Why do people PM me when they themselves can't accept PMs?
Gah.

For the one I'm talking about, yes, I was an adorable 5 year old!

[StageManager2]

Posted: 10/22/06 at 9:11pm

Sorry, my bad. I forgot that particular alias doesn't accept PMs.

Updated On: 10/22/06 at 09:11 PM

[Fiction Writer]

Posted: 10/22/06 at 9:19pm

OOooh well.

[roquat]

Posted: 10/22/06 at 11:09pm

Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion) nearly fainted several times a day, lost a lot of weight, and was always drenched in sweat when he removed his costume--it consisted of a real lion skin PLUS padding.

He still managed to be tremendously funny, though. Watch the scene where Judy Garland slaps him and he bursts into tears--she's obviously biting her lip and hiding her face in Toto to keep from bursting out laughing. You can't blame her--imagine being two feet away from THAT for the first time ever!

Posted: 10/22/06 at 11:11pm

The great thing about the Wizard of Oz is that it's a story of a girl solving her problems on her own. Dorothy is a wonderful role model. I rewrote portions of it to use for Vacation Bible School (Yellow Brick Road=Path of Righteousness). And the dialogue is incredible...so much of it can be used in everyday conversations.

I remember when I was little and watching it on TV with my mother. There's the scene where Aunt Em comes to the field hands and says, "Can't work on an empty stomach. Have a cruller...just fried." So I asked my mother what a cruller was, and she said "a doughnut." I was revolted...who knew that was how they made doughnuts? I don't think I ate another doughnut for 10 years. (I have since made up for lost time.) Some people were afraid of the Witch...I was afraid of the crullers.

Fast forward about 25 years...I am rocking my little sleepless baby girl, singing anything I can remember all the words to, and when I sing Over the Rainbow she calms down and smiles. So we let her listen to the recording and she was enraptured, and when she got a bit older we let her see the song on video...and that was it. My kid fell in love with Oz, too. And she won't eat doughnuts either.

Posted: 10/22/06 at 11:12pm

haha, wow, i deff just watched this tonight and then saw this thread. wierd! lol.

but i love it!

[roquat]

Posted: 10/22/06 at 11:24pm

jasonf--I too have been tortured with the horrific thought that this movie might be "remade" one day but I doubt it. Not after the response to "Return to Oz" (a failure, but one that honestly attempted to approach Oz from the viewpoint of the original books.)

Anyone else besides me ever catch that one? It didn't work, but it was a valiant effort (and the design was stunning!)

[best12bars]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 9:22am

I'm a fan of "Return to Oz" as well... but I agree it was a muddled mess. I particularly love the David Shire score (which is out of print and very hard to find).

I don't think we'll see a Wizard of Oz remake anytime soon, with a film version of "Wicked" looming in the not-too-distant future. But Wicked might open a floodgate of Oz-related projects, particularly if it's successful on the big screen.

Who knows?

We'll always have the 1939 MGM film... and as the old song goes, "They can't take that away from me."

[kec]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 10:35am

I, too, saw Return to Oz. It was ok. Yes it tried to stick close to the stories on which it was based ("The Land of Oz" being one, can't remember the title of the other), but they had to include the somewhat hokey plot about the new "treatment" using electricity.

[best12bars]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 10:42am

It was a mixture of the 2nd and 3rd Oz books, "The Marvelous Land of Oz" and "Ozma of Oz."

But the Kansas sequences in the hospital, as well as those characters in Kansas, are not part of either book, and were written for this film. Pretty dark and scary stuff.

They took the Queen of Ev (who changes her heads whenever she's bored) from "Ozma of Oz" and old Mombi the hag from "The Land of Oz" and blended them together into one evil witch called Princess Mombi.

And the storyline of all the inhabitants of Oz being turned to stone and the city falling into ruins... well, that isn't part of the books either.

It was a noble attempt... and there is much to enjoy... but it is what it is... an ambitious failure.

[TimWarp]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 11:32am

When I was a kid (before DVDs, before VCRs), they showed "The Wizard of Oz" on television once a year, and it was a big event. We HAD to watch it. In the early 60's, people were just beginning to own color tvs, so they had Danny Kaye come on before the movie and tell everyone that the color scenes in the movie didn't start until Dorothy landed in Oz, and there was nothing wrong with their televisions: the opening scenes were B&W. (We still had a b&w set, so it was *years* before I finally got to see it in color; the "horse of a different color" joke was largely lost on me!)

[James885]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 11:46am

Ah, The Wizard of Oz. One of my favorite movies to this day. The Wicked Witch of The West used to scare the pants off me when I was younger. When I was around 4 or 5, I used to cover my eyes every time she appeared. My favorite scene in the whole movie is when the Witch dies and she's screaming: "You cursed brat! Look what you've done! I'm melting! Melting!". At first it used to scare me, but now I just crack up during that part.

As for a remake, I don't thing they will simply because anyone who tries to play Dorothy would have some HUGE shoes to fill. Plus the movie is great as it is, so why mess with near perfection?

[mejusthavingfun]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 12:02pm

I mentioned on a previous thread, WB had a cool project in the works called "The Land of OZ," They wanted to call is "OZ,". Anyways it was in the present. There was a pilot shot, I hope they put it up on iTunes one of these days.

[Flippancy]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 12:13pm

Oz-ophile here as well.

Re: THE JITTERBUG...

If I'm not mistaken, I don't believe they immediately threw away the prints/recordings of the number right after they filmed it. No, I think THAT happened during Kirk Kerkorian's liquidation of the studio in the late 60s. The studio was being prepped for sale, and they had extensive recordings, alternate takes, scripts, notes, etc. etc. of every film that MGM had produced. It all was trashed: either burned, buried, thrown away, etc. It makes me cry to think about it -- can you IMAGINE what was lost, and the film history that was destroyed needlessly? I bet the Jitterbug footage -- and god-knows-what-else OZ related -- was included.

Change the subject: have any of you ever noticed Judy about to break character during the "Lion Slap" scene? It's just a glimmer, but noticeable if you watch for it. She thought Bert Lahr was hilarious.

[DG]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 12:22pm

I liked Jean Marsh in RETURN.

[best12bars]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 1:38pm

Flippancy---You certainly may be right about when those materials were thrown out. My point is they WERE thrown out, and it was before anyone realized they might be valued as archival "gold." Even in Kerkorian's liquidation time (late '60s to early '70s), this was all viewed as "excess goods" and many things were trashed, burned or given away.

I'm friends with a lady who used to work for Liza Minnelli years ago, and when Spielberg was filming "Hook" on the old MGM soundstage (where some of Oz was filmed), they invited Liza to come take a look. She'd been asked to do a cameo in the film, but her schedule wouldn't permit it. So, she decided to show up on the set that day to say hi in person and thank Spielberg for thinking of her, regardless.

While they were walking around, one of the makeup people grabbed them (my friend and Liza) and said, "Come here, I want to show you something." She took them to a makeup room, and sitting on an old dusty Styrofoam head was a tangled reddish-brown, long wig. The make up person flipped it over and it said "Judy Garland: Esther/Meet Me in St. Louis" sewn into the wig seam. She said it had been sitting up there for years, and they were thinking of throwing it out recently. Instead they gave it to Liza that day, and she was SO grateful they hadn't trashed it.

And that wasn't even very long ago... 1990, in fact.

TimWarp--I remember very well just how much of an EVENT it was, when the "Oz" film was shown annually on television. I would get excited for weeks in advance. And those introductory announcements saying, "please don't adjust your TV sets" when the first part of it comes on in B&W. I also remember when they had to "pad" the show with these introductions, because it clocked in at 101 minutes, and they needed to flesh it out to make it a 2-hour show. Then the intros disappeared, because they just showed more commercials, and started to advertise more on TV in general. Then, they actually began EDITING the film(!!!), trimming scenes down, to cram in even MORE commercials. Those were the bleakest days. And finally, this film was deemed a historical treasure, became protected, and it was (and still is) illegal now to edit or alter this film in any way for commercial release. Thank GOD for that.

And, boy, have times changed.

[AudreyTwoTwo]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 2:16pm

I love this movie! I watched it all of the time.

I actually got upset when:
a. Dorothy was crying and Toto ran away (I LOVE TOTO!)
B. When Elphaba was melted

I think our house is going to turn into Oz soon.

[Flippancy]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 2:49pm

The annual showing of OZ was a big event, for those of you who have only known videocassettes and DVD. Once every year, that's it. When I was really young, I think it was around Christmas, and then it got switched to the spring, I think.

And yeah, I was petrified of the witch and the monkeys. That shot with the witch in the crystal ball -- when they zoom in? Fugeddaboudit...nightmare inducing.

[kec]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 3:00pm

I know from whence you speak, Flippancy . Once a year no video. I remember it being on in March I think. The witch and the monkeys scared the heck out of me, every time. As I got older, I cried when Dorothy said goodbye to the Scarecrow. He was my favorite of the three characters.

Best12Bars, thanks for the clarification on the books. I thought Ozma of Oz was the third book, but I was confusing it with The Lost Princess of Oz, a later book about Ozma.

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 3:10pm

Hey, I grew up with the video and it's STILL a huge event whenever it's broadcast on TV! (Which is more than once a year now.)

I have been in love with the movie for my entire life. I don't remember ever being scared of it. We had the 35th (I think) anniversary video, with a whole bunch of extra footage at the end. You know, before DVDs with their fancy-schmancy menus. When I was little, I used to sit through the entire movie, the credits, and all the stuff. I knew all the words to the deleted songs, as well as all the bits of trivia that were included in the booklet on the video case.

I've been in The Wizard Of Oz twice, once as the Scarecrow and again as the Wicked Witch. The latter was the most fun I have ever had on stage. The script we were using was written for low-budget school productions, so there was no melting. Instead, the witch shrank (which allowed the school to use a cheap puppet). I begged the director (who was a teacher I'd had for all four years of middle school and knew pretty well) to let me melt. I said, "It's not The Wizard Of Oz if the witch doesn't melt!" He said, "Okay, how do you propose you melt?" I said, "Easy. I stand on a platform with a hole in the middle and slowly ease down the hole, leaving my hat behind."

The next day, I came to rehearsal and there was a big hole sawed out of the middle of one of his classroom tables! That was pretty cool, and my melting was awesome.

To pay homage to my love of all things Oz, I got a tattoo of ruby slippers on my ankle a year and a half ago. It's very pretty. I'll post a picture here later.

Does anyone remember the concert version with Joel Grey and Jewel that used to play every Christmas? There was no set, just the actors standing at microphones, with an orchestra behind them, and they read through the entire production. I loved that and would watch it every year, but I can't find it anymore.

[StageManager2]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 3:18pm

I've seen this CD in the stores (notice the Twin Towers):



Is it worth purchasing? I don't care for the tagline. It reminds me of the CINDERELLA sequel.

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 3:35pm

Actually, that's exactly the concert I was just talking about.

I loved it, and I think it's really striking to see the show without actually "seeing" the show. It shows just how strong the story is, and proves that it doesn't need the big sets and bright colors.

Plus, I just love Joel Grey and will watch him in anything. Jewel is an odd choice for Dorothy, but she's really sweet and surprisingly believable.

As for being worth it, it's up to you. But I recommend it.

[StageManager2]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 3:57pm

What I meant was, do they just sing, or is there dialog, as well? My mom used to have an old record (actually, there were two) of THE WIZARD OF OZ and it was of the entire movie. I used to listen to it over and over and over... (We didn't own a VCR/videos.)

BTW: What did you guys think of this little gem?



I admit, I haven't watched it yet. I plan to, though.

Updated On: 10/23/06 at 03:57 PM

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 10/23/06 at 4:06pm

From what I remember, they go through the whole dialog as well. But it's been a while.