Double Dose: The Wiz(ard of Oz).

 (Double Dose is two films from the same director, writer or star...or genre or theme or property...you get it...pretty simple. Here, it's a return to Oz, but not Return to Oz...that will probably come later.)

The Wizard of Oz (1939, d. Victor Fleming - crave)
The Wiz (1978, d. Sydney Lumet - rental)

I am on the record multiple times on this blog as saying that I do not like the 1939 adaptation of L Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz. I even insinuated at one point that I perhaps detested it.

Harsh words.

Untrue.

In the latest rewatch (full disclosure, I rewatched while listening alongside a podcast's audio commentary) I couldn't help but continually be dazzled. It is one of the most vibrant films ever made, it has an allure, the primary colours of the yellow brick road, the Emerald City, the ruby slippers and red poppy field and all the rest of it that is impossible not to find alluring and utterly watchable.  As many times as I have seen it throughout my life, I still can't exactly remember how it plays out its story (likely muddled by the multitude of other interpretations no doubt) so there's also a sort of memory game that I play when I watch it.

But, I also find the songs verging on interminable. They've been such ubiquitous songs in my life that they have run their course into tunes I don't think I really ever need to hear again.  There's no magic left in them for me, they've been played out.

Likewise the performances are legendary but have also been mimicked and mocked and impersonated so many times that they've become a victim of their own success. I imagine should I ever watch The Godfather I'll probably have the same reaction.

I recognize with The Wizard of Oz there is an inescapable delight, but for me, also, an exhaustion.

So being prompted to watch The Wiz for the first time, ever, was a bit of a revelation.  Watching The Wiz was never something I've ever really wanted to do, in part because its previously generally maligned reputation preceded it, but also the last thing I ever really want to watch is yet another spin on Dorothy Gale's journey down the yellow brick road. There are dozens of Oz books beyond the first one, but Hollywood seems solely fixated on reinterpreting aspects of the 1939 film, and not paying any attention to the Baum novels beyond his first.

Yet within opening minutes of The Wiz -- a film produced by Motown in association with Quincy Jones, based off an award-winning stage musical that debuted earlier in the 1970's -- it was very clear that the film has a different take on what the story is about.

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy's journey is literally a journey, a fantastical adventure through another land where the character's sole focus is returning home, while making friends along the way. In The Wiz (soon --or already? -- to be released in a Criterion Collection edition) Dorothy (Diana Ross) is 24 years old (Ross was a decade older than that) living in a Harlem apartment with her aunt and uncle, afraid to leave her neighbourhood, afraid often to leave the house, working as a kindergarten teacher afraid to move beyond being around children, afraid to even risk love by going on a date or speaking to a nice eligible bachelor. Dorothy is riddled with a crippling anxiety in a time where such emotional disorders weren't adequately qualified. Her anxiety keeps her not only constrained, but detached. She thinks of Em and Henry's place as home and their nudges for her to go out in the world have her fearful that it would mean she loses home, but then "home" also doesn't feel like home, a feeling she doesn't understand.

So when her precious cairn terrier Toto runs out of the apartment into a blizzard, and she gets caught up in a ridiculous snow tornado (snownado), aided by the gentle guidance of Glinda, she's sent to the upside down of Oz, where a very familiar, and yet wildly unfamiliar adventure awaits her.

The Wiz was critically panned for years and a bomb at the box office. It was no doubt a massive disappointment, in no small part because of it's massive budget (doubling that of Star Wars but not recouping it at the box office). The money is absolutely on screen. Massive set pieces are decorated to the nines, the costuming is all exceptionally unique. Noted legend in the visual effects game Stan Winson was on the project and so much of the realm is intriguingly chaotic and unexpected. The world of Oz in The Wiz is like the Stranger Things upside-down reality version of New York, a bit more of a nightmare than a fantasy. It's almost a wasteland, with husk of buildings surrounded by rubble, or walls of trash lining the streets, and cabs who are perpetually off-duty the moment you hail them, and street vendors stalking, stalking, stalking you. There is a sequence in Oz's parallel subway system that is genuinely creepy and had me absolutely giddy watching its unsettling practical effects play out.

Oz here is everything Dorothy fears, all the worst case scenarios come to life, except... she meets the Scarecrow (Michael Jackson) whose brains are made of garbage. She meets the Tinman (Nipsey Russel) whose wife has done away with him, but he yearns to have a heart to still love her with. She meets the Lion, an outcast, full of braggadocio but nothing to back it up with.  She makes these fateful companions who become friends on her journey to find her way back home, hoping that the Wiz will help them. 

But first they must defeat the wicked witch of the west who runs a sweatshop with an iron fist. The wicked witch (Mabel King) is not a major part of this story, she is yet another vignette kicking off the third act, and otherwise not a presence in this film. The adversary Dorothy has to face is her own discomfort, and when she finds out the Wiz (Richard Prior) is nothing but a simpering charlatan, she realizes that he wasn't needed at all. Dorothy teaches her friends to have compassion for their own perceived deficits and to prove to them they have the strengths they fear they lack. But it takes Glinda (Lena Horne) to show Dorothy that her desire to return home is not the same as her desire to find home, and teaches her that "home" is a place that exists within herself, the center of her being, something she carries with her wherever she goes, an idea that can comfort her no matter what happens or where she is. Diana Ross then delivers her big moment, tears streaming down her face, filled with a new sense of self. It's not the same as the Lion's gaining courage, but instead she's found comfort within herself and a sense of her own being.

It's a journey not taken by Dorothy in Victor Fleming's classic, the only message in that film is stamped right on the package "there's no place like home". The Wiz delivers a journey that's much richer and deeper.

Of course, The Wiz is not without its flaws. At 2h 13 minutes it's a full half hour longer than the classic film, and those extra 30 minutes are dearly felt. The songs are, generally, really quite good, with that Quincy Jones magic spinning around the creations conceived for the stage production five years earlier, but also, some of them get belaboured in the long-playing disco era where the instrumentals just keep repeating and the dance breaks become long enough to literally take a break to grab a snack or go to the bathroom.

As exceptional as the production values are, I found the makeup on both the Scarecrow and Tinman to be immediately horrifying and that reaction didn't abate much throughout watching the remainder of the film (and then watching the film again alongside a podcast commentary track). I get the design sense behind them but they're not great (and yet every background dancer in every scenario looks phenomenal).  

The film's key problem is that director Lumet is not a director for this scale of production, with this many moving pieces (literally). His direction of the music numbers and extended dance sequences is ... uninspired. Often with static cameras at vast distances away taking in as much of the scenery as possible without really anything in the way of camera work or editing to capture the momentum or excitement of the moment. He's telling the audience to look at the spectacle but not inviting them to be a part of it. It just so happens I like to look at spectacle so I was still enamoured with the composition, but there is definitely energy lacking.

I can understand why The Wiz didn't catch on. It's not an overtly uplifting film and Oz isn't the most obviously fantastical place. Dorothy, played by a 34-year-old woman, is constantly in tears and seems petrified all the time (it's really effective in hammering home her anxiety disorder, frankly), not making for the most inviting or inspiring protagonist... and yet, I believe the journey she takes. I believe her when she sings her heart's song that she has grown as a person and is ready to live the life she's been too timid to find before. And the weird, unfamiliar, slightly dangerous and exciting nature of Oz makes it such an incredible place to visit, especially compared to the vibrant familiarity of The Wizard of Oz.

If The Wiz were a Wicked Part 1-style smash hit, I'm sure I would be as sick of it today as I am of the 1939 film, but even after almost 50 years, The Wiz feels like a forgotten gem, an underdog, a secret (mostly) success nobody wants to talk about and certainly nobody wants to license songs for their commercials. It only makes it more enticing to me. I thought I was running out of big spectacle films to discover from the 70's and 80's, I only needed to branch outside of science fiction to find more.

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