And The Director Of Wicked (Movie) Will Be... — Page 5

Did my post make any mention of location? No

Yes, it did:

Wasn't one of the arguments for Wicked London (in regards to their British accents) that Oz is an IMAGINARY place therefore people could speak in an entirely different vernacular?

I really don't think Baz needs to strive to keep Oz strictly American feeling. Moulin Rouge depicts Paris beautifully although entirely in English with varying accents, so I would assume he could do justice to an imaginary location.

In the first paragraph you talk about an "IMAGINARY place" and in the second paragraph you go on to talk about how Luhrman set his movie in Paris but it was in English and then you again referred to "an imaginary location." So yes, there was mention of location in your post.

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I am not certain you are entirely seeing the point.
It is true that Oz is a fictional place and therefore people can act and speak differently there, but Oz is definitely a very american fairy tale.

Baum takes a lot of American pop culture of the time and integrates it into his stories, as do his illustrators. Oz is as much an American fairy tail as Middle Earth is a british one. It is true that Middle Earth is not Enland, but Tolkien wanted to create a lore that was for England, which is similar to Baums aspirations.
Baum's goal was to write the modern American Fairy tale. He makes this quite clear in the introduction of his original Oz book, that he feels the classic Euro fairy Tales of the past were no longer the fashion.
Maguire's Oz is not exactly the same as Baum's Oz, and certainly brings a lot of Hollywood Oz in to the picture, but it is still closely Based on Baum's Oz, and if you are familiar with all 13 of his original Oz books and his own various adaptions which name President Theodore Roosevelt by name, there is no denying that these are very American Fairy tails.

That being said, events in the third Oz book, Ozma of Oz, does lead many to believe that Oz is actually located in the desert of Austalia or on the underside of Australia. It was Australia that Dorothy and Uncle Henry were traveling to in the beginning of that book, so maybe Baz will be a good choice after all.

Updated On: 11/30/08 at 03:34 PM

I whole-heartedly agree that the Wizard of Oz is an American spun tail with its roots in the States BUT I do not agree (as others were implying) that it is strictly American. It begins to sound like the "You have to be Latino to understand In the Heights" argument.

I do feel like Wicked, as its own entity, veers away from the strictly American feeling the film had because the film was just that, an MGM Musical fantasy with very American portrayals and rooted in the fabric of our history.

In Wicked there is no Kansas, there is no reference to Roosevelt. Had we not the brief presence of Dorothy in the second act or the Wizards vaudevillian performance, we'd have nothing linking us to that era in American history.

Maguire's novel creates Oz as a fully realized world which does not rely on the national history of any country to tell its story and therefore I believe that a director looking to translate it to film is not required to be faithful to any nation's sensibility.

To quote Baz himself (or possibly Catherine Martin his wife- whom I am ecstatic to have costume designing) in the Moulin Rouge extras, they had to create a "360 degree world" and I think he'll be able to do the same for Wicked.