"The Wiz" Movie and Question- Page 2

[Candleshoe2]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 11:50am

Who else is freaked out by the man with the puppets in the subway station? THe music... everything about that freaks me out!

[HeartandMusic]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 11:50am

Oh man, I caught about the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie last night on TCM, I only stayed with it that long to be sure and catch Ease On Down the Road. As soon as Michael Jackson was attacked by fanged garbage cans in the subway I knew it was time to go to bed.

I wish I could've seen the original stage version, Hinton Battle rocks. Updated On: 7/4/06 at 11:50 AM

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 12:01pm

The whole movie makes no sense, but those scary puppets are the epitome of "huh?????"

Imagine if they'd given the same treatment to other recent film adaptations of musicals:

"Rent" - Starring Bette Midler! We'll make Mimi a 48-year-old social worker from Omaha, and set whole the story there. Omaha has great locations... and pretty sunsets. Yeah, that'll work good. We can give it lots of "inside references," you know, for the people who live in Omaha!

"Phantom of the Opera" - We'll use Webber's music but give it a rap/hip-hop flavor... and let's set this story in Sydney Australia in the '80s. Sydney has a cool opera house, and it'll look great on film. And we can use Shirley Jones as Carlotta. Who cares how old she is? Everyone remembers her from musicals. We can surround her by babies hanging on wires. It'll give her a "young" look!

[HeartandMusic]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 12:10pm

hahaha, b12b, that post just made my day. Especially the part about the babies.
Updated On: 7/4/06 at 12:10 PM

[Mr. Tuttle]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 12:22pm

Please don't give Diana any ideas. Great..now she's gonna de her own Rent!

Ohhh..or how abour Secret Garden? She can play 10 yr old Mary! A part she was born to play. And then all the flowers can singing!

Hey. This could be good!

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 12:25pm

Stephanie Mills was given a new song in the 1984 revival, which was sung in Evilene's castle. Mills hated the song and when she did a tour of the show ten years later, she wisely chose to cut it.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 12:40pm

Dorothy doesn't need a song at that point in the story. This is the dramatic climax (when she's trapped in the witch's castle) and to have her stop and sing about ANYTHING at that point is a bad idea.

They tried that in the MGM film, when they added a reprise of "Over the Rainbow" for Garland, and it rightfully hit the cutting room floor.

That's not exactly the time when you want your story to lose steam.

Updated On: 7/4/06 at 12:40 PM

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 1:04pm

I thought the stage show was fantastic and very inventive when I saw it back in 1975! Far better, IMO, than some of you seem to remember it being. Geoffrey Holder's vision for the production was truly original. And far FAR better than many of the shows I've seen on Broadway in the past couple of decades.

I remember it being horrible. It was all we talked about at the time, how horrible it was. But, you're right about it being better than a lot of what I've seen in the past couple of decades. It's all relative.

[somethingwicked]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 1:10pm

In regards to the questions about Diana Ross's age...

She was born in 1944 (according to IMDB) and the movie was released in 1978, so assuming the bulk of it was filmed in 1977, she was indeed about 33 or 34 at the time.

Updated On: 7/4/06 at 01:10 PM

[Elphaba]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 1:39pm

in the Brewster Projects......not far from my second place in Detroit.

I found the movie fun, like the music......I never looked at it as great art.

[Mr. Tuttle]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 1:55pm

The music was much better on the OBCR.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 3:18pm

Yeah, Quincy Jones overproduced the crap out of the music. Oh, well Jackson, Nipsey Russell, and Evilline have some nice moments.

And that Vegas-Goes-ADD choreography!!

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 3:27pm

Evilene! Poor Mabel King. Talk about overkill.

They might as well have cast Brezhnev in that part for all the makeup and costume they piled onto her.

Honestly... Who would have known?

If a "performance falls in the forest"... and know one is around to see it... does it even exist?

[RockyRoad]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 8:12pm

This movie is horrid. I saw it again on TMC and is was still as bad as I remember. This show deserves a better treatment. Ross was horrible. And that Lena Horne number..what was she on?? The hysterics were funny.


Anyone remember that CBS was going to do a tv Wiz starring an unknown named Anika Noni Rose?

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 8:17pm

Well, when Diana isn't crying (which is very rare) she is generally screaming: My favorite example:

"Miss One?...Miss One?...MISS ONE!!"

This of course immediately followed by...tears.

[wonderfulwizard11]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 8:26pm

Michael Bennet, you can't forget Diana's two added songs (in which she cries): Can I Go On? and Is This What Feeling Gets (cut from the final print). Wow, it really needed two extra songs.

[OzarkElphaba]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 8:31pm

Yea, this is def. one of those movies that you watch when your little and think is fantastic.

Although, if we are gonna gang up on Diana for her age, let us not forget Stephanie's age in the early 1990's tour...or in the 1984 revival...or in the current one (She prolly is not in it, but it would not suprise me in the least bit). I wish there was more surviving of the original cast...I'd like to have seen it, or even farther back when it was Off-Broadway and had Butterfly McQueen as the Queen of Field Mice, and The Wiz had a helicopter.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 8:42pm

Stephanie Mills, though, is absolutely tiny. I don't think she's much taller than 5 feet in heels. That alone gave her the illusion of being a child on stage, even in the 1993 tour which I saw (and in which she was wonderful).

[OzarkElphaba]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 8:43pm

I was all of like 5 when I saw it and barely remember it. I remember enjoying it and thinking that Judy Garland should have gotten to sing Home.

[Chenofan #1]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 8:50pm

I can never watch the whole thing. I think it is horrid!!!

(I got Dorothy in the show, in CT! I am very excited.)

[zoom]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 9:03pm

This show needs a good filmed version. I dont care if it is TV!! I wish the CBS thing had happened.

Speaking of which..where is Anika? Wasn't she in some early run thrus of "Purple"?

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 9:09pm

I'm actually really glad that T.V version wasnt made because they cut half the original songs and added new ones by Andrew Lippa. The score to the WIZ doesn't need an overhaul...

[pab]

Posted: 7/4/06 at 9:09pm

"The source material stinks, too. It's not as if they took this really great stage show and destroyed it."

I totally agree with best12bars, that the stage show was fantastic when I also saw it back in 1975. I can totally recall the tornado dance which was brilliant! The show just worked and whenever friends and family members visited me, while I was studying in New York, The Wiz was the show they wanted to see so I got to see it a number of times during the original run.

I was so looking forward to the seeing the movie when I heard it was being made but it goes down in my books as the WORST movie musical transfer from the stage. I hated the movie version of A Chorus Line but The Wiz was even worst.

"If you believe" was the only song that I could stomach and luckily Lean Horne's ex son-in-law was smart enough to be sure she was cast as Glinda.

I wonder who told Sidney Lumet and Richard Attenborough they could direct musicals. All dramatic directors are not as versatile as Milos Forman was with his direction of Hair.

Updated On: 7/4/06 at 09:09 PM

[Mr. Tuttle]

Posted: 7/6/06 at 2:22am

Lucky Stephanie Mills!

[LostLeander]

Posted: 7/6/06 at 2:37am

Aww, this movie has a soft spot in my heart.
It used to be my favorite movie (along with Bye Bye Birdie), until I watched it a couple of months ago.

Yikes, this is not a good movie. Ross is pretty awful. I love the magical time warpish full shot of Diana Ross singing Home. Sorry, shrieking, weeping, shredding vocal chords, and scaring children (except me).

Lena Horne is INCREDIBLE! The funniest thing, I have EVER seen in my life. I think that goes in the book as the most over-indulgent, larger than life film performance of all time.

I do LOVE the Emerald City Sequence, though.