Johnny Showtime: THE WIZ

 by JB

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Wiz opening on Broadway, Fathom Events screened the perhaps beloved film nationwide on May 18 and 21.

This week I eased on down a local road to revisit The Wiz after many years. I still remember first seeing the film at the late, lamented Des Plaines theater a week into its original release. I was 16 years old. I was the only one in the theater.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: The Wiz is based on L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, filtered through the Black American experience.

This time around, I found the movie to be very much a mixed bag. Half of it is amazing, right up there with the best Hollywood musicals ever made. The other half is botched—done in by fevered egos, artistic hubris, and the mistaken belief that MORE is always better.

THE AMAZING: Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man, Ted Ross as the Cowardly Lion, and Mabel King as Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West, all acquit themselves nicely. These are strong performances. I especially like Russell’s version of “Slide a Little Oil,” Ted Ross’s take on “Mean Old Lion,” and King’s epic, “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.” These songs are delightful.

MORE AMAZING: Michael Jackson’s performance is terrific. This was his film debut. The filmmakers were wise to use a song that was discarded after the Broadway show’s Baltimore try-out, “You Can’t Win.” It’s a perfect song for Jackson, and he turns it into a singing tour-de-force. One has to admire his performance in this film; he dances up a storm. Because he is the first to meet up with Dorothy, and because Jackson and Diana Ross were such good friends in real life, the choreography favors them dancing together. During the climactic “Can You Feel a Brand-New Day” showstopper, Ross and Jackson are always front and center, dancing and emoting. In fact, a fun game any otherwise bored viewer can play during this particular musical number is “Find Nipsey Russell.”

HINT: He’s usually way on the far-right side of the frame, hidden behind dozens of other dancers.

SAD TANGENT: I tread lightly here because you can’t talk about Michael Jackson without dredging up his unsavory and perhaps criminal personal life. I always thought of Jackson as a victim, though; his early show business experiences and his treatment by his tyrannical father call to mind John Lennon’s take on fame, describing Elvis as the King of Rock and Roll being tied to his throne by the very people who were dependent on his success for their livelihood. The same thing happened to Jackson. He became the biggest star on Earth but the price he paid was dear: he gave up his privacy, his nose, his central nervous system. Imagine needing to inject the surgical anesthesia propofol in order to simply sleep at night.

STILL MORE AMAZING: The production design, which turns real New York locations into Oz, is breathtaking. (This is the only film in history that features an end credit shout-out: “Yellow Brick Road provided by Congoleum.”) Stan Winston’s special make-up designs are some of his career-best, especially the prosthetic make-ups on The Tin Man, the Flying Monkeys, and the Crows. Quincy Jones’ arrangements of the show’s original songs are also quite good.

THE BOTCHED: Diana Ross is miscast as Dorothy. She tries her damnedest, but she’s too old for the part. Ross comes across as an overly serious, pinch-faced scold, and is saddled with nothing but second-rate ballads. The entire enterprise is placed on her shoulders and, though we can see her straining to hold the whole thing together, she’s just not up to the task.

Ross is not helped by the script, penned by a young Joel Schumacher. It gleefully tosses out every line of dialogue from the Broadway smash and replaces it with what can only be described as self-improvement platitudes straight from the work of Werner Erhard and the then-popular “EST” movement. Apparently, both Diana Ross and Joel Schumacher were acolytes of the self-help guru and were pleased that their film could reflect his important work. Apparently, Lena Horne’s platitude-heavy final speech is a patchwork quilt of Erhard-isms with just enough articles and conjunctions added to make them complete sentences.

REALLY BOTCHED: What really had me shaking my head at my most recent screening was the songs themselves and their placement in the narrative. In its film version, most of The Wiz’s narrative momentum is lost by bad song choices, lack of editing, and redundancy. Quincy Jones and the film’s producers chucked eleven—ELEVEN—of the Broadway show’s original songs and added new ones. This leads to a frustrating doubling of the show’s themes. Theresa Merritt sings “The Feeling That We Had” at Thanksgiving dinner, and it’s beautiful. Then, Diana Ross immediately sings another ballad, “Can I Go On?” (a new song by Quincy Jones, Nickolas Ashford, and Valerie Simpson) and it's simply more of the same.

Nipsey Russell sings “What Would I Do If I Could Feel,” expressing his plight without a heart, then immediately sings “Slide Some Oil to Me,” expressing his plight being rusted shut. I have never seen a Hollywood musical where more characters sing TWO SONGS IN A ROW. Once the producers decided to change the order of the songs, they could have paced things in a way that provided more variety and narrative oomph. In an example of double climax, the clueless filmmakers follow Broadway showstopper “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News” minutes later, with ANOTHER SHOWSTOPPER, “A Brand-New Day,” written for the film by Luther Vandross. This is too much of a good thing.

ANOTHER WASTE OF THE AUDIENCE’S TIME is the “Emerald City Sequence” and musical number. When our plucky band of Yellow Brick Road travelers finally arrive at their destination, we are treated to an interminable fashion show wherein hundreds of fashion models strut around the central plaza of the World Trade Center, wearing clothes of a single color, only to have the eponymous Wiz announce every 90 seconds that said color has been changed. What this Met Gala Eye Candy has to do with the plot is anyone’s guess. Oz is a fickle, fashion-crazy town? Perhaps. The green clothes look the best? Well, yes. Real designers like Halston, Ralph Lauren, and Oscar de la Renta supplied the film company with real haute couture fashions? Probably that last one.

BATTLE OF THE SINGING STARS: Four years ago, writing about 1976 snooze-fest A Star is Born, I discussed the film’s "climactic", SEVEN-MINUTE-LONG, UNBROKEN CLOSE-UP OF STAR BARBRA STREISAND. I wrote, “I’m at a loss to name any other Hollywood film that contains an instance of massive ego that even comes close to this.” Well, folks, I’m no longer at a loss. The Wiz has a shot that is the only serious rival to Streisand’s Uber Hubris. Reprising the song “Home,” director Sidney Lumet frames star Diana Ross in an unbroken close-up that goes on for four excruciating minutes. At least in A Star is Born, Babs is singing to an unseen, offscreen audience. In The Wiz, Diana Ross is SINGING RIGHT TO US. We are locked into her unwavering, unrelenting stare.

CRYING INTO YOUR BEER: If you are sad because you missed the Fathom Event screening, you are in luck, gentle reader. The esteemed Criterion Collection is poised to release its new 4K Blu-ray disc of The Wiz in just two weeks’ time—June 10—with oodles of extras. Preorder it now... and prepare to ease on down the road!