Let's Tell A Story About A Wizard, No Dorothys Allowed! - By Matty Jacobson

Matty Jacobson tried to find his Glinda crown from his
Halloween costume several years ago for this particular
mug shot. But, he gave up after going through the fourth
box of costumes & wigs. He did find this Bruno hair,
though. Matty owns, edits and contributes to
The Skewed Review.

THE SKEWED REVIEW | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

I'm pretty sure I wasn't around when the first motion picture ever was conceived of, but I'm sure the conversation of those who dreamt the concept up went something like this:

Dreamer A: Dude, I love going to the theatre!


Dreamer B: Yo, me too, bro!


Dreamer A: Man, it's whack that I can't see that play they're doing on the other side of the country. It would be totally radical if we could see "MacBeth" here in Los Angeles.


Dreamer B: I know, bro! Wouldn't it be, like, the most awesomest if there was a way that we could see that play they're doing in New York here in Los Angeles?


Dreamer A: Holy crap, man, I just had the best idea!


Dreamer B: Whaaaaaa?


Dreamer A: Dude, you know how we, like, take pictures and stuff?


Dreamer B: Yeah?


Dreamer A: What if we took tons of pictures in a row of plays, then we could like, flip them really, really fast, and then people in Los Angeles could for "reels" see the play they're putting on in New York?!


Dreamer B: Why did you do air quotes around "reals?"


Dreamer A: Because it's spelled differently! 


Dreamer B: Why?


Dreamer A: I dont' know. I'm sure once we figure out this movie thing, the pun will make sense!


Dreamer B: What's a movie?

OK. Let's set aside the fact that when I typed the word "awesomest," my computer didn't underline it in red to indicate it was a word that didn't exist. Yes, it's unnerving. But we'll just have to look past that.

The point of this reenactment of the first conversation dealing with movies has to do with this trailer. Have a peeky-poo. (By the way, my MacBook thinks both "peeky" and "poo" are not words. Odd.)




Yes, this is the prequel to the story we know as "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Now, you're either thinking one of two things after watching this. You're either in the, "Sure, I'll see it" camp, or you're desperately waving your "WHAT THE F*%$!?? HOW DARE THEY MESS WITH THE ORIGINAL?!?!" flag.

Whoa. I totally thought it
was the other way around! 

Unfortunately, we live in a world where most people think "The Wizard of Oz" was a movie first. And also unfortunately, most of the world is highly misinformed that the original was a 1939 MGM film starring Judy Garland. Most people are wrong on both counts.

OK, I'll admit I'm not giving the public enough credit. I'm sure everyone knows that "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was a book written by L. Frank Baum that was published in 1899, and it starred an uneducated little girl, a scarecrow with oatmeal and pins in its head, a man who cut off his own arms, legs and head, a town made completely of china (the people, too!), a whole white city where people have sunglasses permanently locked to their faces to give them the impression that it's actually green, and a female cyclops with bees as pets.

Well, I will simply not accept
any rendition of "The Wizard
of Oz" where the Tin
Woodsman's legs aren't
jointed like a velociraptor's.

Actually, I'm surprised more people in 1939 didn't take issue with MGM screwing with the original plot so much. OR, I wonder if people in 1939 said, "WHAT THE F*%$!?? HOW DARE THEY MESS WITH THE ORIGINAL?!?!" and referred to the 1925 movie starring Dorothy Dwan?




I also wonder if the people in 1925 were pissed that anyone would mess with the original 1902 stage musical.

If you thought Dorothy
was sexy in 1939, check
out Anna Laughlin in
1902! Yowzah! 

I personally am intrigued by this new imagining of the "Wizard of Oz" stories. In fact, I wish the stories were revisited more often. However, a good portion of our population considers themselves to be such Dorothy purists that they poo-poo any attempts to retell the story unless it's a stage musical like "Wicked," or "The Wiz."

But that brings me to my point. If you've never seen a live-action play or musical, then you, my friend, have absolutely no culture outside of that rotting milk in your fridge. You truly are missing out. It's really a treat to see how different producers, directors, actors, choreographers, costume designers, and the myriad others who make up a live production create a different piece of art out of the same story.

And it's totally acceptable, too. I could go to New York City tomorrow to see a production of "Hairspray," and be totally entertained. I could then return to St. George and see the Tuacahn version and be equally entertained by two completely different products.

And by the way, you won't hear me complaining either time that the producers are scum for messing with the original John Waters movie.

Wow. John Travolta looks horrible. 

If you're familiar with my movie commentary, you'll know I'm an advocate for directors who want to retell a story. In fact, I love it when a director loves a story so much that he or she wants to tell it again. It's like an actor who loves "Romeo and Juliet" so much that she goes and auditions for the part.

Would I scowl and call her an unoriginal bitch for daring to take on the role that was originally portrayed by a drag queen in the Elizabethan era? Of course not. I would look and sound like a total idiot if I did so.

Yet, I see and hear so much criticism of people wanting to take on new angles to classic stories. Much of it is unfounded, too.

I'll revisit my criticism of the criticism of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," which was directed by Tim Burton. I can't count the times I heard people scoff at Burton's daring to remake the '70s film, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Like I've pointed out many times before, Tim Burton never remade that movie. He adapted a new movie from the original book.

No, Tim. We're not calling you
crazy for making the movie.
We're calling you crazy because,
well, look at yourself. 

And why can't all movies be that way? Hell, if Burton had taken the script from the Gene Wilder version and put his own spin on it, what's so wrong with that?

So let's get back to "Oz: The Great and Powerful."

I've already seen chatter on the Internet about how this is a prequel to the 1939 film. Well, that's probably true considering that the trailer opens with James Franco in black & white--the same thing that set apart "The Wizard of Oz" as something even more spectacular in 1939. (Although, it wasn't the only movie to use the black & white-to-color trick.)

My biggest qualm with this tale is that it could really have been awesome if they made the book into a movie. However, the filmmakers know this would never work because too many people think it would be an affront to the very art of filmmaking. It would be like movie blasphemy to retell a classic retelling of a retelling of a retelling of a book. People would never get past the title to see it for what it was.

Tim Burton learned his lesson. I'm sure he would have loved to do his own version of the original "Alice in Wonderland," but instead, the movie we saw was a sequel to the story we all know. I've always wondered if that had anything to do with the scorn Burton received after he adapted "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" verbatim from Roald Dahl's book.

Hello, I'm Roald Dahl. Did
you know that I absolutely
hated the '70s bastardization
of my book, "Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory?"
It's true. Nobody cares, though.

I think he and Disney realized that people are just too stupid to know that two good pieces of interpretations can exist in the same world and be wonderful for different reasons.

Oh, look! "Oz: The Great and Powerful" is produced by none other than Disney.

It's OK, Dorothy. Disney didn't
stick to my story, either. But at
least they made bank with the 3D! 

I will applaud the next director who stands up and is willing to take a chance to tell the "Oz" stories without having to result to, "what happened before Dorothy came?" And I will applaud even louder for the public who is willing to let someone who was always inspired by a story to tell the story in his or her own way without ostracizing that person. But, sadly, I think we're all too eager to grab pitchforks rather than actually give a retelling of a story a chance.

Out of OzzZZZZZZZzzzz - By Matty Jacobson

Matty Jacobson is owner, operator,
editor and contributor to The Skewed
Review. He's also the most
disappointed man in the land. For
some reason, he expects story tellers
to tell complete stories.
How absurd! 

I think the most frustrating thing about Gregory Maguire's re-imagining of the stories of Oz through the eyes of the Wicked Witch of the West, her friends, and her family, is he seems to think stories aren't allowed to have closure.

I read "Wicked" before it was ever a musical, and I remember thinking the end was, well, not an end. It was like there was supposed to be more to the story but Maguire just stopped writing. But then "Son of a Witch" came out, so I assumed the story would pick up again where it had left off before.

Wrong.

So I guess it was a "Fool me once, shame on you" scenario when I assumed the third book, "A Lion Among Men" would do what I wanted the first two to do: resolve something. Anything. But, no.

So when "Out of Oz" appeared, I thought that maybe, perhaps, hopefully, Maguire would fashion a satisfactory end to the saga of, well, what is this a saga of?

I decided to check out some reviews before I actually put my time into reading the monstrosity that is "Out of Oz." USA Today's reviewer said, believe it or not, that it was a satisfactory end to the "Wicked" saga.

But now that I look back at the so-called saga, I realize it's not a saga at all. It's more like a reading of minutes from a bureaucratic meeting that just happened to take place in Oz.

From the first page of "Wicked" to the last page of "Out of Oz," I realized that there isn't a purpose to anything. Ninety percent of each book is more about the rules and regulations of Oz than any actual plot lines. The readers are forced to watch some group of people wandering around the land for literally no apparent reason other than to wander.

We are introduced to random characters who seem to have something important to do with the plot, and if they do, their stories are told in some other book somewhere else, because I can't find a trace of them in the "Wicked" stories.

But what pissed me off the most was the potential these books had to be literary gold. There was so much potential for character development. There was so much potential for action. There was so much potential for hear-wrenching love stories. But in the end, I never felt for any character. And it didn't matter that I didn't feel for any character because none of the characters cared, either.

The whole series ended with more questions than answers. So that's the schtick, you might say? Well, I don't accept it. If Gregory Maguire would have put half as much effort into drafting a complete story as he did with describing how Glinda prepared a meal, then these books would have won my heart over.

Instead, they left me wishing I could click my heels together three times and retrieve all the time it took to read these books -- time I'll never get back.