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“The Wiz” Appreciation Thread

A rare photo of Michael wearing braids on the set of the Wiz 1977.

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TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) — Northlawn Cinema with the Tulsa County Parks will host a family-friendly viewing of cult classics, as well as recent release movies.

The pop-up show will be Saturday, Sept. 19, at 7:00 p.m. at O’Brien Park, 6149 North Lewis.

Tulsa County Parks said the event is free, so grab the lawn chairs and a blanket, and bring the family to O’Brien Park for an evening under the stars, and enjoy our 20’ viewing screen with state of the art digital projection and digital surround sound.

Mask-wearing and social distancing will be practiced during this event.

“Northlawn Cinema, in partnership with the Tulsa County Parks and local food trucks are proud to provide the community a convenient, safe, family-friendly, fun event to help reduce stress on families during these difficult times of social distancing. And it is particularly heartfelt that the showing is “The Wiz” which is a cult classic in the Black community,” said Anita Works, native north Tulsan and managing director of Northlawn Cinema.

“The Wiz” is a Broadway spinoff from the classic, Wizard of OZ with music and performances by award-winning performers, Dianna Ross, and Michael Jackson. Dorothy (played by Dianna Ross), a young African American school teacher leaves a family dinner to chase her dog into a snowstorm and is swept up by a cyclone and transported to OZ. Dorothy teams up with a scarecrow, a tinman and a cowardly lion to battle the Wick Witch.

https://ktul.com/news/local/tulsa-county-parks-to-host-pop-up-movie-at-a-north-tulsa-park
 
NatureCriminal7896;4304312 said:
TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) — Northlawn Cinema with the Tulsa County Parks will host a family-friendly viewing of cult classics, as well as recent release movies.

The pop-up show will be Saturday, Sept. 19, at 7:00 p.m. at O’Brien Park, 6149 North Lewis.

Tulsa County Parks said the event is free, so grab the lawn chairs and a blanket, and bring the family to O’Brien Park for an evening under the stars, and enjoy our 20’ viewing screen with state of the art digital projection and digital surround sound.

Mask-wearing and social distancing will be practiced during this event.

“Northlawn Cinema, in partnership with the Tulsa County Parks and local food trucks are proud to provide the community a convenient, safe, family-friendly, fun event to help reduce stress on families during these difficult times of social distancing. And it is particularly heartfelt that the showing is “The Wiz” which is a cult classic in the Black community,” said Anita Works, native north Tulsan and managing director of Northlawn Cinema.

“The Wiz” is a Broadway spinoff from the classic, Wizard of OZ with music and performances by award-winning performers, Dianna Ross, and Michael Jackson. Dorothy (played by Dianna Ross), a young African American school teacher leaves a family dinner to chase her dog into a snowstorm and is swept up by a cyclone and transported to OZ. Dorothy teams up with a scarecrow, a tinman and a cowardly lion to battle the Wick Witch.

https://ktul.com/news/local/tulsa-county-parks-to-host-pop-up-movie-at-a-north-tulsa-park
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I wish that I knew about that because I live about 45 minutes from Tulsa.
 
I am using this movie along with Moonwalker to introduce my 9 year old God-niece to MJ.
 
ScreenOrigami;4300422 said:
Would we have seen Michael in the film, if Diana hadn’t been in it? My impression is that one thing kind of led to the other because he only heard of the project when Diana told him she was going to be in it. If this is true, I prefer the film the way it is. ;)
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DuranDuran;4300429 said:
Never heard of this. Even so, Mike knew Stephanie and she could have him about it and Jermaine was still on Motown and working as an A&R guy on the side, so he might have known about it as well. Stephanie was signed to Motown at the time too.

Berry Gordy didn't want Diana, and told her she was too old. Berry also had a bad experience with Diana filming the Mahogany movie, another reason he did not want to work with her again on The Wiz. So Diana went over Berry's head and talked to someone at Universal Studios who were going to finance the movie. The studio guy got her in it.
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Michael Jackson decided to play the Scarecrow character (on ‘The Wiz’ film) because of Berry Gordy.

It was not because of Diana Ross (who also played in the same film), or because of Stephanie Mills or Jermaine Jackson.

Everything began from Rob Cohen (head of Motown Productions at the time, but also the man who produced ‘The Wiz’ film) who believed that Michael Jackson would be perfect for the role of Scarecrow.

So, Rob Cohen approached Berry Gordy and he suggested to him that Michael Jackson should take that role (Berry Gordy agreed with that idea).

Berry Gordy then talked Michael Jackson into playing in that film as Scarecrow.
 
ScreenOrigami;4300384 said:
The production notes from the original brochure reveal where each scene was filmed.
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Thanks for sharing. I hadn't seen that before.

JichaelMackson;4300406 said:
Even in his limited film career MJ worked with some iconic directors. Lumet, Scorsese, Landis, Fincher, Lynch and probably some more I forgot about
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Captain EO was written by George Lucas, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Steven Spielberg appears in the "Liberian Girl" video


Smooth72;4300407 said:
If it wasn’t for MJ I would say the Wiz is awful
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This is similar to my view, although I think "awful" is a bit harsh. But not being in the target audience (ie I'm white) I definitely wouldn't have looked twice at this if it wasn't for MJ.

Mjjpikagurl;4311164 said:
I am using this movie along with Moonwalker to introduce my 9 year old God-niece to MJ.
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I was gonna do the same with this and the Number Ones DVD. Is 5 a bit too young? Her attention span seems to be less than half an hour at the moment.
 
R1chard said:
Thanks for sharing. I hadn't seen that before.


Captain EO was written by George Lucas, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Steven Spielberg appears in the "Liberian Girl" video



This is similar to my view, although I think "awful" is a bit harsh. But not being in the target audience (ie I'm white) I definitely wouldn't have looked twice at this if it wasn't for MJ.


I was gonna do the same with this and the Number Ones DVD. Is 5 a bit too young? Her attention span seems to be less than half an hour at the moment.
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I say start with the J5
 
I haven't seen the wiz yet. but it's on my list of movies to watch also captain eo. my mom love the wiz. i saw the moonwalker. awesome movie. :) most reviews are good with the wiz. i think the reason it didn't get enough hype back in the time it was release because it was the black version of the wizard of oz and cause alot problems. the wiz was a stage play before it was a movie.
 
Liberian Girl could of had a better short film. i don't like song, yes come me attack me. but i think if the short film was better it probably would got more praise. it would of been nice to see him with a black woman in it or a woman working in liberian since that's was the song was really about. :)

PYT should of did too. there's alot songs michael made should had short films many agree.
 
‘The Wiz’ did not get good reviews from critics and it also flopped mainly because of the following reasons:

Diana Ross received a lot of negative criticism because she was too old for her Dorothy Gale role.

Diana Ross received also negative criticism for her make-up.

It is filled with too many, boring ballads.

The film’s visuals and overall tone are dark, catatonic, and depressing.

The script is weak.

The acting is weak, too.

Sidney Lumet (the director who eventually replaced John Badham) was not suitable for directing such type of musical/fantasy films.

Also, keep in mind that fantasy-oriented films are always a risk at the box office, and ‘The Wiz’ film simply proved that with its poor, box office performance.
 
mj_frenzy;4312538 said:
‘The Wiz’ did not get good reviews from critics and it also flopped mainly because of the following reasons:

Diana Ross received a lot of negative criticism because she was too old for her Dorothy Gale role.

Diana Ross received also negative criticism for her make-up.

It is filled with too many, boring ballads.

The film’s visuals and overall tone are dark, catatonic, and depressing.

The script is weak.

The acting is weak, too.

Sidney Lumet (the director who eventually replaced John Badham) was not suitable for directing such type of musical/fantasy films.

Also, keep in mind that fantasy-oriented films are always a risk at the box office, and ‘The Wiz’ film simply proved that with its poor, box office performance.
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Who cares.
Do you know what "Appreciation" means?
 
[video=youtube;mPVpMxVn6mk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?mPVpMxVn6mk[/video]
 
1970s musicals

mj_frenzy said:
it also flopped mainly because of the following reasons:
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The more likely reason is that it was a movie musical released in the late 1970s, when they had pretty much been out of style with mainstream audiences. Most of the other ones released around this time didn't do that well either:

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Can't Stop The Music
Xanadu
Hair
Thank God It's Friday
All This And World War II
Bugsy Malone
Rocky Horror Picture Show (this became really popular years later as a cult hit, but flopped when originally released. I think it might have been helped by being shown on cable TV in the 1980s.)

The Who's Tommy was a hit in the mid 1970s but I think it was low budget. It didn't need to make a huge amount of money to break even. The Wiz was expensive. Grease was was a big hit. But I think Grease fit with the other popular 1950s nostalgia stuff in the USA like Happy Days, American Graffiti, Laverne & Shirley, and the singing group Sha Na Na. It also didn't hurt that John Travolta was in Grease. It's interesting that Travolta was in 3 popular movies about big crazes during that time: disco (Saturday Night Fever), 1950s (Grease), & country music culture (Urban Cowboy). The Fame movie was a hit too and a TV show was spun off from it, and Janet appeared on the show in later seasons.
 
Re: 1970s musicals

DuranDuran said:
The more likely reason is that it was a movie musical released in the late 1970s, when they had pretty much been out of style with mainstream audiences. Most of the other ones released around this time didn't do that well either:

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Can't Stop The Music
Xanadu
Hair
Thank God It's Friday
All This And World War II
Bugsy Malone
Rocky Horror Picture Show (this became really popular years later as a cult hit, but flopped when originally released. I think it might have been helped by being shown on cable TV in the 1980s.)

The Who's Tommy was a hit in the mid 1970s but I think it was low budget. It didn't need to make a huge amount of money to break even. The Wiz was expensive. Grease was was a big hit. But I think Grease fit with the other popular 1950s nostalgia stuff in the USA like Happy Days, American Graffiti, Laverne & Shirley, and the singing group Sha Na Na. It also didn't hurt that John Travolta was in Grease. It's interesting that Travolta was in 3 popular movies about big crazes during that time: disco (Saturday Night Fever), 1950s (Grease), & country music culture (Urban Cowboy). The Fame movie was a hit too and a TV show was spun off from it, and Janet appeared on the show in later seasons.
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It's just that 70's "Blaxploitation films" began to lose their popularity.
 
mj_frenzy;4312538 said:
‘The Wiz’ did not get good reviews from critics and it also flopped mainly because of the following reasons:

Diana Ross received a lot of negative criticism because she was too old for her Dorothy Gale role.

Diana Ross received also negative criticism for her make-up.

It is filled with too many, boring ballads.

The film’s visuals and overall tone are dark, catatonic, and depressing.

The script is weak.

The acting is weak, too.

Sidney Lumet (the director who eventually replaced John Badham) was not suitable for directing such type of musical/fantasy films.

Also, keep in mind that fantasy-oriented films are always a risk at the box office, and ‘The Wiz’ film simply proved that with its poor, box office performance.
Click to expand...

For all its downsides, The Wiz is still Michael's best movie. A good imagination of the authors was attached and filmed in a very atmospheric way.

Sidney Lumet decided to unwind and try himself in an atypical genre.

Moonwalker is weaker as a movie than The Wiz.
 
Michaels Lover said:
:laughing:
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I don't see anything funny, but it really is.

Michael brought in such a wonderful screenwriter who wrote Bonnie & Clyde and the original Superman. As a result, despite his work, we saw a very weak film without a clear script, acting and plot.

The Wiz is much better in this regard.
 
NatureCriminal7896 said:
i need to watch the wiz before i can say it's bad or not in my opinion. i love the moonwalker.
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This is because Michael plays there in his best years. Try to abstract from this. A very weak film will come out.

There are much better films with music stars at the head (Bowie's Labyrinth, Prince's Purple Rain).

Moonwalker is incredibly weak. 40 mediocre minutes filmed for 10 great minutes of Smooth Criminal.
 
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