Slaughterhouse-Five

When it first appeared in 1969, the anti-war movement in the United States was growing rapidly, and the "counter culture" was beginning to feel the scales of history tipping in its direction. The Woodstock music festival was probably the iconic event of the year, as nearly half a million young people descended on a farm in upstate New York. As Joni Mitchell caught it in her song "Woodstock,"

I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an' get my soul free

Still, the "establishment" seemed to have a firm grip on power, and not everything was love and flowers: Nixon was president, the war was escalating, the Manson family was committing their crazed murders, and the killings of six students at Kent and Jackson State Universities by the National Guard was only a few months away. Kurt Vonnegut, nominally a member of the "Greatest Generation" who has served in and survived WWII, might ordinarily be expected to side with the establishment -- and yet, somehow, he found his way to writing what might just possibly be the most powerful anti-war novel ever penned. Although, as one filmmaker remarks to him in the opening section, why not just write an anti-glacier novel?

Unlike, however, most novels written with a similar intent, such as All Quiet on the Western Front, Slaughterhouse-five (named after the meat locker in which Vonnegut and other German POW's were held captive in Dresden) doesn't confront the horror of war head-on. Its main character, Billy Pilgrim, has "come unstuck from time" -- suffering from something like PTSD, but filtered through a Vonnegutian progress. His recuperation in a hospital is aided by the reading of science fiction novels,  written by the (fictional) Kilgore Trout (a pun on Vonnegut's friend Theodore Sturgeon). Things get really weird when, on his wedding night, Billy is abducted by the Tralfamadorians, who take him to their distant planet to study humanity; they bring him back to earth, but return periodically to study humanity some more. In the midst of this chronological scramble, we finally get 'round to seeing the core of Billy's wartime trauma, and the fire-bombing of Dresden. Dresden, a city already crowded with refugees from other fronts of the war, was relentlessly firebombed by the RAF with incendiaries intended to create a firestorm -- and they did. More than 25,000 people were killed, one of the worst single-event civilian casualty counts this side of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Vonnegut's book was playful -- but it was also deadly serious; its influence has reverberated through the years, and was recently celebrated by novelist Salman Rushdie. There are still wars, and still warmongers, still those who believe that military might alone can tame the demons of civilization. Or maybe they are the demons.

And so it goes.

Return to Oz (1984)

Our second alternative version, 1984's Return to Oz, has the distinction of being both the darkest version of Oz to date, and also the most faithful to the original Oz books. Numerous characters from the first two that followed the original -- The Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz -- appear here for the first time. And, thanks to the combined magic of muppet man Jim Henson and "California Raisins" claymator Will Vinton, they come to life vividly on the screen:

• Billina, Dorothy's hen, who begins to speak as soon as she arrives in Oz

• Tik-Tok,  a mechanical wind-up man who serves as the "Army of Oz"

• The Wheelers -- men who have wheels in the place of hands and feet

• Jack Pumpkinhead, brought to life by a magic powder -- he's always worried that his head will spoil!

• The Nome King -- arch-enemy of Oz in the early books, with an Army of Nomes at his side, brilliantly played by Nicol Williamson.

• Mombi -- the wickedest witch of them all, here conflated with Princess Langwidere of Ev

Oz here is a dark and gloomy place, its inhabitants turned to stone by the combined forces of the Nome King and Mombi; Dorothy must rescue not only her companions but the entire population of Oz. The backstory is darker still; worried about Dorothy's constant tales of a place they don't think exists, Uncle Henry and Aunt Em send her to a doctor in a neighboring town, whose main treatment seems to be an early version of electro-shock therapy! The links between this world and Oz, though, are maintained an even expanded; the electro-shock machine becomes Tik-Tok; the wheeled gurney on which Dorothy is strapped while on her way for treatment becomes the Wheelers, and the Doctor himself becomes the Nome King!

It's hardly your typical Disney film, but it has an interesting origin story: back in the 1950's, Walt Disney had bought up the rights to all of the Oz sequels, but these were starting expire in the 1980's. Walter Murch, who was coming straight from his role as sound designer for Coppola's Apocalypse Now, was available, and the team of Henson and Vinton seemed ready to re-create their characters on a modest budget. Disney execs weren't happy with the early footage they saw, and wanted to fire Murch -- until George Lucas stepped in, saying he'd never work for Disney again if they did that. In gratitude, Murch gave the original Tik-Tok to Lucas, where he now resides as the centerpiece of Lucas's garden in San Rafael.

UPDATE: Here's a link to a documentary about the film -- it's not clear when it will be out, but the trailer is worth watching!

The Wiz (1978)

Tiger Haynes, who played theTin Man in the original Broadway "The Wiz"

Perhaps more than any other story, The Wizard of Oz has proven durable on stage and screen, and has managed numerous leaps of style, approach, and song. This week, we'll look at two in particular, starting with "The Wiz,' an all-Black cast and produced musical that debuted at the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre on Broadway on October 21,1974. Initial reviews were mixed, and the production moved on, with a different cast, to the Majestic Theatre in January of 1975. This production won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and its main song -- Ease on Down the Road -- proved to be a top hit both in its original version and when recorded by Diana Ross -- starring at that time in the film version -- in 1978.

The film version of the musical, with Ross as Dorothy, Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, Ted Ross (no relation) as the Cowardly Lion, and Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man was directed by Sidney Lumet and released in October 1978. Its reviews were decidedly more mixed; while nearly everyone praised the musical performances, there was a strange disconnect with the film's production values, which seemed at once too "stagey" and too underplayed. The decision to have Diana Ross play Dorothy with natural hair and minimal makeup -- and with her role changed from child to schoolteacher -- brought some criticism; the choice of Nipsey Russell -- better known at that time as a frequent game-show panelist -- irked others. The bigger problem, in retrospect, was that Hollywood in that period really didn't understand how to market a Black film; while low-budget "Blaxploitation" films did well at the box-office, the major studios had no idea either how to reach Black audiences or market the film to white viewers.

The 1939 Wizard of Oz

 It's considered by many to be the greatest film ever made, and for a long time it was also one of the most familiar; from 1956 to 1999, its annual appearance on television -- usually in the spring -- was a tradition in many families, including my own. Since then, as cable and internet streaming have diluted its influence, it's entirely possible to grow up without seeing it -- if that's your case, then you are in for a treat!

Oddly, in 1939, although it made back its production budget and received generally good notices, it wasn't regarded as a great success. The story of its production has itself become the stuff of legend, and all sorts of rumors continue to circulate about it. And yet, some of the strangest rumors are, in fact, true: the producers originally wanted Shirley Temple for the role of Dorothy; Buddy Ebsen was originally cast as the Tin Man, but had to be replaced by Jack Haley after he developed an allergic reaction to his aluminum paste makeup; Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, suffered burns from the pyrotechnic device set to put out a cloud of red smoke when she stepped onto the elevator by means of which he was to vanish from the Munchkinland set. Perhaps most strange of all: the costume department at MGM had sent out for several racks of used men's suits for Frank Morgan's role as Professor Marvel, and finally identified a suitable one as "grandeur gone to seed." It was only when Morgan stepped out onto the sound-stage and glanced at the inner pocket that he saw a cloth label identifying the jacket as having belonged to L. Frank Baum! (Baum had died in 1919, but his widow still lived in their old home, Ozcot, just off Hollywood Boulevard, and had apparently given away a number of her husband's old suits to charity).

There were, of course, some changes from the book. "Miss Gulch" was needed to sustain the reality/dream pairings of the film (first used by the 1925 silent version); the Kalidahs were omitted, as were the mice who helped rescue the Lion and Dorothy from the Deadly Poppy Field. The swarm of insects that the Witch sends to attack the four companions was retained, but converted into a dance sequence, "The Jitterbug," which was ultimately deleted from the finished film (you can watch a reconstruction of it using Mervyn Le Roy's home movie footage here). And yet, inexplicably, the Witch's line -- "I've sent a little insect on ahead to take the fight out of them!" -- remained in the final cut. The biggest change of all, of course, was making the whole thing nothing but a dream. In the books, Oz was always -- as Garlad's Dorothy insists in the film -- "a real truly live place." In The Emerald City of Oz, the 6th in the series, Dorothy has her friend Princess Ozma wish Uncle Henry and Aunt Em to her palace in the Emerald City, and there they live happily ever after. There is, in the end, no need to return to Kansas.

Backgrounds on Oz

Map of Oz

First published in 1899, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is quite possibly the greatest distinctly American fairy tale ever written. The book itself has been a best-seller for 114 years, and the story of the Wizard has been adapted many times -- first in 1902, as a wildly successful stage play (for this version, Baum gave Dorothy a last name -- the playful "Gale"), then as a film by Selig Polyscope in 1910, then again in 1925 (with Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man), and most famously in 1939 with Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, and Frank Morgan.  Film and television versions continued, including a 1960 TV version starring Shirley Temple (whom the 1939 film's director, Victor Fleming, had originally wanted for the role of Dorothy), and the all-black cast "The Wiz" was a hit Broadway show in 1975.

L. Frank Baum wrote 13 additional "Oz" books before his death in 1919, and they were all enormously popular, although sales declined gradually over the period. Many of the greatest characters of the Land of Oz were introduced in these sequels, and would have been familiar to anyone growing up in the first half of the twentieth century: Jack Pumpkinhead, The Nome King, the Sawhorse, Professor Wogglebug, and Tik-Tok the Royal Army of Oz (he had his own modestly-successful Broadway show). Unbeknownst to many, Walt Disney acquired the rights to all the post-Wizard sequels back in the 1950's, but it wasn't until the early 1980's, when these rights were about to expire, that the Disney company showed much interest. The Disney producers brought Walter Murch,  Francis Ford Coppolla's longtime film and sound editor, aboard to direct, and engaged the services of stop-motion animator Will Vinton (famous for his commercials featuring the dancing California Raisins), along with some of the Jim Henson company's muppet designers and puppeteers. Murch had in mind a much darker tone than the 1939 film, and Disney grew alarmed as they saw the production designs and early tests. It was, according to Much, only because of George Lukas's personal intervention that he was not fired from the film. Fairuza Balk, a young actress who would later become well known for her roles in indie films such as Gas, Food, and Lodging, was cast as Dorothy, and Nicol Wiliamson -- known for his role as Merlin in John Boorman's Excalibur -- was cast as the Nome King.

The movie did poorly in its initial release -- I remember seeing in at a multiplex where I was one of only two or three people in the audience -- but has gained an enormous following on VHS and DVD; many Oz fans consider it to be, by far, the most faithful adaptation of any of Baum's books for the screen.

Since then, of course, Gregory McGuire's Wicked -- a book which brilliantly re-cast and re-shaped Oz and its denizens (who else would have suspected that the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda were college roommates?), and the resulting Broadway musical has been the highest-grossing of any theatrical Oz adaptation to date. More recently, 2007's Tin Man miniseries and 2013's prequel Oz the Great and Powerful have shown that, once again, Oz is a realm capable of continual reinvention.