Welcome once again to "Your Favorite Movie," a series in which we discuss with a good friend the ins and outs of his or her favorite movie of all time. I consider myself lucky to have stumbled upon a great excuse to spend an extra hour per week with a real adult human (no offense, Willow!).
The real adult human this week was Allison N***. I was really excited to sit down with Allison at the Triangle Tavern this past Friday and talk shop, because Allison is a legit cinephile. She knows the motherfucking craft. As such, she provided some really exciting insights into her favorite movie. Plus, I've sincerely enjoyed drinking beers with Allison for the twelve years I've known her, so it was my pleasure to split some Kenzinger pitchers with her and shoot the shit once again. With us, helping augment some of the details, was her fiancé, Stephan C****** (they got engaged at the Urinetown cast party). Our conversation is below, with permission, and is, as always, lightly edited for clarity.
Allison's favorite movie is, and seems to have always been, The Wizard of Oz. Out of every movie that has appeared and will eventually appear in this column, The Wizard of Oz is perhaps the one least necessitating an introduction. It's celebrating its 80th anniversary this year, and I really can't imagine any person on earth would be reading this without having seen the movie at least once. It's a classic... but is it the best? Read on to see Allison make her case.
The real adult human this week was Allison N***. I was really excited to sit down with Allison at the Triangle Tavern this past Friday and talk shop, because Allison is a legit cinephile. She knows the motherfucking craft. As such, she provided some really exciting insights into her favorite movie. Plus, I've sincerely enjoyed drinking beers with Allison for the twelve years I've known her, so it was my pleasure to split some Kenzinger pitchers with her and shoot the shit once again. With us, helping augment some of the details, was her fiancé, Stephan C****** (they got engaged at the Urinetown cast party). Our conversation is below, with permission, and is, as always, lightly edited for clarity.
Allison's favorite movie is, and seems to have always been, The Wizard of Oz. Out of every movie that has appeared and will eventually appear in this column, The Wizard of Oz is perhaps the one least necessitating an introduction. It's celebrating its 80th anniversary this year, and I really can't imagine any person on earth would be reading this without having seen the movie at least once. It's a classic... but is it the best? Read on to see Allison make her case.
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Joe: Clearly Wizard of Oz is a classic film. I don't think we need to necessarily go through the plot. You know the plot of Wizard of Oz if you are over the age of eight.
Allison: Yeah, you can condense the plot. It's not a terribly complex plot.
Joe: So if you had to say what the movie is about, in a very brief time period, how would you describe Wizard of Oz?
Allison: I mean, it's about straying too far from home, and coming back home again. It's about wanting to grow up before you're ready to grow up. It's about... really, it's about coming back home. And actually, rewatching it today, I remembered how I find the ending so, kind of... I find the full, actual ending of it to be kind of not very satisfying. And I feel that the moral of the story negates everything that happened in the meantime. After everything that happened in the movie, she's like "Oh, if I ever want to go looking for my heart's desire, I'm not going to leave home ever again!" It's like—all this cool shit happened to you... in your dream.
Joe: It did seem like she regretted leaving Oz...
Allison: Right! All the friends you made along the way. Isn't that, "the Oz is inside you all along" kind of a thing?
Joe: So do you feel—the fact that this is your favorite movie of all time—does it have anything to do with that lesson? Like, did you take that lesson to heart?
Allison: No, I don't think so. [laughter] No, I wanted to get out of there as soon as I could.
Joe: So you're more of the "we're not in Kansas anymore" wide-eyed adventurism?
Allison: I think I wanted to be. Or I wanted to see myself in that version of Dorothy. The movie for me is more about the nostalgia of it. It's my first favorite movie, like my earliest favorite movie. So going back, every time I watch it, I'm reminded of all the warm, fuzzy feelings I had as a child watching it. Feeling the same way that Dorothy does when she opens the door and it's Oz, and what that feels like as a kid. Every time I watch it, I'm still like... "That looks great, that's still very cool." So I think I'm more about the Oz than anything that happens outside of Oz.
Joe: Appreciating it as a movie, versus, like, this had a—you related to it in a personal way?
Allison: I think so. And I was really just about the movie itself. I didn't get into Wicked. I didn't get into any other [of the] Oz universe—
Joe: The sequel? Return to Oz?
Allison: I haven't seen Return to Oz.
Stephan: There is a sequel?
Joe: There is a sequel.
Stephan: Is Judy Garland in it?
Allison: [laughter] She is not.
Stephan: Oh, is she dead by then?
Joe: Yes. I think it was '85 it came out?
Allison: Fairuza Balk? Yeah, you wouldn't—she's in... The Craft?
Stephan: No.
Allison: Another favorite ever? [laughter]
Joe: [Return to Oz is] a weird movie. It's a lot weirder than Wizard of Oz.
Allison: Yeah, that's what I've heard. And it's like darker too? But The Wizard of Oz itself is pretty dark.
Joe: I guess the book—if you read about the difference between the book and the movie—the book is a lot darker. I guess, as an example, the Tin Man wasn't always a tin man. He was, like, a human being—
Allison: And the Witch, like, turned him into a tin man I think it was? ...I haven't read the book.
Joe: I read those—there was like a book series that turns classic books into actual children's books, and pretty much paraphrases the whole book. So I read that when I was younger. But I didn't read the actual book. But apparently, the Tin Man was a human, [who] was in love with a Munchkin.
Allison: Okay...
Joe: —and the Munchkin's mom didn't want this guy to marry the munchkin, so she bewitched his ax to chop himself into pieces. And a tinsman found the pieces of human flesh and... turned him into the Tin Man.
Allison: Huh.
Stephan: That's pretty dark.
Allison: I don't know why they cut that out of the movie!
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: Every character in the movie gets such a little introduction, like, "I'm the Scarecrow, I just have no brain," and "I'm the Tin Man, the tinsman didn't give me a heart!" Like... should tin men have hearts? Are there other tin men with hearts?
Joe: Why do you think that is? Why is the movie structured that way? Is it because they wanted it to be a children's film? Or they just were lazy...?
Allison: I mean, the movie runs an hour fifty? So it's not long, but it's not short. I feel like they kept those types of things short for the sake of brevity, like, he's a Tin Man, what more do you need to know? It's a fanciful world where things don't make sense. We don't need to explain everything. I said to Stephan earlier, it's a movie that doesn't really hold up to very harsh scrutiny. You can start picking it apart pretty quickly.
Joe: Does it have anything to do with the fact that the movie made it all a dream sequence? Because that's not how it is in the book. She actually went to Oz.
Allison: And there's a series of books.
Joe: She returns.
Allison: Yeah, and ya know, it was the '30s... Don't think about it too hard!
Stephan: So two things. I did not find out till much later that it was all a dream.
Joe: You don't really grasp that as a kid...
Stephan: No, I literally never got through to the end of the movie.
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: He did not watch it with me today either!
Stephan: So it was one of my Mom's favorite movies, and we did own it on VHS. However, I watched it a lot when it was on television, like ABC or whatever?
Allison: TBS around Thanksgiving? For whatever reason?
Joe: It's a classic Thanksgiving movie...?
Stephan: It's like three hours with commercials! So I just never—not that I disliked it, but I just never got to the end until much later. And then I kind of didn't like the ending, and that it's just a dream.
Allison: It's never a great framing device.
Joe: Especially because there is a sequel [in which] Oz exists. And it's not like she says "Oh, it does exist." No! Actually, so [in] the sequel, Dorothy is in a mental institution because she's talking about Oz so much, and nobody believes that it exists. That's how it starts!
Allison: Again... just the one movie. When the book Wicked came out, I remember some friends were reading it in like fifth or sixth grade, and I was adamant that I would never read it, because I never wanted to feel any kind of sympathy for the Wicked Witch. I didn't care about why she was the way she was.
Joe: She is a stone-cold killer.
Allison: She's going to murder Dorothy! She tries multiple times to murder her. Dorothy herself commits manslaughter twice. Her house falls on the first one, and she melts the second one.
Joe: Technically, neither on purpose.
Allison: That's manslaughter, right?
Joe: Yeah... third degree?
Allison: It's not premeditated, but...
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: But! She does go to the Witch's castle to get her broomstick. Normally, the one way to do that is to kill her.
Joe: True.
Allison: I have two thoughts about this. The first being, after she melts the witch, one of the guards is like, "You killed her!"and she's like, "Well I didn't mean to! Honest!" But... you came her to do that. That was your intention all along. What did you think was going to happen?
Joe: It was not very well planned.
Allison: The second— [laughter] this is getting...
Joe: No, please, this is good.
Allison: My second thought. The Wizard sends them to the Witch's castle to get her broomstick. The Wizard sends these four individuals to their almost certain death rather than give up his true identity as a charlatan. And then they come back and he's like "Oh, you did it. Oh, I'm not a bad guy!"
Joe: He does literally say "I'm not a bad guy."
Allison: "I'm not a bad guy, I'm a bad wizard." But like, he sent them away knowing full well that they are not going to make it.
Joe: He's just vamping for time.
Allison: He sends them on an impossible mission!
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: ...It's hard to rewatch it as an adult sometimes.
Joe: Um, there are definitely some plot holes. I guess the one I—this might be an even more ridiculous plot hole—but I did not understand why, when Dorothy was being treated as a hero by the Munchkins, and there was all different kinds of Munchkins... there was pretty much a Munchkin army. Like, soldiers, right? With Civil War garb. So how come they couldn't defeat the witch? They had an army!
Allison: And really, why is it so easy to kill the witches? Like, it's just water? I don't know if that's something they cover in the book Wicked. And I will never find out! Also, are the Munchkins trapped there? Because they only take her to the edge of Munchkinland, and they're like, "You're on your own."
Joe: They felt unsafe?
Allison: "This is as far as we go"?
Joe: I guess. One of the interesting facts that I read about the movie—I was very interested in the Munchkins.
Allison: [laughter]
Joe: First off, like, none of them spoke English. They were a "European dancing troupe" that was pretty much leaving Europe to escape the Nazis. And they came over to the United States.
Allison: And I read a lot of them were Jewish, I did read that. They were called the "Singer Midgets."
Joe: Did they label themselves that just to get away?
Allison: Apparently, it was because their manager was named "Singer."
Joe: [laughter] Were they hired under the false pretense that they were singers?! Apparently, every Munchkin save for two of them in that long scene, their songs were overdubbed by somebody else.
Allison: The dubbing becomes more apparent the older I get. When I was a kid I didn't notice at all. Watching it today, I was like, wow—
Joe: The Lollipop Guild, that's—it was creepy how bad the overdubs are.
Allison: And you can tell that some of them are very comfortable doing what they are doing—the center Munchkin in the Lollipop Guild is killing it. The other two guys are really dubious about this. Just not feeling this.
Joe: It's like they have crooked mouths, like almost as if they were smoking cigarettes right up until they yelled "scene" and someone took the cigarettes out of their mouths.
Allison: But they're also dressed like children? But they're talking like little old men? Is it offensive? Probably!
Joe: I remember, as a kid, cracking up at a lot of shit like that. A lot of the munchkins. I remember me and my sisters repeating the phrase "It's a twista! It's a twista!"
Allison: My Dad used to quote it a lot too. Like, I knew most of the words to the movie by a very early age. And I used to reenact the whole thing with my Dad. Watching it today, I was like, "Oh, I still know most of this." It was coming back, like, Dorothy's inflections. Like, this is weird.
Joe: I remember my aunt would ride the same bike as the Wicked Witch, so everybody would be like, "Aunt Dee Dee, that's you!"
Allison: I'm sure she loved that.
Joe: [laughter] Yeah! Are you aware of the urban legend of the Munchkin hanging—so, okay, we don't need to discuss whether it's true or not. It's not. Obviously.
Allison: Why would that be true?
Joe: Exactly. I guess what I'm interested in—two things I'm interested in. One, even if you're a logical person, why was that so scary? Like, I remember reading [about] it as a teenager, reading the urban legend on Snopes, "Did a munchkin kill [himself]?" and it said "False" in big red letters, but like, that still freaked me out I guess. That there would be a possibility that someone would kill themselves in the background of a classic movie. And two, what is it about those types of things that interest Americans enough that they would want to believe that someone committed suicide in the background of a classic movie?
Allison: I think there's something about "Old Hollywood" that is... people really love to hear about the seedy underbelly and the salaciousness of the—
Joe: A lot of that shit was fucked up! But we'll get to it...
Allison: It was a time before a lot of regulations and a lot of labor laws and, I think people like to pick apart... you know, "There's something nice. Let's ruin it." And I remember hearing about that rumor probably from a shitty kid in my grade school, [snotty kid voice] "Oh, your favorite movie, Wizard of Oz, you know a Munchkin, like, killed himself on set?" Someone just wants to ruin that thing for you. I mean, the movie itself had it's own real issues. Like, the original Tin Man not being able to perform because he had a reaction to his makeup, and he had to leave the cast—
Joe: And, the Wicked Witch, the green paint had copper in it? So [during] that smoke scene in the very beginning, apparently she caught on fire and suffered third degree burns. Definitely, a lot of those stories, it was definitely a 1930s, like, "this is the kind of shit that happened."
Allison: People can trace, ya know, "Oh, Judy Garland had to wear an uncomfortable corset to flatten her chest, and that's what caused her pill addiction!" Like, um, no, but okay? People are plagued with their own issues.
Joe: What was your favorite "This could only happen in a 1939 movie" moment? Like, whether it was like a shitty, lack-of-movie-magic—
Allison: Honestly, I do feel like a lot of the practical effects that they use do still hold up. I really love the miniature work, like when they're flying away, and you can tell it's just a little miniature that they're hanging by a thread. I love those moments. I do feel like if the movie was remade now, they would really have to reevaluate Dorothy's relationship with the three older male farmhands? [laughter] On her farm. It's a little weird!
Joe: That was actually something that I was going to bring up that was cut from the movie. Apparently there was a scene at the end where Dorothy was talking to Hunk, who is the Scarecrow, about him going to Agriculture School, and the implication was that they were, like, they kind of had a romantic thing going. And that's why the Scarecrow was her "favorite," or whatever.
Allison: ...So, one. She's supposed to be, like, twelve.
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: She's supposed to be a child. Judy Garland was like seventeen, but she's supposed to be a child. Two, I have always maintained that Dorothy and the Scarecrow obviously had a thing for each other. There's something special there. "I think I'll miss you most of all." I mean, come on. You don't just say that in front of two people that you have known almost equally as long, and not have it mean something. Which, also—How long is she actually in Oz?
Joe: A day?
Allison: A day.
Joe: They don't eat, except for the apple.
Allison: Right. Back in high school, for the Sadie Hawkins Dance, the theme was "Famous Couples." And I wanted my then-boyfriend and I to go as Dorothy and the Scarecrow, because I thought it'd be cute. And his mother, who didn't like me, was like, "They weren't a couple." But clearly they were... And we argued! It was the first and only time I've ever argued with a significant other's mother, about anything! And it was about whether or not Dorothy and the Scarecrow could be considered in love.
Joe: [laughter] You couldn't show her the IMDB trivia page I guess?
Allison: I mean it was 2005?
Stephan: ...I wouldn't have been on board with the costume.
Allison: [laughter]
Stephan: It's on record.
Allison: But your mother would've been! So... take that!
Joe: Okay, one more 1930s thing, and then we'll move on. Apparently the snow was asbestos? And this was a couple years after they realized that asbestos was bad for you. They still did it. That's insane.
Allison: That's insane. Hollywood was just, like, it's own world, it seems like. It's own rules. People didn't care, if you were making pictures. Entertainment was so important that people didn't seem to care if children were getting hurt, or animals were getting hurt, or people were getting covered in asbestos [laughter].
Joe: It's interesting to me what, I guess, the purpose of making the movie [was]? Obviously, to make a good movie, but was it to give entertainment to children, or was it to strive to achieve this classic cinema hour and forty minutes? Or both?
Stephan: I don't feel like movies in the '30s set out to accomplish being "classics." I feel like modern day movies certainly try to become this, like, "classic film." But I feel like a lot of the classics, the older ones: Wizard of Oz, and, what was Pam's favorite movie?
Joe: It's a Wonderful Life.
Stephan: It's a Wonderful Life, I feel like a lot of those movies are classics because they kind of just, like—
Allison: We made them classics.
Joe: Just by chance. TV stations—
Allison: It was a commercial failure, Pam's movie.
Joe: Wizard of Oz was nominated for the Oscar for Best Movie.
Allison: Judy Garland won a special Oscar? Like, they didn't give her a real one, but they were like...
Joe: "Best Juvenile Actress of That Year"? [laughter] So it lost to Gone with the Wild.
Allison: [laughter] Gone with the Wind?
Joe: ...Gone to the Wind. Um. I've never seen that. I don't know if it was more worthy of the Oscar than Wizard of Oz.
Allison: I feel like the Oscars back then... it's just really hard to create an award ceremony from scratch. It's not until, ya know, the 25th Annual, the 30th Annual, when that award actually has some clout.
Joe: And that was the 12th.
Allison: Right, and I feel like by then it's still kind of like, who are these for? "We're giving ourselves awards for something we liked." I don't know—maybe there were people back in the '30s trying to go see every Oscar-nominated movie.
Joe: Have you ever seen Gone with the Wind?
Allison: I have not, no. It's very long. I don't have any time for a three hour movie anymore.
Stephan: I mean—if I could stay on this topic—I feel like, even now, how often [does] the most popular movie, or the movie that even I feel was the best of that year, actually win Best Picture? Wizard of Oz could have easily been the favorite, but it probably wasn't going to win, just because the few people that vote on the Academy board don't like it to the same degree that the public likes it.
Joe: And I would probably have a stronger opinion if it wasn't another "classic" movie that won that year. Ya know, if it was, like... what's a bad one that's won?
Allison: Crash.
Joe: [laughter] Crash.
Allison: What was the Crash of the 1930s?
Stephan: Maybe The Wizard of Oz was too childish, too juvenile maybe?
Allison: I don't think—
Joe: Which goes back to the question, were they making it as a "children's movie"?
Allison: I don't think they were making it as a children's movie. I think they were making a family-friendly, universal, general-audience movie. Something that kids and adults could go see. Because the...
Joe: The purpose of making the movie was to challenge Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the amount of money that [it] made. Allegedly.
Allison: Did they beat that?
Joe: No. I think Snow White, with inflation accounted, is still the highest grossing movie of all time. [Editor's note: This is not true. The highest grossing film, with inflation accounted for, is... Gone with the Wind.]
Allison: That's bananas. I don't personally see Wizard of Oz as a "children's movie," or what we consider now to be children's movies.
Joe: But the question there would be, has the definition of a children's movie changed in the past eighty years?
Stephan: We've actually had this conversation pretty recently. Even from the last twenty years, the definition of a "family movie" has changed. When you think about a lot of the movies that we watched, that we loved, that we grew up with, that were "kids movies." Kids movies have changed—Mrs. Doubtfire, which I would consider a children's movie, a family-type film. But they don't really make movies like that. When you think about what a children's movie is now, it looks very different than what it was twenty years ago. Those movies from the '90s look very different from what family movies were twenty years before that. So I feel like that's a genre that changes pretty often. That's something we've talked about before.
Joe: At the same time, all three of us, it sounds like, watched a 1939 movie when we were kids.
Allison: When my younger sister was like eight or nine, she still hadn't seen it all the way through, and I sat her down to watch it—she might've been a little younger than that—and she was like, "Nah, the monkeys are a little too scary, I don't really like it." And I was like, "What are you talking about?!" But, like, it's dark. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is a melancholy song. That song's kind of a bummer. It's not—there's a lot of fanciful, jubilant action in it, but it's still, it's got a lot of dark moments. She almost dies! She gets poisoned! By the witch... and by asbestos!
Stephan: Which isn't surprising though, because when you consider all the Grimms' fairy tales, all of those have been adapted to more family-friendly content. But all of those are dark, and just... filled with murder.
Allison: [laughter] "Filled with murder"?
Joe: There's some other crazy shit, there's just a lot of murder in the book. Um, the Witch sends wolves before she sends the monkeys, and the Tin Man just cuts off all their heads. With his ax.
Allison: I mean, the movie opens with Miss Gulch wanting to euthanize Toto. Like, the movie starts there.
Joe: That's a 1930s thing, like, a sheriff authorizing the euthanasia—
Allison: "The sheriff has authorized me to take your dog, to put your dog down." And also, that is not resolved by the end of that movie. Toto is still probably going to die. I forgot that until today, like, oh, right, Toto's still gonna probably die. Let's see how Dorothy feels about staying home when they ax him.
Joe: Maybe [Miss] Gulch was killed in the tornado.
Allison: Oh, maybe! Well, one can hope. [laughter]
Joe: So back to the Oscars. I guess there's not too much. Do we know what their only win was? ...No, they won twice.
Allison: I don't know what categories they had in the '30s. Sound mixing? Is that...?
Joe: They won Best Original Score.
Allison: Okay, that makes sense.
Joe: Not "Soundtrack."
Stephan: Special effects maybe?
Allison: The score is great.
Joe: But this is the weird thing about the Oscars in the 1930s—they won Best Original Score, but they weren't nominated for Best Score. And I do not know what the difference is.
Allison: Maybe it's like Best Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay?
Joe: Maybe Score is now known as "Soundtrack"? We're sorry Drew. We're sorry.
Allison: On the day of his going away party, of all days! I would think that Original Score is something that's wholly original to the movie, and then just regular Score might be taking elements from other movies that already exist. Like, "We've underscored this movie with Bach... but they did a really good job with it." Should I know this as a Comm major?
Joe: The other one they won was for Best Song, "Over the Rainbow."
Allison: Which happens six minutes into the movie, which is insane. They lead with their number one song. The most iconic song of all time is the first thing that happens in the movie. It's like starting an album with the best song ever.
Joe: Is it kind of a version of "Tell, Don't Show," like... "Sing, Don't Show"? Like not showing [how] Dorothy's upset with her home life, but just... sing about it?
Allison: Yeah, Dorothy was just told to get out of the way, "Stop bothering us with your trivial problems, like your dog being put down, and go find yourself a place where you can't make any trouble." And then she sings. That's when movies just sang a song about their feelings, that didn't explicitly say what they were feeling, but just summarized their feelings.
Joe: What's that called when you just give—when you just talk about the plot instead of showing the plot? Someone knows the name here. Something... not "disposition." Something like...
Stephan: Exposition.
Joe: Exposition! It's an exposition song.
Allison: Let the record show that we all knew that.
Joe: Yes.
Allison: It's one thing that I love about "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," if we could just talk about that.
Joe: Sure, please.
Allison: So "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" happens six minutes into the movie, we're showing everyone in the audience, this is the—it's the best song, it's still in Kansas. We spend more time in Kansas than I think people remember. We're in Kansas for a while. But what I love is that it goes right from "Over the Rainbow" to the Wicked Witch theme. It's a smash cut right from "Why oh why can't I?" to Miss Gulch riding down the street and the Wicked Witch theme is playing, it's so good. You don't get that anymore.
Joe: Speaking of songs, I... didn't realize how much I hated "King of the Forrest." Totally unnecessary!
Allison: Well, the Lion gets a really truncated song when he's introduced.
Joe: That's your excuse?
Allison: That's kind of my excuse. I think, I did not like the song as a kid. I thought it was weird. I couldn't understand a word he was saying.
Joe: The vibrato.
Allison: The vibrato, the kind of mush mouth that he sings with. To this day, I'm like, "Oh, he singing 'Monarch of all I survey.'" Those are the words he's saying when he's dragging them out. I really love—watching it now as an adult—I really love the imagery in that scene. It's really subdued. They pick up the weird-shaped, cape-shaped carpet, and they drape it over his shoulders, and it's this rich Technicolor green. And they break the flowerpot and sit it on his head, and they pretend that he's king for a second. And I think it's kind of a sweet moment that they're waiting there for the Wizard to see them, and now they're playing a little game of pretend, and he's the king, and they're all at his feet. I think it's a sweet moment. And the Lion doesn't get a musical moment the way that the Tin Man and the Scarecrow get.
Joe: Fair.
Allison: Bert Lahr is great. He's fun.
Joe: I guess I have no choice but to agree with you.
Allison: You don't have to. I'm telling you—never cared for that song as a child. "This is really slowing down the action. I need more movie. Why are we just listening to this lion sing a song about being king?" It kinda comes out of a nowhere.
Joe: They're just vamping for time. "We have to give this dude at least five minutes to go talk to the Wizard. And the Wizard to respond. And come back." ...I guess the vibrato was pretty funny, just how over-the-top it is.
Allison: It's so over-the-top. It's such a silly song. The Lion is a really great vaudeville comedy character. He has so many great lines, like silly, slapstick-y moments that I've always loved. The movie's also funnier than people remember. It's classified as a "comedy."
Joe: I never noticed, until this recent watch the Seer, looking at the picture of Auntie Em.
Allison: Oh yeah, he's just going through her shit—
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: —and telling her to close her eyes. He's the... oh, I can't think of his name now...
Joe: I was going to say "Great and Powerful"—
Allison: He's the "Marvel" something... I just watched it.
Joe: I'll put a footnote there.
Allison: Yeah, perfect. Mention that I knew it the whole time. He's the fortune teller, he's the Wizard, he's the doorman—
Joe: Is he?! Wait...
p
Allison: Yeah, he's all these characters. He's the doorman. I was trying to figure out today—so I was reminded that he plays all these other minor characters leading up to the Wizard. And I don't know if it's just that he is such a funny actor, like, "We'll just use him a bunch of times." Is there something symbolic to him playing all these roles? He's the guard that they have to impress to get to the Wizard, so at first I was like, "Is he his own guard? Is he in a disguise?"
Joe: He admits to being a charlatan. So... it could be.
Allison: But they don't ever explain—he's also the carriage driver of the horse of many colors, like, he plays that guy too. No one else in Emerald City could act at all—?
Joe: And he's every extra in the background.
Allison: He's the only person in Emerald City with lines, save for the people in the makeover scene. I love that this movie has a makeover scene. That's fantastic.
Joe: And, just, remembering that this is all Dorothy's dream! She's seeing a farmhand dressed in lion garb getting a perm—
Allison: [laughter] As a sissy lion, getting a little bow in his hair. Is that offensive? Probably. Has that character not age well?
Stephan: Well, I mean, it's a dream sequence of a twelve-year-old girl. How else would a twelve-year-old girl dream about an amorphous lion man?
Joe: She dreams about her love interest getting stuffed.
Allison: That scene—oh, and the scene—the Scarecrow has, they do a lot of "disembodied head" moments, so he's getting restuffed and it's very clear that it's just his head poking out, and they're stuffing a bag full of straw. When the flying monkeys come in, and they take Dorothy away, they're like stomping on the Scarecrow, and he's flattened. It's kind of terrifying.
Joe: Oh shit! How about when the Scarecrow has a gun?!
Allison: The Scarecrow has a gun.
Joe: I had never noticed that.
Stephan: I'm sorry... what?!
Allison: I don't think they ever address where he gets the gun from...
Joe: They don't even acknowledge it at all! I don't even remember what scene it was.
Allison: I believe it's when they are all—Dorothy has been taken, the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion are going to the Witch's castle to find Dorothy. I think it might be before they come up with the plan to steal the guards' uniforms—
Joe: —Which is a great plan—
Allison: A classic plan. But I'm pretty sure the Scarecrow has a gun. And there were promotional stills of the three of them, and he's packing heat!
Joe: Just that one scene!
Allison: And they never address it again. And he never shoots anybody. Isn't that the theater thing, where if you see a gun onstage, it has to go off? And it never goes off.
Joe: When I was talking to Pam about It's a Wonderful Life, I asked about Bert shooting at George. Her explanation was... "It was the '40s."
Allison: [laughter]
Joe: I guess that's the same here.
Allison: Maybe they thought it would be funny? Where did they get the gun? Where are there guns in Oz?
Joe: Change of subjects, I guess... Have you ever tried to sync Dark Side of the Moon to Wizard of Oz?
Stephan: We've actually done it.
Allison: That [had been] the last time I think I watched it, and this was six, seven years ago maybe.
Stephan: Longer than that.
Allison: Longer?
Joe: There's no reason to believe that [the sync] is legit, except that there's so many things—
Allison: It kind of works. And it's only the first side of the album too. It doesn't work if you pause it, flip it, and start it over.
Joe: The biggest thing is when it goes from "[The Great] Gig in the Sky" to "Money," right when the color comes in.
Stephan: Which is so good. And it's very cool to watch that.
Allison: Our friend who insisted on us watching it, he had a reel-to-reel of Wizard of Oz, and he was playing that... he must've started it ten to fifteen times, try to get it to sync up—
Joe: The second lion roar, right?
Allison: —And he kept restarting it—
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: —And we were in a state where we were... not really that patient. We were like "You gotta hurry this up, man, I am losing it." It was cool...
Joe: There's enough coincidences that it's worth doing once.
Stephan: Just getting through the album. You definitely can't restart it and watch the entire movie.
Allison: Doesn't work. But that is a fun thing to do.
Joe: Any small things that we've missed that you'd like to discuss?
Allison: Um... no, the only thing I wrote down was "The Wizard sends Dorothy to her death." And then acts like it's no big deal? That's insane. Also, the idea... the Wizard sort of implies... so we're not really sure what time we're in in present-day Kansas. Like, they never gives us the: "KANSAS, 1939"—
Joe: It's not in the future. It's before 1939.
Allison: Right. But the Wizard kind of implies that he's stuck around in Oz because of the Depression. He's like "times being what they were, I took the job."
Joe: Interesting!
Allison: It's like... does being a Wizard pay well? Or was it that he had nowhere else to go? Because he kept the balloon, he could've left whenever. Also, no one's ever seen the Wizard...? I dunno, there's a lot of mystery surrounding the Wizard, that I think doesn't add up when you pick it all apart, put it back together, you're like, "Wait a minute..."
Joe: Apparently the actor was a huge drunk.
Allison: Which is like, I get. They originally wanted to hire W. C. Fields, so it was one or the other, alcoholism-wise. I don't think W. C. Fields would have been a good choice. I don't think he would've been as versatile in the other roles that the Wizard was. ...All you W. C. Fields fans, comment below if you agree!
Joe: [laughter] ...I don't know who that is.
Allison: He's a vaudeville guy.
Joe: So unless you have anything else to add, we'll kind of wrap it up a little bit.
Allison: Sure.
Joe: I found it interesting that all three movies that I've discussed with people so far have to do with—have a significant dream sequence, or, like, have to do with "what's fact and what's fiction." Why do you think that is? Do you think it has something to do with the act of watching movies itself?
Allison: Yeah, I think there is something always nice about—movies are a window into another world, and then that world being a window into another world, [it] becomes this "world within a world." And I think that dream sequences and imagination sequences... that's just easy? It's not a hard thing to pull off.
Joe: It has nothing to do with, like, "escapism"—
Allison: Going to the movies and watching a movie is escapism in itself. And then further escaping into another world. If I had gone to the movies in the '30s, and it was just Kansas the whole time, like, Kansas for an hour and forty? That would be terrible! Like, I'm living in Kansas. My world is sepia and bland. And my chicks are dying, and my dog's being put down, like—bring me to Oz. Some place that's another world.
Joe: That's probably the most famous scene of all time, movie-wise, right? The color scene?
Allison: I think so. I was trying to look up movies that have used Technicolor leading up to that, and... it was a very long Wikipedia article that I could not make heads or tails of, because there are so many version of Technicolor, like, okay, that's cool, I just kind of want a list of movies that used it? So it was early in the fine-tuning of Technicolor. I think, imagery-wise, it still holds up.
Joe: For sure.
Allison: Sometimes we have this idea of what the '30s looked like. And then you see a movie like this and are like, shit, this was 1939? Good for you!
Joe: Do you feel like the magic of this movie, is that the baseline for why it's your favorite movie of all time?
Allison: I do. I think it's the imagination element. As a child, I don't think I minded the "it was all a dream" idea as much, because I had a very active imagination growing up, so it was like, this is a whole world that she built in her head. She could just live in this world, and all you needed was a really good concussion! And she could just be there. I think magical imagination world was really special to me as a kid. I think that's why I was drawn to it.
Joe: And you're still drawn to it.
Allison: For a long time, The Wizard of Oz being my favorite movie was a part of my personality. People knew that about me, would get me Wizard of Oz-themed gifts. And I think that's part of the reason why I was hesitant to name it as my "favorite movie," because I'm like, "I'm a 31-year-old woman, is this still my favorite movie?"
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: "Have I not moved past this?" And no! Watching it again today, I'm like, yeah, no. This is good. This is for me.
Joe: ...That's probably a good way to end it, I dunno. Anything we need to add?
Allison: Um... no... did I mention that the Scarecrow was my first crush as a child?
Stephan: No...
Joe: They felt unsafe?
Allison: "This is as far as we go"?
Joe: I guess. One of the interesting facts that I read about the movie—I was very interested in the Munchkins.
Allison: [laughter]
Joe: First off, like, none of them spoke English. They were a "European dancing troupe" that was pretty much leaving Europe to escape the Nazis. And they came over to the United States.
Allison: And I read a lot of them were Jewish, I did read that. They were called the "Singer Midgets."
Joe: Did they label themselves that just to get away?
Allison: Apparently, it was because their manager was named "Singer."
Joe: [laughter] Were they hired under the false pretense that they were singers?! Apparently, every Munchkin save for two of them in that long scene, their songs were overdubbed by somebody else.
Allison: The dubbing becomes more apparent the older I get. When I was a kid I didn't notice at all. Watching it today, I was like, wow—
Joe: The Lollipop Guild, that's—it was creepy how bad the overdubs are.
Allison: And you can tell that some of them are very comfortable doing what they are doing—the center Munchkin in the Lollipop Guild is killing it. The other two guys are really dubious about this. Just not feeling this.
Joe: It's like they have crooked mouths, like almost as if they were smoking cigarettes right up until they yelled "scene" and someone took the cigarettes out of their mouths.
Allison: But they're also dressed like children? But they're talking like little old men? Is it offensive? Probably!
Joe: I remember, as a kid, cracking up at a lot of shit like that. A lot of the munchkins. I remember me and my sisters repeating the phrase "It's a twista! It's a twista!"
Allison: My Dad used to quote it a lot too. Like, I knew most of the words to the movie by a very early age. And I used to reenact the whole thing with my Dad. Watching it today, I was like, "Oh, I still know most of this." It was coming back, like, Dorothy's inflections. Like, this is weird.
Joe: I remember my aunt would ride the same bike as the Wicked Witch, so everybody would be like, "Aunt Dee Dee, that's you!"
Allison: I'm sure she loved that.
Joe: [laughter] Yeah! Are you aware of the urban legend of the Munchkin hanging—so, okay, we don't need to discuss whether it's true or not. It's not. Obviously.
Allison: Why would that be true?
Joe: Exactly. I guess what I'm interested in—two things I'm interested in. One, even if you're a logical person, why was that so scary? Like, I remember reading [about] it as a teenager, reading the urban legend on Snopes, "Did a munchkin kill [himself]?" and it said "False" in big red letters, but like, that still freaked me out I guess. That there would be a possibility that someone would kill themselves in the background of a classic movie. And two, what is it about those types of things that interest Americans enough that they would want to believe that someone committed suicide in the background of a classic movie?
Allison: I think there's something about "Old Hollywood" that is... people really love to hear about the seedy underbelly and the salaciousness of the—
Joe: A lot of that shit was fucked up! But we'll get to it...
Allison: It was a time before a lot of regulations and a lot of labor laws and, I think people like to pick apart... you know, "There's something nice. Let's ruin it." And I remember hearing about that rumor probably from a shitty kid in my grade school, [snotty kid voice] "Oh, your favorite movie, Wizard of Oz, you know a Munchkin, like, killed himself on set?" Someone just wants to ruin that thing for you. I mean, the movie itself had it's own real issues. Like, the original Tin Man not being able to perform because he had a reaction to his makeup, and he had to leave the cast—
Joe: And, the Wicked Witch, the green paint had copper in it? So [during] that smoke scene in the very beginning, apparently she caught on fire and suffered third degree burns. Definitely, a lot of those stories, it was definitely a 1930s, like, "this is the kind of shit that happened."
Allison: People can trace, ya know, "Oh, Judy Garland had to wear an uncomfortable corset to flatten her chest, and that's what caused her pill addiction!" Like, um, no, but okay? People are plagued with their own issues.
Joe: What was your favorite "This could only happen in a 1939 movie" moment? Like, whether it was like a shitty, lack-of-movie-magic—
Allison: Honestly, I do feel like a lot of the practical effects that they use do still hold up. I really love the miniature work, like when they're flying away, and you can tell it's just a little miniature that they're hanging by a thread. I love those moments. I do feel like if the movie was remade now, they would really have to reevaluate Dorothy's relationship with the three older male farmhands? [laughter] On her farm. It's a little weird!
Joe: That was actually something that I was going to bring up that was cut from the movie. Apparently there was a scene at the end where Dorothy was talking to Hunk, who is the Scarecrow, about him going to Agriculture School, and the implication was that they were, like, they kind of had a romantic thing going. And that's why the Scarecrow was her "favorite," or whatever.
Allison: ...So, one. She's supposed to be, like, twelve.
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: She's supposed to be a child. Judy Garland was like seventeen, but she's supposed to be a child. Two, I have always maintained that Dorothy and the Scarecrow obviously had a thing for each other. There's something special there. "I think I'll miss you most of all." I mean, come on. You don't just say that in front of two people that you have known almost equally as long, and not have it mean something. Which, also—How long is she actually in Oz?
Joe: A day?
Allison: A day.
Joe: They don't eat, except for the apple.
Allison: Right. Back in high school, for the Sadie Hawkins Dance, the theme was "Famous Couples." And I wanted my then-boyfriend and I to go as Dorothy and the Scarecrow, because I thought it'd be cute. And his mother, who didn't like me, was like, "They weren't a couple." But clearly they were... And we argued! It was the first and only time I've ever argued with a significant other's mother, about anything! And it was about whether or not Dorothy and the Scarecrow could be considered in love.
Joe: [laughter] You couldn't show her the IMDB trivia page I guess?
Allison: I mean it was 2005?
Stephan: ...I wouldn't have been on board with the costume.
Allison: [laughter]
Stephan: It's on record.
Allison: But your mother would've been! So... take that!
Joe: Okay, one more 1930s thing, and then we'll move on. Apparently the snow was asbestos? And this was a couple years after they realized that asbestos was bad for you. They still did it. That's insane.
Allison: That's insane. Hollywood was just, like, it's own world, it seems like. It's own rules. People didn't care, if you were making pictures. Entertainment was so important that people didn't seem to care if children were getting hurt, or animals were getting hurt, or people were getting covered in asbestos [laughter].
Joe: It's interesting to me what, I guess, the purpose of making the movie [was]? Obviously, to make a good movie, but was it to give entertainment to children, or was it to strive to achieve this classic cinema hour and forty minutes? Or both?
Stephan: I don't feel like movies in the '30s set out to accomplish being "classics." I feel like modern day movies certainly try to become this, like, "classic film." But I feel like a lot of the classics, the older ones: Wizard of Oz, and, what was Pam's favorite movie?
Joe: It's a Wonderful Life.
Stephan: It's a Wonderful Life, I feel like a lot of those movies are classics because they kind of just, like—
Allison: We made them classics.
Joe: Just by chance. TV stations—
Allison: It was a commercial failure, Pam's movie.
Joe: Wizard of Oz was nominated for the Oscar for Best Movie.
Allison: Judy Garland won a special Oscar? Like, they didn't give her a real one, but they were like...
Joe: "Best Juvenile Actress of That Year"? [laughter] So it lost to Gone with the Wild.
Allison: [laughter] Gone with the Wind?
Joe: ...Gone to the Wind. Um. I've never seen that. I don't know if it was more worthy of the Oscar than Wizard of Oz.
Allison: I feel like the Oscars back then... it's just really hard to create an award ceremony from scratch. It's not until, ya know, the 25th Annual, the 30th Annual, when that award actually has some clout.
Joe: And that was the 12th.
Allison: Right, and I feel like by then it's still kind of like, who are these for? "We're giving ourselves awards for something we liked." I don't know—maybe there were people back in the '30s trying to go see every Oscar-nominated movie.
Joe: Have you ever seen Gone with the Wind?
Allison: I have not, no. It's very long. I don't have any time for a three hour movie anymore.
Stephan: I mean—if I could stay on this topic—I feel like, even now, how often [does] the most popular movie, or the movie that even I feel was the best of that year, actually win Best Picture? Wizard of Oz could have easily been the favorite, but it probably wasn't going to win, just because the few people that vote on the Academy board don't like it to the same degree that the public likes it.
Joe: And I would probably have a stronger opinion if it wasn't another "classic" movie that won that year. Ya know, if it was, like... what's a bad one that's won?
Allison: Crash.
Joe: [laughter] Crash.
Allison: What was the Crash of the 1930s?
Stephan: Maybe The Wizard of Oz was too childish, too juvenile maybe?
Allison: I don't think—
Joe: Which goes back to the question, were they making it as a "children's movie"?
Allison: I don't think they were making it as a children's movie. I think they were making a family-friendly, universal, general-audience movie. Something that kids and adults could go see. Because the...
Joe: The purpose of making the movie was to challenge Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the amount of money that [it] made. Allegedly.
Allison: Did they beat that?
Joe: No. I think Snow White, with inflation accounted, is still the highest grossing movie of all time. [Editor's note: This is not true. The highest grossing film, with inflation accounted for, is... Gone with the Wind.]
Allison: That's bananas. I don't personally see Wizard of Oz as a "children's movie," or what we consider now to be children's movies.
Joe: But the question there would be, has the definition of a children's movie changed in the past eighty years?
Stephan: We've actually had this conversation pretty recently. Even from the last twenty years, the definition of a "family movie" has changed. When you think about a lot of the movies that we watched, that we loved, that we grew up with, that were "kids movies." Kids movies have changed—Mrs. Doubtfire, which I would consider a children's movie, a family-type film. But they don't really make movies like that. When you think about what a children's movie is now, it looks very different than what it was twenty years ago. Those movies from the '90s look very different from what family movies were twenty years before that. So I feel like that's a genre that changes pretty often. That's something we've talked about before.
Joe: At the same time, all three of us, it sounds like, watched a 1939 movie when we were kids.
Allison: When my younger sister was like eight or nine, she still hadn't seen it all the way through, and I sat her down to watch it—she might've been a little younger than that—and she was like, "Nah, the monkeys are a little too scary, I don't really like it." And I was like, "What are you talking about?!" But, like, it's dark. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is a melancholy song. That song's kind of a bummer. It's not—there's a lot of fanciful, jubilant action in it, but it's still, it's got a lot of dark moments. She almost dies! She gets poisoned! By the witch... and by asbestos!
Stephan: Which isn't surprising though, because when you consider all the Grimms' fairy tales, all of those have been adapted to more family-friendly content. But all of those are dark, and just... filled with murder.
Allison: [laughter] "Filled with murder"?
Joe: There's some other crazy shit, there's just a lot of murder in the book. Um, the Witch sends wolves before she sends the monkeys, and the Tin Man just cuts off all their heads. With his ax.
Allison: I mean, the movie opens with Miss Gulch wanting to euthanize Toto. Like, the movie starts there.
Joe: That's a 1930s thing, like, a sheriff authorizing the euthanasia—
Allison: "The sheriff has authorized me to take your dog, to put your dog down." And also, that is not resolved by the end of that movie. Toto is still probably going to die. I forgot that until today, like, oh, right, Toto's still gonna probably die. Let's see how Dorothy feels about staying home when they ax him.
Joe: Maybe [Miss] Gulch was killed in the tornado.
Allison: Oh, maybe! Well, one can hope. [laughter]
Joe: So back to the Oscars. I guess there's not too much. Do we know what their only win was? ...No, they won twice.
Allison: I don't know what categories they had in the '30s. Sound mixing? Is that...?
Joe: They won Best Original Score.
Allison: Okay, that makes sense.
Joe: Not "Soundtrack."
Stephan: Special effects maybe?
Allison: The score is great.
Joe: But this is the weird thing about the Oscars in the 1930s—they won Best Original Score, but they weren't nominated for Best Score. And I do not know what the difference is.
Allison: Maybe it's like Best Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay?
Joe: Maybe Score is now known as "Soundtrack"? We're sorry Drew. We're sorry.
Allison: On the day of his going away party, of all days! I would think that Original Score is something that's wholly original to the movie, and then just regular Score might be taking elements from other movies that already exist. Like, "We've underscored this movie with Bach... but they did a really good job with it." Should I know this as a Comm major?
Joe: The other one they won was for Best Song, "Over the Rainbow."
Allison: Which happens six minutes into the movie, which is insane. They lead with their number one song. The most iconic song of all time is the first thing that happens in the movie. It's like starting an album with the best song ever.
Joe: Is it kind of a version of "Tell, Don't Show," like... "Sing, Don't Show"? Like not showing [how] Dorothy's upset with her home life, but just... sing about it?
Allison: Yeah, Dorothy was just told to get out of the way, "Stop bothering us with your trivial problems, like your dog being put down, and go find yourself a place where you can't make any trouble." And then she sings. That's when movies just sang a song about their feelings, that didn't explicitly say what they were feeling, but just summarized their feelings.
Joe: What's that called when you just give—when you just talk about the plot instead of showing the plot? Someone knows the name here. Something... not "disposition." Something like...
Stephan: Exposition.
Joe: Exposition! It's an exposition song.
Allison: Let the record show that we all knew that.
Joe: Yes.
Allison: It's one thing that I love about "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," if we could just talk about that.
Joe: Sure, please.
Allison: So "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" happens six minutes into the movie, we're showing everyone in the audience, this is the—it's the best song, it's still in Kansas. We spend more time in Kansas than I think people remember. We're in Kansas for a while. But what I love is that it goes right from "Over the Rainbow" to the Wicked Witch theme. It's a smash cut right from "Why oh why can't I?" to Miss Gulch riding down the street and the Wicked Witch theme is playing, it's so good. You don't get that anymore.
Joe: Speaking of songs, I... didn't realize how much I hated "King of the Forrest." Totally unnecessary!
Allison: Well, the Lion gets a really truncated song when he's introduced.
Joe: That's your excuse?
Allison: That's kind of my excuse. I think, I did not like the song as a kid. I thought it was weird. I couldn't understand a word he was saying.
Joe: The vibrato.
Allison: The vibrato, the kind of mush mouth that he sings with. To this day, I'm like, "Oh, he singing 'Monarch of all I survey.'" Those are the words he's saying when he's dragging them out. I really love—watching it now as an adult—I really love the imagery in that scene. It's really subdued. They pick up the weird-shaped, cape-shaped carpet, and they drape it over his shoulders, and it's this rich Technicolor green. And they break the flowerpot and sit it on his head, and they pretend that he's king for a second. And I think it's kind of a sweet moment that they're waiting there for the Wizard to see them, and now they're playing a little game of pretend, and he's the king, and they're all at his feet. I think it's a sweet moment. And the Lion doesn't get a musical moment the way that the Tin Man and the Scarecrow get.
Joe: Fair.
Allison: Bert Lahr is great. He's fun.
Joe: I guess I have no choice but to agree with you.
Allison: You don't have to. I'm telling you—never cared for that song as a child. "This is really slowing down the action. I need more movie. Why are we just listening to this lion sing a song about being king?" It kinda comes out of a nowhere.
Joe: They're just vamping for time. "We have to give this dude at least five minutes to go talk to the Wizard. And the Wizard to respond. And come back." ...I guess the vibrato was pretty funny, just how over-the-top it is.
Allison: It's so over-the-top. It's such a silly song. The Lion is a really great vaudeville comedy character. He has so many great lines, like silly, slapstick-y moments that I've always loved. The movie's also funnier than people remember. It's classified as a "comedy."
Joe: I never noticed, until this recent watch the Seer, looking at the picture of Auntie Em.
Allison: Oh yeah, he's just going through her shit—
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: —and telling her to close her eyes. He's the... oh, I can't think of his name now...
Joe: I was going to say "Great and Powerful"—
Allison: He's the "Marvel" something... I just watched it.
Joe: I'll put a footnote there.
Allison: Yeah, perfect. Mention that I knew it the whole time. He's the fortune teller, he's the Wizard, he's the doorman—
Joe: Is he?! Wait...
p
Allison: Yeah, he's all these characters. He's the doorman. I was trying to figure out today—so I was reminded that he plays all these other minor characters leading up to the Wizard. And I don't know if it's just that he is such a funny actor, like, "We'll just use him a bunch of times." Is there something symbolic to him playing all these roles? He's the guard that they have to impress to get to the Wizard, so at first I was like, "Is he his own guard? Is he in a disguise?"
Joe: He admits to being a charlatan. So... it could be.
Allison: But they don't ever explain—he's also the carriage driver of the horse of many colors, like, he plays that guy too. No one else in Emerald City could act at all—?
Joe: And he's every extra in the background.
Allison: He's the only person in Emerald City with lines, save for the people in the makeover scene. I love that this movie has a makeover scene. That's fantastic.
Joe: And, just, remembering that this is all Dorothy's dream! She's seeing a farmhand dressed in lion garb getting a perm—
Allison: [laughter] As a sissy lion, getting a little bow in his hair. Is that offensive? Probably. Has that character not age well?
Stephan: Well, I mean, it's a dream sequence of a twelve-year-old girl. How else would a twelve-year-old girl dream about an amorphous lion man?
Joe: She dreams about her love interest getting stuffed.
Allison: That scene—oh, and the scene—the Scarecrow has, they do a lot of "disembodied head" moments, so he's getting restuffed and it's very clear that it's just his head poking out, and they're stuffing a bag full of straw. When the flying monkeys come in, and they take Dorothy away, they're like stomping on the Scarecrow, and he's flattened. It's kind of terrifying.
Joe: Oh shit! How about when the Scarecrow has a gun?!
Allison: The Scarecrow has a gun.
Joe: I had never noticed that.
Stephan: I'm sorry... what?!
Allison: I don't think they ever address where he gets the gun from...
Joe: They don't even acknowledge it at all! I don't even remember what scene it was.
Allison: I believe it's when they are all—Dorothy has been taken, the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion are going to the Witch's castle to find Dorothy. I think it might be before they come up with the plan to steal the guards' uniforms—
Joe: —Which is a great plan—
Allison: A classic plan. But I'm pretty sure the Scarecrow has a gun. And there were promotional stills of the three of them, and he's packing heat!
Joe: Just that one scene!
Allison: And they never address it again. And he never shoots anybody. Isn't that the theater thing, where if you see a gun onstage, it has to go off? And it never goes off.
Joe: When I was talking to Pam about It's a Wonderful Life, I asked about Bert shooting at George. Her explanation was... "It was the '40s."
Allison: [laughter]
Joe: I guess that's the same here.
Allison: Maybe they thought it would be funny? Where did they get the gun? Where are there guns in Oz?
Joe: Change of subjects, I guess... Have you ever tried to sync Dark Side of the Moon to Wizard of Oz?
Stephan: We've actually done it.
Allison: That [had been] the last time I think I watched it, and this was six, seven years ago maybe.
Stephan: Longer than that.
Allison: Longer?
Joe: There's no reason to believe that [the sync] is legit, except that there's so many things—
Allison: It kind of works. And it's only the first side of the album too. It doesn't work if you pause it, flip it, and start it over.
Joe: The biggest thing is when it goes from "[The Great] Gig in the Sky" to "Money," right when the color comes in.
Stephan: Which is so good. And it's very cool to watch that.
Allison: Our friend who insisted on us watching it, he had a reel-to-reel of Wizard of Oz, and he was playing that... he must've started it ten to fifteen times, try to get it to sync up—
Joe: The second lion roar, right?
Allison: —And he kept restarting it—
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: —And we were in a state where we were... not really that patient. We were like "You gotta hurry this up, man, I am losing it." It was cool...
Joe: There's enough coincidences that it's worth doing once.
Stephan: Just getting through the album. You definitely can't restart it and watch the entire movie.
Allison: Doesn't work. But that is a fun thing to do.
Joe: Any small things that we've missed that you'd like to discuss?
Allison: Um... no, the only thing I wrote down was "The Wizard sends Dorothy to her death." And then acts like it's no big deal? That's insane. Also, the idea... the Wizard sort of implies... so we're not really sure what time we're in in present-day Kansas. Like, they never gives us the: "KANSAS, 1939"—
Joe: It's not in the future. It's before 1939.
Allison: Right. But the Wizard kind of implies that he's stuck around in Oz because of the Depression. He's like "times being what they were, I took the job."
Joe: Interesting!
Allison: It's like... does being a Wizard pay well? Or was it that he had nowhere else to go? Because he kept the balloon, he could've left whenever. Also, no one's ever seen the Wizard...? I dunno, there's a lot of mystery surrounding the Wizard, that I think doesn't add up when you pick it all apart, put it back together, you're like, "Wait a minute..."
Joe: Apparently the actor was a huge drunk.
Allison: Which is like, I get. They originally wanted to hire W. C. Fields, so it was one or the other, alcoholism-wise. I don't think W. C. Fields would have been a good choice. I don't think he would've been as versatile in the other roles that the Wizard was. ...All you W. C. Fields fans, comment below if you agree!
Joe: [laughter] ...I don't know who that is.
Allison: He's a vaudeville guy.
Joe: So unless you have anything else to add, we'll kind of wrap it up a little bit.
Allison: Sure.
Joe: I found it interesting that all three movies that I've discussed with people so far have to do with—have a significant dream sequence, or, like, have to do with "what's fact and what's fiction." Why do you think that is? Do you think it has something to do with the act of watching movies itself?
Allison: Yeah, I think there is something always nice about—movies are a window into another world, and then that world being a window into another world, [it] becomes this "world within a world." And I think that dream sequences and imagination sequences... that's just easy? It's not a hard thing to pull off.
Joe: It has nothing to do with, like, "escapism"—
Allison: Going to the movies and watching a movie is escapism in itself. And then further escaping into another world. If I had gone to the movies in the '30s, and it was just Kansas the whole time, like, Kansas for an hour and forty? That would be terrible! Like, I'm living in Kansas. My world is sepia and bland. And my chicks are dying, and my dog's being put down, like—bring me to Oz. Some place that's another world.
Joe: That's probably the most famous scene of all time, movie-wise, right? The color scene?
Allison: I think so. I was trying to look up movies that have used Technicolor leading up to that, and... it was a very long Wikipedia article that I could not make heads or tails of, because there are so many version of Technicolor, like, okay, that's cool, I just kind of want a list of movies that used it? So it was early in the fine-tuning of Technicolor. I think, imagery-wise, it still holds up.
Joe: For sure.
Allison: Sometimes we have this idea of what the '30s looked like. And then you see a movie like this and are like, shit, this was 1939? Good for you!
Joe: Do you feel like the magic of this movie, is that the baseline for why it's your favorite movie of all time?
Allison: I do. I think it's the imagination element. As a child, I don't think I minded the "it was all a dream" idea as much, because I had a very active imagination growing up, so it was like, this is a whole world that she built in her head. She could just live in this world, and all you needed was a really good concussion! And she could just be there. I think magical imagination world was really special to me as a kid. I think that's why I was drawn to it.
Joe: And you're still drawn to it.
Allison: For a long time, The Wizard of Oz being my favorite movie was a part of my personality. People knew that about me, would get me Wizard of Oz-themed gifts. And I think that's part of the reason why I was hesitant to name it as my "favorite movie," because I'm like, "I'm a 31-year-old woman, is this still my favorite movie?"
Joe: [laughter]
Allison: "Have I not moved past this?" And no! Watching it again today, I'm like, yeah, no. This is good. This is for me.
Joe: ...That's probably a good way to end it, I dunno. Anything we need to add?
Allison: Um... no... did I mention that the Scarecrow was my first crush as a child?
Stephan: No...
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