Return to Oz
| S:8 E:10Do you have hazy memories of a young Dorothy Gale being strapped down to a gurney in a psychological institution? What about an evil princess who collects the heads of the girlies she kills? What about scary talking rocks? We’re here to unlock some terrifying core memories this week.
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Speakers: Hannah Leach & Audrey Leach
[Music Playing]
Hannah Leach:
Welcome to Sleepover Cinema, where we analyze the films that created the collective unconscious of those who cannot believe Disney permitted a spooky psych ward to be featured in one of their movies. I am Hannah Leach, a writer, musician, audio producer, and sentient flying couch.
Audrey Leach:
And I'm Audrey Leach, director, editor, producer, and sentient pumpkinhead. We are the sister duo, also known as Too Pink Productions. And we haven't stopped thinking about these movies since we first saw them.
Hannah Leach:
We're going to explore the good, the bad, and the nonsensical of the movies that first inspired our love for film. In an attempt to answer the question: are these movies actually good? And at the end of the day, do we really care if they are?
Audrey Leach:
Today, we are talking about 1985’s Return to Oz.
[Music Playing]
Voiceover:
“Remember how we spoke?”
“Not to talk about Oz? Because it's just my imagination?”
“Just how did you get back from Oz?”
“You put them on, and you click the heels three times, and then you say ‘there's no place home.”
“I know you don't want to go to the doctor's, but you just haven't slept the night right through since the tornado.’”
“This electrical marvel will make it possible for you to sleep again.”
“And Jim, my friends are in trouble. I know it.”
“We are in trouble. Dorothy.”
“Isn't that a stolen lunch pail in your hand? Isn't that a chicken in there with you? The Nome King doesn't allow chickens anywhere in the Oz.”
“I didn’t know King.”
“Who is the Nome King?”
Hannah Leach:
So, everyone, as we get into this episode, you may be wondering to yourself, “Return to Oz, have I seen that one?”
Audrey Leach:
I don't know her.
Hannah Leach:
Yes, you probably have. And once we get into it, you will have frightened childhood memories flooding back into your brain. I know that's how it was for me when I was rewatching it. So, just go on this journey with us.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah, I mean, I actually think there's going to be a probably solid amount who have not seen it. There's still an interesting discussion to be had whether you've seen the movie or not, because we all know what the Wizard of Oz represents in culture in general. And this movie is really bringing something to the table that the classic Wizard of Oz does not.
Hannah Leach:
Audrey, where are you recording from today?
Audrey Leach:
I'm in Los Angeles in my new apartment.
Hannah Leach:
Yay, she made it.
Audrey Leach:
And I have no furniture still.
Hannah Leach:
So, it could be echoey.
Audrey Leach:
And I sleep on the ground.
Hannah Leach:
Do you want to ask me where I am recording from?
Audrey Leach:
Hannah's in my room.
Hannah Leach:
I did successfully move to Chicago almost a week ago (that's really weird to think about). But then I had to come back for a friend's wedding. So, I am currently sitting in “Audrey's room” in-
Audrey Leach:
It is my room.
Hannah Leach:
In our parents' house. I'm using Josh's streamer, microphone clamp thing on this desk, which honestly, I think I might get because this is incredible. And now, that I'm going to have my own permanent setup in my office at home, this is really good.
So, perhaps I'll be getting this. Also, you don't necessarily have to put this in, but I got my first Zoom recorder today, so I finally have this too, which I'm really excited about.
Okay. Question for the culture this week.
Speaker 1:
“The culture's super sick right now.”
Speaker 2:
“It's actually really bad, period.”
Hannah Leach:
It's moving themed, considering both of our current life states; are we pro-big goodbye or pro-subtly slipping out of town?
Audrey Leach:
For example, say your friend would really want you to have a going away party, or your friend really wants a solid mark of you're leaving this town or whatever, and you don't really care — I kind of think that it's just nice to give that to them because you’re friends, you know what I mean? It's like you should.
Like even if you don't like being the center of attention, if that's your worst nightmare, is doing that for yourself or whatever, I mean, you're not going to die. It's okay.
Hannah Leach:
Right, right. And that's why I tend to be I'd prefer to slip out in the dead of night just because I find goodbyes to be really dramatic, especially with the internet being the way it is. You and I talk more than I talk to many people, and we haven't lived in the same city in years.
So, I think that's part of it. And also, we're both pretty emotional people, and so having to go through all of the emotional hoops of that, is just not a fun way to celebrate having lived in a place.
I will say yesterday, Josh's cousin and his wife are our really good friends, threw us a really nice going away party that was just family, but they have a pool, and it was really cute and I enjoyed that. I will say though, Audrey, do you remember how much I slipped out under the cover of darkness when I left New York?
Audrey Leach:
In my memory, it was kind of you also didn't know if you were coming back or not. So, it wasn't, “I'm moving and I'm not coming back,” it was more a, “I'm going to go regroup.” I just don't think that anybody thought anything too dramatic about that.
Plus, everybody kind of leaves at the end of college. Everybody goes somewhere for at least a bit, I feel like.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and then one thing led to another, and I never came back except to visit. And honestly, I'm not mad about it. After this week, I'll be recording in Chicago. I'm so excited to be in Chicago. If you are a listener and you live there, let me know.
If you're someone from high school who listens to this and I haven't heard from you in a million years, let me know.
Shout out to Kristin Kapusta for sending me $25.
Audrey Leach:
I've talked to a few listeners who live in LA or surrounding areas. So, same.
Hannah Leach:
Okay, so let's discover information about Return to Oz. Return to Oz was released by Disney, somehow inexplicably on June 21st, 1985. And it is rated PG.
Audrey Leach:
Synopses. First one is from IMDB.
“Dorothy saved from a psychiatric experiment by a mysterious girl is somehow called back to Oz when a vain witch and the Nome King destroy everything that makes the magical land beautiful.”
Letterboxd:
“Dorothy saved from a psychiatric experiment by a mysterious girl finds herself back in the land of her dreams and makes delightful new friends and dangerous new enemies.”
Finally, Rotten Tomatoes:
“Dorothy discovers she is back in the land of Oz and finds the yellow brick road is now a pile of rubble and the Emerald City is in ruins. Discovering that the magical land is now under the control of an evil empire, she sets off to rescue the scarecrow, the Tinman, and the lion with the help of her new friends.”
Hannah Leach:
And we have some rather ill-fitting taglines here.
Audrey Leach:
There’s four taglines. The first one is “An all new adventure down the yellow brick road.” I mean, we just learned it was rubble, so not really.
Second: “It's an all-new live action fantasy filled with Disney adventure and magic.” They really fucking tried it there. They're, “Yeah, it is Disney. You're not going to think it is, but it is.”
The third one: “If there's one thing you must do this summer, it's return to Oz.”
And lastly: “Return to the land where the adventure began.”
Hannah Leach:
They're just not threatening enough to fit the movie, in my opinion. But I mean, it's-
Audrey Leach:
I mean, they weren't going to be threatening.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah. But maybe if they had been threatening, they would've ended up doing better financially, considering what this thing actually is, but we'll get to that.
Audrey Leach:
The director of this film was Walter Murch, which really, really surprised me when I saw that because he is known mostly as an editor and a rerecording mixer and a sound designer. And in film school, I read one of his books called In the Blink of An Eye, which it's about the art form of editing.
But it had me remembering what was in that book. And kind of the main takeaway or one of the main concepts that he teaches in that book is about the six criteria that justify making a cut, which is interesting.
Those six things, if you were curious, are emotion, story, rhythm, eye trace, two-dimensional plane of screen, and three-dimensional space of action. Those are the six tenets of what he's referring to. And this little quote from him kind of explains what those things mean.
He says, “What I'm suggesting is a list of priorities. If you have to give up something, don't ever give up emotion before story. Don't give up story before rhythm. Don't give up rhythm before eye trace. Don't give up eye trace before planarity, and don't give up planarity before spatial continuity.”
So, it's kind of just the hierarchy of needs of how you should prioritize making cuts. That's kind of-
Hannah Leach:
That’s really interesting.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah, so he's very knowledgeable. And he's worked on some of the biggest, most famous movies ever. He was in the Sound Department on The English Patient, The Conversations, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather Part II and III. And shockingly (maybe it's not that shocking), he only ever directed this film and a single episode of Star Wars, Clone Wars, the TV show.
Hannah Leach:
So, actually, Walter Murch was fired a week into directing Return to Oz because Disney executives were not into the dailies, they thought he was going to take too long to shoot it.
And so, when he got fired, he contacted his friends, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas. I know, I was I thought it was Coppola, but then I got tripped up and I said it wrong, so you can throw me in jail for that one.
He basically begged them to help him win Disney back. And so, he did that, and it worked. And even though that strategy worked, the executives had little faith in the movie and ultimately, doomed it with limited promotion and a short theatrical run. So, sad for Walter, but he continued to slay his career. So, at the very least there is that.
Audrey Leach:
It's been said that editors are good at directing because they know what's going to happen at the end of this process, and they know what they actually need to capture. And also, I feel most editors are more introverted.
So, there's just more of an emotional intelligence I feel like anyway, but I am biased. I feel he really got the shit end of the stick with all this, but we'll talk more about that later.
Fairuza Balk:
“Walter Murch is a very special man. I mean, I'm still in touch with him and he's got to be one of the most interesting, wonderful people that anyone could ever be directed by because he's very sensitive. He's one of the greatest editors ever. He teaches editing all around the world, sound editing and picture editing.
So, he has a very interesting way of perception and was brilliant working with me as a kid because he could think the way that I did. Instead of having an adult thinking here and a child thinking here, he put himself into my mind so that he could see things on a par, which really helped me.”
Hannah Leach:
The screenplay was written by Walter as well as Gill Dennis who is known for his work on Walk The Line, On My Own, and Without Evidence. And of course, the original author of the Wizard of Oz series is L. Frank Baum.
A little bit of interesting information. So, Return to Oz is based on the second and third of L. Frank Baum's Oz books, the Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz. Elements from the former include the introduction of Jack Pumpkinhead, the Witch Mombi and her Powder of Life, the conquest of the Emerald City, the escape by Flying Sofa and the search for Princess Ozma.
From the latter comes the Return of Dorothy, the talking chicken, Billina, the Wheelers, the discovery of Tik-Tok, a princess with interchangeable heads, the introduction of the Nome King and the Ornament Room.
So, pretty much all of those random elements are actually from Baum’s work, which is really cool. And it just feels a pretty faithful adaptation of the original source text, which obviously, the 1939 version that we love was not.
I just wrote down these two other credits that I thought were interesting. We had Zorin Perisic in charge of visual effects, and then Norman Reynolds was the production designer. He is the production designer, was a production designer on Bicentennial Man, Mission Impossible, Indiana Jones, Invaders of the Lost Arc, as well as Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
So, very eighties, nineties, campy stuff — it makes sense to me.
Audrey Leach:
I think we should also shout out David Shire, the composer because in all the reviews or things that I've seen about this movie while researching today, everyone was obsessed with the soundtrack.
Hannah Leach:
Okay, so for the cast, it's a little confusing because there aren't that many onscreen people, there's a lot of voice actors. I will say that the voice of the Scarecrow is the son of Jim Henson. So, that feels cool in a puppetry sense.
But really, the actor that is by far the most in the spotlight in this movie is Fairuza Balk as Dorothy. She was 10-years-old when they shot this movie. It was her first screen roll, her first onscreen roll. And of course, she's best known for playing Nancy in The Craft. She was also in Worst Witch, Almost Famous and American History X
Fairuza Balk:
“First of all, I went to a cattle call in Vancouver, which is like 300 children. And then they cut it down to 12 girls, brought us all out to LA, did more screen tests. Then it got down to two girls, and we went to London. And then it got down to one girl which was me.”
Hannah Leach:
She's really scary looking, not so much in this movie. She kind of has like an Helena Bonham Carter thing in that she always looks a little bit goth no matter what she does, which makes her such a good choice for all of the witchy movies. We appreciate that about her.
And then Jean Marsh played Mombi, Deep Roy acted as the Tinman, which if I see Deep Roy credited in anything I'm putting him in. He was the person who played all of the Oompa Loompas in the Johnny Depp, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Just everyone was so random.
I didn't even write them all down because I looked at their credits and I was like I have no idea what this is. And I don't know if any of our listeners will.
Audrey Leach:
Budget 28 million. On opening weekend, it made 2,844,895 and the worldwide gross is 11,137,801.
Hannah Leach:
Not the best, not the best. I will say that the disparity between the budget and the worldwide gross, and the kind of lack of overall knowledge of the movie, but the really passionate sub-genre that this movie is, it falls into the same category as The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth with David Bowie. And those definitely fall into the cult classic genre.
Audrey Leach:
And I would say even though they're not quite at the same time, but it reminds me so much of the Tina, Alice in Wonderland too.
Hannah Leach:
I know, same.
Audrey Leach:
Like they're very similar. They're all in the same category.
Hannah Leach:
Desaturated, weird little girls and adventures and everyone's scary. Yeah, agree.
Audrey Leach:
And everything's practical, a lot of it is practical.
Hannah Leach:
Yes, which I really love practical choices.
Audrey Leach:
Critic scoring: 58%. And the critic consensus on Rotten Tomatoes is: “Return to Oz, taps into the darker side of L. Frank Baum’s book series with an intermittently dazzling adventure that never quite recaptures the magic of its classic predecessor.”
Well, guess what? Yeah, I have a lot to say about that.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah, that's really what we're going to end up talking about the most, I think.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah. Critic opinions:
“Firstly, it's bleak, creepy, and occasionally terrifying. Studio pressure apparently forced Murch to back off from the full theory of his conception. But this is still strong stuff.”
Secondly: “Having read 11 of the 14 original Oz books, including the two this movie was based on, I found it a perfect and fairly accurate combination of the second and third book in the Oz series.”
Can we just get some applause for that? I mean, no one's doing that anymore, like accurate adaptations.
And then thirdly:
“Return to Oz is a fantastic horror movie for children, witches that can remove their heads, mutated rollerblading, punks, evil rocks that spy on you, ghosts trapped in mirrors, electric shock therapy. This is scary stuff for kids, but not too scary. However, making it an excellent treat.”
Hannah Leach:
The idea of it being a fantastic horror movie for children, it's so accurate.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah, and it kind of goes along with that we've talked about this before, but the assumption that children don't horror as a whole is not accurate. The fact that a movie this gets so shut on because parents deem it too scary or not what they want it to be doesn't mean that children won't love it. It's just not your taste, but there are lots of kids who like horror.
Hannah Leach:
I just love the idea of there's young adult fiction and there can be young adult horror. I just think that that's a really cool idea.
So, okay, I picked all of these really kind reviews because when I went to look up Roger Ebert's review, at this time, he was still doing TV reviews with Siskel. So, I watched their review, and they ripped this thing apart. They said that two hours of their lives were stolen.
Roger Ebert:
“I'll always resent that it stole two hours of my life. When I'm dying, I want you to know, if you're at my funeral, I want you to know I'll be there thinking I could have lived two hours happier.”
Male:
“I'll say a few words over your grave: ‘He would've had two hours more happiness if it hadn't been for Return to Oz.’”
Roger Ebert:
“Thank you very much. This is supposed to be the film that was more true to the Oz book, but they made changes from the book it was based on, and they still made a trashy picture, a trashy looking film with none of the joys of the classic Judy Garland.”
Hannah Leach:
They said they liked the hen the most, which is a red flag and that it was not an upbeat children's film.
Audrey Leach:
Well, I'm sure that they were rewarded as reviewers for having a more strong opinion. It’s like nobody would've wanted them to have a middle of the road take.
Hannah Leach:
So, now Common Sense Media, I felt this little description will help jog the memory of a lot of people if they haven't seen it yet. So, okay, here is what Common Sense Media had to say. They rated it 2 out of 5 stars and said that it was appropriate for ages 10 and up. They said:
“1985 follow up to the classic musical is tenured and creepy. Parents need to know that Return to Oz is nowhere near as whimsical nor fantastical, nor fantastic as the Judy Garland classic. It has a gloomier spookier look and feel, though it does have heart.
Dorothy as in the first movie, is as sweet as ever. Children eight and younger will likely find it disturbing, especially if they're fans of the original. Some scenes show an Oz that's fallen apart, dominated by a headless princess and vengeful stony king.”
The way they go after Dorothy is a freaky nerve-wracking site to behold. They're not wrong, it's just true.
Audrey Leach:
Okay, audience score was 71% and the Letterboxd average star rating is 3.4 stars, sort of redeeming honestly. 3.4 is not too bad. Audience opinions:
5 stars: “Cult classic, one of the best films in the world.”
And then someone gave it half a star and said, “What the shitting fuck?!”
5 stars: “Bizarre classic, absolute must see.”
3 stars: “You know what I love in my sequel to the happiest and most beloved musical of all time? Misery.”
And then 3 stars: “Hard to imagine any kid watching this and not being deeply upset.”
Hannah Leach:
I really found the reviews so extreme on either end, and also, just really funny. A lot of the time when I go look at these reviews, it's people making the same joke over and over again. But people had very specific things to say about this movie, which I thought was really funny.
And I also just wanted to mention in the grand tradition of many of the cult classics that we have covered on this show, similar to the 10th Kingdom, similar to Swan Princess, there is a very active and relatively small fan community for this movie.
Well, okay, so there's a fan made documentary called Remembering Return to Oz, which is in progress, I think. And it's them interviewing all these different cast members and crew people. There's also a Remembering Return to Oz Facebook fan page.
I looked at it today and the last thing they posted was two days ago. And it was an AI-generated Walt Disney head saying what they think Walt Disney would've said about Return to Oz had he been alive.
AI:
“Thought they were both terrific. Fairuza Balk’s energy and Enthusiasm brought Dorothy to life while Emma Ridley had just the right touch of magic to make Ozma come alive. Both of them created truly memorable performances and it was a pleasure working with them.”
Hannah Leach:
So, the people that are into it are highly into it, and they're out there. I love finding those sorts of fan communities.
Audrey Leach:
If you're one of those people, hi, and I appreciate you.
Hannah Leach:
Welcome to the pod.
When was the first time we watched this movie? What do we remember about it? Audrey, is it true that you didn't remember this one?
Audrey Leach:
I don't remember it, no, but I do remember our sole memory of the movie.
Hannah Leach:
Okay. So, my main memory of this movie is that, okay, go back in time to 2001 — 2002 maybe, but probably 2001. We were living in Boston and our dad was in grad school at MIT and there were these really big parties that his cohort would throw. It was like maybe 50 adults and their families.
We hosted one of these parties in our little rental house one day, and it was an adult party. So, mom was, “Okay, you guys can hang out upstairs. She got us a bunch of snacks.” She got us a movie we hadn't seen before and put a little TV in our room, which we were not allowed to have TVs in our rooms when we were kids. Which is funny because now mom and dad have a giant flat screen TV in their room. So, times have changed.
The movie mom picked out was Return to Oz. And so, we were laying in our little twin beds, and we were watching this movie and we got through the whole psych ward part. I think it was weirdly when the rock … the first time you see one of the rock guys talking to the king and you just see the face of the rock, I got up and I turned it off.
I was, “We can't handle this because I was freaked out” but also, Audrey was still a pretty anxious kid too. So, I was like-
Audrey Leach:
I mean, I was a baby.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah, I mean she was in preschool.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah.
Hannah Leach:
I was if I can't handle this, Audrey definitely can't handle this, so let's turn this off. So, we turned it off, but then I remember laying there in the dark being, “Oh God, that was horrible.” And then mom told me … I didn't remember this part, but mom told me that we came downstairs in our pajamas, and we were in first grade in preschool, and then we just kinda walked around in the party.
And then someone's mom found us and then grabbed our mom and was, “Jenny, go deal with this.” And so, she did. And I just remember turning off the movie and then laying there in the dark and it was super loud downstairs because all of those adults were there, and it was just the hum of the party Arie and I stuck in our room and it was so creepy.
The elements I remembered that freaked me out were obviously being in the psychiatric institution. That was scary. I remembered the electroshock therapy part, even though I hadn't seen this movie, I think since I was in first grade.
Audrey Leach:
I don't think you ever saw it in its entirety.
Hannah Leach:
Definitely didn't. But I had seen the queen changing heads, I had seen the Wheelers … before I re-watched it, I wrote down sliding thing question mark. And yeah, I had vague ideas. I remember the first 45 minutes, I would say, which makes sense because that's when we turned it off.
Audrey Leach:
It’s not like deeply nostalgic for us. But I feel what's interesting about this movie is very relevant to today's culture also. And just in terms of when an adaptation doesn't match what the audience has in mind, the reaction is usually extremely negative.
And it's not fair. And I feel this was set up to fail, but there's a lot of interesting and cool elements to it that make it worth watching. But I think because of all the negativity around it, it's like this movie must not be good.
Hannah Leach:
Honestly, I kind of want to watch it again. Now that I know what I am in for, it makes me want to watch it again.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah. So, it is on Disney+, and if you haven't seen it, and it might be a great high watch honestly.
Hannah Leach:
I was thinking about that, but then I was like, “Ah, it might be too scary.”
Audrey Leach:
Or bad, yeah. It'll either be really good or really bad. But it's definitely nothing like the 1939 film. So, don't-
Hannah Leach:
It could not be more different.
Audrey Leach:
Don’t expect that.
Hannah Leach:
Do not expect that. And also, survivor group for people us who loved The Wizard of Oz and then their parents were “Here's a sequel.” And then you watch it and it's the scariest of your child life. We’re here now to hold you.
Audrey Leach:
I'm almost sad that we had that reaction though because all the fans are like it's actually not scary. Like all the really passionate fans in all the comments sections that I've been reading, they're all like, “No, it's not scary. It's beautiful.”
Hannah Leach:
I mean it can be both. They're not mutually exclusive. Alright, go watch this movie and meet us here for a discussion.
[Music Playing]
Welcome back everyone. We are about to talk about 1985’s, Return to Oz, very creepy unless you're in the hardcore fandom, then it is a tonally peaceful artistic journey through the mind of Walter Munch.
Audrey Leach:
Murch.
Hannah Leach:
Walter Munch sounds a character in Annie. Isn't it Mr. Munch? Isn't that the dad?
Audrey Leach:
I only remember Mr. Bundles.
Hannah Leach:
Wait, that also reminds me, and then I promise we'll talk about Return to Oz. When we were driving the U-Haul to Chicago, I lost all morale 70% of the way there, and then we stopped and got a snack and then I was you got to play the nineties Annie soundtrack. And then I just sang through all of it and then I felt better.
All of those songs are perfect, and I feel we don't talk about it enough as a culture. They're so good. This is not a musical that we're talking about today though, to the dismay of many people. Why don't you break the bottle of champagne on the side of this discussion?
Audrey Leach:
For me, I think what I was thinking about throughout most of the movie was I'm really curious about what the framing device is for Dorothy in the books because in the movie, in the original film, it's definitely that she hit her head and gets knocked out basically.
It's not saying anything about Dorothy's mental state or her character. She just got hit on the head, it was an accident. But in this movie, Dorothy has got some gr greater issues. The exposition right at the beginning is so funny because I was why did the mom just say, “It's been six months since the tornado.” — Oh, thank you so much for that information.
Hannah Leach:
It's really not her mom, it's her aunt, to which I say, why don't we ever find out what happened to her parents?
Audrey Leach:
I mean, I think I'm just, all of these answers definitely exist and I kind of wish that we had-
Hannah Leach:
I know, it makes me read the books.
Audrey Leach:
A book expert with us here, so just forgive us for not knowing, because I'm sure a lot of the questions we'll be asking have answers. We're just dumb, so we didn't do that.
Hannah Leach:
You know what, I'm going to write down these questions and I'll find out after.
Audrey Leach:
Here's my question though, this is what I wrote. You can respond to this: “There's something interesting to be said about what would actually be diagnosed as a mental disorder being a child's special power and portrayed as a good thing in movies, when they would be ostracized in real life.”
As a child watching her and knowing that she's actually seeing these things and the adults can't see it. And so, as a child, it's very much, “Oh, these adults suck and what they're doing to her sucks.” And she's valid basically.
But it's the film's way of portraying hallucinations? I don't really know.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah, because that whole opening goes on … I mean, I really enjoyed the opening, but it goes on for a weirdly long time. It's 25 minutes before she gets to Oz. Kind of buying the adult's perspective at one point, because I was like, “Well, did she really go to Oz? Honestly, was it all just a weird dream?”
We know that she experienced those things at least psychologically, but she may not have actually experienced them. To me, it's more they're like, “You're being annoying as hell. We're sending you off to the bin,” more than anything else.
I also thought it was funny that in time, she was like, “You don't sleep through the night and then you're no used to me in the morning.”
Audrey Leach:
And that also was an ADR line. I was watching her.
Hannah Leach:
Oh really?
Audrey Leach:
Yeah, I was watching her jaw when that line was being said, and that line was definitely not what she said initially. So, I don’t know.
Hannah Leach:
Well, they probably needed to add that in to add maybe a little more justification for why they were taking her there.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah, I kind of want to go back to that conversation though, because there's so many examples of movies where the child, the protagonist child has powers, like Matilda vibes.
But at least with Matilda, it's she's doing something that has no real life equivalent. There is no moving things with your mind equivalent on earth. But with Dorothy, it's like she has a mental disorder or something.
Hannah Leach:
But is it ever framed as her special ability?
Audrey Leach:
I would argue yes. It’s not to the effect of Matilda. It’s not like there's a huge group of children applauding her when she does this thing. Whereas Matilda, she's got her classmates who are like here for it and stuff. No, I'm just thinking about the children in the actual audience of the movie.
Hannah Leach:
Yes. Okay.
Audrey Leach:
It's like I'd be watching her and I'd be like, “Ugh, life is so unfair.” She's being unfairly punished just because the adults can't see what she sees type of thing. Which happens a lot in children's movies because it's always about how the children are in touch with their imagination and the adults aren't.
It's like a superiority thing, almost, a way to give children some power when they really don't have any. So, I think that is a powerful tool to give children. But in this particular case, it's just funny because she's seeing shit and her aunt, she's not awful, she's just kind of boring and strict, but she's not terrible.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah, no, I agree. I don't know, I'm hesitating to compare it to the original, but I think that she doesn't have very much power in the movie, but she doesn't really seem to care about it all that much. She's kind of just vibing and trying, I don't know, just running around and talking about Oz all day long.
So, it's almost like she's sent back to Oz and her goal is to prove that it still exists. In the beginning, it feels her goal is to prove that it still exists. Then she gets there and it's like okay, it still exists. And then I just find myself through the rest of it, like what is the point of this?
It feels so much a dream because technically, she's saving her friends. But the weird thing is that it's like the Tinman, the Scarecrow and the lion, but you never see her-
Audrey Leach:
They’re like not even in it.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah. They're not in it. And it's you're referencing something that you never saw on screen.
Audrey Leach:
A past dream. It's like a past dream.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a dream that picks up where the last one left off, but you didn't see the first one.
Audrey Leach:
And I can understand from an audience perspective, why based off of probably the misleading marketing that they saw, why you would go into this and be like, “What the hell?”
Because it kind of implies the existence of a remake of The Wizard of Oz because that's what it probably should have been, is like there was a remake that was a non-musical and was a more strict adaptation of the book, the first book, and then come in for this one, rather than just going straight from 1939 musical to this. Which would be a little shocking if you were ready for it.
Hannah Leach:
And coming from Disney of all places … I just want to read off a couple things that struck me as funny. First of all, the really unsettling chicken puppet.
One of my favorite parts of the entire movie was when the pumpkin head guy asked if he could call Dorothy mommy, and then just proceeds to call her mom.
Audrey Leach:
I know. That was one of my questions that I wrote was like, “What do we make of this? What do we make of that whole thing?”
Hannah Leach:
I feel what we were supposed to get from that is that later on, it was clear that Ozma-
Audrey Leach:
Chosen family.
Hannah Leach:
Chosen family … well, it's funny because that's what people say about the first Wizard of Oz, that it’s about chosen family. So, same about this.
Ozma shows up and he's like, “That's my real mom.” So, there's some sort of duality suggested between little Ozma who barely exists and Dorothy, but again, it feels a dream. So, it's never fully connected. It's almost you assume it.
Audrey Leach:
Series of unfortunate events came way after this and is probably kind of inspired by it. But it was reminding me of series of unfortunate events, just like the aesthetic and how grim everything seems, and just bad times for the children, I don't know.
Hannah Leach:
Yes. I wrote down here the creepy music choices. And now, that I said that, I do understand what I was talking about. There's a lot of really weird marching band sounding music throughout different sections that's really unsettling, and it does definitely suggest a specific mood. Appreciated that.
I love all the rock people, they look really cool. Also, when the Wheelers come out and you're just seeing the front of the guy's helmet and it looks a scary mask, that like actually made my heart skip a beat while watching it yesterday: “I would a lunch pail bulb, looks a good time.”
Audrey Leach:
I just looked it up; in the book, there is no dream. It's not a dream, the book.
Hannah Leach:
That does not surprise me.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah, the framing device is so real in the movies.
Hannah Leach:
I wrote “At the midpoint, I have sort of lost the plot.”
Audrey Leach:
Yeah, I was struggling to know what was going on. And it's kind of the same in Alice Wonderland though, because it's like you don't know. You're not going to know.
Hannah Leach:
It's just pure nonsense.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah. Did the green ornament thing remind you of Horcruxes?
Hannah Leach:
Now that you pointed out, definitely, yes. But it did not occur to me at the time.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah. So, near the end of the movie, the climax, she's trying to find her friends that have been turned into green ornaments.
Hannah Leach:
That whole concept was so weird and dreamlike too as a separate note.
Audrey Leach:
And the evil guy is banking on the fact that she's not going to be able to do it, and then she does do it and it's just … oh, it's very uncanny valley, this whole thing.
Hannah Leach:
Yes, and that's the thing with the puppets is that to me, they're really, really cool, but they're almost not that puppet. And so, it's a little confusing at times. It's like hard to appreciate the puppetry all the way because you're like, “Is that a puppet? Or what am I really looking at?”
Audrey Leach:
Well, they used a combination of puppetry and then people in costumes. So, that's why you've got that back and forth in your head of how animate is this thing?
Hannah Leach:
Yes. That also reminds me that inside of Tik-Tok, which by the way, of course, his name is Tik-Tok.
Audrey Leach:
I know.
Hannah Leach:
There was a human gymnast.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah, I heard that.
Hannah Leach:
That was like contorted inside his back is fully bent over and his feet are inside Tik-Tok’s feet. I don't understand how he did it. But e even in that video with Fairuza trying to explain it, I was I have no idea. I need someone to demonstrate it for me.
Voiceover:
“Michael Sunden, who played Tik-Tok, had to spin long stretches at a time in this position with his knees slightly bent in an awkward and uncomfortable way. There was no way for him to be able to see anything and he had to be led around based on sounds.
But all of this is kind of amazing as well. As upsetting and uncanny as The Wheelers are, doing this actually took legitimate skill and ingenuity to pull off.”
Audrey Leach:
What did you think of this little blonde girl?
Hannah Leach:
I was really confused by her at first. I actually thought at the very beginning that it may have been a reference to Through the Looking-Glass, the Alice in Wonderland sequel, and then she ended up being Ozma in the end. And I was like, “Oh, she's the queen of Oz?” So, would she have gotten Dorothy to Oz to then save Oz? Why couldn't Ozma do it? But I guess, that's kind of the whole point.
Audrey Leach:
But I liked her final look.
Hannah Leach:
She looked amazing. She looked so good. So, in the end, with that crowd scene, first of all, I loved looking around in that scene. It was Where's Waldo? But secondly, when she had to say goodbye to everyone, you know how in the last one she says goodbye to the three guys? In this one, I wrote down, “That's a lot of dudes to say goodbye to.”
Because she's going around to all of these dudes and I'm “Why are they all men?” But also, am I gendering Tik-Tok? Yeah, I guess I am. I’m sorry.
Audrey Leach:
He’s male-coded.
Hannah Leach:
Very much male-coded. Sorry.
Audrey Leach:
He's like old man-coded.
Hannah Leach:
He is old man-coded.
Audrey Leach:
Why are the friends or the buddies of the young girl always just old dudes?
Hannah Leach:
Because it's creepy.
Audrey Leach:
Like Alice in Wonderland, even stuff like-
Hannah Leach:
She doesn’t have any allies.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah, right. But the people she comes upon, there are some women, but it's usually-
Hannah Leach:
Just like the villain.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah. The villain will be a woman and then everyone else is an old guy.
Hannah Leach:
Kooky old guys, and then evil lady.
Audrey Leach:
I do want to talk about … maybe this is like our last topic of this. But what the takeaway is for films this, like Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, where you've got seemingly inexplicable things happening, and there's not necessarily always a clear more … there's not always clarity and they're not going to preach to you.
So, the question of what you're supposed to take away from that and should you be looking for concrete lessons?
Hannah Leach:
I feel the way those stories are set up is that they're supposed to be little parables almost. But when you think about them, especially with Alice in Wonderland, it doesn't actually really say anything. because It's more of like a satire of English society than it is about growing up really all that much.
I feel the only growing up element of it is surviving a weird journey. Other than that, though, it's these are the weird people you encounter in life. It isn't anything super concrete. But then with the Wizard of Oz, I think at least, okay, this is an interpretation of the 1939 movie, which is probably way more saccharine than the actual book.
But the whole point of that movie is you have the virtue within you to be able to achieve anything you want. Whereas in this one, when it ended and the titles start coming in and she's just running around in her yard, I’m like, “I have absolutely no idea what she got from that at all.”
Audrey Leach:
There's value to that too. the books that these films are based on are kind of the musings of not a middle-aged man type of thing.
Hannah Leach:
No, but I mean-
Audrey Leach:
So, I think that I wish I knew more about him and his life. There’s so many meaningless experiences in life, or things that just seemed random or hallucinatory things that are kind of unexamined in the human experience or I feel a lot of times just say with dreams for example, people tend to keep their dreams to themselves because you either forget them really fast and you can't verbalize it or you don't want to reveal your psyche to people in that way.
A lot of people think hearing about dreams is boring, which I don't get, but a lot of people do think that. And that's what these stories are. It's just an exploration of the dream version of a child's life.
Hannah Leach:
Also, I think the point about the stories being written by adult men is really interesting because it's adult men sharing their perspective on life through the channel of putting a young girl through different forms of psychological torture. That's just kind of funny to think about.
Audrey Leach:
I mean, that's 85% of horror in a nutshell, horror movies.
Hannah Leach:
That too, that is definitely true.
Audrey Leach:
The torture that happens mostly to women in horror films and it's almost always written by men. It’s something that I feel society as a whole has kind of just accepted without a whole lot of thought. I don't know what that's about. Why with horror, it's oh, it's okay because-
Hannah Leach:
It's being framed as a bad thing because it's like horror.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah. Or because it's like going on a roller coaster. They’re like putting it-
Hannah Leach:
Yeah, it’s about the thrill of it.
Audrey Leach:
In a different category, the filmmakers don't mean it type of thing or like that doesn't shed anything about them, it doesn't mean that they would be violent or that they have violent minds, if you will-
Hannah Leach:
But they don't not.
Audrey Leach:
I think it's really interesting that on the whole, it feels those dudes have been spared from any further thought. I don't know.
Hannah Leach:
Well, it kind of reminds me — and this might not be appropriate, but it makes me think about how in adult content, let me just say, how people can get away with really, really dated content labels or violence or things that would be disturbing out of the context that it's in.
But because it is this medium that most people deem as dirty or shameful or whatever, it’s like we can just go buck wild and let it be as crass or demoralizing as someone's core it wants it to be, how men's core it wants it to be.
Audrey Leach:
In both categories that we're talking about, it's because it's so steeped in the genre-fication of itself, that it's the actual identities of the people who create it, they can be deemed irrelevant to the product. It's like, well, it doesn't say anything about me, it's just this is what we do. This is just what this is.
Hannah Leach:
But like why do you want to do it?
Audrey Leach:
Well, I guess from like a capitalist perspective, it's like we do it because it makes money. We do it because it's expected, we do it because … you could come up with a lot of reasons that don't have to do with because that's what I want.
But if it sells, if the reasoning is it sells, then it is what you want. It's what the people want at their … whatever you just said, id core. There's just like some lizard brain thing going on.
Hannah Leach:
No, it's like a carnivorous thing. It's like an animalistic thing where it's you want to see people beheaded or shamed in the public square. It's the same reason why people like seeing people get destroyed online or canceled or whatever.
We are so hilariously off the beaten path, but it's relevant to … I think you guys would want to hear this — it all comes back to the socialization of the genders; violence being valorized, a take charge attitude being valorized.
Honestly, I feel in a lot of ways (this is so much), the role of being a writer/director is so occupied by men for a reason and it's because other men are in charge. But also, having such control and strict vision over how something should go just feels like a man thing to me a little bit.
Audrey Leach:
I don't even know how we got there, but I’m not about it.
Hannah Leach:
It's because we were talking about psychological torture of young female protagonists in movies this.
Audrey Leach:
I don't know. That's really difficult. Again, I wish I knew more about the author because that usually means a lot, it changes my opinion.
Hannah Leach:
I'm pretty sure that he was a normal guy. He was a father, seems kind of like he had four children. He was married to one woman his whole life, and here's a little bit about him that is funny:
“He had a flare for being in the spotlight of fun in the household. His selling of fireworks made the 4th of July memorable. Christmas was even more festive.
He dressed as Santa Claus for the family. His father would place the Christmas tree behind a curtain in the front parlor so that Baum could talk to everyone while he decorated the tree without people managing to see him. He maintained this tradition all of his life.
He produced a bunch of theater even when it did not necessarily pan out for him financially. He started his own film production company. He died pretty young.”
Baum’s beliefs:
“A traditional element that Baum intentionally omitted from his stories was the emphasis on romance. He considered romantic love to be uninteresting to young children, as well as largely incomprehensible.
In the wonderful Wizard of Oz, the only elements of romance lay in the background of the Tin Woodman and his love for Nimmie Amee, which explains his condition, but does not affect the tale in any other way. And the background of Gayelette and the enchantment of The Winged Monkeys, so on and so forth.”
But basically, he was like, “I don't care about that.” Also, he was a women's suffrage advocate. His Edith Van Dyne, who was like a different character stories depict girls and young women engaging in traditionally masculine activities.
He also wrote the Bluebird books that feature a girl sleuth (we're getting to racial views, let's just be careful).
Baum wrote two editorials asserting that the safety of white settlers depended on the wholesale genocide of American Indians. Yeah, people debate whether or not he was being sarcastic — seems most people think he wasn't.
So, you know what? We had a good run there, but unfortunately, we had to dive into a ditch at the very end.
Audrey Leach:
I’m on the Royal Blog of Oz. Someone named Jay wrote this:
“So, let's address the issue again: was L. Frank Baum a racist? Yes. Was his expression of racism allowed at the time because of the society he lived in? Yes. Did that make it okay? No. Many critics of Baum are aware of his editorials in which he suggested the military should exterminate the remaining members of the Sioux Nation.
Readers of his works outside of the Oz books are aware of many ethnic stereotypes in his works. A few of his works even used the N word. Baum relied on these to depict characters of color in his fiction, as did many other writers of his time. These reveal that while Baum was progressive in his views of gender in other areas, race was one where he was not so enlightened.
I do believe that Baum was attempting to depict a more accurate depiction of the American people in using non-white characters. However, his use of stereotypes is troubling because stereotypes depict an inaccurate (duh, we know) picture of the people being described.”
It sounds as though he would call him himself a feminist obviously, of his time. Not now, but that's very interesting.
What do I even make of that? This whole thing is just really, really wild. I don't know if we've done any justice for it.
Hannah Leach:
I think that going into it, I was okay, this is going to be really scary and really unsettling. And it did achieve that. But also, I wrote down at the end, “Was that an art film” to myself? Because it does-
Audrey Leach:
I’d say yeah.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah, it does so little explaining to you and there's so many different types of art involved in it, especially with all of the practical effects and the sculpture and the puppetry and everything. It could be half an hour shorter easily, but it's very entertaining.
I watched it with Josh and the whole time, anytime anything notable happened, he just said, “This movie rocks.” And it kind of does rock.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah. I think one of the sadder aspects of this whole thing is that the fact that it was disappointment financially actually is what stopped Walter Murch from directing more. And this is somebody who is one of the most respected people in Hollywood in terms of their craft.
He's at the top of his game, not in his heyday. And so, the fact that they shut on him so hard, I just hate to see it. Because I watched this little interview thing with him and he was like, “I had all these ideas for what I could do next and what I learned on this movie that I could take to the next. And just he was ready, he was raring to go.
Hannah Leach:
I know. I watched it too.
Walter Murch:
“I was surprised. I was discombobulated by the fact that when the film came out, people said, ‘This is an extremely terrifying, disturbing film,’ which was not my intention. I wanted it to engage the audience fully and I wanted Dorothy to be in desperate situation, but the anguish of many of the reviews and some of the comments that I got from the film was surprising to me.
You can't second guess the reviewer, that's what they say. And in fact, that was the brush that tarred the film. That it was an overly dower and frightening film for children and that I was some kind of molester of children because of the film.
It was a crisis of a kind because I had ultimately enjoyed working on the film despite being fired from it in the middle and the difficulties in making any film. I thought I learned a lot on this film, and I wanted to then apply what I had learned to directing other films.”
Audrey Leach:
The fact that Walter Murch got ran out of directing because of this one fumble, which kind of wasn't his fault … it seems he was set up to fail in terms of the box office, and people just being closed-minded. There's no more clear demonstration of closed-minded executives than what Disney does now.
I mean, in terms of the mode of storytelling and even if they're telling a “diverse” story, it's going to hit all the same story beats. It's going to be exactly what you think it's going to be. And it's going to have a one-word title and it's going to be really vague, and it's going to be an adjective or a noun.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah. Well, I was also thinking about all the Marvel franchises and stuff, it's kind of the same there too. Just giving the people what they think the people want, but what the people don't want anymore.
I did look up Dorothy's parents, the cause for their death is never revealed, but in Wicked, they say that her parents died in a boating accident, which is very aquamarine of them.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah. The Clair de lune. She goes, “That's my parents.”
Hannah Leach:
We should do an encore aquamarine episode honestly.
Is Return to Oz a good movie?
I feel the more important question is, is it worth watching?
Audrey Leach:
Yeah. You can't really say if it's good or not, because I could make arguments both ways to myself.
Hannah Leach:
Same.
Audrey Leach:
But is it worth watching? Yeah.
Hannah Leach:
Definitely worth watching. It's really creepy, but in all the best ways, and I very much appreciate its existence.
Audrey Leach:
Yeah, because if you think about it, L. Frank Baum probably would've identified a lot more with this adaptation than the 1939 film. The 1939 film falls into what was popular at the time. And its number one interest is not honoring the book per se.
Also, the imagery and the style falls a lot closer to illustrations that I've seen from the books.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah, agreed. This movie was never meant to be a direct comparison to the 1939 movie. And you're intentionally-
Audrey Leach:
Like you're being dumb.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah, it's a bad faith approach if you are actually saying that.
Audrey Leach:
You're being dumb on purpose, stop. I'm speaking to the people of the eighties.
Hannah Leach:
We're speaking directly to Roger Ebert from beyond the grave. Sorry.
Audrey Leach:
Alright. I hope you enjoyed this kind of niche movie, but I feel like after Barbie and having done a bunch of super popular films, this was kind of an interesting foray into cult classic territory.
Hannah Leach:
Yeah.
Audrey Leach:
Anyways, as always, you can find more from us at evergreenpodcasts.com/sleepover-cinema, and keep up with our latest creative projects at toopinkproductions.com. We're on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube at Sleepover Cinema, and post a full video version of each episode on YouTube every Thursday.
You should subscribe to our channel if you have not.
[Music Playing]
Hannah Leach:
You can follow Audrey at Audrey Anna Leach on everything. And you can follow me, Hannah at Hannah Rae Leach on everything. You, as always are welcomed to join us on our Discord server at the link in the episode description or on evergreenpodcasts.com.
Audrey Leach:
We did have a bunch of people join the Discord after the Barbie episode, so it's like-
Hannah Leach:
Yes, we did.
Audrey Leach:
It's popping. You can check out our merch toopinkproductions.com/shop. We have t-shirt, sweatshirt, stickers, scrunchies, pens, and more.
Hannah Leach:
And if you the show, if it brings back trauma from your childhood with seeing this movie and not knowing what you were getting into, share an episode with a few friends. Leave us a review and stick around for the next episode.
Audrey Leach:
Sleepover Cinema is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, produced, edited, and engineered by us, Hannah, and Audrey Leach. Sleepover Cinema’s mixed by Sean Rule-Hoffman with theme Music by Josh Perelman-Hall. Executive producer is Michael DeAloia.
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