The Wizard of Oz

Hannah Leach:

Welcome to Sleepover Cinema, where we analyze the films that created the collective unconscious of those who would do anything to be made over by those pretty ladies in the Emerald City. I'm Hannah Leach, a writer, musician, audio producer, and the number one hype woman of Judy Garland's live at Carnegie Hall.

Audrey Leach:

And I'm Audrey Leach, director, editor, producer, and infamous friend of Dorothy. 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 1939s, The Wizard of Oz.

[Music Playing]

Audrey Leach:

To be clear, I know what friend of Dorothy means.

Hannah Leach:

Audrey's like, “Queer people don't owe you an identity.” So Audrey, how's your day going so far?

Audrey Leach:

Today is a good day. Today's a good day.

Hannah Leach:

Ooh, why?

Audrey Leach:

Because it's our grandpa's birthday.

Hannah Leach:

For real.

Audrey Leach:

It's Valentine's Day. I am going to this restaurant later called Tea and Sympathy, that is my favorite place to go to, it's British. It's British food. Everybody that works there is British and I can get my favorite meal there.

I went to some thrift stores earlier, trying to find purple things. I'm not going to elaborate on that, but-

Hannah Leach:

You'll find out why soon.

Audrey Leach:

You'll know, you'll know. And I didn't find anything good and I went to the Urban Jungle, the giant, and I didn't find a fucking thing.

Hannah Leach:

Go ahead.

Audrey Leach:

And we hit a thousand subscribers, finally. After-

Hannah Leach:

We did.

Audrey Leach:

Berating everybody for weeks.

Hannah Leach:

I finally posted on my Instagram story being like, “You want to do something nice today? Click this button.” And then it actually worked. So, shout out to that.

I will say though, there's a lot of listeners who were consistent listeners, who interact with us in the DMs, who messaged me and were like, “I just subscribed. I don't know how I wasn't.”

I want to pause for one second to text grandpa, “Happy birthday” because I will forget. Yeah, I'm kind of sick today. I woke up this morning and was like, “Time to get to work ladies.” And then was like, “Oh I feel awful.”

So, I laid on the couch and I watched an hour of The Bachelor, which I'm on season 26. It's my first season of The Bachelor. If you have opinions on Clayton, let me know.

Audrey Leach:

Clayton.

Hannah Leach:

It's a mess. Here's the thing. So, his name is Clayton and half the girls say Clayton and the other half say Clayton. It's funny to watch people struggle with how they're going to pronounce it.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. I just can't get behind The Bachelor at all. It's just not my thing. I even watched a season of it. I watched the 2020 season when it was the first black bachelor and that was the reason I watched it. Because I was just intrigued and it was such a mess. It was such a hot mess and it was just bad.

Hannah Leach:

I actually heard that that one was a mess, but I don't remember why.

Audrey Leach:

Because the girl that he picked got canceled for going to an antebellum sorority party.

Hannah Leach:

That is so tragic.

Audrey Leach:

That shit. And then everyone canceled her and then they are together I think. Or they were together after the fact. He was like, “It's okay.”

Hannah Leach:

I remember that. In terms of problematic things, she could have done, that's not as bad as it could have been.

Okay, so this week's question for the culture.

Speaker 1:

The culture's super sick right now. It's actually really bad, period.

Hannah Leach:

This is related to the Wizard of Oz tangentially. So, the musical Wicked. When does a musical, specifically Wicked, hit like Phantom of the Opera or Chicago status in terms of it's an institution for better or for worse and it goes from being a musical to being a little bit of a meme. Do you feel like Wicked has hit that point?

Audrey Leach:

I think it's right in the middle. I think it's not quite there because I still see it as feeling somewhat modern compared to other shows that have run for a really long time. I would still want to see Wicked and I've seen it four times probably.

Hannah Leach:

I've only seen it once. No, that's not true. I saw it twice.

Audrey Leach:

No, it’s not true.

Hannah Leach:

I saw it twice. I saw it twice. I saw it when we were really little and then I saw it-

Audrey Leach:

In Canada and in Florida.

Hannah Leach:

No, we saw Phantom of the Opera in Canada. We've only seen Wicked twice together.

Audrey Leach:

I thought we saw Phantom and Wicked in Canada.

Hannah Leach:

No, it was just Phantom.

Audrey Leach:

I know one of the times I was a sophomore or a freshman in high school, because I remember the picture.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. That was the Florida one. Because I have my hair extensions in. I have a high low dress on, with a tribal print.

Audrey Leach:

When we would go to Florida on breaks, we used to go to this one mall called Coconut Point Mall and we would go to the Delia’s and get an extravagant dress there for New Year's because we tended to be in Florida for New Year's. I just remember-

Hannah Leach:

That may be true for you, but I definitely never got an extravagant dress from Delia’s.

Audrey Leach:

Well, no it wasn't necessarily Delia's always, but we would dress up for New Year's or we would have reasons to dress up. But it's just funny that we were bringing outfits to Florida.

Hannah Leach:

Oh yeah, we were dressing for kind of no reason. I kind of feel like it's a meme. I think that our circles are very specific in terms of musical theater people or people that grew up around musical theater people and it's just really easy to make fun of Wicked because it kind of has that, I want to be Eponine vibe to it, belter girl magnet thing.

Okay. This is not related to whether or not it's a meme. If you had to play Elphaba or Glinda, who would you want to play?

Audrey Leach:

I think the role of Glinda is more fun.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah, I agree. I would want to do that.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah, I think the role is more fun. You get to fly in the thing, you get to have bubbles, the costumes are prettier. I think that that is just more fun.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah.

Audrey Leach:

But obviously it would be a serve also to be Elphaba. But I think it's a little more grounded and a little less fun and harder vocally.

Hannah Leach:

Glinda?

Audrey Leach:

No, Elphaba is harder. I think Elphaba's harder.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. It's definitely harder. It's definitely harder. People that are really good at belting are superhuman in my opinion.

That just reminds me of the fact that I'm coming to New York on Friday and the karaoke room is about to never be the same, after we've been in there. We're about to cause permanent chemical change to the karaoke room.

Audrey Leach:

I feel bad for everybody else who will be present but that's okay. Sorry, to them.

Hannah Leach:

Everyone else who's going to be present will probably be equally annoying. Shall we talk about the Wizard of Oz?

Audrey Leach:

Yeah.

Hannah Leach:

The Wizard of Oz was released on August 25th, 1939. It was not rated because at the time movies weren't rated. But it's rated TV G and Common Sense Media says that it's appropriate for ages six and up.

The movie was directed by very famous director Victor Fleming, who that very same year directed Gone with the Wind. He was also well known for having directed A Guy Named Joe and Test Pilot.

And I just think it's interesting his first directing credit was in 1919. It's just so wild to think, 1939 doesn't seem that old but 1919 seems really old. It's just interesting.

There's a bunch of other directors that were involved in this movie. There were four other directors and we're going to lightly touch on some of them. But Victor Fleming is the one credited with having directed it.

So, one thing we're going to get into a lot with this movie is that almost more than any other big Hollywood movie, there are so many stories about the production of this movie and how it was so bad and so fraught and so historical in so many ways.

But it's also a kind of known fact that Judy Garland would kind of embellish some of her anecdotes about the movie, the older she got. Just for the sake of giving the people what they wanted. So, we'll talk more about that later in we get.

But one of the anecdotes about him and this one has been corroborated by a lot of people, is that Victor Fleming during the scene where Judy Garland is interacting with the lion for the first time, she couldn't stop laughing because she thought the actor was really funny. And in the middle of takes, Victor Fleming came up to her and slapped her in the face and was like, “Get it together.”

Apparently once the scene was done he was so ashamed of himself, he ordered the crew to punch him in the face. But instead Judy kissed him on the nose and was like, “I hold no ill will against you.”

Audrey Leach:

No.

Hannah Leach:

Which is so icky but it's all foreshadowing for things that will happen later on. So, other directors, I'm just going to say their names, George Cukor, Mervyn LeRoy who was also the main producer. Norman Taurog, Richard Thorpe and King Vidor, who he directed all of the Kansas scenes, which is interesting to me that the Kansas scenes had a different director than everything else. But with a production this huge, I guess it makes sense. And it was so early on in the industry that like, sure.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah, that kind of reminds me of what is referred to now as a second unit director, which is sometimes if a movie is shot in multiple locations or in a very complicated way, they will have a second unit director, a third unit director and so on. So yeah, that's probably what it was, basically.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah that is probably how it worked. The very, very good music is by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg. Harold Arlen wrote the music itself and he wrote the extremely popular standards, The Man That Got Away, Come Rain, Come Shine and Get Happy, which are songs that ultimately went down in history as very essential parts of Judy Garland's Cabaret Cannon, whether they were in movies that she was in and then she would sing them live at her concerts. They were songs that became very synonymous with her, which is cool.

Yip Harburg did the lyrics and he wrote the lyrics to Brother, can you spare a dime, which is very famous song, April in Paris and It's Only a Paper Moon, which is obviously also a very famous song.

Herbert Stothart did the score and also did a great job on that.

The writing credits for this movie are a little extreme. So, 20 people have writing credits and a lot of them are contributing writers. So, that is what it is.

But the screenplay was written by a combination of Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf. And of course that is based off of the book series by L. Frank Baum, the Wizard of Oz series, Adventures and Oz. There's several of them and obviously they're really famous and different adaptations of The Wizard of Oz have taken different parts of different books in the series and worth them into movies.

Kind of similarly to the Alice in Wonderland movie adaptations where they pluck things from different stories in the series.

It was edited by Blanche Sewell, who also edited The Pirate, which is another famous Judy Garland movie, which infamously during the shooting of that movie, her mental health was really, really bad. Also she edited Grand Hotel and Honky Tonk.

But another interesting thing is that Blanche was the assistant to Viola Lawrence. And Viola Lawrence is regarded as Hollywood's first lady film cutter. So, one of the first big female film editors of back in the day.

And she worked her way up the ladder, worked for a bunch of different small and big production companies, and ultimately became a supervising editor at Columbia. She believed in the power of close-ups and highlighting actors' eyes to convey drama and emotion.

Audrey Leach:

Here are the synopsis. IMDb:

“When a tornado rips through Kansas. Dorothy Gale and her dog, Toto, are whisked away in their house to the magical land of Oz. They follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City to meet the wizard. And on the way they meet a Scarecrow who wants a brain, a Tin Man who wants a heart and a Cowardly Lion who wants courage. The wizard asks them to bring him the Wicked Witch of the West’s broom to earn his help.”

Here's the Letterboxd one:

“Young Dorothy finds herself in a magical world where she makes friends with a Lion, a Scarecrow, and a Tin Man as they make their way along the Yellow Brick Road to talk with the wizard and ask for the things they miss most in their lives. The Wicked Witch of the West is the only thing that could stop them.”

That was so bad. That was literally awful.

Hannah Leach:

I thought it was okay.

Audrey Leach:

The Rotten Tomatoes one is the same as the IMDB one.

Hannah Leach:

Unfortunately.

Audrey Leach:

And then, okay, this is a crazy amount of taglines. Okay, here we go. So, this is chronological:

“Mighty miracle show of a thousand delights. Amazing sights to see, the tornado, munchkin land, horse of a different color, starling balloon ascent, flying monkeys, trees that talk and throw apples. Let's go over the rainbow with Judy and her greatest hit. Hear beloved star Judy Garland, sing Over the Rainbow and other songs, great on the wide screen.

We're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, songs you will sing and dance to, the book that 80 million read the play that 941 cities saw. Now the greatest technicolor show, world miracle since Snow White. 9,200 living actors in the notable star studded cast.”

Hannah Leach:

Is that … it sounds wrong.

Audrey Leach:

This does not make sense.

Hannah Leach:

Maybe 920, the most.

Audrey Leach:

9,000?

Hannah Leach:

More like 90.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. Sure.

“9,200 living actors in the notable star set of cast. 68 incredibly magnificent sets. Augmented orchestra of 130 pieces. Chorus of 300 rousing voices, a hundred minutes of unforgettable entertainment, a musical spectacle. If you enjoyed Snow White, you'll go into ecstasies over the Wizard of Oz.”

Hannah Leach:

Into ecstasies.

Audrey Leach:

“Gaiety. Glory. Glamor. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's technicolor triumph, biggest screen sensation since Snow White, the mighty miracle show that is the talk of America. The greatest picture in the history of entertainment.”

Hannah Leach:

I love old timey taglines, a lot.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. No one's using the word gaiety anymore.

Hannah Leach:

Gaiety. Glory. Glamor. That is so good.

So, getting into the cast. A lot of the people in this cast are stars of the 20s, 30s, 40s, that we don't know that much about or they're just problematic old men. And I know that we don't super care about a lot of them.

So, I'm going to put a lot of attention on one Miss Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale in this movie. Judy Garland to me is like my Julie Andrews, I would say.

Obviously, Audrey's love for Julie Andrews has been intense for longer. But I think the older I get, the more that I love Judy Garland.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. Me too.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. She's the one and only, she's an icon.

Audrey Leach:

Although, I was kind of stanning, even as a baby.

Hannah Leach:

No, you were, but Julie was your queen. But we're going to get into this.

Audrey Leach:

That was a close race.

Hannah Leach:

We're going to get into our childhood love. The movies that she's most famous for having been in are Wizard of Oz, obviously, A Star is Born, Meet Me in St. Louis, Judgment at Nuremberg and Summer Stock.

She is a huge pop culture figure. Huge example of the tragic heroin kind of in the vein of like an Amy Winehouse, but over way more years, with way more comebacks and way more plot points to her life, because obviously she lived to be 47.

But there are so many elements of her story that are really interesting. She started off in Vaudeville. Her parents were Vaudeville performers. She was one of a trio of sisters called “The Gumm Sisters.” And then they became “The Garland Sisters.”

She was born as Ethel Gumm. That was her birth name. She was put on prescription drugs really early, before she even got signed to any major studio, she was taking uppers and downers because her mom put her on them. And that was kind of an issue that like plagued her entire life.

There are some major themes to her life, notably gay men. Her dad was caught with another man when she was a kid and her parents separated. She got married like four or five times and several of them ended up being gay or kind of being gay from the beginning. She and the gays are very intertwined in a lot of different and complicated ways.

She was basically forced by MGM to have two abortions with her first two pregnancies because she was pretty young when she got pregnant.

Voiceover:

“Troubled from the start, the marriage was doomed when Judy got pregnant. She wanted a baby, but her pregnancy would've cost MGM Millions. The studio convinced her husband and of course her mom, though written in the third person. These are Judy Garland's words:”

“Where are we going? Never mind, said mother. You'll see. They drove for about a half hour and pulled up in front of a dreary little establishment outside of town. Her mother took Judy by the hand, led her inside to a shabby little office. In a few minutes, David, her mother and MGM were satisfied.”

Hannah Leach:

She was in this series of movies when she was a teenager with Mickey Rooney, who was two years older than her and also kind of stylized as like an ugly duckling teenager vibe. And she has this huge crush on him, but he didn't like her back, but they grew close.

Anyway. Also, one really interesting thing about her is that she was kind of in the mix with Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner and all these women of the era. And she really wanted to be perceived as glamorous as they were.

And despite the fact that everyone at MGM and basically everyone she ever encountered in the industry knew that she was this unforgettable, iconic talent, they still insisted upon finding ways to shit on her, to tell her she was ugly. To put her on diet pills, to put her in insane shapewear. She just got beat down by this system so hard.

But yeah, she's one of those super iconic, relatable, downtrodden perpetually yearning actress singers. She's kind of Lana-ish. She's kind of the blueprint for people like Lana a little bit, I think too.

I love her. I think she's so talented. If you haven't listened to Judy Garland live at Carnegie Hall, you definitely should. It’s incredible. And we will obviously gush more about her later on. So, I will leave it at that.

We had Frank Morgan as Professor Marvel, gatekeeper, carriage driver, the guard and the wizard. We have Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow. We have Bert Lair as Cowardly Lion and Jack Haley as the Tin Man.

And it's pretty universally acknowledged and documented that none of those men, especially the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man had like any interest in being friends with Judy or providing any sort of positive environment for her.

Judy Garland:

“I had to work with three very professional men. You know, Jack Haley and Bert Lair and Ray Bolger. And they had so much makeup on, you know, then one was a Tin Man and one was a Scarecrow and one was in Cowardly Lion. And they were so busy complaining about their makeups.

And each one was making bets as to which makeup was the most difficult. And they all gained weight all the way through the picture, and they all pretended, they just …

Whenever we do that little dance up the Yellow Brick Road.”

Male:

“Yeah, I remember that.”

Judy Garland:

“I was supposed to be with them. You know? They'd shut me out. They'd close in and the three of them and I would be in back with them dancing. And I wasn't good enough to say, wait a minute. And so, the director, Victor Fleming was a darling, man. He was always up on a boom, would say, hold it you three dirty hands. Let that little girl in there.”

Hannah Leach:

In fact, the only person who she considered a true ally on the cast was Margaret Hamilton who played the Wicked Witch of the West. And Ms. Gulch.

I found out that she was born in Cleveland. She went to Hathaway Brown School, which is maybe 10 minutes from where I live, was an angel. And she's really funny in interviews when she's talking about getting cast as the witch, when she's talking about getting burnt with all the shitty special effects. She's super funny.

Margaret Hamilton:

“He said, they're sort of interested in you for a part in the Wizard of Oz. And I said, oh gosh. Think of that. I said, I love that story from the time I was four-years-old. What is it? And he said, well, the witch. And I said, the witch? And he said, then he said the final thing. He said, yes. What else?”

Hannah Leach:

And to go back to the Tin Man thing, if you know anything about this movie, you will know the fun fact, which is-

Audrey Leach:

The makeup.

Hannah Leach:

Yes. Which Audrey, do you want to explain the makeup thing?

Audrey Leach:

I kind of forget, but basically the makeup was poisonous and bitches were passing out. Bitches were sick. Like literally. And also the snow was asbestos, wasn't it?

Hannah Leach:

Yes. The snow was asbestos.

Audrey Leach:

There you go.

Hannah Leach:

And to clarify with the Tin Man thing, there was an entirely different guy casted for the part, but he inhaled too much of the makeup. And I think they were using like aluminum powder or something insane. And his lungs got coated in chemicals and so they had to switch it out.

And this is the thing about this movie that I'm sure we'll talk about more too, which is they were inventing everything as they went. So, a lot of messy shit happened.

With this cast, last but not least, we have Billie Burke as Glinda. She was born in 1884, which is wild. She's a Leo, which is not surprising to me.

And just a fun fact about her. She was married to Florenz Zigfield of the Zigfield Follies. So, her grandness totally checks out with that piece of context.

Audrey Leach:

The budget was at the time 2,777,000, which seems like nothing but once it's adjusted, it's 59,725,019. And Titanic for comparison was 200 million, Pirates of the Caribbean was 140 million. So, that's not-

Hannah Leach:

Relatively modest.

Audrey Leach:

Crazy. But it's because it's not like they could spend all this money on VFX at the time. Everything is so practical and people weren't paid that much, relative to now, so-

Hannah Leach:

Because again, there weren't so many rules, it was kind of the Wild West.

Audrey Leach:

There were like no rules. So, we don't know opening weekend because again, Wild West vibes. The worldwide gross is 25,637,669. While the film was sufficiently popular at the Box Office, it failed to make a profit for MGM until its 1949. Re-release earning only 3 million on a 2.7 million budget, which made it MGM's most expensive production at that time.

Hannah Leach:

You be the critics.

Audrey Leach:

All right, so the, the critic score was 98%. That's incredible. And the critic consensus on Rotten Tomatoes was, “An absolute masterpiece whose groundbreaking visuals and deft storytelling are still every bit as resonant. The Wizard of Oz is a must see film for young and old.”

Here are some critic opinions. These are two quotes from the 1939 New York Times Review:

“By courtesy of the Wizards of Hollywood, The Wizard of Oz reached the capitol screen yesterday as a delightful piece of wonder working, which had the youngsters eyes shining and brought a quietly amused gleam to the wiser ones of the oldsters.

Not since Disney’s Snow White has anything quite so fantastic succeeded half so well. Judy Garland's Dorothy is a pert and fresh-faced miss with the wonder lit eyes of a believer in fairy tales. But the bomb fantasy is at its best when the scarecrow, the wood man and the lion are on the move.”

Hannah Leach:

Hateful.

Audrey Leach:

Okay. And then from the 96, Roger Ebert review. That's weird. Why is there a 90-

Hannah Leach:

I don't know why it exists. I have no idea.

Audrey Leach:

“A brassy young child star, a young Ethel Merman say, would have been fatal to the material because she would've approached it with too much bravado. Garland's whole persona projected a tremulous uncertainty, a wistfulness, when she hoped that troubles would melt like lemon drops, you believed that she had troubles.

The Wizard of Oz has a wonderful surface of comedy and music, special effects and excitement. But we still watch it six decades later because its underlying story penetrates straight to the deepest insecurities of childhood, stirs them and then reassures them.

As adults, we love it because it reminds us of a journey we have taken. That is why any adult in control of a child is sooner or later going to suggest a viewing of the Wizard of Oz.”

Hannah Leach:

Okay, so now audience opinions. We had 89% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and an average of four stars on Letterboxd. Audience opinions, five stars, “Absolute masterpiece. Way funnier than I remember. Way cooler from a production standpoint and way more beautiful. It's the Wizard of fucking Oz. What could I possibly say about this? Shit’s great.”

Five stars, “It's a timeless classic.”

4.5 stars. Okay, this is like the most Letterboxd thing I could possibly put here, but it feels relevant:

“My gal pals and I were absolutely hooting and hollering whenever the hot Scarecrow came on screen to do a silly dance and fall down. We decided Scarecrow was a lanky sensitive DIY boy who stands in front of you at your roommate's friend's house show. And at first you're annoyed but then he notices he's blocking your view and he apologizes so much, maybe even too much.

And after the show you joke around with him and laugh when he trips over his own dirty converse laces and suddenly it's 2:00 AM and you're heading home and you think you're going to miss him, most of all.”

Okay. And then one star, “The Wizard of Oz may be the staple of American pop culture and is no doubt legendary for its influence and cultural impact. But it is also a film that belongs to its era for it looks awfully dated today.”

Audrey Leach:

Shut up.

Hannah Leach:

Okay. Cultural context. I think we touched on everything. Obviously, the shadow of Snow White was really significant and MGM wanted to live up to that hype and that impact.

There were extremely brutal working conditions for everyone involved. I'm sure directors had tons of power, but everyone else was kind of just like at their mercy.

And then of course this is the era of Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, the studio system. And a lot of these actors were kind of still theater actors at their core transitioning into film. Like film actors weren't as common of a thing as they are now.

I don't remember when we first watched this movie. I have a lot of childhood memories about it. What do you think?

Audrey Leach:

Yeah, it's another one of those pre-memory things. I don't remember a time when I didn't know this movie. This is just coming to me now. We actually did have a DVD of it in the van movies.

Hannah Leach:

We did?

Audrey Leach:

Yes, it was a sleeper.

Hannah Leach:

Oh, okay.

Audrey Leach:

It was a sleeper.

Hannah Leach:

Okay, okay.

Audrey Leach:

But I just remembered what the case looked like. It was one of those really flat ones and it was kind of papery. But we had it on VHS too, so that was the original.

Hannah Leach:

Oh wait, this makes sense because how else would we have watched the behind the scenes feature so many times?

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. But we watched the behind the scenes with Angela Lansbury many times.

Hannah Leach:

Yes.

Audrey Leach:

But they were a little bit more Ken Burns documentary style and a little less fun early 2000 style. So, I think, it was a little bit less fun of a watch for us at the time.

Hannah Leach:

It was very educational though.

Audrey Leach:

Yes, very educational. We both have been characters from the Wizard of Oz for Halloween more than once. I've been Dorothy probably three times and I've been the Wicked Witch or a witch. Which is basically her except I don't do green. I feel like maybe without the green you're not really committed, you're just a witch. But either way-

Hannah Leach:

I think that's true.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. The intention was there.

Hannah Leach:

The intentionality was there. I obviously was Glinda several times. That dress, it's too good. I remember in preschool I dressed up as Glinda and then my favorite teacher also dressed up as Glinda, coincidentally.

We also had a Dorothy Barbie and her feet lit up. We had a Glinda Barbie, we had a Wizard of Oz Polly Pocket set.

Audrey Leach:

Polly Pocket. Yeah, I remember that really well because there was so many cool features to it. Glinda's bubble was in there and you could put her in the middle of it and then there was a part of the pink plastic that swirled around so you could make it look like the bubble was closed or open. It was cool.

Hannah Leach:

It was so good. It was so good. It's funny because I had a Polly Pocket of Snow White too. So, something about 1930s and Polly Pockets.

Also, I have to say, the merchandising empire of the Wizard of Oz lives on, seeing as I have my Dolls Kill Wizard of Oz crop top on currently, and I love it. This is like my favorite shirt.

Audrey Leach:

I just remembered another thing we had, we had that book where you could press the different faces and it would play the songs. Remember we had that popup book of the Frank L. Baum story. And it was so cool to us. It was so nice that it was upstairs. That wasn't a toy.

Hannah Leach:

It was like a coffee table, book situation.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. But I would look at it all the time. It was really fun.

Hannah Leach:

It was sweet. When I was watching it this time I felt like I had the whole thing memorized. The sounds of it and everything.

Audrey Leach:

Oh yeah. Another thing I wanted to say is that I edited a children's theatrical production of The Wizard of Oz in I think 2021 or last year. I think it was 2021. But I literally ripped the movie and used the movie to supplement what I was doing because we recorded it all on green screen and it was just such an undertaking because it was COVID protocol. So, none of the kids were ever in the room together. But I edited an entire production of The Wizard Oz.

Hannah Leach:

That was one of those classic, only during COVID, would this shit happen.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah.

Hannah Leach:

It's so goofy. But it is really impressive. I remember thinking that too.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. I've edited the movie, quite literally.

Hannah Leach:

Yes you did. I watched this movie on the Spectrum app. Did you?

Audrey Leach:

It's on HBO.

Hannah Leach:

Oh really?

Audrey Leach:

Yeah.

Hannah Leach:

Well, I watched it on the Spectrum app and I thought you did too because it was like, “Watch again?” And I was like, “I can watch this.”

[Music Playing]

Audrey Leach:

No. It's on HBO.

Hannah Leach:

It's very accessible. Shout out to that. I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend watching this movie and then returning to talk about it with us.

Welcome back everyone. It's time to follow the Yellow Brick Road into this discourse about the Wizard of Oz. Audrey, take us to church. You're up.

Audrey Leach:

After Judy opened her mouth and sang “Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high,” I was crying, immediately I was crying. It was like, “Okay, it's curtains.” I was not expecting that. I thought The Sound of Music crying tally — ultimately The Sound of Music crying tally did beat the Wizard of Oz crying tally. But-

Hannah Leach:

Yes.

Audrey Leach:

Not by that much. It is just like the herstory of it all is just oozing from every frame of this movie to see so much being done practically. And the only reason it is being done practically is because they had no other choice. The technology did not exist yet.

But to put that level of effort into the craftsmanship of the frame and to know what it's going to look like when you're shooting it, to have the entire vision within frame is something that is so rare now, though I just miss that. I miss the craftspeople and the production designers having a complete vision and knowing exactly what they're going to get.

A lot of times the VFX workers are outsourced and they're in other countries and they have no connection to this production and they will never talk to the director themselves. And it's just so outsourced to the point where it becomes really inauthentic and it feels disjointed. And I think that, yeah that was just refreshing to see.

Hannah Leach:

Just seeing Judy Garland do her thing is just so stirring to me. She's so precious in this movie. And also when she's locked in that tower and she's like, “I'm frightened” that made me cry. That whole part, just like it's so believable. She genuinely seems so scared.

And is just like, even the parts where it's very like, “Oh you can go on this walk with me, I can help you. Why not?” She just sells it so much and she fills my heart with happiness, so profoundly. I just love her so much.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. Another thing that we didn't mention in the first half is that the whole thing when it goes from sepia to color, where they literally just had a sepia set and a sepia toned stand in, do the opening of the door part and then Judy comes in, in the color set. And I think a lot of people don't know about that or they just assume that it was done in post.

But they did that practically too because they didn't have … if you can do it practically now it's the opposite. But what it used to be is if it can be done practically, we would like to do it practically. Let's save the money and do it that way. And now it's become the opposite, which is fucked, but it has.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. Even when I was a little kid, I would like anticipate that part so much just because the reveal was so fun.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. As far as the music goes, I do feel like the Wizard of Oz is underrated in terms of everyone knows all of these songs. And kind of just people don't recognize The Wizard of Oz as a musical in the way that they recognize The Sound of Music or West Side Story or other huge movies as musicals.

Hannah Leach:

I kind of feel like the reason why the music other than Over The Rainbow, isn't that well remembered is because when people think of the Wizard of Oz, they think of the visuals and Judy. You know?

Audrey Leach:

Yeah.

Hannah Leach:

And I'm melting. If I Only Had A Brain is so good, the lyrics, “I would while away the hours, conferring with the flowers, consulting with the rain.”

Audrey Leach:

Kind of poetic.

Hannah Leach:

They're so good. All of the lyrics are so clever. And same thing with the Tin Man song and okay-

Audrey Leach:

King of the Forest, maybe not.

Hannah Leach:

King of the Forest, I feel like actually is good. But the actor is-

Audrey Leach:

The performance.

Hannah Leach:

Doing too much.

Audrey Leach:

He just made a choice. And I can appreciate the choice. I appreciate a bold choice, but you can tell that he had made that bold vocal choice in the booth. And then when he's doing it on set in playback, there's a bit of a incongruence between the choice he made when he was recording and then what he had to do in real life.

I think that maybe is why it feels weird. There's just something not completely cohesive about the vocal and the performance.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. It's also genuinely hard to understand what he's saying by the end of that song.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. But the part of it that I appreciated more than I ever have is that part where they're like, “What about an elephant?” And he's like, “I wrap it in …

Just the little-

Hannah Leach:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Audrey Leach:

Speaking part. I thought that was fun.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. Okay, I actually feel like that part through the entire wizard part is really funny. I looked up the screenplay and copy and pasted some of my favorite lines from the wizard, when he's giving them awards and stuff because they're so funny. Like he gives the Scarecrow a doctorate of thinkology, first of all.

Second of all, when he gives the lion his medal, he says, “Therefore for meritorious conduct, extraordinary valor, conspicuous bravery against wicked witches, I award you the triple cross.”

And then when he's getting in the hot air balloon, he says, “I'm off to confer, converse and otherwise hobnob with my brother wizards.” It's just really funny.

And also when he's describing the balloon incident and he says, “I was performing spectacular feats of stratospheric skill never before attempted by civilized men.” There is such a funny and interesting commentary that definitely was included in the original story about how people with power are just super randomly chosen.

It's all just dumb luck to get any of it. And that everyone is faking it. The wizard is faking it and at the same time the Tin Man and the Lion and the Scarecrow and Dorothy have everything they need-

Audrey Leach:

Within-

Hannah Leach:

Within themselves. But they feel like they're fakers but they're not.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. And it demonstrates the difference between those who know they don't possess something but pretend like they do. And those who know they don't possess something and let it defeat them.

The message of that is a little bit confusing because ultimately, they get the thing that they were wanting or wishing for. It's like the Scarecrow, the Lion and the Tin Man get that thing physically from the wizard, but from Dorothy-

Hannah Leach:

Yes.

Audrey Leach:

It's within. But the rest of them get the thing.

Hannah Leach:

Okay. What struck me this time around is that when I was a kid I was like, “Oh, they got the heart and they got the medal and they got the diploma. They got their things.” But what was so obvious to me this time is that-

Audrey Leach:

It's just a symbol of the thing.

Hannah Leach:

They already had all of those things. Yeah. And it's like, oh now that I have the piece of paper, I can say that I'm smart or now that I have this medal, because someone is acknowledging it, it's real.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. And it does make them feel better about it, it makes them feel better in their insecurity. Like it or not, it did, they did feel better about it.

Hannah Leach:

I'm wondering if there was ever a version of it where at the end, Glinda could have been like, when she's talking to Dorothy and she's like, “You had it in you all along.” She could have turned to them and been like, “You also have what you needed, all along.”

Audrey Leach:

The terseness of the ending is hilarious. She's just like, “Sorry bitch, you had it in you all along.” And then, she's like, “No, she had had to learn it herself.” “Okay, bye.”

Hannah Leach:

Okay, I really don't want to nitpick this movie for obvious reasons, but-

Audrey Leach:

It’s just funny. I thought it was funny how terse it was.

Hannah Leach:

She had to learn to watch for herself. Also, another Glinda moment that I really loved was in the beginning where Dorothy's like, “I thought witches were ugly.” And she was like, “No silly, only bad witches are ugly.” That just made me laugh this time around.

Audrey Leach:

And I was thinking about too in this watch is, okay, so if the Wicked Witch of the West is sisters with the Wicked Witch of the East, and that the Wicked Witch of the East is also evil, does that mean that there's a Wicked Witch of the South and that she's also good and she's sisters with the North?

Hannah Leach:

It would be the Good Witch of the South.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah.

Audrey Leach:

Can she not be rehabilitated, you just murdered her sister in cold blood.

Hannah Leach:

She didn’t mean to murder the sister. It was a genuine accident.

Audrey Leach:

Well, if there was ever a reason to be evil.

Hannah Leach:

That would be a good one.

Audrey Leach:

That's a good reason.

Hannah Leach:

Isn't that in Wicked? Isn't that part of it?

Audrey Leach:

She uses the grief in her life as a reason to be wicked.

Hannah Leach:

Which this is not a wicked podcast, but it has always annoyed me that she sings no good deed and then is like, never mind.

Audrey Leach:

Mentally I didn't understand it because I didn't understand the meaning of the figure of speech, no good deed goes unpunished. And I kind of still don't. I know what it means, but it doesn't click in my brain. Like what? Are they just saying, I'm a good person, but bad things still happen? Or what are they saying?

Hannah Leach:

I think it's kind of like you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

Audrey Leach:

But I’m just like-

Hannah Leach:

Kind of a similar sentiment.

Audrey Leach:

I'm like, that's such a negative figure of speech. Just because you got punished that doesn't correlate to a good deed. Just because a bad thing happened, that doesn't mean that it was in response to your good deed or something. Like what? Somebody please explain that song to me.

Hannah Leach:

Someone slide into the DMs. No, I can explain the song, but the phrase, I always felt like that phrase didn't actually make that much sense with what the song was about.

Okay, I know that this is not a new take, but you meet the Scarecrow and you're like, “He's kind of gay,” and then you meet the Tin Man and you're like, “Oh, he's extremely gay.” And then you meet the lion and he literally says, “I was born to be a sissy and I'm just a dandy lion.”

Audrey Leach:

I'm going to be honest, I never thought that.

Hannah Leach:

I never thought that until this time.

Audrey Leach:

Oh, okay. Yeah. I just did not view them as humans or anything. I was just like, “These are these creepy ass costume people.”

Hannah Leach:

They all just seem so gay. And I think that's really funny and I love it. And it does speak to, as Audrey was saying in the beginning, the whole friend of Dorothy turn of phrase. Which is a old timey way of saying that someone's gay, see 1995s Clueless.

Which also leads me to this, which is I think of them as like gays and their girl. And when they go and save her from the tower, all I could think to myself is, I wish that gays would go that hard for their girls, but they don't. I feel like they don’t.

Audrey Leach:

You don't think your friends would save you from something.

Hannah Leach:

It's more like this. I can rely on my gays for their opinions on things. But not for acts of service in any way. That is the difference. I'm just the mother and they just disrespect their mother constantly.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah.

Hannah Leach:

That’s just it. But I have lesbians, so at least there's that. I got to give a shout out to Margaret Hamilton as the Witch. Every single moment she's on screen, she is giving 110%. She's so unselfconscious in her performance and it is amazing to witness.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. I think we take performances like that for granted, especially in those early days because you can't blame them. But women are so concerned with being pretty and having a glamorous role and not wanting to be ugly. Not wanting to especially be uglier, to be made uglier.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah.

Audrey Leach:

So, I have huge respect towards any actress who knew about all that and said, “Fuck it, I'm doing it.” And to commit to that and go all the way, even in the child production of The Wizard of Oz, that I edited and being around … when kids are casted as villains, a lot of times the girls don't want to lean into it. They don't-

Hannah Leach:

Oh.

Audrey Leach:

They don't want to be uglier, “uglier.” When you are watching that, you wish that they would so badly because ultimately, it hurts the show as a whole. But it's like, I get it. I get why you don't want to, but I wish you would because there's so much power in that.

Hannah Leach:

In my high school experience, going from being grandma to being glamorous person in casting, like-

Audrey Leach:

No, it's rare. It's rare that a girl in high school can really embrace it at the time.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. One thing with the Margaret Hamilton thing that's interesting on top of it all is that I think it's very notable that she and Judy Garland got along so well because they were both probably treated as the ugly ones on set, which again, continues to be insane.

Audrey Leach:

Fucking crazy.

Hannah Leach:

But they were calling Judy Garland a hunchback and the little piggy with pigtails and stuff like that. They were so mean to her, and why?

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. It's crazy the women that had this, they had a whole complex about thinking they're ugly. Like even Barbara, because people would tell them that. And what the fuck? Because Barbara's so fucking beautiful. It's insane.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah.

Audrey Leach:

She is ethereal to me.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. She is really, really beautiful. I agree.

One part of the movie that made me feel a little weird was at the end when she was like, “I'm never leaving here again. And if I can't find what I'm looking for in my own backyard, then I never really lost it in the first place.”

Audrey Leach:

I wrote that too. That's something that I wrote.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. What do you think about that?

Audrey Leach:

If we want to use home as a metaphor for the self, I think it works. It works fully. You can go searching and searching and searching for validation or love or whatever it is that you're missing. And if you ultimately can't recognize that or find it in yourself, then you're not going to feel that you have it.

So, I think if you think of Kansas as the self and Oz as the world, then it works. But if you're going to think of it as, no, literally if I ever leave home — if you're ever not happy staying in your own backyard, then fuck you and you're not grateful and you should stay home.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah.

Audrey Leach:

That’s not the takeaway I would hope. But in terms of a child's mind, they might see it that way. And I actually wrote that. I was like, “I wonder if anybody ever saw this movie and decided to never move because of this.”

Hannah Leach:

I think when you think about it for kids, a part of it might be, I'm never going to try to be someone other than myself ever again. Again, what you're saying with home as a metaphor for self, I also think that a way better execution of home as an idea of coming back to yourself is home from the Wiz.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah.

Hannah Leach:

That is a way clearer.

Audrey Leach:

They corrected. Yeah. They corrected it with that song. It makes more sense. They almost make it seem like she regrets the journey. And I think that's the problem too, is like, she just met three incredible friends along the way, and she-

Hannah Leach:

Three incredible queer figures.

Audrey Leach:

And she grew from it. And they almost make it seem like she regrets that. But I think that maybe that's why it feels also off-putting.

Hannah Leach:

When she has to say goodbye to her friends and then she's in the house and it's like, “Oh, they were here all along.” It's the same thing. It's the same oh, this was here all along, I just didn't see it.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah.

Hannah Leach:

Like theme that that pulls through the whole thing.

Audrey Leach:

And it is a really good lesson in part to say, look at your surroundings and actually see them, actually appreciate the people in your life or your home or whatever it is, that's not a bad lesson.

But as long as it doesn't get to the point of become a hermit or never move, don't change because what are you doing?

Hannah Leach:

Yeah.

Audrey Leach:

It can be construed in different ways.

Hannah Leach:

Yes, I definitely agree. All the grasping for something that you think you need, like your brains or your heart or your courage, and then you actually have it all along. It ties in with everything and it's about aspiring and then you get to where you want to be and then who's there? The wizard, who's just a guy who's bullshitting.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. And you realize, oh, it's actually all bullshit. That is super true in life. When you graduate college and you get the degree and you're like, well I don't really feel much smarter. Especially us, because we went to Liberal Arts college, so it's different. But obviously, if we were doctors we would know a lot more than we did before, but-

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. I remember when I finished college, I was like, “Well, I feel the same if not slightly worse.”

Audrey Leach:

And I'm in the hole.

Hannah Leach:

But I have the piece of paper, so now it's my turn to pretend, you know?

Audrey Leach:

Yeah. Now it's my turn to really pretend forever.

Hannah Leach:

Yep.

Audrey Leach:

Especially in creative endeavors, you're never going to feel like you're done. And there's no finality to a life in the arts, in the way that there is to becoming a doctor or becoming something that there's a literal date and time where you become that thing and you are that thing.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. A doctor's a good example.

Audrey Leach:

Yeah.

Hannah Leach:

Or a licensed cosmetologist. Something where it's like, here is your title and your qualification.

Audrey Leach:

And you can do it.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah. And you can do it.

Audrey Leach:

To its full extent and you will never have to question, am I actually doing it? Is it worthwhile? Obviously, duh.

Hannah Leach:

I think it's my favorite movie.

Audrey Leach:

Whoa. It beats Aquamarine?

Hannah Leach:

Well, last night as I was watching it, I was like, “Okay, this and Aquamarine.” I literally thought that to myself.

Audrey Leach:

I could see it-

Hannah Leach:

The jury’s out on that one.

Audrey Leach:

I could see it beating Aquamarine in different categories. If there was a rubric, it's like Aquamarine would beat the Wizard of Oz in the modern and applicable to life category. And the Wizard of Oz would win in aesthetic level of iconicness.

Hannah Leach:

Yeah.

Audrey Leach:

Film history, it's got more merit.

Hannah Leach:

Visuals. Yeah. The Wizard of Oz is The Wizard of Oz for a reason. And if you haven't seen it, what's going on?

Audrey Leach:

Literally, what are you doing?

Hannah Leach:

I don't think anyone hasn't seen it though. Not on this podcast.

Audrey Leach:

I guess we'll take the poll.

Hannah Leach:

Not in our Discord. I feel like people have seen it, but I'm really excited to hear about other people's experiences with this movie because everyone's been Dorothy for Halloween at some point. Everyone had their little phase.

Oh, we also got to include us doing the Lullaby League, obviously.

The Wizard of Oz was and is a huge part of our understanding of movies and things that make us happy. And it's not overrated. It is as good as people say. And I love it.

Audrey Leach:

I've never even heard someone try to make that argument.

Hannah Leach:

It's beautiful and perfect and I cannot recommend it enough.

Audrey Leach:

Well, on that note, 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 can follow me, Audrey at Audrey Anna Leach on everything.

[Music Playing]

Hannah Leach:

On our YouTube channel with over 1000 subscribers. Thank you very much.

Audrey Leach:

Yes. See how I didn't mention that? I was like, yeah.

Hannah Leach:

We don't need to beg anymore. And you can follow me, Hannah at Hannah Rae Leach on Instagram and @lanavontrapp on Twitter. And of course, you can join our Discord server at the link in the episode description or on evergreenpodcasts.com.

Audrey Leach:

You can check out our merch at toopinkproductions.com/shop and our Casetify code, 15SLEEPOVER.

Hannah Leach:

And if you like the show, leave us a review, send it to a friend.

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. Bye.

Hannah Leach:

Bye.

Audrey Leach:

Somewhere.

Hannah Leach:

I was about to do that.

Audrey Leach:

I know you were, that's why I did.

Hannah Leach:

That is so disrespectful.

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