Lost in Adaptation: The Wizard of Oz

Huh... you know it never occurred to me to check how well it did on initial release because of how big it got later. I'll have to be sure to do that from now on.

Dominic Noble

Ahh the life of a english teacher... doomed to forever see the grammatical errors, poor sentence structuring and spelling mistakes that the rest of us remain blissfully unaware of. I'm moved once again by your kind feedback. That my videos manage to elicit such enthusiasm from someone means a great deal to me ^_^ Your PHD sounds like a interesting subject, albeit it one I would be hopelessly bad at if it involves any sort of essay writing (I went for a degree that involved as mush practical based learning as possible to avoid this). Whereabouts are you studying?

Dominic Noble

I adore your paraphrases, artistically indecent though they may be. I adore your prose in summarizing the main plot! (Although the English teacher in me was twitching by the end of that run-on sentence). And I ADORE being able to support your awesome stuff. I love getting in "on the ground floor" of your show, too, as it were--it feels amazing to watch you and your style and sophistication grow and develop. You put so much passion into these, and so much hard work. I really hope you reach a point where you can start transitioning over to full-time reviewer. :) And once again, you cheer me up on kind of a down day. The internet is a wonderful place, offering wonderful opportunities for wonderful people to do wonderful things, and now my inner English teacher is bashing me over the head for repetition. *sigh* Kind of a random aside, but I like the way that you retell (and, as stated, paraphrase!) things in your own way--it's one of the ways we make stories ours, I think, one of the ways we internalize them. I'm a PhD student studying Medieval British Literature, and I focus on the Middle English romances--basically the PopLit of the middle ages, full of dragons and adventures and quests and magic and EPICNESS. One of the best parts of my job is re-telling (and paraphrasing!) these centuries-old stories to my non-academic friends and family--like you, sharing the undiscovered joys of stories gone too long un-shared.

Amy Reynolds

Re: the red shoes--yes, I had heard that, too. I also heard (sources may be unreliable) that they were originally silver as part of some turn-of-the-century political statement by the author, who supported switching from the gold standard to the silver standard (thus silver shoes "walking all over" yellow *cough*gold*cough* bricks).

Amy Reynolds

This was perfect! I'm really glad you set the record straight with the book version of the Lion (who was more likable in my opinion and much less annoying). As for why the shoes were changed to red slippers I think it might have been to show off more color as Technicolor was still new at that point so instead of having grey-ish, silver shoes they wanted something to be more vibrant and eye-catching for audiences. I could be wrong though so don't quote me on that.

Excellent review Dom. Fascinating to learn just how much weirdness was left out of the film version. In regards to the lack of film sequels it's well worth remembering that The Wizard Of Oz wasn't particularly successful on its initial release in 1939 by MGM. Not only that but The Bluebird (released in 1940) by 20th Century Fox as a rival to Oz was a flop despite starring Shirley Temple. My theory is that the studios decided big budget fantasy movies were too risky despite Fantasia being a success.

Kim Huett