The Restoration of The Wiz and Why We Should Still Watch Movies at the Theater
Nearly 50 years since The Wiz premiered on Broadway and shortly after that in movie theaters, you might find yourself occasionally easing down the sidewalk like Diana Ross and Michael Jackson eased on down that yellow brick road or if you’re like me you can’t take the subway without flashing back to the giant, monster trashcans. From school plays to hugely successful Broadway productions, The Wiz has transcended generations because, at some point during a Black person’s childhood, someone sat them down in front of a TV screen to become so entranced in the dazzling, psychedelic land of Oz that they forgot it wasn’t the original version of the movie.
Yet while the Broadway musical is currently on a national tour, there was barely a rumble about the 4K restoration of the cult classic being released in theaters. Most classic film restorations are shown at art house cinemas for eager cinephiles who need to experience richer color palettes, deeper textures, and enhanced soundtracks of remastered films. So, unless you have your ears to the theater streets, you might miss it. However, with the recent success surrounding the Broadway revival, its stars, and soundtrack – I would’ve expected that the restoration would’ve just added to the spectacle, especially since it was available to watch at major theater chains.
Still from The Wiz, Courtesy of The Criterion Collection
Anyhow, I bought a ticket for a movie that I’ve seen fifty-leven times and sat down with my popcorn and too-sweet icee in a dark auditorium with about 10 other fans. Michael Jackson’s beautiful brown skin and peanut butter cup nose took over the large screen. I saw more clearly the details in the jazzy fashions the dancers of Emerald City strutted in as they switched from green to red to gold. If the picture had been any more vivid, I would’ve actually smelled the funk from Evillene’s flying monkey motorcyclist goons. I tried not to sing too loud and thought to myself, everyone should experience seeing this film and really any classic film on the big screen.
Maybe it was the nostalgia of seeing Auntie Em’s holiday dinner which reminded me of my family sitting around my late grandmother’s dining room table during the holidays or maybe it’s because every time I walk into a local movie theater, I have to walk past the ghostly box office window to a ticket kiosk or a bored teenager scanning phones. But it feels like we lost something with the convenience of streaming movies anywhere at the drop of a hat or a finger push on a touch screen phone.
Still from The Wiz, Courtesy of The Criterion Collection
If the message is the medium and the medium is streaming services – what is being communicated to us about the movies that we are consuming. Initially, when streaming was introduced, it seemed like a good idea. There were so many options at your fingertips. These streamers seemed to even unlock the gates for filmmakers of color, giving space for more diverse stories. But now it seems like every original movie released on a streaming platform, regardless of the budget is a watered-down, screen saver that barely gives us a reason to look up from our phones.
Not every film needs to be an artistic masterpiece, it’s okay to be purely entertained. However, the need to feed the beast and quantify creativity has made the movie-watching experience less valuable, less connective, and less magical. Skipping the opening title credits, cutting off the movie as soon as the end credits start rolling, or ads abrasively disrupting a scene to sell you something you never wanted in the first place. And perhaps that’s the point as we’ve evolved into an attention economy – a fixed audience with eyes locked on a screen can be profitable.
But what about the art of it all? When you view artwork in an art gallery – the space is usually stripped of distractions that will take focus away from the art in front of you. This is not to say that true art can only be viewed in an art gallery, but my point is, the space or the medium in which you view it can add to or remove from the piece. Films, not just filmmakers, need theaters.
The rising costs of movie theater tickets have long been a barrier to entry for a lot of people, especially if you have a family. Growing up, I lived around the corner from a dollar movie theater. Remember those? If you didn’t have enough money to catch a movie on the opening weekend, you could wait a few weeks to catch it at the dollar theater before it finally ended up on home video. That memory reminds me of what we had and what’s possible. We can bring back movie theaters like independent bookstores.
Films can be shown in many different types of ways and in many different types of spaces. A pop-up screening of the mega-hit, Sinners, recently took place in Clarksdale, Mississippi. The city where the film is set didn’t have a movie theater, so community activist Tyler Yarborough wrote an open letter to Ryan Coogler and the Sinners cast and crew inviting them to Clarksdale. He set up a petition rallying for a public screening of the film which garnered over 5,000 signatures. Soon afterward, Warner Bros. installed a huge screen in the city’s civic auditorium and hosted multiple screenings where Coogler and members of the cast and crew attended.
Obviously, every visit to the theater won’t and doesn’t have to be a star-studded, red-carpet experience. But it should still be an experience that we all have – being suspended in time, immersed in a story, feeling all the feels like the Tin Man.
