Category: Richard Pryor

THE WIZ

By Marc S. Sanders

It always surprised me that Sidney Lumet is the credited director of The Wiz, the black cultured musical interpretation of L Frank Baum’s celebrated fantasy The Wizard Of Oz.  Now that I’ve seen it with adult eyes and a tremendous appreciation for the director, it’s template makes sense knowing that I’m looking through the lens of Lumet.  Dorothy might arrive in the land of Oz, but Oz sure looks like a journey through the five boroughs of New York City, and of course Sidney Lumet is one of the all-time great storytellers of what happens within one of the greatest cities in the world.

With electrifying music penned by Quincy Jones and a screenplay by Joel Schumacher, The Wiz follows the step-by-step moments of the beloved tale.  However, everything looks like a new invention. 

Diana Ross was a sensation at the time this film was in the making and she campaigned so hard for the role of Dorothy that the script modified the age of the character to 24, thus allowing a thirty-something to convincingly play the role of an unsure kindergarten teacher with an opportunity to move on to high school academics.  On a snowy Thanksgiving night, our heroine is cast off in a twisting blizzard, landing in the Munchkinland of Oz.  Toto, a gray schnauzer, has accompanied her.  These munchkins are graffiti figures who come alive out of the concrete walls of a Harlem basketball court and neighborhood park.  It’s a brilliant invention of set design that deviates from the familiar.  The Wiz opts to maintain an urban theme.

Michael Jackson is the Scarecrow, though made of paper garbage, not straw.  A peanut butter cup wrapper enhances his nose.  He’s heckled by street guys garbed in crow likenesses when Dorothy comes upon him.  Lumet maintained a 70’s vibe to this film to fall in line with Jones’ music.  All of this design works, including the cartoon like cabs that ritually appear and abandon the characters as they embark on the Yellow Brick Road with the Chrysler Building rising in the distance.

The Tin Man is portrayed by Nipsey Russell.  He’s discovered in an amusement park junkyard where he’s crafted out of rickety old junk.  Terrific makeup here.  Ted Ross breaks out of the lion shelled statue famously erected outside of the New York Public Library.  Within the land of this Oz, a New York flavor answers for all of Baum’s familiar creations. 

Not everything works so well in The Wiz.  I’m impressed among these great talents of black entertainment that Lena Horne is cast as the Good Witch Of The South, but her one true moment at the end of the film is wasted with baby angels floating in the background of a very false looking starry backdrop.  Lena Horne is shown for the briefest of moments as Dorothy crash lands in Oz but then does not come back until the end of the film.  She sings a message to Dororthy about believing in herself.  It’s an awful moment and drains a lot of the energy from the film. Cheesy and awkward.

The course of the movie is invested so well by hundreds of costumed extras along with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.  Nipsey Russell keeps up just fine. Ted Ross could have done more as he transferred from the live stage to this film.  His portrayal is not a standout from what Burt Lahr did with the role of the Cowardly Lion.  Diana Ross with Jackson are the leaders with nonstop energy, though.  Michael Jackson’s performance is clumsy but falls beautifully in line with all of the music.  His physical prowess in dance is part of what made him a star.  Diana Ross does not stop.  She never looks out of breath, and she puts such gusto into leading this company of musical performers.  It’s such a joy to watch both of them strut to Ease On Down The Road and Everybody Rejoice/Brand New Day.  These are two of the best and most memorable songs in the picture because of what Diana Ross does on screen with the numbers.  I especially love Brand New Day.  I’m hearing it now in my head as I write and fondly recall the wide shots that Lumet devotes to the enormous feats of choreography.  May be the best scene in the film.

Lest I forget Mabel King, as Evillene – this story’s Wicked Witch.  She is not introduced until after the great Wiz orders the four travelers to kill her.  When she does arrive, in her home based “Sweat Shop” it’s an amazing moment.  Mabel King is best known as Raj and Dee’s strict mother on the TV show What’s Happening!!!  Growing up, I’ve always been a fan and Mabel King is a sensational performer.  Her vocals give off such power and demand during her song Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.  Evillene marches down the stage in her puffed-up costume wear of glittered red with a large updo to command her little Winkees.  She certainly hijacks the picture from Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.  This is a performance that is Oscar worthy.  An absolute scene stealer.

As for The Wiz himself, it is Richard Pryor.  He’s cute in what was supposedly his first film where he donned his familiar mustache.  He’s silly but not so much fun.  Sometimes he’s just garbling like he forgot his lines and does his Richard Pryor schtick that he’d later rely on in The Toy and Superman III.  What impresses me is the costume choice for the character.  He’s eventually revealed to be the phony Wiz who operated the giant intimidating head, and he’s dressed like a literal homeless person from the streets of Harlem. 

Sidney Lumet worked with Jones and Schumacher to help us envision a modern New York as a world of urban, but colorful, fantasy.  The Yellow Brick Road goes down into the subway tunnels for some threatening moments of suspense as well as through an old amusement park, maybe located in Coney Island.  The Emerald City appears on the other side of the Verrazano Bridge, and it is Manhattan lit up in green.  The centre of the city is Lincoln Center where the inhabitants dance in red, yellow and green depending on the traffic light raised high above the famous circular fountains.  I believe the mysterious Wiz is located at the top of one of the Twin Towers.  Lumet used what he knew and applied a colorful brush of fantasy over the entire Metropolitan area.  I say it is brilliant.  Familiar like it should be, but still a fresh idea as Dorothy leaves her home of Harlem for the more extravagant of locales where she seeks out the famous Wiz hoping for a way home.

A Broadway and touring stage company of The Wiz is performing currently and I hope not too much of what is featured in this film has been washed over. 

The Wiz is dated to a disco era but most of the songbook still works with high energy and passion.  A strong appreciation remains, and maybe that’s because L Frank Baum’s original story is so timeless.  This cast along with Quincy Jones and Sidney Lumet, plus creative inventions in makeup from Stan Winston still hold up.  You’ll tap your foot if you turn this soundtrack on your radio or you opt to take in the visuals of this kaleidoscope of color and sound on your flat screen.

BLUE COLLAR (1978)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Paul Schrader
CAST: Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto, Ed Begley Jr.
MY RATING: 6/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 96% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Three financially strapped automotive factory workers rob their own labor union, but when they get more than what they bargained for, their friendship and loyalty are tested.


There may come a day when I revisit Blue Collar and revise my current opinion.  It’s not impossible.  I’ll be a different person five or ten years from now.  I may have a different job with different bosses and co-workers, or I may be living in a different neighborhood in a different house.  All sorts of things could change that will affect my perception differently.  Until that happens, though, this is what I think:

Blue Collar, the directorial debut of eminent screenwriter Paul Schrader, author of Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and American Gigolo (1980), is a film with a good story to tell.  Not just good – important.  This is an important story about loyalty, friendship, and duty to your family.  Richard Pryor turns in a great performance, flexing his dramatic muscles as he seldom did, unfortunately.  Schrader’s screenplay, co-written with his brother, Leonard, and using source material from Sydney A. Glass, pulls no punches regarding corruption within the powerful auto workers union.  Character motivations are crystal clear from the opening scene to the final, cynical freeze frame.

But…but…I wish this story were contained in a film that made me care about these characters while the movie itself was playing.  Intellectually, I see the value of the story.  But as a moviegoer, I was less than moved.  Schrader’s direction is competent, but the film moves from beat to beat with the energy of a sloth.

Zeke (Richard Pryor), Jerry (Harvey Keitel), and Smokey (Yaphet Kotto) are three working-class friends on the line at an automotive plant in Detroit.  Their closeness is established in a bar scene that gave me hope for the rest of the film.  It plays almost like an Altman film, with some overlapping dialogue, simple but clear direction, and conversations that give us an instant picture of who these three disparate characters are.

It’s unclear what Smokey’s financial situation is until later in the film, but Zeke has back-taxes to pay because he has declared too many dependents for the last three years, and Jerry has a teenage daughter who is so desperate for expensive braces that she tries making some herself, with exactly the kind of results you’d expect.  Their union, which is supposed to help them, is a joke as far as they’re concerned; they can’t even fix Zeke’s broken locker door.  So, after Zeke makes some observations at the union’s local office, he and his pals hatch a plan to rob the office vault.

What they find there drives the rest of the plot, so I’ll tread lightly from here on out.  But the vault robbery is a good example of where the movie is lacking for me.  The plan is simple and relatively risk-free, but I was hoping for at least SOME suspense during the robbery.  A moment occurs when they’re about to be discovered, so they don their masks…but the masks that Zeke bought aren’t masks.  They are, in no particular order, plastic vampire fangs and a funny hat, a pair of sunglasses covered by an American flag design, and a pair of googly-eye glasses – you know, the ones where the eyeballs are attached to the glasses by long springs?  This crucial moment was ruined by the utter ridiculousness of their “costumes”; it felt like a transplant from some other Richard Pryor comedy about incompetent criminals.

After that, the screenplay feeds us important chunks of information, but there is no dynamic energy to the editing or the direction or something.  It just felt…boring.  Which is a shame because, again, there is a good story here.  The union local blatantly lies about the contents of the vault after the robbery.  An FBI agent tries to get Zeke, Jerry, or Smokey to spill what they know about union corruption, but they are too loyal to turn stool pigeon.  Zeke has to make some hard choices in one of the movie’s better scenes towards the end.  Smokey displays strength when threatened by union thugs, but he pays for it later.  And Jerry just wants to do the right thing without anyone getting hurt.

But there was just zero energy to the narrative.  I never felt carried along by the tide of the story.  And without that forward momentum, every scene felt like it was just marking time before the next.  To the degree that I understood the plight of these blue-collar workers, the movie just didn’t make me care enough to feel anything about it.  I did feel empathy for Zeke, mostly due to Pryor’s powerful, angry performance, but even that empathy was turned on its ear by the time we got to the closing credits.

There is, I guess, something to be said about how the screenplay is constructed so that, at any given point, you could say that any of the three main characters are the true lead of the film.  The story is truly balanced, and I give it credit where it’s due.  I just wish the storytelling was more dynamic.  Like I said, the day may come when my opinion of this movie will change.

Today is not that day.

…tomorrow’s not looking good, either.