9/30/23
Newsletter #474
The Crack of Dawn
In 1978 when I was 20 years old, I went through the movie guide in the newspaper looking for a film to see. Unable to find anything that looked even remotely interesting, I decided to see The Wiz (1978). My only motivation was to see what the director, Sidney Lumet – an exceptionally talented director whose previous film had been the brilliant, Network (1976) – did with this obvious monstrosity of a Broadway show to turn it into a Hollywood musical film. There was no question in my mind that what I was about to see was Sidney Lumet, after the enormous success of Network, was now cashing in and make as much money as he'd ever made in his entire life. Since I considered Lumet a true talent, and as intelligent as any director working, I was very slightly interested to see how he had attempted to tackle what appeared to be an impossible task. The most obvious problem seemed to be that the lead actor was the nearly-40-year-old Diana Ross, and she was playing the character of 14-year-old Dorothy.
I drove to Dearborn – birthplace of Henry Ford, and the location of Ford World Headquarters – to the relatively new Fairlane Theater, located within the Fairlane Mall and Hyatt Regency Hotel complex. It was a beautiful, contemporary building constructed of mirrored glass, by the local, though world famous, architect I. M. Pei (whom I had oddly met). It was about a 300-seat theater that was maybe 25% full, which really meant 75% empty, a particularly bad sign for a brand-new movie. The audience was entirely black, which wasn’t surprising in that it was a black version of The Wizard of Oz.
A few minutes before the film was going to start, orderlies in white jackets began wheeling in special needs patients in wheelchairs. One, two, three, four . . . and soon there were at least twenty. The orderlies parked the patients down front near the screen. We, the rest of the audience, exchanged a number of looks among ourselves that said, is this really happening? Well, what are you going to do? Special needs patients are allowed to go to the movies too, right?
The film begins. On big, expensive, way-too-bright, intentionally phony-looking sets, there is our incongruous cast of characters: 40-year-old Diana Ross, a full-grown, 20-year-old, Michael Jackson (the last we’d all seen of him he was a kid in the Jackson 5), Nipsey Russell, some other guy, and Toto the dog. They all come dancing down the yellow brick road, arm in arm, singing, Ease on Down the Road, the show’s one hit song. It’s a pretty good song and an enthusiastic black gentleman right behind me began to joyously clap along. A few other audience members began to clap along. One of the patients in a wheelchair joined in and also began clapping. Then another patient joined in, then another, then another, then they began grunting. I turned around and the man who had started the clapping had stopped and now had a look of concern on his face. Soon all of the special needs patients were clapping, and most of them were nowhere close to the beat. Then they were grunting and moaning, then began to shriek and scream, some of them falling out of their wheelchairs. I glanced back and the man — frozen in mid-clap — now looked horrified. What had he done?
The orderlies wrangled the patients back into their chairs, then took them home. Most were still clapping and shrieking. When they were gone, the rest of us turned around and attempted to watch the rest of the movie. It’s a particularly bad film, and it made me feel crummy on a number of levels: Sidney Lumet was not only a sell-out but had done a terrible job; Diana Ross needed to immediately retire from movies, and Berry Gordy and Motown needed to get out of the movie business immediately. With Mahogany, Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon (that’s the whole title), and now this, Gordy proved that he should never have left Detroit.
However, on a completely different level, The Wiz was an exceptionally important movie because it fortuitously brought two incredibly talented people together. The music supervisor on The Wiz was Quincy Jones. At a point during filming, Q (we call Quincy Q), came up to the moping, forlorn Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, who was clearly not having fun, and asked, “Who are you with?” Michael in his high voice replied, “What do you mean?” Q said, “What record company are you with?” Michael innocently said, “I’m not with any record company.” Quincy Jones – I mean, Q – said, “Why don’t you sign with me. I’ll get you a great record deal at Epic, and I’ll produce.” Michael said, “Oh, OK.”
Their first collaboration was the album Off the Wall that contained the Grammy-winning, number one hit song, Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough. The album is 9x platinum, meaning it has sold over 20 million copies.
Well, since that went so well, Q and Michael made another album. This next one was called Thriller, and it is, and remains, the biggest album of all-time. It has sold more than 70 million copies.
So, what did Michael Jackson do next? Since he and Mr. Quincy Jones seemed to work so well together, as per Q’s telling of this, Michael never spoke to him again. The expression of hurt bewilderment on Q’s face as he told this story was heartbreaking.
Ah, The Wiz.
Hello, today.