HuffPo
It's every screenwriter's nightmare. To be in the office of one of
Hollywood's most powerful producers, pitching all of your script ideas.
Only to then have that mover-and-shaker repeatedly say "Nope. Not
interested."
But that's exactly what happened back in 2009 to poor
Mitchell Kapner. The screenwriter of
The Whole Nine Yards was in
Joe Roth's office, pitching away. But the producer of
Alice in Wonderland and
Snow White and the Huntsman just wasn't buying into any of the story ideas that Mitchell was putting out there.
"So I'm sitting in a room with a writer who now doesn't have all that
much to say. And I feel sorry for the guy. So I ask Mitchell what he
was reading," Joe recalled during a recent phone interview. "And he
tells me that he's been reading the
L. Frank Baum books to his kids. And I tell him -- I am somewhat embarrassed to admit -- that I had thought that
The Wizard of Oz was a singular book. But as it turns out, Baum actually wrote a series of 14 Oz books."
So Kapner starts to walk Joe through the storylines of the various Oz books. And when Mitchell gets to No. 6 in the series,
The Emerald City of Oz (which talks about who the Wizard is and how he actually got to Oz), Joe stopped the screenwriter.
"When Mitchell starts talking about that man behind the curtain and
how he got there, this storyline immediately strikes me as a great idea
for a movie for a couple of reasons. One was because I love
The Wizard of Oz.
But this character is only in the last few minutes of that film and we
have no idea who he is," Roth explained. "And the second reason was --
during the years that I spent running Walt Disney Studios -- I learned
about how hard it was to find a fairy tale with a good strong male
protagonist. You've got your Sleeping Beauties, your Cinderellas and
your Alices. But a fairy tale with a male protagonist is very hard to
come by. But with the origin story of the
Wizard of Oz, here
was a fairy tale story with a natural male protagonist. Which is why I
knew that this was an idea for a movie that was genuinely worth
pursuing."
So at Joe's insistence, Mitchell -- borrowing bits & pieces from
the Baum books -- cobbled together an origin story for the Wizard .
Which Roth liked so much that he immediately took this story treatment
to
Dick Cook, the then-Chairman of Walt Disney Studios. And Cook (who knew that the Mouse Factory had made two previous attempts at
Oz pictures, the aborted
Rainbow Road to Oz project back in the 1950s and 1985's poorly received
Return to Oz)
immediately sparked to this idea. Insisting that Kapner turn his story
treatment into a full-blown screenplay. More importantly, that Roth
start looking for a director with visual effects experience who could
possibly helm this sure-to-be big budget fantasy film for Disney.
"Now as it turns out,
Sam Raimi
is my next door neighbor. His office on the Sony lot is right across
from mine. So I tell him what I'm working on and I asked him to read the
script. And Sam says 'No,' " Joe continued. "It turns out that -- just
like me -- he's a huge fan of the 1939 film. So Sam tell me 'I'm not
going to touch
The Wizard of Oz.' And I tell him 'No, no. It's
not a remake. In movie parlance, it's more of a prequel. Its storyline
takes place long before Dorothy & Co. ever get there.' So Sam reads
the screenplay and says 'God, I love this. I'd love to do this.' And
that's how our journey began."
Which isn't to say that this 3 1/2 year-long journey was all that
easy. In fact, it was Raimi & Roth's mutual love of the 1939
Oz film which then made
Oz The Great and Powerful that much harder to shoot.
You see, to Sam's way of thinking, one of the things which makes the original
Wizard of Oz
such an entertaining movie even today is that it is obviously a product
of Hollywood's studio system of the late 1930s / early 1940s. Which
means that this all-shot-on-soundstages, early Technicolor film had a
very distinctive look.
"And Sam, he wanted our
Oz movie to -- as much as possible
-- have the same sort of look & feel as that 1939 film. To have the
same sort of production values. Which is why Sam insisted that we use as
little green screen as possible on this picture. He wanted his actors
to be standing on real sets with their feet on the ground. So that this
fantasy world could then be tactile," Joe said. "So I introduce Sam to
Robert Stromberg, the production designer on
Avatar and
Alice in Wonderland. And the two of them go off to Detroit and build these enormous sets on 7 different soundstages."
Speaking of Mr. Stromberg: While Joe is out thumping the tub for
Oz The Great and Powerful, he's also helping Robert guide through the initial post-production phase of his directorial debut. Which is
Maleficent, Roth's live-action prequel to Disney's 1959 animated release,
Sleeping Beauty. When asked why he selected a production designer to helm this big budget fantasy (which stars
Angelina Jolie as the misunderstood Mistress of All Evil), Roth got right to the point.
"Robert Stromberg's my guy. I had him design
Alice. He did a great job designing
Oz.
I knew that he wanted to direct, and -- in my role as a producer -- I
really wanted to help Robert further his career," Joe stated. "Of
course, my original thinking was that I wanted to put Robert on a small
picture at first. Let him get his feet wet. But then the script of
Maleficent
came along. And this is another one of those fairy tale stories where
the look of your movie is such a key element when it comes to the
overall success of this picture. The first images that you put out
there, the footage that you use in your trailer, they all help the
audience decide whether they eventually want to go and see your movie or
not. And since Robert had done such a great job on
Alice &
Oz and we had this terrific script and Angie had already agreed to do the movie, I figured why not just toss him in the deep end?"
But as for getting into any further details about
Maleficent (which is due to hit theaters on July 2, 2014) or that
Alice in Wonderland sequel which Roth recently hired original
Alice scribe
Linda Woolverton to write, the usual gregarious Joe suddenly got close-mouthed. Preferring instead to shine a spotlight on
Oz The Great and Powerful.
Which (to Roth's way of thinking, anyway) strikes just the right
balance between being a stand-alone piece of entertainment aimed at
today's audiences and having just enough sly winks & nods to the
1939 film to appease all of those
Wizard of Oz fans out there.
"And just wait 'til you see the 3D in this movie. Most of the time,
3D is used as artifice. It's added after the fact. But we knew -- right
from the get-go -- that we wanted
Oz The Great and Powerful to
be shot in 3D. It was part of our plan for this picture right from the
start. Sam knew where and when he wanted to use 3D in this movie and
chose his shots accordingly," Roth enthused.
And to think that this big budget 3D trip to
Oz (which
reportedly cost $200 million to make and another $125 million to
promote) only came about because a screenwriter ran out of story ideas
during a pitch session with a producer.
Jim Hill is an award-winning entertainment writer who lives in
New Boston, NH. Over the past 30 years, he has interviewed hundreds of
veterans of the animation & themed entertainment industry and
written extensively about The Walt Disney Company.
