**when he interviewed a cast member of The Wiz**
I’ve read about, and seen excerpts, of the Broadway show THE WIZ. It was Great!
Then they decided to make it into a movie and (can’t say it here) by putting adults in child roles, pimps and “Hos”, just the thing blacks were used to seeing in their ghettos.
It was unwatchable. Even black audiences refused to go see that piece of dreck.
Siskel and Ebert said it was the last of the Blacksploitation movies produced by whites.
But if you will remember, the ORIGINAL THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) bombed at the box office. It took till 1956 for MGM to recover from that one.
When the movie RETURN TO OZ was made by Disney, was released, Joel Siegel went on TV and actually shed tears that they had tried to upstage the “greatest movie ever made!”