Contributor Movieclips

Update
06-27-2011
Content Type
Student Resource
Grade Level
Third grade, Fourth grade, Fifth grade, Sixth grade, Seventh grade, Eighth grade, Ninth grade, Tenth grade, Eleventh grade, Twelfth grade
Object Type
Video
License
Read the fine print

The video is a clip from the movie “The Wiz.” Dorothy (played by Diana Ross) convinces Scarecrow (played by Michael Jackson) to join her to find the Wiz. Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz is the film version of the popular Broadway musical that retells the events of L. Frank Baum’s classic novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz through the eyes of a young African-American kindergarten teacher who’s “never been below 125th Street.” Leaving a large family dinner to chase her dog into a snowstorm, Dorothy (Diana Ross) is swept up by a cyclone and transplanted to the land of Oz — which looks suspiciously like a skewed version of the run-down Manhattan of the late ’70s. Landing on top of the Wicked Witch of the East, the puzzled Dorothy is greeted by munchkins who peel themselves from a graffiti mural and sing to her about the Wiz (Richard Pryor), a powerful wizard living in Emerald City who can help her get home. On her journey down the yellow brick road, she encounters a garbage-stuffed scarecrow (Michael Jackson) in a junkyard, a broken-down tin man (Nipsey Russell) caught in the decay of an old amusement park, and a cowardly lion (Ted Ross) posing as a stone statue outside a museum. The quartet tangles with a subway station that comes to life, a poppy den, and a gaggle of motorcycle henchman on their way to the Wiz — who orders them to kill the Wicked Witch of the West (a sweatshop tyrant) before he will grant them their wishes.