Oz films 1914-1925

The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) was the first theatrical version of Oz, based on the namesake book, seventh in the series, from 1913.

His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (1914) predates The Scarecrow of Oz (1915), the ninth  book in the series.

The Magic Cloak of Oz (1914) is based on Queen Zixi of Ix (1905), an unofficial entry in the series.

The Wizard of Oz (1925) is a fanciful, loose adaptation of the first book, and unlike the three previous films has no involvement from L. Frank Baum, who died five years prior. Its biggest claim to fame is featuring a pre-Laurel & Hardy Oliver Hardy.

It’s interesting to watch this early Oz. They’re all silent films, of course, and rely heavily on slapstick of one kind or another, and capture none of the hilarious dialogue the books feature so generously. Baum was a theater man before Oz, and it’s evident from how showy his film versions are. The books are more about social satire, but that’s hard to convey, much less emphasize, in the early film format. 

Watching them is an object lesson in the elasticity of storytelling between formats, and a lucid tour of early Oz history.

My Year in Oz

This one still needs to be written up even though things didn’t work out as planned. So: My year in Oz.

This is the third year I’ve ended up spending unplanned amounts of time on a single literary topic. One year I read multiple variations on The Iliad. Then I spent another immersed in Don Quixote. 2020 with Oz ended up being a little more deliberate, and maybe even the most appropriate way to characterize a very, very strange year.

Now, again, A Squire’s History of Oz, and “Falling Toward Oz,” is a dead project. It will become an artifact topic here on the blog, sort of fictional, unavailable for consumption in the real world. It was a nonfiction work, an attempt at a unified look at L. Frank Baum’s original books and the famous and most visible, and even most recent, projects that were inspired by them. 

The funny thing is, I found myself writing about things I had never actually experienced. Losing the manuscript probably spurred me on to doing so. I finally watched The Wiz, read Wicked. I enjoyed Diana Ross in Wiz. I see there was controversy surrounding her casting, that the movie itself sort of caused a massive backlash. I don’t really see why. I think she was a good fit. And I loved discovering, at last, that moment in Michael Jackson’s career where he sort of became himself. I did not really enjoy Wicked. I found it pretentious, indulgent.

Early in the year I read a work of fiction I found at the airport, concerning Baum’s widow and how her life eventually led to a wish-fulfillment (on the part of the author) of someone actually being there to give Judy Garland some support on the set of the famous movie, the one that for most people has become the only legitimate Oz experience. Later I finally read a young adult version of Oz I found at Walmart a few years ago, that was as generically a young adult version of Oz as it could possibly get. 

I rewatched Tin Man, the TV miniseries, for the first time since watching its original broadcast.

And I wrote George & Gracie. This became “Falling Toward Oz” redux for me, most of the elements revisited, in a new form (once I managed to remember a few of them!). This was a story I had wanted to write for a few years, and finally wrote because I lost all that other material. 

It still feels weird to talk about George & Gracie at all, as it happens to be the title piece of this year’s Christmas collection, a phenomenon that is otherwise strictly a family thing. The collection is packed, otherwise, with family elements, somewhat impenetrable to outsiders, and deliberately so: it was absolutely written for them. Even “George & Gracie” itself means more in family context, getting all the references. 

But it feels good to know it’s out there, and is probably more valuable than the project it replaced, and is going to be a wonderful reminder of a most peculiar year, one spent in Oz, in more ways than one.

The Computer Ate My Homework

 Well, it’s official. My computer ate my homework. Which is to say, my computer died and took my files with it.

Three weeks ago I got stuck in the rain, and I happened to have my tablet with me. It was a horrendous downpour. I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t get it to a shop until the end of the week, or if it died more or less instantly, but the end result was, because it was such a compact instrument, it was a complicated business just to answer whether or not my files were retrievable even before the diagnosis, and certainly out of the question after.

So I lost material. I lost the whole Oz affair. I lost Squire’s History of Oz, the greater nonfiction work, and “Falling Toward Oz,” which for me was far more valuable. I talked about this stuff here. It was actually some of the last material I actively talked about here. If COVID-10 hadn’t hit, this would not have even been an issue. I don’t have Wi-Fi at home. I travel to get it. This was far easier pre-pandemic, and even beyond that, when everything closed, it was more or less around the time I was completing this work. I’d’ve self-published it months ago. 

But now it’s been eaten. If I wanted, I could reconstruct the book itself and even tackle the story again. I’m not feeling especially motivated to do that at the moment. I’m not grieving. I kind of figured this was going to be the result, and so I made peace with it the day I turned the tablet into the shop.

I lost the manuscript I carved out of In the Land of Pangaea, something I didn’t really talk about here, something I did earlier in the summer and submitted to a contest. All the work on that is lost unless by some miracle it has legs in the contest. Again, I could be okay with that. I loved working on that thing. It was if nothing else an excellent exercise in revision. 

I lost this year’s Christmas poem package for my niece! I wrote it ridiculously early as it was, so I can always rewrite that well before the end of the year. I know the bones of what I wrote. I can either attempt to replicate or do something new. It’s okay.

I lost some plotting for Space Corps! I didn’t lose the major Space Corps material. I have the Seven Thunders manuscript, and notes in an actual notebook for most of what I had been working on, and copies attached to emails for other things. There’s so much already quite unwritten about Space Corps anyway, it’s difficult to say what can be lost in such a manner as this. Having Seven Thunders as it is, and in the revised form as I’ve worked on it, is the main thing, and what would’ve been the big loss in a previous computer loss.

That’s not everything, but those are the highlights. I have email copies of stories I wrote this year. I will have to revert to backups for additional poetry collections, whenever I get around to that project again, losing whatever work I had done in that regard. (I think it eats what would’ve been the next release, in the state I left it, which again would not have been a problem pre-shutdown, because I would have published it well before this happened).

Last week I bought a school-sized (rather than pocket-sized) notebook, with the intention to perhaps work on stories and/or notes there. This would not be a guarantee against loss, either, but it would offer a different level of control. I have some really old notes! Stuff dating back to probably 1996 at least, a lot of old Space Corps material. That’s how I always did it before. Then at some point I started doing it on a computer, and when I had a printer handy would carefully print it out (another backup model!). Technically I have a printer now but have no idea if it actually works. I inherited from my sister. Has been sitting on a desk I don’t work at (I find desks hard to work at for extended periods, unless they’re big, and this one isn’t).

And at some point I will buy a new computer of some extraction. And be very, very careful, especially as it comes to file preservation!

A Journal of the Pandemic #7

Well, the toilet paper apocalypse, at the very least, is subsiding.

It’s not true everywhere, of course. There’s still places I go where the shelves are empty, but not everywhere. It’s becoming routine to find toilet paper again. Yay humanity! The greater problems are still out there. The pandemic, for instance. We’re at the point where some people desperately want things to return to normal(ish), and there are people who respond, “No way, idiots!” So civil discourse is about the same as it’s always been. Comforting? I guess?

I‘ve backed off Facebook. I was checking it obsessively. For a while, kept trying to come up with funny things to say. People in general are going back to normal there. Again, this does not mean normal is returning or will return anytime soon, but it’s good to see.

After admitting last week that I stopped eating breakfast, I of course started eating breakfast again. Found another new peanut butter cereal, so of course am having that now.

I was pretty productive last week. I edited or looked at some projects I’d been working on previously. Squire’s History of Oz looks good. Found I had actually pretty much finished Modern Woe, the latest collection of poems (if by “latest” you allow me to mean material written literally a decade ago). That’s a project that was kind of disrupted before the pandemic, thank you. I’ve had an interesting past six months. I’ve had an interesting last year, and I’m coming ever closer to a year without my niece, and am still trying to make sense of that.

I started outlines for two last Space Corps books. Space Corps is the largest project I have ever worked on, and the thing I still hope to hang my legacy on (but who can control these things?), and I’ve spent years developing these outlines. These last two, I’ve been slow to work on them, but again, a lot has changed over the years, and I work at a different pace. But it finally seemed like the right thing, to use this time to work on them. I mean, I personally would consider myself an idiot if I didn’t.

The family continues to merrily converge for a video-chat game night on weekends, and even though I’m still not playing along, I’m glad it’s happening. This is how COVID-19 will be remembered, in the grand scheme. I have nothing but deep sympathies for those who have suffered, but for a lot of us it’s a moment that’s giving us a huge opportunity, and it’s good to see it being embraced, however it may look.

I mentioned, I think, the Colorado friend with the anthology he wants to do, and it occurred to me that the story I’m working on now (Pat is being driven crazy by its inability to stay on track with the vampire thing) will be as appropriate as anything to give him for it. I’m really proud of this one.

Now, if I could just get some reassurance that I won’t have to wear a mask when I go back to work...

Falling Toward Oz

Just a quick note:

This week I became glad I hadn't decided I was more or less done preparing A Squire's History of Oz, because it occurred to me that I could add one more thing to it: "Falling Toward Oz."

Which, by the way, I haven't written yet, but that's hardly a problem!  "Falling Toward Oz" will be my version of Oz, which for a book celebrating Baum's Oz and the many versions that have followed, seemed about right for someone who thinks of himself first as a writer of fiction.

So that's hopefully something I'm going to write, or start writing, this week, and hopefully tackle some other stuff as well.

Rest Stop, A Squire's History of Oz, Best Cuban In Town...

I actually did end up writing "Rest Stop" last Monday, but as it turns out the contest closed submissions...several hours previous.  But it's okay.  The story ended up far shorter than I would think the contest would've liked.  It saves me the agony of waiting, and rejection.  Pat was confused about a few things.  (I reference Pat casually these days.  Hi, Pat!)  But it was basically exactly what I wanted it to be.  Maybe if I'd had more times, it could've been longer, better.  But I didn't even have a few of the ideas that went into it until that day, until after the apparent submission deadline had passed.  In the end, there could've been no different results for this one.

This week I continued working on A Squire's History of Oz.  Because they're in the public domain, I figured out I could actually include excerpts from Baum's books, and that was a breakthrough I typed into the manuscript with some satisfaction.  Last Saturday (not yesterday) I typed up a timeline (drove myself mad trying to remember a somewhat recent Eric Shanower comic, never did find it, thanks in part to a maddening remodel of ComicBookDB that I discovered was happening, in some ways worse than BoxOfficeMojo selling its soul to IMDb, but hopefully when it's back to functioning capacity it will be better), and just left out the bulk of Oz comics (because there have been many) and concerned myself with the many, many film, stage, TV, and book iterations (some of which will be very confusing, because a lot of them have the same title: Wizard of Oz).

And because I'm always brainstorming for that elusive idea that traditional publishers will actually want to publish, I flashed on Best Cuban In Town, which will join my lamentable large assortment of projects that need to be tackled.  This one has the virtue of drawing on Tampa, where I live, with a lot of elements I can practicably draw on, including stuff I'm really sure no other writer is approaching. 

Sort of drew inspiration, too, from the reminder that Hamlet is about thirty-three thousand words.  Granted, it's a play (and paradoxically Shakespeare's longest; I have no idea how many words the typical play encompasses; my mom was a rollerskating judge alongside a guy who ended up writing plays, but that's as close as I get, other than acting in school and writing the odd attempt).  But great things don't need bulk.  Maybe that'll help...

Updates February 2020

Been working on A Squire's History of Oz recently, a nonfiction project I've been meaning to realize for a little while now.  I also have some more submissions I'll be tackling, one of them that's due in about a week and the story for which I figured out this morning.  Tentatively calling it "Rest Stop."  The other is centered around Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, otherwise known as the Captain Nemo story.  I actually read it a few years back for the first time, and was amazed at how compelling the first part of it, before Nemo is even introduced, actually was.  There's a Jules Verne park here in Tampa, so I almost feel compelled to work on this one.

Apart from these, I have Three Stooges Syndrome, in that there are of course larger projects I want to begin tackling, that I've mentioned here before, one of which (Collider) I worked on the outline for after previously tackling it anew last October, just before the blood-in-the-eye thing happened, which sort of derailed me for a while, and they keep butting up against each other.  And then I follow links in emails for shorter pieces I can submit, and...Oh, and I also worked on formatting another of the poetry collections, so that's another thing, and finally ordered copies of the last one I put out.

Plus, wrote about what I'm working on here, at the blog, which I don't do often enough.  Or perhaps the commentary I was doing a year ago for another project still leaves me feeling guilty...