Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think probably the scariest thing, as weird as it sounds, was 'The Wizard of Oz' and the flying monkeys with the witch. I remember seeing that - it still seems freaky.
I remember giving birth in Bromley Hospital annexe. It was painful. Zowie was 8 lb. 8 oz. David was there the whole time. It was the first and only time I saw David cry.
What has 'The Patchwork Girl of Oz' got in its favor? Quite a lot, from our point of view in 2009. If you want to see how Oz's creator envisioned his own work, here it is.
When I was young, I colored in the line drawings in vintage editions of the Oz books that had been handed down through generations in my family. This was a bad thing to do.
We don't consider the Wizard of Oz or Father Christmas to be too old. They're still magical characters, and the fact they've been around the block only adds to their magic.
In a sense, 'Out of Oz' is an examination of how individuals keep going, keep reinventing themselves and their lives, even after life-altering complications have afflicted them.
My favourite books series as a young child was the Frank L. Baum 'Wizard of Oz' series. They were beautifully written, oversized fat books with wonderful type and illustrations.
One thing you understand quickly as a fighter is that you're not punching with eight or 10 oz. Gloves. We've got 4 oz. gloves. It only takes one good shot for a fight to be over.
The first books I remember having an impact on me when I was a kid were L. Frank Baum's 'Oz' books, which were much stranger than the movie: at once rather whimsical and really dark.
I can't imagine how much time it took Matt Bucy to cut up 'The Wizard of Oz' and reassemble every word of dialog into alphabetical order. The resulting movie is called 'Of Oz the Wizard.'
I've been acting since I was 8 - I used to play hockey and there was a kids' theatre down the street from my house and one day I just walked in and signed up for auditions for 'The Wizard Of Oz.'
In 1900, as the immigrants come down the gangplank into Jersey City, they expect the streets to be paved with gold, and they were only paved with gold in Frank Baum's 'The Wizard of Oz,' of course.
I'm doing a new musical on Broadway, which opens in October called 'The Boy from Oz,' where I play Peter Allen. For those of you who don't know, he became first famous in America for marrying Liza Minelli.
And then I went to visit my sister in the states and all of a sudden it was just like, it's like... it's like the movie Wizard of Oz when all of a sudden it changes from Black and White to glorious Technicolor.
The fact is that 'The Wizard Of Oz' has never really worked in the theatre. The film has one or two holes where, in the theatre, you need a song. For example, there's nothing for either of the two witches to sing.
Films like 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Shrek' are hits because they hit on different levels with different age groups. Striking that balance is what I strive for. But I won't know if I've done it until the audience sees it.
'Star Wars' came out when I was seven. It was so different from anything else, like peeking into the land of Oz. All you wanted to do was see it again and go back and see more of it. That feeling is not easy to reproduce.
The figure of the witch was interesting to me, because of the primal, archetypical witch nightmares I had, even as an adult. But as a kid, it started with Margaret Hamilton in 'The Wizard Of Oz' as this inescapable horror.
One day between takes on the 'Oz' set, I went into one of the cells and laid down and dozed off. When I woke up, I thought I was back in a federal pen. But I did my time, and today no one is more of a free man than Chuck Zito.
My husband and I like to reminisce about how, when we were 9, we read straight through L. Frank Baum's 'Oz' series, books filled with wizards and witches. And you know what those subversive tales taught us? That we loved to read!
I always had this curiosity about acting, but I was really into sports, and I never really thought about acting as a career. My senior year, I tried out for the high school production of 'The Wizard of Oz,' and that was it for me.
Someone asked me who I would be if I were a character in the 'Wizard of Oz.' I would be the curtain. I would be the one who saw both sides that nobody noticed, that was pretty and there to be used and discarded when they were done.
I'm fanatical about movies: African, European, Viking, Roman. I got into witchcraft and magic from watching 'Bewitched' and 'The Wizard of Oz,' which shows in some of my outfits. I dress to reflect the whole spectrum of the universe.
I don't often do a lot of that kind of research, but when it's something specific like 'Oz' - which I fortunately did not have a lot of experience with - I will. I read 'The Hot House,' about being on the inside at Leavenworth prison.
Most of the female 'superhero' role models of my childhood came from novels, and they rarely had powers. Take Dorothy, for example, from 'The Wizard of Oz;' or Laura Ingalls and her sisters in the 'Little House on the Prairie' novels.
There was another Judy Garland movie on TV, and it wasn't 'The Wizard of Oz,' and I was so confused. I was like, 'Wait a second, what is Dorothy doing in this movie?' And that's when I became fascinated. I didn't realize there were actors.
I hear all the time that boys don't like stories about girls. Which never made much sense to me. Wasn't 'Terminator' about a girl? And 'Alien'? Hell, I grew up on 'The Wizard of Oz.' People enjoy stories about anything if they're good stories.
So vast is the shadow cast by the MGM production of 'The Wizard of Oz,' so indelible are its characterizations, so perfect its music, and so assured is its cinematic immortality, that most people think of it as 'The Original.' In fact, it isn't.
Sometimes I regret that the wonderful children's stories that have been made into movies were - people no longer read 'The Wizard of Oz'; they think they know the story. They don't know anything about all the bits and pieces they had to leave out.
'The Master' with Joaquin Phoenix puts up a good fight, but my favorite movie of all time is 'The Wizard of Oz.' I just love it. I watched it over and over again as a child, and I think it has all the elements of wonder, and it's a beautiful story.
As a rule, I try to avoid the French Quarter because of the crowds, especially Bourbon Street. But hey, some people love it. A great, wild, adult thing to see is the costume competition in front of the bar Oz on Bourbon early morning on Fat Tuesday.
I've always felt that, when I looked at my tombstone, it shouldn't say, 'Mehmet Oz banged out 10,000 open-heart operations.' I've probably done 5,000. Am I any better at it than 10,000? He shook his head. It's just a different number on the tombstone.
I've always been a bit of a clown. But I think the seminal moment was when I was sixteen, and I auditioned for a little production of The 'Wizard of Oz,' and I was like, 'Clearly I'm Dorothy!' And they were like, 'We'd like you to play the Wicked Witch.'
I grew up a poor kid in Florida, and I was always in Florida living with my stepfather and my mother, and we used to, every year, sit down and watch 'The Wizard of Oz.' And I think to this day that's probably the foundation for everything I've done since.
Identifying Israel with Jewry obscures the existence of the small but important post-Zionist movement in Israel, including the philosophers Adi Ophir and Anat Biletzki, the sociologist Uri Ram, the professor of theatre Avraham Oz and the poet Yitzhak Laor.
We actually say in 'Nightbreed,' 'God is an astronaut, Oz is over the rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters go.' There's a lovely sense in which there's a simple thesis being played out here. These are things you understand as a child out on the play yard.
I worked at an old folks' home once in Harlem, and I was an activities volunteer. I used to do all these plays with the old people. I did 'The Wizard of Oz;' it was adapted. There was a guy there who played the harmonica, so we had an overture, and The Wizard was 96.
'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' is a good one because it not only turned out, I think, to be a really funny movie but it was also a delight to shoot. We were in the South of France, working with Glenne Headly and Michael Caine and Frank Oz the director - who were just fun.
The number one mistake is giving pets table scraps. I made the mistake thinking I was showing my dog love by giving her food and treats. You see a tiny 4 oz. piece of cheese, but for a Boston Terrier like mine, that's like one and a half hamburgers. That's unhealthy.
Every year, I have my graduate students read the great works of history, from classical times to the present. They gamely tackle Tacitus, ponder Plutarch, plow through Gibbon. Then they get to Thomas Carlyle and feel like Dorothy when she touched down in Technicolor Oz.
I loved fantasy, but I particularly loved the stories in which somebody got out of where they were and into somewhere better - as in the 'Chronicles Of Narnia,' 'The Wizard Of Oz,' 'The Phantom Tollbooth,' the 'Dungeons & Dragons' cartoon on Saturday morning in the '80s.
A great deal of my mail comes from fans of the 'Oz' picture - fans of all ages. The scholarly, the curious, the disbelievers write and ask how? why? when? what for? did you fly? melt? scream? cackle? appear? disappear? produce? sky-write? deal with monkeys? etc., etc., etc.
On 'Oz' one day, I got a chunk of a camera embedded in my head, and I was passed out on the floor geysering blood while the set medic stood over me, freaking out. No help whatsoever. I ended up going to the ER and getting nine stitches in my head - real Frankenstein stitches.
I've wanted to act since I was seven. The year before, I'd been a munchkin in 'The Wizard of Oz' and was overcome with terror. The next year I just watched. My sister was in 'The Little Mermaid' and I had this deep knowing that I needed to be there on stage, not in the audience.
First off, from reading the script and knowing that I was going to be apart of it, I'm a huge 'Wizard of Oz' fan so to be involved in something that was connected to the original books was really exciting for me and it was very different than anything I had ever worked on before.
I just don't know when we all decided that if it doesn't fit in a Happy Meal box, it's not for kids. I remember flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, and I grew up watching Monty Python. I think that kids can handle a lot more than we give them credit for, especially when it comes to the absurd.
Music is the only passion I shamelessly indulge in. However, for recreation I enjoy watching movies. 'Wizard of Oz' was the first film I ever saw, followed by the 'Bond' movies. I also watch a lot of World cinema through DVDs mostly brought by one of my best friends who's now based in Toronto.
Because I'm seen on 'Oz', a lot of the urban cats in the city are like, 'Yo, I thought you'd be rolling in a Mercedes?' And I'm just like, 'Not at all!' This is cable money. There is a big difference between that and a network. But still I can't complain. It's better than doing a 9 to 5 any day.
I grew up in the '70s and in Los Angeles during the new blockbuster era. 'Star Wars' was the first film that I saw in the movie theater. I wanted to be an actor; then it turned out to be this 'Wizard of Oz' story: I was 10 or 11 years old, and it turned into something that I didn't think it was.
'The Wizard of Oz' is my favourite. It explains what life on this planet is about. Although Dorothy reaches Oz, she finds she had what she needed to go back to Kansas all along, but the Good Witch tells her that she had to learn it for herself. All of the answers to the meaning of life are there.