Tag: movie

Wicked Movie: The Making of a Witch explores the nuanced and powerful portrayal of witches in the highly anticipated Wicked movie. Witch Hunt podcast hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack delve into their immediate reactions and the deeper social themes conveyed through the film. From the breath-catching spectacle of Galinda’s grand entrance to the heartbreaking social justice undertones surrounding Elphaba’s journey, this podcast dissects the movie’s profound commentary on othering, power dynamics, and societal hypocrisies. Alongside enthusiastic discussions of standout scenes involving musical numbers, stunts, and emotional turns, Josh and Sarah provide a thorough examination of how the Wicked movie redefines classic witch stereotypes and resonates with contemporary issues. The podcast is an unmissable treat for fans of Wicked, Oz, and beyond, offering a thoughtful and passionate examination of one of the year’s most magical films.

Transcript

Josh Hutchinson: [00:00:00] There's pandemonium. People are running in the streets in panic because, oh, the Wicked Witch is coming. Like suddenly there's a Wicked Witch. There hasn't been a Wicked Witch before, as far as we know. And now there is one and she's the great enemy. And oh, by the way, she's green.
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast reviewing the portrayal of witches in literature, theater, and film. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: And I'm Sarah Jack. Today we investigate the treatment of witches in the Wicked movie.
Josh Hutchinson: And we're reviewing the Wicked movie because it's something that we obviously enjoy, and it's something a lot of people out there enjoy, and we want to be able to enjoy it together while also critically evaluating the role of the witches in the film.
Josh Hutchinson: So, we saw the Wicked movie today, and Sarah, I'm really curious, how did you feel when you [00:01:00] walked out of the theater?
Sarah Jack: I didn't want to leave. I wanted to walk right back in and watch the next showing.
Josh Hutchinson: That's the same way that I felt, actually, though, even while the movie was going on, I was like, I can't wait to watch this again and catch more of the details and everything because I kind of had to live in the front of screen mostly to focus on what they were saying and singing, but I wouldn't be able to just sit back and enjoy everything.
Sarah Jack: We've spent several weeks preparing for this event, reading, watching. So there's been all this time looking forward to being in Oz in the theater and so being there was fantastic and I wasn't ready to leave Oz. And
Josh Hutchinson: It was a really, it was really just a great [00:02:00] creation of the world of Oz. I thought their rendition of Oz was quite excellent.
Sarah Jack: Maybe we want to talk about Galinda's entrance into the film a little bit.
Josh Hutchinson: Boy, do I. Galinda's entrance is so spectacular. And if you love the Good Witch in the 1939 MGM film, this is very evocative of her coming in, in her bubble. It's. I love the way they show, they pan up to the sky and you just see this like light twinkling in the sky moving. You think, Oh, it looks like the sun, but cause it's so bright and spectacular, but it keeps coming down. And then it's a bubble with Galinda in it. It's amazing.
Sarah Jack: Yeah, and she, Cynthia and Ariana have now created these characters [00:03:00] that I, I don't, I, they will never be matched, in their, the combination together, their partnership, their friendship. And we'll be talking about that more, I'm sure. But I, I fell in love with Glinda immediately and, I'm sure, you know, my love for Glinda the Good Witch from MGM, you know, that sets the stage and, but Galinda was just marvelous right from the get go.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, she's spectacular. They really cast the movie very well. I thought all of the actors just fit perfectly the character. You know, I don't know if they, they cast it and then they did some rewrites to, to make it perfect for them, butall of the songs just came straight from the musical and they were able [00:04:00] to sing them perfectly. And, you know, you look at people like Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel and the vocal talents that they have, then you see Ariana and Cynthia able to pick that ball up and run with it. And they just nailed every note. It was literally pitch perfect and beautiful. thought, you know, the whole, the story between the two characters was just beautiful. They don't start out liking each other, but they come that way.
Sarah Jack: I'm just gonna state that I have not been to the musical, but I've read and I've read and read and, you know, seen lots of Oz, and talked to experts, but the first look into Oz today in that theater was [00:05:00] not sparkly. Right out of the gate is the darkness.
Josh Hutchinson: There was a really problematic moment for me, one that I struggled with a little in the first scene. Well, spoiler alert here if you're not familiar with the musical, the first scene of the movie is basically similar to the beginning of Oz, once Dorothy lands in Oz and The Wicked Witch of the East is dead and the Munchkins are celebrating, ding dong and all that. And, so the beginning of Wicked is similar in that they're actually celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. Which then the whole movie goes back explaining like the story from the beginning of the, before she was the Wicked Witch of the West when she was Elphaba, you know, [00:06:00] and goes through her life and adventures and misadventures, but in the first scene, while they're celebrating the death, they burn a giant, wooden effigy of the witch, which really evoked the terrors of the European witch trials and also modern-day persecutions of people accused of witchcraft.
Sarah Jack: Absolutely. I almost cried. 
Sarah Jack: So, you know, my experience as a child watching the 1939 film, you know, for sure that the witch was evil. You just, it's not just assumed, but you know, you knew then. And it's this huge relief. This monster's gone. You just hear that a witch is dead. You see her feet there, and the celebration makes sense. It's [00:07:00] comfortable. It is a celebration of conquering evil.
Sarah Jack: But if you've read Wicked, if you are familiar with the characters at all, and I think also when you have an awareness of what's happening in our world to innocent women and children and men, I've learned to not, so I automatically think it's not a witch.I don't see celebration in killing a witch because of the reality. And I'm fully aware, fully aware that this is a fairy tale. It's a fairy tale I love, but it was hard to start right there, celebrating and watching the burning of this effigy, especially when there's been things in the news this week of deaths of innocent people, but also of effigy burnings. [00:08:00] And so I couldn't, I was like for a minute there, I wasn't in the fairy, fairy tale. It was hard to see it. It's huge. I mean, it's not, it's huge.
Sarah Jack: Yeah.
Sarah Jack: they, I mean,
Josh Hutchinson: It's a Burning Man size, effigy, basically.
Sarah Jack: truly, obviously it goes into the story and you begin to fall in love with Elphaba. It's horrific to realize that that was her, that that is, yeah. I mean,
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah.
Sarah Jack: I want to say it's not just about the things that I said. It does, as a descendant of women that were hanged for witchcraft, it was very upsetting. I'm not saying it was the wrong choice. I don't have an answer. I don't know what I think of that. I think that it is a portrayal of mob mentality against accused and alleged witches.
 
Josh Hutchinson: That's, uh, the flip side of, you know, what I was saying my [00:09:00] initial shock at it happening. Part of me did feel like this shows what happens. This is like a visual for people that you instantly connect to the historic witch trials most, but, you know, once you know about the modern witch trials, this really just evoked images that we've seen of people being burned alive for this. So it was difficult to see, but I also see it as, Hey, this is a, moment where we can talk about this and maybe shed some light on what's happening now. Like you said, the mob mentality in the manner that they were rejoicing. Everybody's getting caught up in what everybody else is, everybody else's celebration and you know, they just light this thing, but [00:10:00] the image was just so, it's so visceral. And it really just kind of knocks you out for a moment while if, you know.
Sarah Jack: Yeah, I'm really curious if, if they did screen test. If they, what kind of responses they were getting and if they just ignored them, , you know, I think people would've been ho I think, I mean, it's very horrifying to watch and part of the, when you're looking at it from the fairytale perspective, you associate water or a, you know, a falling house with witch death, but it's just a different feeling to watch a giant witch burn.
Josh Hutchinson: Now that said, if I wasn't aware of what's going on today, I might be It might be, my reaction to it might've been measured a little bit more, but still the thought of all the innocents, the tens of thousands of innocent people who were [00:11:00] actually burned or at least their bodies were burned at the stake because of witchcraft accusations in Europe, still knowing, just knowing about that makes me feel some kind of horror at seeing it.
Sarah Jack: Yeah. It was horror. It was horrifying. 
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. But like you were saying earlier, then you go, it's kind of a dramatic switch. You go from this burning effigy, to then 
Josh Hutchinson: Glinda starts telling the story of Elphaba and she begins with, well, Elphaba's mother having a relationship that then leads to Elphaba's birth. So you see this little, like, I find it a little adorable green baby, coming out. Everybody who's present for the birth is like shocked and repulsed by it.
Sarah Jack: So [00:12:00] that had another tie to me from that had another tie for me in reality. I read an article this week about a little girl that was born with albinism. And in the interview, the mom responds how disappointing it was, how hurtful it was that when her family came to meet their child, they only stayed five minutes. And that's like a real experience that just happened just a little bit ago. I do think that birth is a celebration. It's supposed to be a celebration and it wasn't. 
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah,
Sarah Jack: for Elphaba's family.
Josh Hutchinson: Right. Yeah, the green skin color is obviously a device to mark Elphaba as being different than all the other characters in the movie. It's really just a [00:13:00] signal of her otherness, but like you said, real people go through very similar experiences where a baby's not born the expected skin color. And people don't know how to react to that. There's a lot of superstition. We just did an episode about that earlier this week, and there's so many myths about persons with albinism, especially, but also, you know, people who are born with anything that marks them out as being different than other people. If you have a disability, you're marked out as different right away. If people can see it, then they start thinking about you as being kind of different and maybe less than other people.
Sarah Jack: You made a good point when you said they don't [00:14:00] know how to respond. And I do think that there is that. The shock causes people to not respond. 
Josh Hutchinson: The, that scene is so beautiful with her birth. One of the things that we just had a really wonderful conversation with Paul Laird and Jane Barnette earlier this week. And one of the things that I believe Jane brought up and they spoke about looking forward to how. Is this going to look off the stage on camera? And I loved the dimension that that room, the birthing room had. It had the, the family and the characters and the animals just like all around and the baby goes up. It was really a fascinating scene because, even though there was this, [00:15:00] the father's in the background, not responding well, she's still being elevated.
Josh Hutchinson: That's a good point. There's, there's something to that where it begins with her being elevated and then later on in the movie, she's also elevated, like physically lifted above the ground. So you kind of can see her at two stages of life having a similar experience. And we know that flight is so important in portrayals of witches. Of course, the original Wizard of Oz book and film had the Wicked Witch of the West flying around the country on her broom. So you've got that back again and that's wonderful, but you wait for it. It builds up a lot of anticipation for that first actual flight [00:16:00] moment.
Sarah Jack: Yeah.
Josh Hutchinson: So,
Sarah Jack: Yeah. Flight is such a key element in even in Frank Baum's I mean, Dorothy, the wizard, how do they get to Oz? It's through the air.
Josh Hutchinson: And how did the wizard get to Oz? Through the air in his balloon. And, you know, so it's common, like the Oz stories tend to begin and end with, you know, whether it's at the end of the MGM film, the wizard taking off in the balloon to go back and leaving without Dorothy or, you know, you know, the way this one ends with the song, the performance, of Defying Gravity. just leave that as a hint for now. it's very effective. I really loved the way that they closed this movie, but we'll come back to that after we talk about the middle a little more.
Sarah Jack: I really want to talk about Elphaba's. [00:17:00] magic that they do show like right out, right out of the womb. That is flight. Like the magic that they show is the flight. 
Josh Hutchinson: But I also love the props, all the props, like all the details. Every little prop was so fun. And it looked like, you know, you just wanted to go play with Galinda's shoes and the poppies and the, the spectacles and glasses. And I wanted to try Elphaba's hat on, like the props were really marvelous.
Sarah Jack: I loved the way that they used the poppies in the scene when Professor Dillamond is removed from the classroom, and another professor comes in with a lion in a cage, and Elphaba gets furious about the way they're treating this lion. She's used to animals walking around freely and being able to converse, and this cage is supposed to suppress the [00:18:00] lion's ability to learn to speak, and she gets really upset about that and begins her like social justice quest for the animals, but she puts everyone to sleep using poppies, which, of course, if you know the 1939 film or the original L. Frank Baum book, the poppies put Dorothy to sleep while she's walking the yellow brick road. And so I thought here they are using those poppies again. They found a way to, to tie those things and, you know, have that element included.
Sarah Jack: This movie wanted to send some social justice messages and, you know, the animal culture that was under attack and being persecuted is something that is very, there's so many examples [00:19:00] in our history and in our modern world that that speaks to. So that is another one. Like with the burning effigy, that's not going to maybe affect everybody the same way, but I feel like what you see happening with the professor and the animals is not as subtle. Not that a burning effigy is subtle, but it was a clear statement.
Josh Hutchinson: It's something that everybody's going to recognize something that's going on today that is reminiscent of the treatment of the animals, the persecution and suppression the animals, because, the animals, they're, you know. In Wicked, the animals begin, they're basically like humans in animal form. They speak, they're intelligent, they can have friendships with humans, and so [00:20:00] forth. They're suppressed and animals start disappearing. I really loved that they included the scene with Dr. Dillamond talking to his animal friends the, in his room, and they're having a little secret hush hush meeting because they can't be caught meeting together anymore, because that would look seditious to the wizard and, and his side of things, which Elphaba doesn't realize that the wizards behind it at first either. What's going on with the animals and them being banned from teaching, they're being banned from preaching. They're being banned from basically any involvement with humans other than as what we think in the real world, the role that animals play as pets and workers and so forth. So they're, they're really suppressed and treated as subhuman. [00:21:00] They're totally dehumanized, and, you know, like with that cage, they don't want the animals to speak anymore. They want them to be quiet, and the board, when Dr. Dillimond flips it over in an earlier scene, says animals should be seen and not heard, which is very upsetting.
Sarah Jack: It's very upsetting. These animals are contributing to society. They're intelligent. They have, you know, they're not, they're being devalued, but they're actually are very valuable to society.
Sarah Jack: Yes. Yeah. And. I said, through, through your own personal lens, you'll see things going on now and you'll know things that have happened in the past that really remind you of what's going on with the animals. There are so many for me. I hope people [00:22:00] think about 
Sarah Jack: it's just not a stretch of the imagination whatsoever.
Josh Hutchinson: There's so many different ways that you could apply that to today's world and to the world history because, you know, this cycle of persecution has been going on and we've talked about this a little before, the label "witch," as just meaning, you know, an othered, bad person who's dangerous to us, could be a witch, whoever the witch in that sense of the word is changes from time to time. so, You know, the witch has been Jewish people, the witch has been black people, the witch has been feminists, the witch has been the LGBTQ, um, there's been so many witches over time, it might [00:23:00] be the people in the country next to you, um, who are the witches and, I mean, this is anywhere in the world, these kinds of things have been applied to so many where we just label someone as being this bad guy. And they said something about it in the film. There's a part where they talk about how, 
Sarah Jack: the Wizard talks about how to unite people, you create an enemy. And so he created the animals as being the enemy, because he tired of the discord in Oz.
Sarah Jack: Yeah, but then in the next breath, they, they trade that in for Elphaba. She's there, not the enemy, boom, Madame Morrible trades it in. Well, the animal that their usefulness was done, and, it was pretty much squashed. I mean, they, appears that they gotten that handled. [00:24:00] And so then the new enemy is Elphaba.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. There's like announcements. You hear Morrible's voice all over Oz and they show it at Shiz. They show it in the Emerald City. People, there's pandemonium. People are running in the streets in panic because, oh, the Wicked Witch is coming. Like suddenly there's a Wicked Witch. There hasn't been a Wicked Witch before, as far as we know. And now there is one and she's the great enemy. And oh, by the way, she's green, so she's easy to spot. So. Easy to hunt her down and treat her as being different and different than human because she doesn't even look like us.
Sarah Jack: Would you like to talk about the friendship and love?
Josh Hutchinson: Yes.
Sarah Jack: in Wicked?
Josh Hutchinson: I definitely do want to talk about.
Sarah Jack: It was amazing.
Josh Hutchinson: it. It's such a good story, because Galinda [00:25:00] and Elphaba start out like their first big song that's the two of them together is Loathing. And, they just talk about how they loathe each other and well, they sing about how they loathe other, but they're always, even before that song starts, you know, they're at odds with each other at every moment and then they get stuck rooming together and they hate it and they hate each other and or loathe each other. So they're not off to a great start.
Sarah Jack: Yeah.
Josh Hutchinson: But then Glinda, or Galinda, as she's known at the time, Galinda, well, there's this dance, you see, and Galinda gets a boy to ask Elphaba's sister, Nessarose, who we haven't talked about yet,to ask her out to [00:26:00] the dance, because she's just sitting there by herself, while everybody else is running off to the dance club, and she, in the film and in the musical she's a wheelchair user and Galinda thinks that oh this will look like I'm doing a nice thing by getting the boy to do a favor for, you know, this girl, but really she's just trying to get the boy out of her own hair. But Nessarose is so happy. She beams at Elphaba and just is so like glittery faced. I would, I don't know, that's not a thing but maybe it is a thing. She's just so happy that Elphaba does something nice for Galinda, and then Galinda does something nice for Elphaba, and then they become really good friends. And scene where they had that, that's one when I was about [00:27:00] crying. I was starting to well up a little because it just tugs at the heartstrings the way, you know, Elphaba's isolated on the dance floor and everybody's laughing at her because she's wearing a funny hat. And Galinda goes and dances with her.
Sarah Jack: Yeah.
Josh Hutchinson: The goofiest Elphaba dance, kind of reminded me of the Elaine from Seinfeld, but it's just
Sarah Jack: Oh, yeah.
Josh Hutchinson: you know, arms flailing kind of dance. Yeah. Little shoulder moves and little, like whatever this thing was and.
Sarah Jack: Yeah. yeah, I just was, I mean, I was there. I felt like I was right there in the, the, the film just really pulls you in. And 
Sarah Jack: there's another brand out there that we know as magical, but this one had the magic.
Sarah Jack: This, I, I mean, [00:28:00] I have been to the magic place recently and in my seat in my theater, I felt Elphaba and Galinda's magic and Oz's magic. They really pulled that off. And that scene really does it. I mean, it is, you feel her isolation and this is something that really was a nod to the thread of courage from the original versions of Oz. They don't ever necessarily say courage in Wicked, but Elphaba was demonstrating that there in that scene, I think. So, and you're just like that turning point where Galinda decides that she's gonna go have fun with Elphaba with the silly dance. It's such a key moment. It is, you know, Elphaba was purposely, you know, [00:29:00] vulnerable right then and Galinda took the opportunity to become her friend right there in front of everybody.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, it was so powerful. And this movie, the movie, and I know the musical also, they bring that friendship, female friendship so powerful in both of them. That's a big reason why Wicked's been a running on Broadway for over 20 years and has a touring show and shows in other locations. And, it's so massively successful largely because of that friendship story that you don't really expect from a story involving the so-called Wicked Witch of the West that, Oh, she once was young and she had friends. It's really amazing.
Sarah Jack: Yeah. So we just talked about all of that. 
Josh Hutchinson: We danced around Fiyero. [00:30:00] We got to talk about all of that without bringing him up, but how fantastic was he?
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, and Dancing Through Life, his grand, big entrance into the scene and the song Dancing Through Life, it's been stuck in my head since I got out of the theater,along with maybe a dozen other songs, but that one keeps coming through because it's so fun. But they do a lot in the scene also of dancing through life. So it's important. And Fiyero, the character of Fiyero in first Wicked movie, he's very interesting. He's a deeper, guy than kind of, he comes off across at the beginning, he seems just shallow and self-absorbed and, he's, they make him the ultimate [00:31:00] goof off character. He doesn't want to take anything seriously. He wants to dance through life.
Sarah Jack: Yeah, I think it's interesting. So he's one of the main male figures.Wizard is one of the main male figures, and neither one is quite what they say they are. I don't know what that means.
Josh Hutchinson: No. And one has power because he pretends to be powerful, the wizard. Where Prince Fiyero, he's a prince from the Winkie country, which they don't really get into what that is in the movie, but it's very heavily featured in the, this book, the original Wicked. And so he actually is born with real power over people, or at least his parents have authority over people. Yeah, he has authority where [00:32:00] the wizard usurps authority by being able to read a handful of words out of the Grimmerie, which is the ancient magical text in a language no one can read in Oz.
Sarah Jack: Okay, I want to talk about Jeff Goldblum here. Fantastic. It was so great, 
Sarah Jack: Yeah. But I, I loved, I loved her trip to Oz. I loved her invitation to Oz. I loved her trip to Oz. You know, the, Wizomania, the, that was all fantastic. And I had seen an interview with the director and Jeff and Cynthia and Ariana and that huge Oz head was right there on the stage for the interview. I thought it was going to play a bigger part in the film. And it is amazing and remarkable, but they just got right to [00:33:00] Jeff, they got right to the Wizard himself. He couldn't wait to meet Elphaba.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, I was surprised when he walks out from behind the head on his own, because we're so used to what happens in the 1939 film when Dorothy goes there and they, like, Toto runs around and finds the man behind the curtain that you're not like, don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain. And he's in there on his microphone telling people don't pay attention. Like where here, yeah, Goldbloom Wizard walks out voluntarily, because he's eager to meet Elphaba, because, as is revealed several minutes later, he has a plan for her. He has something that he needs her to do for him.
Sarah Jack: Yeah. Okay. So then actually I want to say another thing about my experience watching this. We get to this [00:34:00] point in the film, and I remember thinking, how come I haven't been scared yet? There hasn't really been anything scary. I, I was thinking it was probably more like childhood fear that I was hoping would be evoked a little bit more.
Sarah Jack: And it wasn't there, but that changed too. Once Elphaba has the Grimmerie, the next few scenes are just brutal. And I just, man, that was, that was something. I'm talking about the flying monkeys.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah.
Sarah Jack: That was scary and it was scary what was happening to them. but they were scary.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. What happens to them when they're transformed to sprout wings all of a sudden from their back, these gigantic wings just breaking the flesh and clothing and coming out? The [00:35:00] poor, Chistery, the head of the Emerald Guard is writhing on the floor and like, you really feel his pain and what he's going through the animations on those monkeys were just really powerful. You first see it with one and then they go into another room and all the guards that were lining the hallway are all on the floor and jumping on walls. They're trying to, like, not feel this pain anymore.
Sarah Jack: And you know what I felt like when Elphaba meets him before she walks up to the Grimmerie and is able to read it, it's like they were kind of, unless I was imagining it, cause I was just so pulled into the story, I wondered if he had been able to talk before and couldn't talk. Like, I felt like he wanted to say something to her. [00:36:00] Cause I feel like they just like paused on his face and his eyes, you know, were looking at her and they showed her eyes. And I just was like, you know why he can't talk. He lost it.
Sarah Jack: Yeah. I really want to see what they do with him in the, in part two. yeah. Because he has a pretty significant role in Gregory Maguire's novel, Chistery, and he, does involve speech in his role there. So, be interesting to see what happens. But yeah, when the, the once the flying monkeys go after Elphaba, because Morrible goes out there and tells them that Elphaba's responsible, it wasn't the wizard's idea, it was Elphaba who did it, and they need to go after her, and they're all in a lot of pain, and they fly off in a [00:37:00] rage, and suddenly they're flinging themselves at windows as Elphaba and Glinda make their way down this, you know, one of those long hallways that they only make for movies like this.That exact hall
Josh Hutchinson: With a lot of windows and it's high above the city, the Emerald city, they're up real high and these monkeys are flying and full force, like throwing their bodies at these windows. And the first time it happened, like everyone in the theater jumped a little bit, so this comes as a surprise at the beginning, I believe, but they are, they're fearsome, you know, adversaries.
Sarah Jack: That Grimmerie was amazing. The way it opened, the way the spells came up off the page, and the language that she read the [00:38:00] spells in, I was so thrilled.
Josh Hutchinson: Yes, I loved that she did this spell and she's pronouncing these mysterious spell words, like, which is what you think that a spell is like. It's some mystery language, you know, repetitive, repeating of syllables and things kind of magic. 
Sarah Jack: Maybe I missed this, you know, when they're, there's a couple times that Elphaba's in the forest. She's, it's not scary really. And I know with Oz there's, the, the MGM Oz, there's the scary trees and I don't feel like there are any Easter eggs or nods to talking trees. I would have liked to have seen at least a face on a tree, but maybe I missed it.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. Maybe they're saving that for the second part.
Sarah Jack: Could be, but I did the, one of the other Easter eggs that was in it was when they're rescuing the cub [00:39:00] and they bicycle out of there and put the cub in the basket, like Toto went in the basket. That was fabulous.
Josh Hutchinson: see that because it like seeing Elphaba on the bike, you reminded me of MGM watching, the Wicked Witch and the mean lady in Kansas riding the bicycle and Dorothy sees her like riding in the air around the house while it's flying in the cyclone, just I had that image
Josh Hutchinson: I guess I can't do the music from that sequence, but you guys I'm talking about from
Sarah Jack: and then you just. 
Sarah Jack: You mentioned the cyclone and I feel like the, the, just a little nod. There was a little nod to when, when, Glinda's like, I like the air and she puts her hair out the window. Like that was a little one. And then obviously there's a storm later, but, yeah, I just,
Josh Hutchinson: [00:40:00] Yeah, that storm's spectacular, too.
Sarah Jack: Yeah.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, I love the green flashes in the sky. Very awesome. the end in the Defying Gravity sequence.
Sarah Jack: I Hope You're Happy. 
Sarah Jack: I really look forward to being able to see the stage musical because I want to see the songs in that kind of environment and presented like that. 
Sarah Jack: 
Sarah Jack: Yeah. I know there's, there's a lot of power in going to see a live performance, and you can really feel very close to a story by being in the same room as the people acting it out and singing and playing instruments and all that stuff. You get to see this whole world coming to life in front of you and it feels very immediate. I'm ready to go see the [00:41:00] Nutcracker.
Josh Hutchinson: I was thinking about a Christmas Carol, but like the film also brought a lot of immediacy, I thought, with the ability to do closeups, you know, you can pan back and see the whole world, or you can get really close and intimate with somebody's face and you really get pulled in that way by being able to see the nuances, the little, micro expressions and so forth in people's faces.
Josh Hutchinson: 
Sarah Jack: So Josh, do we consider Madame Morrible a witch?
Josh Hutchinson: She is a witch. She is a sorceress. You can call it by different names. She's a professor of magic. She's a spellcaster. She's a lot of things. She's not labeled [00:42:00] witch by anybody in the movie. That's important to note. Where Elphaba gets labeled the wicked witch at the very end, none of the other characters are actually, even Glinda's not called a good witch in this first film, so.
Sarah Jack: But her little friends keep saying how good she is. That was so funny.
Josh Hutchinson: was
Sarah Jack: so good.
Josh Hutchinson: Her and her friends and the, her friends,just every time she does something that's outwardly seems like she's doing a nice thing for somebody, they're just like, oh, she's so good. She is such a good one. She's so good. Like all through the movie, they're just saying that, reinforcing that she has this, she's able to build a reputation as being almost saintly or, you know, whatever she's. She's the good witch [00:43:00] without the label witch yet. 
Josh Hutchinson: Even though she did, because Elphaba got her into the sorcery seminar, and they call it sorcery not witchcraft, which is also something to note. But it's interesting because we also know just going back to the original Oz, and people are familiar enough with this story, this isn't giving much away for what happens. When know that there, in the original Oz, there's a Wicked Witch of the East and a Wicked Witch of the West, and then you have a Good Witch of the South and a Good Witch of the North, so there's like the four corner cardinal directions all are represented by some kind of witch, two good ones and two evil ones or wicked ones, I should say. So we know that we're going to see Glinda become the good [00:44:00] witch, but we don't know yet, who's going to be this Wicked Witch of the East who's Elphaba's counterpart, so I don't want to reveal who that is yet, if you're not familiar with the novel or the musical and you haven't seen the film yet um, because that's not going to happen yet, be revealed for another year when part two comes out, so anyways, we have you know, one wicked witch, a sorceress, a phony baloney wizard, a learning Glinda student of sorcery. So you can see there's kind of, basically you could just say there's four witches if you wanted to, even though one's a male.
Sarah Jack: When you were, just reminding us that, you know, It can be anyone who's an accused witch today. That made me think [00:45:00] about childhood Elphaba being used to illustrate like her, her childhood character's there. Elphaba as a child is in this film more than once, but they don't show many of the characters that young. So I was just thinking about, you know, obviously, unfortunately there are children that are branded as witches today, too. 
Josh Hutchinson: Yes, and watching Elphaba grow up you can see that people are suspicious of her at an early age and like you said, coming out of the womb, she's already doing magic. She does this involuntary magic whenever she's upset, um, so it's just this emotional driven magic. And she in, right when she comes out of the room, out of the womb, into the room, [00:46:00] she, levitates all these objects in the room up to the ceiling. And it's quite remarkable. And then there's a scene where children are picking on her and she gets angry and something happens to those children. And then she gets yelled at by her father, "what have you done now, Elphaba?"
Sarah Jack: And do you think that there was purpose, whether, I mean, it's really illustrated in the film, but, Elphaba's character seems to be the one that feels the most. And I don't mean those, those necessarily just those moments where her magic flares up, but she's the one that is thinking and looking outside, you know, what is popular and really evaluating what's happening, and then she's also the one that has power in the form of magic.
Josh Hutchinson: She has, now see she's an interesting portrayal of a [00:47:00] witch, because she has this innate power but she's also othered, and therefore, she's people try to render her powerless. She fights back. And, so, but she also, you know, how stereotypically, a witch is like a poor, old crone who lives alone in a, like on the edge of a swamp or deep in the woods somewhere. And Elphaba doesn't have that upbringing. She's the daughter of the governor of Munchkinland. And so she's born into privilege just like Glinda is, or Galinda, born into privilege. They both, their families have servants, and [00:48:00] Elphaba is raised by a nanny, and so her family has resources. 
Josh Hutchinson: So what I'm thinking is that, you know, people have this image of the, of, always went after the poorest people. And certainly the, you know, that happened a lot. You look at a case like Sarah Good in Salem. You know, she's out asking people for gifts because she can't support herself and her husband can't support the family. But you also have people caught up in witch trials who were middle class or even who were wealthy, like Philip and Mary English in Salem witch trials were the wealthiest people in Salem and got caught up in it. So when I look at Wicked, I'm seeing all these different kinds of [00:49:00] Witches in it, because they all have different backgrounds and characteristics and their lives really shape what kind of witch they become.
Sarah Jack: And I think it's something to reflect on that Wicked the film, the most evil thing is the mob mentality or the groupthink. It is the character, you know, on either side of each other, the neighbor, the friend together, you know, those that are, you know, extinguishing the animals, those that decide that Elphaba is the Wicked Witch. I don't know in the future what wicked she may do, but from what we've seen of the story, there wasn't an evil source of power, but there was an evil source of [00:50:00] hurt happening to citizens in Oz.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, hmm, she's not sworn an allegiance to any kind of devil figure or anything like that. Her power, she came by her power naturally,  which is interesting.
Josh Hutchinson: But, I think, do you think, you know, L. Frank Baum kind of put, flipped witch stereotypes on their head by introducing the idea that there could be a good witch, and then Wicked the novel took that further, by introducing the concept of, you know, a gray area kind of between wicked and good, where, which is the reality that everybody actually lives in, is the space between wicked and good. No, nobody's entirely either one. And, I love exploring that area. Then in [00:51:00] Wicked and in the movie, you really see all of those shades that come between this black-and-white world of good and evil. You see everything that's in between and another way that they change the portrayal of witches is again and I guess L. Frank Baum really started it, because the Wizard, the male figure, patriarch of Oz is a a phony. He can't do any of that real magic. He does the other kind of magic, which is sleight of hand and illusions and things like that so he has a big, giant head that talks and it's supposed to be him. He also takes other forms in the books, so, um, you know, he's effectively powerless. And he has all the power, [00:52:00] but it doesn't come from himself, it comes from these lies that he builds around himself. Whereas the women actually like have, Madame Morrible is a powerful sorceress. Elphaba is a powerful witch. Glinda, we know, is coming into her power. So you've got really, it's a patriarchally run world, but suddenly you've got these three powerful women in it. And what's that going to do? How's that going to shape the next movie?
Josh Hutchinson: I've been intrigued by how it's the wonderful wizard, but it's also the terrible wizard. And they did say terrible. He did say terrible in Wicked today. And I was kind of, I was like glad to hear it. I think we always, you know, think the powerful and wonderful and terrible.
Josh Hutchinson: You know, that other movie that came out [00:53:00] last decade, Oz the Great and Powerful. He's both great, which can mean a lot of different things, and powerful. Where we know that really he's not so powerful, but he has everybody believing that he is.
Sarah Jack: So was there anything else that you loved or that really surprised you?
Josh Hutchinson: I was like really happy to see the ruby slippers slipped in there. They had both, they had the silver and the ruby.
Josh Hutchinson: yes. Yeah. Those slippers, they've. It was interesting that in, in this one, the slippers, they mentioned because,Elphaba and Nessarose's father gives slippers Nessa Rose. And that's a significant moment where he's got a gift for her, but he's got nothing [00:54:00] but grumpiness and anger for Elphaba. So, that's another moment that actually means, like, isolating Elphaba.
Sarah Jack: Yeah, and she feels like she deserves that because she blames herself for Nessa's disabilities.
Josh Hutchinson: When Elphaba and Nessarose's father gives Nessa those shoes, he says, these were your mother's. 
Josh Hutchinson: They're not at this moment in time in part one, the shoes are not special yet.
Sarah Jack: She doesn't even put them on then. She's seen in a scene right after that with not those shoes on.
Josh Hutchinson: shoes. Yeah. She must put them, tuck them away because they're so special being from her mother, who she never in Wicked the movie. And I also in the musical, Nessa never knows, never knows her mother because her mother [00:55:00] dies, giving childbirth to Nessarose. So, which is a little different than what happens in the novel.
Josh Hutchinson: What's your favorite scene from a staging standpoint? There are like, I really love one of the dances when they're in the spinning contraption and
Sarah Jack: yeah,
Josh Hutchinson: around on the ladders. I thought that really took a lot of coordination to line up that scene, the choreography and the moving, literal moving parts of the set.
Sarah Jack: Yeah. I got very excited. I pretty sure I almost clapped. I didn't, but I was like, when I like saw what that room looked like, and them putting the books. I was like, oh my goodness, they're going to be dancing there. It's going to spin around. It's going to be awesome.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, now, you know, if you were to ask me my favorite scene of the film, [00:56:00] that's the Defying Gravity sequence. The part when Elphaba takes flight for the first time. I found that to be very powerful and also very just entertaining and cool. You know, it's very action-packed and dramatic and bold and, just watching, you know, the stunt work in the film is incredible. I've watched a lot of behind the scenes stuff in the lead up to this, and just the number of times they had actors on wires, flinging them through the air at like top speed, and, and they would be singing. You can watch their, their mouth moving the whole time that they're, I'm like, how do you even concentrate while you're being flung through the air like that? So there's a lot of really cool scenes. There's a lot of great action in it. We've talked about a lot of the [00:57:00] emotions and the themes and the undertones and, and that kind of stuff, but there's, it's an action film too.
Sarah Jack: It is an action film. Yeah.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, so, if you don't like musicals, but you like magic and awesome special effects and stunts, it's really a great film.
Sarah Jack: Oh. And you know, the other part that was really great too is just the, the script, like what they're saying and the very special new words that sound like words you know, that are words you know, but don't sound like themselves. That was amazing.
Josh Hutchinson: I love the Ozian language with words like horrendable. They're quite fun. They just take, take a word and throw a twist on it. So as the you still understand what they're saying, but it's kind of Seussian or something. It's [00:58:00] a fun way of Ozifying a word. 
Josh Hutchinson: Cause There's almost nothing that I could criticize about this film. I loved it. 
Josh Hutchinson: A lot of the stuff, it was like this, you're like looking and seeing so much at once, but then at other times you really are only seeing like a little bit, you know, a more defined, smaller space.
Josh Hutchinson: I liked that variety because one of the good things that I really like about that you can do with musicals is make the scenes really come like there's a lot, so much movement at once. In other words, all the dancers, the choreography, people are moving in different directions, coming at each other, away from each other. You know, you see all these different kinds of people moving around on the screen in different ways at the same time.
Sarah Jack: Yeah. And they really, in this, in the film, the props and the, the [00:59:00] large, the little props and the big, the furnace, like so much is used in the choreography. It's great.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah, that's another thing I love about musicals, and they did that especially well in this movie, using the entire, like, the sets were practical pieces, because every piece of it is used in some somewhere in the choreography. You've got Galinda gliding, hanging on a ceiling fan at one point going in a circle. You know, people are jumping off walls. There's ladders. There's all kinds of moving parts.
Sarah Jack: Which, I really want to point out that I felt like that was a real statement. You had Galinda singing in her room that she, you know, it was To use a word that Jane Barnette used this week in her interview with her that I loved, frothy. It was a frothy room and Galinda's frothy and she does this frothy little flying around in this room, [01:00:00] but the sky is not the limit there. When Elphaba actually flies, the sky is the limit. And I really, I saw, you know, that comparison as significant.
Josh Hutchinson: Yeah. That reminds me of something else I wanted to say about witch representation. You have the pinkness, another word that Professor Barnette used earlier this week. The pinkness of Glinda and her, Galinda's room is just so stuffed with pink, primarily there's a few other colors in there. It's overwhelmingly pink and so, you know, pink of course being a color traditionally associated with females. While Elphaba there in contrast is in all black, which, you know, a color certainly associated with females, but it's. Like, so different than pink. Pink is like, [01:01:00] we associate it with cheerfulness and happiness and fun and bubbly, cutesy things and gentleness. And black is like a strong, like harsher color. It's a more powerful color. It is associated with evil but Elphaba just
Sarah Jack: Independence,
Josh Hutchinson: like she belongs in it. And she's not wicked. She's, she's nice.
Sarah Jack: Thank you for joining us on Witch Hunt. Tune in Monday for a special interview with experts on Wicked and the representation of witches on stage and screen. Until then, have a great today and a wicked tomorrow.