Frank Baum

And the hard song, as it turned out, belonged to a very recognizable source.

The song Believe in Yourself from the 1978 musical film that we just talked about, The Wiz, which is a pretty fucking awesome piece of 70s cinema, post-blaxploitation, a reinterpretation of Frank L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz.

I haven't seen it in

so long.

There's no controversy about asbestos being used in the Scarecrow's costume when he's set on fire by the Wicked Witch of the West, who incidentally is not named in the original movie.

Only 56 years later did author Gregory Maguire name her Elphaba, paying homage to the original author, L. Frank Baum.

So L, F, and B, A. L. Frank Baum.

That gives you Elphaba.

How did you actually, uh, take the proboscis out of the mosquito?

Yeah, it's actually not me.

It's my student, uh, who is the first author of the paper, Justin Puma, uh, who spend almost two years trying to, practicing how to take, uh, uh, the, the tube from a mouth, uh, of a mosquito to do the work.

Um, so we use little gears, those, uh, pa- watch repairs use, um, to, to magnify the structure and also very, you know, control their hands very, you know, stably to pull it out.

Those are the four.

The most filmed American authors, according to IMDb, Edgar Allan Poe, O. Henry, Stephen King, L. Frank Baum...

Nobody got that.

Of course.

Who was her son-in-law?

Oh, L. Frank Baum?

L. Frank Baum, yes.

Yeah.

I was like-

I always mix them up.

Yeah.

It is L. Frank Baum.

And the Cowardly Lion's campy mannerisms were part of a subversive current that helped generations of viewers see themselves.

L. Frank Baum was the man behind the curtain.

Before MGM's Technicolor Tornado, Flying Monkeys and Green Witches, there was a writer.

A writer with a filing cabinet.

Freed, a songwriter himself, insisted that the score be integrated into the plot.

It was Arthur Freed who pushed for a song that could carry the audience from the dust-grey world of Kansas into the colour of Oz.

L. Frank Baum never mentioned rainbows.

That image came from Yip Harburg, who used it as a simple signpost of somewhere better.

Oh, okay.

Like Frank L. Baum.

It's how you pronounce it, right?

Baum? Baum.

Yeah, like tree.

Or like

Frank L. Baum, right? So...

He wrote a movie we've covered before.