The Projector #51: Upon Closer Examination… (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

A couple of nights ago my family and I went to one of the makeshift drive-in theaters that’s popped up in Chicago during this long, pandemic-stricken summer to go see The Wizard of Oz. It was a great night, offering both a chance to get out of the house and to see a movie projected for the first time since March. (My last was The Invisible Man for this very podcast.) It also left me feeling like kind of a dummy. I’ve seen The Wizard of Oz countless times, dating back to a childhood in which its annual airing on network TV was close to a national tradition. I’m not embarrassed to say, as a kid, I didn’t notice that the the characters Dorothy meets in Oz were played by the same actors who played the Kansas characters in the bookend segments. Kids often don’t notice that sort of thing. (I think I got that Margaret Hamilton played both the Wicked Witch of the West and Almira Gulch, but didn’t connect the dots with the others.) But even though I’ve seen the film on increasingly large screens over the years, this is the first time I noticed that Frank Morgan not only played Professor Marvel and the Wizard but also the gatekeeper, carriage driver, and guard that eventually admits Dorothy and her friend to see the Wizard.

Has this happened with anyone else? I don’t mean with The Wizard of Oz in particular. I think that might just be my weird film-specific face blindness at work. But has anyone else overlooked a film’s key detail, maybe for years and over repeat viewings? Or am I just a dope? Here’s another example, one that I think I can pin on first watching the film on smaller televisions: I never noticed Richard Dysart’s character in The Thing has a nose ring until watching it on Blu-ray a while back. A quick Google reveals that I’m not alone, but I’m glad I finally caught it. It’s such an odd touch that reveals an oddball streak in the character that the dialogue doesn’t touch.

Anyway, if you’ve got examples from your own movie-watching history, leave them in the comments. Other bits of business: Please enjoy the second half of our Meek’s Cutoff/First Cow pairing. And look for our long-promised parenting and moviegoing bonus episode soon, along with some other surprises, including — if all goes according to plan — our first audio commentary. It’s for a movie we’re guessing a bunch of you enjoy. (But I don’t want to jinx it by giving it away.)

I can give away some links to some pretty cool pieces, however. Pieces like:

• For Vulture, Bilge Eibiri wrote about Liam Neeson, action star.

• For Uproxx, Mike Ryan wrote about trying to watch Cocoon and, in the process, discovering some of the limitations of the streaming era.

• Also for Vulture, Joseph Bien-Kahn spoke to Steven Garza, one of the subjects of Boys State (and good reading in advance of an upcoming podcast episode).

• And also, Rachel Handler spoke to Holland Taylor about Legally Blonde.

• Stereogum’s Nina Corcoran looked back at the time-capsule soundtrack of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World on the film’s 10th anniversary. (Ten years, wow.)

• Puzzled by She Dies Tomorrow? Our own Tasha Robinson spoke to director Amy Seimetz about the film.