OF OZ THE WIZARD (1939)

[silentfilm]

For obsessive compulsive people only, here is an edit of The Wizard of Oz with the dialog completely in alphabetical order...

[boblipton]

Some one clearly had a lot of time to waste; more than I. Now, if you will excuse me, I must go lock and unlock and lock my front door twenty-four times.

Bob

[Mike Gebert]

And it still goes perfectly with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon...

[Donald Binks]

Expected I is never something this. Done it was why?

[Harold Aherne]

They didn't alphabetize the MPPDA logo, "The Voice of Action" in the Western Electric logo or the IATSE insignia -- gotta start over!

-HA

[bigshot]

OCD rears its ugly head!

[westegg]

Next up: WIND THE GONE WITH.

[Donald Binks]

Next up: WIND THE GONE WITH.

Be that wouldn't?

GONE THE WIND WITH?

[Nick_M]

Brief interview with the creator: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/some ... is_amazing

Dangerous Minds: GOOD GOD, MAN, WHY DID YOU DO THIS CRAZY THING?

Matt Bucy: It was a challenge from a friend, Ray Guillette, to do something never done before. While on a short road trip, he said he didn’t think anything original was possible. I said nonsense! He asked for an example. I hatched the idea then, pretty much complete, and we riffed on the idea for a while. Then I totally forgot about it. But a couple years later he asked me when I was going to make this original thing. I said I’d hop on it right away and thanked him for saving the project!

DM: When was this done and how long did it take?

MB: The idea was hatched in 2001 (I think) and then I actually did it in April 2004. It has been shown sporadically since then, most recently at MIX in NYC a couple years ago.

It didn’t take too long. In a couple of days I wrote a bit of code to help disassemble the movie, then the disassembly took me and another friend three days to complete. It was a manual process but it went very quickly. It was pretty difficult to speak after a day of disassembly! It really messed with my head. The credits took another day. I had to wait for the right moody clouds to show up where I live so I could re-shoot the sky pan that lies under the credits. In total no more than a week of work.

DM: I really love the rhythms that are created by some of the most oft-repeated words. And there are some long passages of wordlessness. Could you talk about what edit criteria other than the alphabet you followed, or were those decisions more intuitive?

MB: The editing criteria were simple and strict. Alphabetical then chronological. The only subjective decisions were about how to spell things like screams and breathing. I consulted a friend, James Sturm, who co-founded the cartoon school here in town about some of these since they appear in cartoons all the time.

DM: You dug around in the guts of a classic piece of popular art, one that people know intimately already. How did the process transform your view of the film?

MB: My appreciation for the film increased enormously, mostly in a technical sense while disassembling. I saw and heard things I’d never seen before and which you would only see going frame by frame. I saw how much craft there is in the film. With headphones on and listening to sections over and over I heard how much the soundtrack is edited to sound smooth, for instance. I had no idea what the final result of my edit would be. I had concern that it’d just be a mess, but on first play that concern evaporated into laughs, screams, jumping up and down and astonishment. I got pretty excited!

Interesting discovery: there are less than a thousand unique words in the film. Most words are used only once. Also, there are mistakes! And people are finding them and letting me know, some angrily! Amusing. I guess that’s what happens when you mess with a classic.

[Scoundrel]

I'm looking forward to CASABLANCA, CITIZEN KANE and STAR WARS

[Gumlegs]

In that order.

[Donald Binks]

I'm looking forward to CASABLANCA, CITIZEN KANE and STAR WARS

"Again, it play, Sam!"
"Bud Rose!"
"Be Force the with you!"


(Bananas going I,I'm think!)

[wich2]

[earlytalkiebuffRob]

For obsessive compulsive people only, here is an edit of The Wizard of Oz with the dialog completely in alphabetical order...

Yes, clearly for those who wash their hands after breaking wind...
[after breaking clearly for hands their those wash who wind Yes,...]