I SAW IT ON TAPE - The Wizard

Everything seems to move a lot faster nowadays. I don't just mean the accelerated passage of time that comes with old age (2025 is half over??) but the way contemporary media finds its way into our homes. A new TV show could premiere tomorrow morning and you can watch it through to the series finale before bed. I can go see a matinee at the theater and then come home and fast forward to see if I missed anything after the credits. "Reserve" became "preorder" and then "preorder" became "pre buy". We're always trying to recreate the past because the future is fleeting. Getting what we want right when we want it is such a tepid thrill (mostly because the choices are crap) but the nuanced joys of anticipation and yearning seem to be outmoded. Believe it or not, this isn't me lamenting the loss of my childhood and the days when we had to wait 6 whole months for a movie to journey from the cinema to the video store. Instead I'm here to point out that that's exactly when things started to speed up, and like everyone else who hit the ground running I leaned to adapt. 

The Wizard opened in theaters in December of 1989 to bad reviews and poor box office. Whatever, that's not what this is about -- this is about that span of time between its theatrical run and its video release in June of 1990. I (like many people apparently) did not see the movie in theaters, but I remember the incessant TV spots that wisely aired during all my afternoon TV programs, and these commercials had two things to sell: the kid from The Wonder Years, and Super Mario Bros. 3. Sure I liked Kevin Arnold, but the more exciting part was getting a glimpse of the new Mario game - which, of course, is the big climactic reveal of the last act and so they ruined that surprise 10 times a day during commercial breaks between Hey Dude and Captain N. What that did was got me all excited for the new video game, not this new movie, and I'm guessing that was the national consensus. Super Mario 3 was released in the U.S. in February of '90, so by the time The Wizard was on videotape in June, me and the rest of the country (and the world) were already entirely familiar with all the ins and outs of Nintendo's crown jewel. But for me, that created a new kinda buzz: now I wanted to see the movie about the kid that gets to play Mario 3 on a giant TV screen, because now there was a context I could relate to, but also fantasize about. At any rate, a Kids' Movie about video games wasn't some manipulative ploy, it was an attractive and believable premise and so I certainly had interest. 

Shortly before its VHS release, my sister (who's 12 years my elder) moved out of our house and into her first apartment. Whithin a few weeks of moving in, getting settled, buying groceries, and acquiring a pet cat named Felix, she invited her little brother over for a sleepover. She was excited to play host and show off her new place, and I was excited because I was 7 years old and so any small activity out of the norm was fun and interesting - particularly if that activity involved Domino's and a tape rental. The tape was, of course, The Wizard because everything just lined up that way. So, pizza, summertime, sleepover, new movie, it should've been an otherwise unblemished memory in the rolodex of my protected little childhood, but physically I felt like garbage. I remember sitting on the floor in front of the TV watching Beau Bridges and Christian Slater bicker their way to California and noticing that it was literally hurting my eyes to look at the screen. And then noticing it was painful to look at anything. And my throat and neck and skin were all burny/itchy - so much so that I couldn't hide it, causing my sister to freak out and call my mother crying, "He's all itchy and wheezy and I don't know what's wrong and I don't know what to do!" This is where it becomes notable to point out that I never had a pet cat growing up because my father was allergic to them, and this is the part of the plot when everyone discovered at the same time that I too was allergic to cats. Felix had me all fucked up, to the point that had I stayed overnight my face would've melted off like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

You know I love any opportunity to write or talk about The Wizard, and it often ends up as a defense; always defending the quality of the movie, my subjective adoration for the movie, and dismantling and discrediting all the flimsy criticisms against it. It (along with everything else in the universe) lies at the mercy of The Internet now, and so whenever it's mentioned in that ring of fire we're treated to the endlessly "fresh" observations regarding product placement and "California" and the Power Glove being "so bad". Of course, the most common comments continue to be the conviction that the only way to enjoy it is through the lens of personal nostalgia; that's it's a bad film and the only reason to watch it is to indulge in some sorta sentimental irony. Well I'm here to say (yet again) that I have very different feelings about The Wizard, and if I truly wanted to simply feel as though I were a child watching it for the first time I could just pour beach sand into my eyeballs and do a shot of Clorox. How's that for nostalgia? 

- Paul