OzLand is the debut feature film from West Point native filmmaker Michael Williams. Released in 2015, its narrative was inspired by L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. To celebrate both the film’s 10th anniversary and its enduring appeal for both indie film fans and Oz aficionados, a special screening will be held at the Malco Renaissance Cinema Grill in Ridgeland at 7 p.m. Oct. 21. Presented by the Mississippi Film Society, the screening will be followed by a Q&A with Williams and some of the film’s cast and crew. Free tickets are available here.
What is OzLand?
OzLand is a post-apocalyptic film inspired by The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, from the perspective of someone who wants to believe that there’s something more in this desolate world they live in. The story is about these two characters and their journey when a copy of the book comes into their lives and how the book and the world that they’re seeing around them correlate. It not only sends their journey in a new direction but also sends their friendship in a new direction.
The film is now celebrating its 10th anniversary. How did it originally come about?
At the time, which is 2012, I was just making short films and was on track to just be a cinematographer. I never thought that I could be a writer or director for a feature film. I thought that was just not my thing. So, I kind of limited myself.
And then, Glenn Payne, a fellow filmmaker from Tupelo who plays Emery in the film, he was also working on a feature film idea around the time. We both challenged each other to apply for the $2500 Mississippi Film Alliance Emerging Filmmakers Grant. And I said, well, if I get the grant, then I’ll write the movie because I was just pitching a premise at that point. I thought, if I get the money, then I guess that’s a sign that I need to make a feature film and we’ll make it happen.
We both ended up getting the grant. He got his for Earthrise and I got mine for Ozland. We both decided to make these movies for $10,000. We were going to shoot Earthrise first and then later in the year start shooting OzLand.
Once I got that grant, I was like, OK, I have to write this movie because all I had was just a long treatment. I wrote it and then we funded it through the proceeds from my short film Kane. We had a big premiere for it and announced OzLand there. We also had an Indiegogo campaign and then the Mississippi Film Alliance grant and then any merchandise we sold throughout the making of the movie.
We shot part of the film in three and a half days in Kansas over Labor Day weekend in 2013, then came back to Mississippi and shot about 12 to 13 days on weekends and holidays from September to January 2014. We had to do it that way because Zach Ratkovich, who plays the other lead Leif, was in the Air Force (and still is). We couldn’t shoot on any day that he was technically working. It was just about 5 to 10 of us on set every day.
We finished a version of the film in 2014. Then that went on a regional tour and festivals for about a year. I recut the film to make it a little bit shorter and then we released it officially on October 16, 2015, in Hollywood. We had a one week theatrical run, then released nationwide on all the different platforms at the time.
What Mississippi locations did you use in the film?
The biggest location was Mary Holmes College in my hometown of West Point. That was a prominent historically black community college that shut down in 2005. They just closed the doors and left everything in there.
When we filmed in 2013, the basement looked like a nuclear bomb went off. That’s where he finds the book at the very beginning of the film. We also sourced a lot of props in that building. Then up another floor, it looked like a smaller bomb went off. Then you go up to the top floor, it looked like people just vanished like in the Rapture. All their stuff was still there. You open a drawer, and all their personal photos. So that was the location we used a lot. We used a lot of it for Earthrise as well. We shot there and then tons of places around my hometown.
Then we went to Meridian and shot on the abandoned Royal Land grounds, it’s an abandoned amusement park. The big circus scene takes place there. We ultimately came back to Meridian and screened the film on March 20, 2015 and the mayor proclaimed it as officially Ozland Day.
What has the response been to the film over the past decade? Have you seen any renewed interest, either through streaming availability or the resurgence of all things Oz in popular culture thanks to Wicked?
Our original theatrical run was kind of a regional tour. We did that. We got distribution. We ended up having the one week theatrical in Hollywood, then released on streaming. You know, we got tons of press and reviews that were generally favorable. But it didn’t really do much when it first came out. But then it kind of rose over the next few years and Amazon Prime really pushed it. It did really well with Amazon. And then Amazon changed their payment structures and we weren’t making very much. Then we got dropped by our distributor three years in because I didn’t give them my second film. So that’s a little bit of drama for another day, because I didn’t give them The Atoning. They dropped Ozland and broke our contract.
So, in 2018, the film was pulled from everything and then I had to find a way to get it back out there. We re-released it on our own on Amazon and Blu-ray. It’s currently only available for rental and purchase on Amazon. They’ve been purging independent films from Prime so they don’t have to pay as many streaming rights. We’re lucky that it’s even on Amazon, really. It’s also on Vimeo and it’s on Blu-ray.
The film had a resurgence this year too, thanks to its 10th anniversary. We screened it at the annual Oz-Stravaganza in New York earlier this year. I got to see the film with a room full of Oz fans, which is the first time I’ve ever seen it with people who are devoted to Oz and not just in it for the movie itself.
What was that experience like? Did the audience better connect with the film’s many allusions to the book?
Yeah, they did. What I liked is that a lot of them enjoyed the extra layers of story that we took on top of L. Frank Baum’s story. They appreciated our take on the idea of home or love or all the different themes that are worked into the story. We also got to see it with John Fricke, who is the renowned Oz scholar. If you watch any MGM release of Wizard of Oz on DVD, he’s the commentary track. He got to see it in the theater there and that was a big deal because we also did a Q&A with him. So having a historian, who loves Oz and Judy Garland and is very much immersed in that world, give his seal of approval was a huge thing for us.
As far as Wicked is concerned, yes, every time something Oz happens in the mainstream, the film has an uptick either on Amazon or IMDb or something. Also, a big thing I want to mention is that we have a lot of our props and memorabilia in the All Things Oz Museum in Chittenango, NY, which is L. Frank Baum’s hometown. There’s a whole exhibit in that museum for OzLand. So anytime people come there to see, you know, costumes from The Wiz, from even the new Wicked movies, they have costumes from ours as well. We’re about to send them all the OzLand costumes after this 10th anniversary if I can get in my attic and find them. (laughs) A lot of people discover the film through the museum. We also have the script in the Academy’s library. So, the life of the film has had its fun little moments.
What’s striking and bold about the film is that it focuses on just two characters. Which probably helped with its micro budget, but also likely brought up its own challenges in staging the drama. How did you approach casting and working with the actors?
I always knew Glenn was going to be Emery. That was the plan because we were making these films together. I wrote it for him. And I wrote the character of Leif for my friend Cameron Spann, who was an actor who was prominent in our community in the early 2010s. But then he was moving to Memphis and couldn’t do it. Jack was kind of like a last-minute find. He came to us on the scouting trip and we auditioned him with Glenn during that trip. He kind of was perfect for it.
There were some rehearsals, but they were not extensive. There were a lot of times, especially in Kansas, where we would say, here’s a slate of scenes that we may shoot today. If we find the location or if a dust devil runs by us, we were sometimes having to take opportunities when nature gave it to us. So, there was a lot of improv in that way, maybe we were in a location and we had to adapt really fast.
There were some scenes that were just horrible at first. The first time we shot them I had to go back and reshoot them and rewrite them based on our limitations for the budget. There’s a whole thing with the crows that we could not pull off earlier. Over those six months that we were filming on weekends it really changed. We would see what we got, and what we needed to pick up. The cast and crew was so good because everyone understood our intentions. Everyone was bringing their own extra elements to it. That’s where all the layers came in, because even though we do have just two actors on screen as characters, the locations were also characters, the music was a character, the flora and fauna were characters.
At its heart it is a character study, some people have compared it to Of Mice and Men. You have to be invested in the characters. That’s been the tough part of the movie, is that it doesn’t align to people’s attention spans currently with things like TikTok, streaming and bite-size entertainment. But if you really sit down and watch it, especially in a theater, you’re immersed. It’s much better than watching it on a little screen where you have distractions, because if you’re distracted, you don’t see all the subtle layers and elements that are weaved throughout that really make it a richer story than if you just look at the surface level dialogue with two characters.
You made a film for just $10,000 that’s still being talked about a decade later. It could be a case study for aspiring indie filmmakers who may not think they can accomplish their visions. Is there any advice you can offer?
I would say every movie I’ve ever made has never had enough money. The Atoning was in the end around $50,000, which is nothing. OzLand was $10,000, which is less than nothing. And then all my short films were $1500, $1000, $500 even zero. (laughs) At the time it was a luxury to have $10,000 because I’d never been able to pay anyone before. Maybe I paid for some gas and paid for food and all that. But on Ozland, everyone got paid. It wasn’t much, we just split it up, but everyone got paid.
We really made that $10,000 stretch. But I had to wear like 30 hats. I had to do a ton of jobs for free. And then we had to do all the special effects ourselves. What you see on screen, the working robot was maybe 200 bucks spent on materials. And then I spent maybe 100 bucks on the model. And that was just us growing up and watching tons of behind the scenes on all these movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and studying those. There’s one CG shot that Zach Prichard made of the tornado, and the rest is all practical. We used puppets, miniatures, forced perspective. There’s a lot of editing tricks too. You’ve got to be creative. I guess the advice for that is, if you have no money, you have to do a lot of stuff for free for yourself that you know you’ll never get paid for. You have to beg and borrow and sometimes steal – ethically, of course. (laughs) You’ve got to be creative and resourceful and prove everyone wrong because everyone’s going to say you can’t do it. We did it anyway. And we just keep proving to people that no matter how much money you have, as long as you have a passion and you know what story you’re telling, you can do it.
Now, the hard part is you can’t do it too many times. That’s why I haven’t made a feature since The Atoning. Because I don’t want to make another movie where I can’t pay people what they’re worth or kill myself in the process by wearing too many hats and then know that the film is not good enough because we didn’t have the resources and the manpower to do it right. Do it a couple of times to prove that you can do it, but then getting yourself to the next level of this industry is the harder part – how do you get the real money and not have to kill yourself just to prove yourself again?
What does OzLand mean to you, either in terms of your career or just that specific moment in your life?
It still means a lot to me. Sometimes I have to remind myself of all we were able to accomplish. When I’m looking at whatever I’m working on now, even if it’s not film related, I’m like, well, if we did that, there’s no reason why I can’t do this. Don’t have that naysayer in the back of my head saying, oh, you can’t do this. For instance, I have to do a lot of work on my house. But then I’m like, wait, we built whole sets for OzLand. We did all these things. I can work with wood. I can do this work. In that way, the film keeps inspiring me.
I was really worried about seeing it earlier this year because I haven’t watched it in years and I am completely a different person than when I made it. I had very different beliefs that I would be very embarrassed about today. But the film was made to be adaptable to whatever your beliefs are. Whether you’re more like this character or this character, and whether you’re more of a believer or a non-believer.
I always thought that I was more like Leif. I wrote it from his perspective, even though I knew I was pulling stuff from my own life for Emery. And then I realized over the last 10 years I moved more to being like Emery, and then I realized I’m really a bit of both.
