Adaptations can be hit or miss. They come with a lot of baggage, from audience expectations to inevitable comparisons with the source material. So, if you’re going to mess with a classic — as SCI FI Channel has chosen to do with its three-night, six-hour programming event Tin Man — you’d better do it right. And it certainly doesn’t hurt to assemble a talented cast that includes Zooey Deschanel, Alan Cumming, Neal McDonough, Raoul Trujillo, Kathleen Robertson and Richard Dreyfuss.
Premiering Dec. 2-4, Tin Man does both. Directed by Nick Willing, whose previous credits include TV adaptations of Jason and the Argonauts and Alice in Wonderland, the miniseries reimagines L. Frank Baum’s literary classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — which, of course, spawned the beloved 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. But don’t expect munchkins, ruby red shoes or wicked witches in striped socks from Tin Man. And don’t expect any singing.
“I’m glad they steered away from that,” says Cumming. “I mean, imagine trying to live up to that. ‘What are you doing? Just be quiet.’ Imagine trying to live up to the singing of the original songs. I mean, it’d be awful.”
Well, maybe not awful. After all, Cumming won a Tony Award in 1998 for his performance in the Broadway musical Cabaret and Deschanel has sung beautifully for her roles in many films, including Elf and Bridge to Terabithia.
“I love to sing,” she says, “but that was never a part of the script so I didn’t really even think about it. It was only when we got there and it happened to be that pretty much everyone could either sing or dance, and we were like, ‘Hey, we should have made this a musical!’
Of course, that would only invite comparisons to the classic telling of the story, and Deschanel, like Cumming, is hoping to avoid those. Deschanel — who will be playing another iconic role as Janis Joplin in the upcoming biopic Gospel According to Janis — calls Judy Garland’s performance in The Wizard of Oz one of the greatest of all time.
“And underrated,” she continues, “because people don’t really give enough credit to her performance as carrying that film through. I think she was a really wonderful actress. She got so much attention for her singing — she was an amazing singer — but I think she was a really great actress, as well. No, no, don’t compare me to her, please — don’t.”
Rest assured, Tin Man is its own story. This is not your grandparents’ Oz. In fact, it’s not Oz at all — it’s the O.Z. (as in the Outer Zone). That’s where a rebellious young waitress named DG finds herself after she’s ripped from her rural Omaha farmhouse by a violent tornado. The wicked sorceress Azkadellia (Robertson), who has seized power of the O.Z. from its rightful queen, Lavender Eyes, has conjured the storm as a means of summoning DG, whom she views as a threat to her reign.
The way Deschanel describes DG, who shares little more than initials with Garland’s Dorothy Gale, perhaps Azkadellia has reason to worry.
“She’s feisty, she’s modern, she’s sort of a regular girl who’s discovering a part of herself that is able to fight,” says Deschanel of her character. “She’s a little bit sheltered in the beginning, and then she is able to sort of grow up and discover that she had parts of herself that she didn’t even realize — which is sort of a rite of passage.”
Shortly after her arrival in the O.Z., DG meets up with some recognizable characters: Glitch (Cumming), a zipper-headed former adviser to Lavender Eyes who is now missing half of his once-brilliant brain; Cain (McDonough), a tough ex-cop, or “tin man,” whose heart has been broken by the abduction of his wife and son; and Raw(Trujillo), a half-human/half-wolverine, whose once-strong courage has been shattered.
Cumming enjoyed the challenge of playing Glitch, a man with only half a mind.
“I mean, there’s not much you can do [to prepare]. It was just making sure it didn’t go too far one way and just actually [keeping] a balance. You know, you could be funny and humorous because of the situation he’s in, but also that you would believe him when he has these flashes of remembering his past. And I think that’s a nice thing as well, because everyone is finding out stuff about themselves on the journey as the audience is, so that’s quite nice.”
Together DG, Glitch, Cain and Raw head down the “Old Road” toward Central City to find a once-powerful wizard known as the Mystic Man (Dreyfuss). While the road may be familiar, the direction in which it leads is decidedly distinct.
“I know that’s the first thing that strikes everybody, but I didn’t even think of it as an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz,” insists Deschanel. “It’s sort of a classic storyline and it has some of the characters represented in some way, but there are so many differences. … Moving genres makes a huge difference in how different a film plays.”
Indeed, SCI FI Channel’s imprint is all over this project. Tin Man is set in a fantastical world that is far darker and more expansive than any Oz we’ve ever seen before. It’s filled with computer-generated beasts, such as predatory PaPays and menacing flying monkey bats. Even Toto is more than man’s best friend — he’s a “shapeshifter” who can transform from man to dog in a split second.
“It’s so weird,” says Deschanel of working around effects that are added in after filming. “I hadn’t done a lot of green screen stuff before. … I always prefer — and I think pretty much everybody would say — reacting to real things.”
Not everyone, it turns out.
“I quite like those actually, when there’s absolutely nothing there,” admits Cumming. “It’s kind of like being a child and just imagining things that aren’t there. And it’s actually easier to do when there’s nothing there than when there’s … things there.”
Science fiction and special effects aside, what Tin Man does share with The Wizard of Oz — appropriately — is its heart.
“I think that’s why it’s such a great story and why we keep kind of going back to it and there’s many stories like it,” says Cumming. “It’s about all these characters — different characters with different needs who come from different places, and they are all going on this journey together thinking that they will find what it is that they need at the end of the journey. And, of course, on the journey they realize that they’ve got what they need right there with them.”
Whether viewers are willing to join the characters on that journey for three nights remains to be seen, but a bit of impromptu market research that Cumming did during a recent elevator ride has him feeling optimistic.
“There was one of these little TVs in the elevator and it just said, ‘Tin Man coming soon.’ And everyone said, ‘Oh, I can’t wait,'” he recalls, before making the one potential comparison to The Wizard of Oz that no one involved in the making of Tin Man would mind.
“I think it’s going to be one of those things that people will have a special place in their hearts for.”