Most people that have seen the Wizard of Oz set to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon agree that it’s a pretty cool coincidence. Replacing the soundtrack to a movie can significantly change a viewer’s perception of the film, because audio almost always plays a large role in a film’s storytelling, mood and tone. Wizard People, Dear Reader manipulates that idea and hilariously re-envisions the 2001 adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by providing a full-length, alternate soundtrack of narration to the film.
“We were at a bar and there was a guy playing pool all by himself, and he had sunglasses on and this kind of big hat, and headphones on… just totally cut off from the world even though he was right there in the middle of it, playing pool. We were just kind of taking turns, as people do when you’re just sitting around just kind of throwing out jokes, about what he could possibly be listening to,” creator Brad Neely said. “I bet he’s listening to a book on tape of Harry Potter.”
From there, Neely adopted the enthusiastic and scruffy voice that such an overbearing narrator might have. Though unnamed, this narrator becomes another character in the film, and seems more in-tune with the characters’ inner-dialogue than factual information; Hermione becomes the ugly and obnoxious Harmony, Professor Snape is now a female, and Rubeus Hagrid is called “Hagar the Horrible.”
Although Wizard People started out as a popular live performance, much like Mister Sinus Theater (a sort of live version of Mystery Science Theater 3000), Austin-based cartoonist and musician Neely no longer performs it live because of legal issues. However, he has recorded and made available a downloadable two-disc set to sync and play along with the first Harry Potter film.
Neely made it easy, and free, to download this two-and-a-half hour recording, divided into two separate burnable files, from counter-copyright website www.illegal-art.org. Simply follow the syncing instructions on the website to watch the film with the new soundtrack, or pop the CDs in your car stereo and listen to the “book on tape” as if it were one.
Aside from just being incredibly funny, Wizard People uses heavy-handed metaphor and hyperbole to tell another story that may not be immediately apparent to fans of the film’s original version. The narrator makes frequent religious and existential references to Harry’s powers, situation and inner conflicts. One of the most interesting scenes in Neely’s interpretation takes place in the school’s attic in front of the Mirror of the Erised, between Harry Potter and “Ronnie the Bear.” Harry finds the mirror and sees it as a gateway to heaven, and the scene becomes a moment of conflicting value systems between the two friends.
“What’s funniest sometimes is the serious stuff in the world…it kind of gets tied up in the whole reason that the Christian Right doesn’t like Harry Potter; if you’re going to be a wizard you have to kind of not believe in heaven, but you can believe in all these other crazy magical awesome things. You know, like Dumbledore’s pitching being a wizard to Harry as an alternative to going to heaven. I just think that’s cool, and Ronnie the Bear’s already totally into that whole idea.”
Ironically, one of the most fertile topics for Wizard People is Harry’s obvious biblical references, “He’s prophesized, he’s the most powerful being whether he wants to or not, and in every movie he saves the world from Satan, or Voldemore. I just think it’s such a Christ story, and I like the idea of a reluctant Christ. So, I saw the potential to be able to get that across.”
Whether altering the soundtrack to a film is considered a new art form is up to the viewer’s interpretation, but Neely’s attention to time and tone deserve recognition. The narration syncs almost perfectly in chronology and visual action, and each time the DVD player’s screen moves to a new chapter, the narrator announces it and introduces what’s on screen. From there, the storytelling analyzes the scene, or spirals away on an absurd tangent concerning nothing on-screen.
Aside from straining his throat to maintain a bizarre voice for the entire length of a film, another obvious difficulty of the project was working within the time constraints of a given scene or chapter, “That was a challenge, but a fun one… it was also a way to keep variety from chapter to chapter, so it wasn’t just all the same tone. [I] could work on one specific chapter at a time and kind of, hopefully, make these little, different sections.”
Although the project started out a joke between a group of friends, Neely has received a huge amount of positive response from fans who have downloaded and synced the DVD and audio, “I still get emails pretty much daily where someone has watched it and enjoyed it. So, that’s gratifying.”
Brad Neely’s other projects can be found online at www.creasedcomics.com, including the popular George Washington music video. Future projects include a series of short cartoons for an internet TV station, and a fictional rough-draft to Ulysses S. Grant’s autobiography, The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant.
