Visitors to the McWane Science Center in Birmingham may be in for a trip down the Yellow Brick Road this weekend. The center’s IMAX theater will be hosting a Saturday screening of the 1939 movie classic The Wizard of Oz with the new movie musical Wicked to begin showings next week. Annie Strong is Creative Director at the McWane Science Center. She says the educational part of the OZ weekend is a visit from local TV weatherman Dave Nussbaum…
“He's going to be answering questions about weather from one to four. So how you know?” said Strong. “How did Dorothy travel to Oz on a tornado? I don't know if he'll be able to answer that, but he'll be able to answer some of your other tornado questions.”
APR news featured McWane’s CEO Amy Templeton in a radio related to the TV program “Alabama, Inc.”
“Everybody loves the bed of nails,” says Templeton. “If we’re here a hundred years from now, we’ll have the bed of nails.”
Before you ask…nobody gets hurt on McWane's bed of nails. Your body weight gets distributed, so nothing gets punctured. It’s also makes the experience, well…more sciency. Okay, back to Templeton. She says it’s more than just what the kids think is fun…
“One of my favorite things at McWane is when the parents and the children are doing things together," she recalls. "And then the children are ready to move, but the parents aren’t quite finished with that exhibit.”
McWane’s Annie Strong says this weekend’s Wizard of Oz event will be the lead up for next week’s IMAX screenings of the new movie “Wicked.” That new film is based on the Broadway musical, which was based on the original Oz film and the book by L. Frank Baum. Strong says young visitors and their parents and grandparents may be fans of one movie, but less familiar of the other.
“We're imagining most people will know about ‘Wicked’ and we're, you know, just giving them a precursor to that. And you know, maybe hoping some parents or grandparents will bring out their kids to show them the original Wizard of Oz, if they haven't already seen it.’
Strong says another exhibit will be on color and film making. Producers of the original1 1939 film shot the early scenes in Kansas in black and white, and then transitioned to vivid color when actress Judy Garland, as Dorothy, visits Oz.
