influenced by the teachings of author Werner Erhardt, which focused on improving a person’s mentality so they’d be better able to handle the situations they found themselves in. Diana suggested incorporating Erhardt’s teachings into the script. Executive producer Cohen really hated that she was doing that. He said this after The Wiz released:
“The movie was becoming an est-ian fable full of est buzzwords about knowing who you are and sharing and all that. I hated the script a lot. But it was hard to argue with [Ross] because she was recognizing in this script all of this stuff that she had worked out in est seminars.”
Even Joel Schumacher, who actually wrote the script, said that he was thankful for the teachings but in reality, those who had been exposed to them didn’t really implement them in their lives. “Everybody stayed exactly the way they were and went around spouting all this bullshit,” he said.

Berry Gordy was accused of purposely sabotaging his own film
Several insiders accused Berry Gordy of intentionally making sure that he did everything in his power to see to it that The Wiz was a box office flop, all because he hated that Diana went over his head and that MJ was in the movie. At that point, many say it was a personal vendetta Gordy had. The Wiz did lose big profits at the box office, but since then, it has become a cult classic.

Golly! There was whole lot going on with that movie but…

Here are the bright side to Diana being a part of the film:
(1) Diana played that role! She was an excellent “Dorothy.”
(2) Diana wanted the film shot in New York so the Kaufman-Astoria Studios in Queens geared up for the film. Because of this, more filming started to be done there and it became a viable studio once again. To thank her for bringing filming back to KAS full time, they named one of the stages after her. On the corner of one building is a plaque dedicating the sound stage as “The Diana Ross Stage.”

Old school fun fact:
Diana was temporarily blinded by the laser lights that shot out from the giant head of The Wiz (most of you probably know this already). She couldn’t see for two days so her sister Rita had to take her place for certain shots (they only filmed the back of her).