On its Dec. 5 broadcast, ?Saturday Night Live? aired a ?deleted scene? from ?The Wiz Live!? featuring Ryan Gosling impersonating Ray Bolger's interpretation of the Scarecrow from the 1939 ?Wizard of Oz? film. Hilarity ensues. Featuring Gosling and SNL cast members Kenan Thompson, Beck Bennett, Jay Pharoah, Leslie Jones, Sasheer Zamata and Michael Che, the skit is a parody of Dec. 3 NBC television event, "The Wiz Live!," which earned 11.5 million viewers and rave reviews from TV and theater critics alike. A precursor to a prospective 2016-17 Broadway remounting, the broadcast was directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon with a teleplay adapted by Harvey Fierstein who retooled the musical written by Charlie Smalls and William F. Brown. Starring an all-star cast that featured Stephanie Mills, Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, David Alan Grier, Uzo Aduba, Amber Riley, Elijah Kelley, Ne-Yo, Common and newcomer Shanice Williams as Dorothy, the show was updated to include modern dances and technology, devices that "SNL" had no troubles lampooning.
