For those of us who have always loved to watch movies Ed Wood (1994) is
a gloriously atmospheric, black and white love letter to cinema. Tim
Burton's film recalls a bygone era when one could see movies in theatres
with palatial stages and grandiose art deco architecture. He understands
that for the devoted cineaste, the best moments in life have often been
spent in a darkened movie theatre being enveloped by a film and becoming
one with the environment it creates for two hours. Watching a movie is
a form of escape from the harsh realities of the real world and Ed Wood
argues that making films can also do the same thing. Of course, Burton's
movie takes this idea to an extreme. The characters that populate the
movie are perhaps a little too devoted to their craft—so much so
that they develop an intense denial towards the awful elements in their
own lives.
No one understands and appreciates this devotion to cinema
more than Burton. From Beetlejuice (1988) to Mars Attacks!
(1996), his films are lovingly crafted homages to the horror
and science fiction B-movies that the director enjoyed in
his childhood. Burton once commented in an interview, “There’s
a roughness and a surprising nature to most B movies that
you don’t get in classic films—something more
immediate.” With Ed Wood, Burton indulges this obsession
completely by telling the story of a man who loved to create
and watch movies.
Initially, Ed Wood may seem like a rather odd vehicle in
which to celebrate a love of movies. What does the infamously
touted "worst filmmaker of all-time" have to do
with what makes movies so great? As Burton's film amply demonstrates,
what filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. lacked in technical merits
to make a good movie, he more than made up for with heart
and enthusiastic perseverance.
Ed Wood was born in Poughkeepsie, New York on October 10,
1924. He spent his youth watching westerns and Universal
horror films. Wood first got bitten by the filmmaking bug
when his parents gave him a movie camera at eleven years
of age. After serving as a Marine in the Pacific during World
War II, he moved to Hollywood in 1948. He started off as
an actor in local theater and idolized Orson Welles. Wood
spent a few years doing little but making contacts, including
aspiring producer Alex Gordon who helped him meet Bela Lugosi.
Wood and Lugosi became friends and when he finally scraped
together enough financing to make Glen or Glenda (1953),
he gave Lugosi a role as an omniscient master of human fates.
Wood gave Lugosi a larger role in Bride of the Monster (1955),
despite the actor’s increasing ill health. Lugosi’s
various drug addictions and his bad health finally took their
toll and he died on August 16, 1956. Wood was crushed. However,
before Lugosi’s death, Wood shot some generic footage
of him in a cemetery and outside his home. This footage became
the basis for Wood’s most infamous film, Plan 9 From
Outer Space (1959). He made Plan 9 for only $6,000, armed
with stock footage and a script he had written in less than
two weeks. The film barely got a distributor, made no money
and was shortly pulled from theaters. By the 1960s, Wood
was reduced to writing trashy novels and making low budget
sex films. He died from a heart failure on December 10, 1978
in North Hollywood.
Ed Wood spans the six year period in which he made his most
celebrated movies. Starting with the autobiographical Glen
or Glenda and climaxing with the release of Plan 9 From Outer
Space, Burton's film eschews the traditional biopic format
for a looser, more impressionistic take on Wood's life. This
approach is necessary because many of the details of the
cult filmmaker's life are contradicted by those who knew
him or are simply not known, as documented in Rudolph Grey’s
excellent oral biography, Nightmare of Ecstasy. Burton opts
for a more intimate character study of the director and his
small but dedicated crew. He never puts these people down,
but rather celebrates their intense love of making films.
“There are times in history, like
Paris in the ‘20s, when groups of artists happen
to get together at the same time. I think of this as kind
of the bad version.”
Tim Burton
The origins for Ed Wood can be traced back to two men. During
his sophomore year at the University of Southern California,
Scott Alexander wrote a proposal for a documentary about
Ed Wood entitled, The Man in the Angora Sweater. Fellow classmate
and screenwriting partner, Larry Karaszewski remembers that
they had "always talked about what a great biopic it
would be. But we figured there would be no one on the planet
Earth who would make this movie or want to make this movie,
because these aren't the sort of movies that are made." The
two film students were not interested in "making fun
of Ed Wood the way most traditional things written about
Ed up to this time had done," Karaszewski recalls. "What's
interesting is that since Ed Wood was so on the fringe of
Hollywood, the story became one that was more about someone
who wants to be a film director than about a guy who actually
is a film director."
Alexander and Karaszewski went on to write the Problem Child
films but the Ed Wood movie was always in the back of their
minds. Out of frustration from being pigeonholed, they wrote
a 10-page treatment for film school buddy Michael Lehmann
with Karaszewski's tongue-in-cheek pitch, "the guys
who wrote Problem Child and the guy who directed Hudson Hawk
making a movie about the worst filmmaker of all time." Lehmann
showed the treatment to his producer, Denise DiNovi, who
in turn showed it to Tim Burton. The trio struck a deal where
Lehman would direct and DiNovi and Burton would produce the
film.
Burton originally was going to take the role of producer
because he was set to direct Mary Reilly (1995), a version
of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story but told from the perspective
of the doctor's housekeeper. However, Columbia Pictures was
interested in speeding up the production faster than Burton
wanted and they also rejected his casting of Winona Ryder
as the housekeeper in favour of Julia Roberts. Frustrated,
Burton left the project and regrouped at a farmhouse in Poughkeepsie,
New York. He started reading Grey’s Nightmare of Ecstasy
book in preparation for the movie. The more he read, the
more interested he became in Wood and his world, to the point
where he wanted to direct the film.
Burton was attracted to Wood's unusual hopefulness. He recalled
in an interview about how he was drawn to the man's "extreme
optimism, to the point where there was an incredible amount
of denial. And there's something charming to me about that." The
filmmaker also identified with the Wood-Bela Lugosi relationship
as it mirrored, in some ways, his relationship with Vincent
Price. "Meeting Vincent had an incredible impact on
me, the same impact Ed must have felt meeting and working
with his idol."
However, no screenplay had been written at this point. So,
Alexander and Karaszewski worked 14-hour days, seven days
a week for six weeks writing what would eventually become
a 147-page screenplay. For the two writers, there was a certain
level of desperation that inspired such a large output in
such a short span of time. Alexander told Film Threat magazine
that "there was a bit of mercenary attitude behind the
script in the fact that we were trying to appeal to Tim's
instincts. He's a very personal filmmaker and everything
with him is on a gut level...We knew we had one shot, and
so we tried to put in scenes that would work for him on an
iconographic level or would parallel his relationships." This
angle paid off as Burton liked their first draft so much
that he agreed to direct and use said draft without any revisions—a
practice virtually unheard of today where screenplays are
re-written and doctored to death. Lehmann, who was originally
supposed to direct, was developing the screenplay for Airheads
(1994) into a movie and so he and Burton swapped roles on
the Ed Wood movie.
Ed Wood was in development with Columbia Pictures but this
soon changed when problems between the studio and Burton
arose. The director wanted to shoot the film in black and
white with total creative control. Karaszewski remembers
at the time that "the studio was saying, 'How about
if we shot it on a color negative and released it here in
black-and-white, but then later on if the film is not that
successful we could make it a color video?' Tim said no way." Burton
recalls, “I went through that ten years ago on Frankenweenie.
It looks like shit. If you’re going to make a decision,
make a decision. You don’t hedge it.” Columbia
responded by putting the film in turnaround a month before
principal photography was scheduled to start. Almost immediately
Warner Brothers, Paramount and Fox became interested in optioning
the film but Burton went with Disney because they agreed
to give him complete creative control and a $18 million budget
but only if he worked for scale.
After working on large-sized, multi-million
dollar productions like Batman Returns (1992), Burton saw Ed
Wood as a chance to be more instinctive in his filmmaking approach. "On
a picture like this I find you don't need to storyboard. You're
working mainly with actors, and there's no effects going on,
so it's best to be more spontaneous." This attitude towards
the filmmaking process results in Burton's most accomplished
movie to date. Ed Wood is a perfect blend of the filmmaker's
unique visual style and his pre-occupation with what Gavin
Smith calls "the irrepressible outsider who will not be
denied." Wood fits in with other Burton protagonists,
like Pee-Wee Herman, Batman, and Edward Scissorhands, who do
not fit into normal mainstream society but struggle to achieve
their dreams anyway.
With this in mind, it seems only fitting that Burton cast
Johnny Depp as Wood. It was the second time that the two
had worked together (the first being Edward Scissorhands)
and further reinforced the belief by many film critics that
Depp was actually Burton's cinematic alter-ego. For Depp,
the appeal of Ed Wood was the era that the filmmaker and
his crew lived in:
"There must have been a kind of
optimism that we lack today. People wore suits then. People
wore overcoats and hats. Somehow that meant something to
me. People cared. There was a kind of enthusiasm about
the country. That was the big thing that had to be put
across. It was an innocent time."
Depp portrays Wood as a naïve dreamer who loves the
movies. He even gets ideas for movies from discarded stock
footage that a stagehand runs for him. "Why if I had
half the chance, I could make an entire movie out of this
stock footage," he says as he dramatically constructs
an absurd tale from a montage of completely unrelated footage
that could only come from his brain. There is something contagious
about this approach that makes you root for Wood to succeed—even
if you are aware of the director's eventual downward spiral
into poverty and obscurity.
To play the pivotal role of Bela Lugosi, Burton cast legendary
character actor, Martin Landau. For the director, Landau
was his only choice. "Martin has done great movies.
He's done weird cheesy horror movies. He's done it all." The
veteran thespian was no stranger to genre films and immersed
himself completely in the part. The first thing he did was
make-up tests with Rick Baker to capture the external essence
of Lugosi. Baker didn't use extensive applications on Landau,
just enough to allow the actor to use his face to act and
express while also resembling Lugosi physically. As Landau
remembers, "I could then react, not as I would react,
but as Lugosi would react. Ultimately I walk differently,
I behave differently and I sound differently."
To augment the rather Method style of getting into character,
Landau also did extensive research on his subject, watching
25 of Lugosi movies and seven interviews with the man between
the years of 1931 and 1956. From this research Landau constructs
a Lugosi that is a gruff, grumpy old man who spits out obscenities
when provoked. He's the jaded counterpoint to Wood's youthful
optimism. At one point he says, "this business, this
town, it chews you up, then spits you out. I'm just an ex-bogeyman." He
underlines perfectly one of the most important unwritten
rules that governs Hollywood: you're only good as your last
movie.
And yet, Lugosi also talks about what's wrong with modern
horror films: "they don't want the classic horror films
anymore. Today, it's all giant bugs. Giant spiders, giant
grasshoppers. Who would believe such nonsense?" For
Lugosi, the older films were "mythic, they had poetry." Even
though he is talking about horror films of the '50s, Lugosi
could easily be talking about the horror films of today where
subtlety and imagination has been replaced by sterile, state-of-the-art
special effects and formulaic stories. The clunky effects
of these older movies, with their rubber-suited monsters
and fake blood, have a certain texture to them that you can
almost touch. There is something comforting about this because
you know that it's real. Computer effects, for the most part,
lack any real textures and are too perfect looking—they
lack any kind of personality.
If Ed Wood is a loving homage to movies, it is all the more
fitting that Orson Welles, the patron saint of cinema, is
celebrated throughout. From the obvious touches, like the
poster of Citizen Kane (1941) that hangs in Wood's office,
to the use of deep focus photography (where the fore, middle
and background are all in focus) and low angle perspective
shots favoured by Welles, his presence is felt everywhere.
This culminates in a meeting between the auteur and Wood
at Musso and Frank Grill, a famous West Coast eatery. With
his stocky build and deep voice, Vincent D'Onofrio bears
an uncanny resemblance to Welles. As he and Wood share a
drink and commiserate about their struggles to get films
made, there is a particularly important exchange:
Wood: Mr. Welles, is it all worth it?
Welles: It is when it works. You know, the one film of mine where I had
total control—Kane—the studio hated it. But they didn't
get to touch a frame. Ed, visions are worth fighting for. Why spend
your life making someone else's dreams?
Triumphant music plays in the background as Welles delivers
this sage advice and it inspires Wood to go back and finish
Plan 9 his way, right of wrong. For Burton it was important
to include this scene even though it never actually happened
because Wood often equated himself with Welles.
Ed Wood ends with a triumphant screening of Plan 9 From
Outer Space at the same theater where Bride of the Monster
failed. Even though this never really happened, it is a nice
way to end the movie—on a high note instead of what
really happened. Wood became an alcoholic and was reduced
to making schlocky nudie films. Burton clearly means to celebrate
the man and his love of movies and so this bit of revisionism
can be forgiven. After all, there are many articles and books
that document the less savory aspects of Wood's life.
With Ed Wood, Burton transforms the filmmaker into the ultimate
cinephile. Wood criticizes Vampira for not giving Lugosi's
movie the proper amount of respect and mouths the dialogue
to movies as he watches them—totally enraptured in
the experience. As Gavin Smith pointed out in his interview
with Burton, Wood is the “patron saint of movie junkies,
raptly mouthing his own films’ dialogue Rocky Horror-style,
his own number one fan.” Unfortunately, mainstream
movie audiences did not feel the same way and Burton's movie
tanked at the box office. It was a bittersweet pill for him
to swallow. "I love the movie, I'm proud of it. It's
just that no one came. I guess if I was like everybody else,
I would just blame a bad marketing campaign. But that's too
easy." As Landau put it in an interview, the real joy
came from the experience of making the actual movie. “I
loved the challenge of doing it. It was a great set to work
on, and Tim and Johnny and I had a day of mourning when it
was all over.”
And yet, Ed Wood has endured. It went on to win two Academy
Awards (one for Landau's performance and one for Baker's
make-up) and a slew of critics awards. The movie has also
become a favourite of film buffs everywhere, which is rather
fitting considering that this is exactly its target audience.
Sadly, Burton went on to make Planet of the Apes (2001),
a paint-by-numbers action film with expensive computer effects
that lacked any of Burton's distinctive personality—the
complete antithesis to Ed Wood. Hopefully, he has not become
completely absorbed by the Hollywood system and that there
is still some of the spirit of Ed Wood left in him.
Carducci, Mark. “Ed Wood: Cult Legend.” Cinefantastique.
October 1994. pp. 21-44.
Clark, John. “The Wood, The Bad, and
The Ugly. Premiere. 1994.
French, Lawrence. “Playing Bela Lugosi.” Cinefantastique.
October 1994. pp. 24-25.
French, Lawrence. “Tim Burton’s
Ed Wood.” Cinefantastique. October 1994. pp. 32-34.
Gore, Chris and Jeremy Berg. “Ed or Johnny:
The Strange Case of Ed Wood.” Film Threat. December 1994.
36-38.
Salisbury, Mark. Burton on Burton. Faber and
Faber: London. 2000.
Smith, Gavin. “Tim Burton: Punching Holes
in Reality.” Film Comment. November/December 1994. pp.
52-63.
