Will Scheibel
In the first century of American cinema, is there an easier subject of ridicule than writer-director-producer Edward D. Wood, Jr., the so-called worst director of all time? Ed Wood (1994), a biopic with a dose of counterfactual film history, never takes the bait that might have tempted lesser filmmakers.
Instead of an ironic or mean-spirited comedy about the creator of such camp classics as Glen or Glenda (1953), Bride of the Monster (1955), and, most infamously, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), director Tim Burton and screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski paint a sincerely sympathetic portrait. What’s more, they even find something brave in Wood’s apparently non-judgmental and optimistic attitude, his resourcefulness and resilience, his sheer love of movies, and—conventional standards of “quality” be damned—his passion for creative work and determined commitment to his singular aesthetic.** Here, the title of “The Worst Director of All Time” is a badge of honor, a sign of belated mainstream recognition. Perhaps not coincidentally, Ed Wood was a box-office bomb, although now many consider it Burton’s masterpiece (myself included).
Ed Wood is also extremely funny. However, the humor arises not from Wood’s alleged ineptitude as an independent filmmaker toiling in low-budget horror and science fiction, but from the sharp incongruity between Wood’s assured if admittedly bizarre view of the world and the world’s bemused view of him in it. When shooting a scene in Bride of the Monster, for example, actor Tor Johnson (playing Lobo, the burly assistant to a mad scientist) loudly bangs into the doorframe when exiting soundstage right, visibly shaking the set. Surprised that Wood is ready to move on to the next scene, the DP asks, “Don’t you want to do another take, Ed? Looks like big baldy had a little trouble getting through the door.” Wood replies, “No, it’s fine. It’s real. You know, in actuality, Lobo would have to struggle with that problem every day.
I always laugh at this scene, not because I think Wood is a fool, but because I kind of admire the confidence in his vision even as I understand the incredulity of those around him. Burton purports to tell the story from Wood’s point-of-view, and the film is all the better for it. With exquisite black-and-white cinematography by Stefan Czapsky, who previously worked with Burton on Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Batman Returns (1992), and an exotica-influenced score composed by Howard Shore, mixing the theremin, organ, and bongos into one cool musical cocktail, Ed Wood looks and sounds like the sort of film Wood would have wanted to make were funding not a perpetual obstacle. The opening credits sequence alone, designed by Robert Dawson and Paul Boyington, seems like a transmission straight from Wood’s brain, recreating moments from Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 with dazzling use of model miniatures and stop-motion animation.
Before Johnny Depp became a parody of himself, he was one of the most interesting young stars in Hollywood, and his performance as Wood is not only his greatest achievement as an actor, but also key to the film’s success. Depp makes Wood a figure of pathos, not pity. Adopting a slightly presentational and mannered style, he fills Wood with an endearing earnestness and boyish enthusiasm, as well as an energy that appears a little off kilter, supposedly combining elements of Jack Haley (The Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz [1939]), Mickey Rooney, Ronald Reagan, and Casey Kasem. The effect is as if Wood himself were a character who walked right out of a midcentury American film, a grinning, guileless, wide-eyed Andy Hardy, but with a thing for angora sweaters.
Wood identified as heterosexual and also enjoyed wearing women’s clothes. As the film recounts, he drew inspiration from his own life to make his first feature, Glen or Glenda (1953), a pseudo-educational film about what was then called transvestism. Glen or Glenda was sold as an exploitation film capitalizing on the sensational news coverage of Christine Jorgensen’s gender-affirming surgery, a scandal in 1952. In addition to writing and directing Glen or Glenda, Wood played the masculine-presenting main character, who has kept his feminine-presenting alter ego secret from his fiancé (Dolores Fuller, Wood’s then real-life wife), fearing she will not accept a gender non-conforming partner. Sarah Jessica Parker is terrific as Fuller, who loses patience with Wood’s filmmaking ventures and eventually leaves him (she went on to become a songwriter and wrote the lyrics for several tunes that Elvis Presley sung in his films).
Glen or Glenda also began Wood’s collaboration with actor Bela Lugosi, beautifully played by an Oscar-winning Martin Landau, whom Wood befriended late in Lugosi’s life. Once a major star of Hollywood horror films in the 1930s, Lugosi was then in the throes of a morphine and methadone addiction, and his career was in decline. Rick Baker also won an Oscar for his makeup design, which included impressive prosthetics that helped turn Landau into Lugosi.
Wood worked with Lugosi again in Bride of the Monster, casting him as the mad scientist Dr. Eric Vornoff. In Plan 9, Wood billed Lugosi as a guest star and credited him as “Ghoul Man,” but actually relied on archival footage he had shot of the actor, who died before the film even went into production. A chiropractor named Tom Mason then stood in for Lugosi, and to mitigate the problem of looking nothing like him, he played “Ghoul Man” by covering his face with his cape, attempting to evoke Count Dracula, Lugosi’s most recognizable role.
Other members of Wood’s faithful entourage included Paul Marco (Max Casella), who played police officers named “Kelton” in three of Wood’s films, and Conrad Brooks (Brent Hinkley), who showed up in more of Wood’s films than anyone else. Nobody, however, was more memorable than John “Bunny” Breckinridge (Bill Murray), the wry drag queen who guest starred in Plan 9 as the always irritated-looking alien ruler.
One of the charms of Burton’s film is seeing Wood’s troupe expand over the years as various L.A. eccentrics and loners enter his orbit, forming a queer family of choice. Jeffrey Jones plays “The Amazing Criswell,” a local television psychic and the narrator in Plan 9. Lisa Marie plays Maila Nurmi, better known as “Vampira,” the Finnish-American host of a late-night horror program on KABC-TV whom Wood cast in Plan 9 as “Vampire Girl” (and credited as Vampira!). American wrestler-turned-actor George “The Animal” Steele plays Swedish wrestler-turned-actor Tor Johnson, who became a minor horror icon after Don Post made a rubber Halloween mask based on his likeness in Bride of the Monster and Plan 9, one of his biggest sellers. And in an almost achingly touching performance, Patricia Arquette plays Wood’s devoted second wife Kathy O’Hara.
Screenwriters Alexander and Karaszewski based the film on Rudolph Grey’s 1992 oral biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. This screenwriting duo would make a career of telling the life stories of unlikely subjects for biopics: smut peddler Larry Flynt (The People vs. Larry Flynt [Miloš Forman, 1996]), anti-comedian Andy Kaufman (Man on the Moon [Miloš Forman, 1999]), popular commercial painter Margaret Keane, whose husband Walter Keane took credit for her work (Big Eyes [Tim Burton, 2014]), and star of the martial-arts-meets-blaxploitation comedy Dolemite (1975), Rudy Ray More (Dolemite Is My Name [Craig Brewer, 2019]).
To date, they have not made a film better than Ed Wood, in large part because it’s ultimately about more than its biographical subject. Whatever one thinks of Wood or his work is ultimately beside the point in this film. It’s a salute to underground artists and creative fearlessness. It’s an examination of the meaningful connections possible at the margins of creative industries, where one’s life and art are not mutually exclusive (people live to create and, in a very literal sense, create to live). It’s a celebratory expose of the transgressive practices adjacent to and often just below the surface of socially respectable culture in 1950s America—like lingerie underneath a grey flannel suit.
**Wood identified as a heterosexual “transvestite.” I have used masculine pronouns when referring to Wood since, to my knowledge, this is how Wood would have referred to himself at the time. Gender-neutral pronouns were not commonly used in the 1950s the way they are today.
