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All Movie Info
Starring:
Johnny Depp, Sarah Jessica Parker, Martin Landau, Max Casella, Bill Murray, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, Lisa Marie, Vincent D'Onofrio, Conrad Brooks, Rance Howard, Juliet Landau, G.D. Spradlin, Mike Starr, Gregory Walcott, Ned Bellamy, Jim Myers, Jim Myers, George Steele
Directed By:
Tim Burton
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Ed Wood (1994)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
March 24th, 2008
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'Ed Wood' is an affectionate showcase of the man voted the "worst director of all time"; it follows his career from his first feature, called Glen or Glenda, and ends with the premiere of his infamous "masterpiece" Plan 9 from Outer Space, the movie he said he would be remembered for. Ed (Johnny Depp) is a man of boundless enthusiasm; he compares himself to Orson Welles, and has a passionate love for the movies, and he believes he has what it takes to make great ones. He remarks to his girlfriend Dolores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker) that Welles made Citizen Kane when he was 26; Ed is approaching 30 and expresses a need to follow in Welles's footsteps. He starts off doing a play that gets poor reviews, but poor reviews don't bother him, he draws attention to the critic's lone positive comment, about the realism of the costumes.
He then meets with George Weiss (Mike Starr), who proudly produces garbage intended to turn a quick profit, and Ed offers to direct what will become Glen or Glenda, but begins as a story based on the real-life account of a man who undergoes a sex change operation. Ed says he would make a good director because he himself a transvestite and can thus sympathize with the main character. Actually, transvestitism is one of his many eccentricities and quirks, but it gets heightened comedic emphasis from Burton, and Depp gets to walk around in several scenes with a blond wig, angora sweater, and a dress. Ed has an angora fetish, and also likes to wear bras and panties, which he steals from Dolores. He reveals this secret to her in the script for Glen or Glenda, where he casts himself in the lead role.
Ed is willing to do just about anything to find actors and investors. His big "star" is Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau), whom he hires and ultimately befriends, out of both admiration and pity. Lugosi is a sad and lonely old man, a hopeless drug addict who has not worked in nearly four years, and faces financial hardship. He still clings to his Dracula persona, and gets angry when anyone mentions Boris Karloff, largely because he regrets turning down the role of Frankenstein, and resents the fame and success it brought to Karloff. Ed throws Lugosi's name around in an effort to promote his films, but everyone thinks Lugosi is dead and are surprised to hear he is still alive. Ed is really the only person who still thinks Lugosi is relevant, and likewise the only person still willing to cast him. Ed also recruits hack psychic Criswell (Jeffrey Jones), Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson (George "The Animal" Steele) and horror hostess Vampira (Lisa Marie). He even gets his wife's chiropractor to serve as Lugosi's body double, with a cape pulled up around his face. For funding, Ed consults with a woman named Loretta King (Juliet Landau), whom he sees in a bar, and is convinced that she is wealthy. She offers to put up some money for his latest project, if he gives her the lead role, which he has already promised to Dolores. Loretta, it turns out, is not so rich. He holds fundraiser banquets that are abysmal failures; he is willing to lie through his teeth and say just about anything to persuade people to give him money. It takes a special talent to be regarded as the "worst director of all time" and to make films of such consistently terrible quality, but Wood is blinded by self-assuredness and overconfidence in his own abilities.
He is a sunny and optimistic fellow, likable and flamboyant, with an energy and devotion to his craft that is almost enviable. He endures professional rejection and ridicule of every conceivable type and dismisses most of it, stubbornly and proudly continuing his work. He recites the dialogue from his script as it is being spoken by his actors, as if to reaffirm its brilliance. He shoots more than 20 scenes a day with no retakes, and has to make due with a rubber octopus with no motor to make it move. The film is indeed about Ed Wood, but also about the cinematic atmosphere that surrounded him, that of the 1950s, when absurd sci-fi flicks with occasionally bad special effects were released in abundance, and Wood plans to capitalize on this trend by making movies about aliens, zombies, and atomic monstrosities. Wood apparently would have missed the subtext in something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, about what was happening to people during the McCarthy witch hunts.
This is Johnny Depp at his best. He is the perfect choice to play Wood, and this is the kind of character he is usually drawn to, one who is odd and unusual. Depp imbues Wood with bold strokes of madness, genius, and kindness; it is a great comic performance, as well, though never a parody, more like an affectionate send-up, though it does consider Wood on his terms and takes him seriously. Martin Landau won an Oscar for his masterful, superbly entertaining performance as Bela Lugosi. Bitter and occasionally foul-mouthed, he bears a striking physical resemblance to Lugosi (thanks in no small part to a remarkable makeup crew), has a share of the film's funniest lines and moments, and also captures that thick Hungarian accent. Bill Murray, Parker, and Steele fill out the rest of the excellent supporting cast. Patricia Arquette is wonderful as Ed's wife Kathy, and Vincent D'Onofrio is convincing as Orson Welles, whom Ed meets near the end and finds that they have many of the same grievances about the filmmaking process. Stefan Czapsky provides luscious black-and-white cinematography. I also liked the behind-the-scenes look at how Plan 9 got made, what triggered the title change to Plan 9 from Outer Space, and the surprising source of funding for that movie. The scene where Ed's two producers point out the extremely obvious problems with the movie is priceless. This is my favorite Tim Burton film.
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