I first saw Tim Burton’s 1994 biopic Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp and Martin Landau, when it was originally released in theaters. I was someone whom marketing professionals would have identified as an ideal member of the core audience for the movie – someone familiar with Ed Wood’s films; a fan of 1950s monster movies; an appreciative viewer of Johnny Depp’s and Martin Landau’s earlier performances; and an admirer of Bela Lugosi’s oeuvre. As a teenager, I had read my copy of sibling co-authors Michael and Harry Medved’s The Golden Turkey Awards literally to shreds, referring back to it so often and lending it to so many friends that the book’s spine disintegrated and the pages fell out. That book “celebrated” the dubious cinematic accomplishments of director Edward D. Wood, Jr. and, based upon the tabulation of 3,000 ballots submitted by readers of Michael Medved’s earlier book, The Fifty Worst Films of All Time, named Wood’s 1959 magnum opus Plan 9 From Outer Space as the worst film ever made. After reading the book, I made sure to attend any revival screening of Plan 9 that screened within a hundred miles of my home, guffawing whenever a cardboard tombstone got knocked over or a scene abruptly shifted from day to night and back to day again. When I purchased a VCR, one of my first VHS tapes was a copy of Plan 9.
So I was delighted when I learned Tim Burton, whose 1993 animated movie The Nightmare Before Christmas I had loved, would be directing a movie about the career of Edward D. Wood, Jr. I went to see Ed Wood with high expectations. Although Martin Landau’s performance as Bela Lugosi left me agog (and critics agreed – Landau won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe award, and a Film Critics award for his performance), I found myself curiously dissatisfied with the movie as a whole. It wasn’t because of the principal performances – I’ve already mentioned being knocked out by Landau’s inhabitation of Bela Lugosi, and Johnny Depp portrayed Ed Wood as likable, sympathetic, even admirable, not mocking the real-life director in the slightest. The supporting performances were all of a high standard, with the least of them being no less than watchable and entertaining; Bill Murray as Bunny Breckinridge, Jeffrey Jones as the Amazing Criswell, and George “The Animal” Steele as Tor Johnson were, I thought, particularly good. It wasn’t due to any shortcomings in cinematography or set design; in typical Tim Burton fashion, these were first rate, and the subject matter of Ed Wood fit the director’s visual style to a T. It wasn’t due to bad or unbelievable dialogue; the repartee amongst the characters was engaging, entertaining, and often very funny.
Yet the problem, when I was able to puzzle it out after leaving the theater and talking it over with my then-wife, did have to do with the script. American audiences have been trained to expect meaningful change to occur in the lives of the protagonists of the films they watch or the novels they read. Johnny Depp’s Ed Wood begins the movie as a young man somewhat frustrated by his current circumstances (working as a low-paid functionary at a Hollywood studio), but powerfully optimistic about his talents and his chances to write, produce, and direct memorable motion pictures. Throughout the film, he continually runs into roadblocks which temporarily discourage him or stymie him, but he always manages to find a way to press on towards his objective. He ends the film as a slightly older man who is still somewhat frustrated by his current circumstances (having written, directed, and produced several movies which have enraged audiences and inspired derision from critics, in addition to making very little money for Wood), but who retains his optimism about his talents and his chances to produce works of cinematic art that will last as long as those created by his idol, Orson Welles (who shows up in a wonderful cameo appearance near the film’s end). In all the essentials, he hasn’t changed. His character hasn’t changed or grown appreciably. He has gained many new friends over the course of the film, but his problem, if he can be said to have one, was never a deficit of likeability; at no point in the film is he either friendless or without a serious girlfriend. So the film, at least on that initial viewing, seemed to have a static quality, for all of its immense likeability.
Since that initial viewing back in 1994, I’ve watched the film three more times, two times in just the past six months. Each time I have found myself enjoying the movie more and more. Which poses the obvious question: why? It is much more common, it seems, to have a wonderful memory of a film and to then go back to it fifteen years later and be disappointed; what had once seemed magical now comes across as trite or obvious. To gain greater pleasure from a film after initially suffering no small measure of disappointment is an anomaly, an anomaly which requires a change in perspective.
Starting with my third viewing, I began to realize the film would more accurately have been titled The World of Ed Wood, for at its heart, it is an ensemble picture. Ed Wood the character doesn’t change, because Ed Wood the character is actually Ed Wood the environment, or Ed Wood the setting. The film’s true protagonists, the people who experience change and growth, are Ed Wood’s circle of friends. Ed Wood brings them together as an extended family of oddballs, has-beens, and never-beens, and his invincible optimism and undying faith in his own creative powers — and by extension, their creative powers, for he has invited them to join his charmed (if tarnished) circle — allows them to experience their own brands of achievement or rebirth. Loretta King, an ingenue from the hinterlands, gets to experience life as a film actress (albeit an actress in a Grade Z science fiction movie). Tor Johnson achieves a rise from the tawdry life of a professional wrestler to the somewhat more dignified role of a popular and recognizable film actor, someone who can dress his wife and kids in their fanciest clothes to take to a Hollywood premiere. The Amazing Criswell gets to expand his fan base and socialize with the demimonde element he enjoys and appreciates. Bunny Breckinridge, Ed’s gay friend, gets to become a kind of hero to the local gay community by getting many of them parts as extras in Glen or Glenda. Kathy O’Hara finds the love of her life in Ed, marrying him and staying with him through the rest of his life. Paul Marco, Conrad Brooks, and Tom Mason (Kathy’s chiropractor) get to escape being nobodies by becoming (slight) somebodies in Ed’s films. Vampira gets to continue her film and media work after being fired by the television station that had employed her as a horror hostess. Even Dolores Fuller, Ed’s girlfriend through the first half of the film, who ultimately gets fed up with the tawdry milieu in which Ed chooses to immerse himself, goes on to bigger and better things; we learn in the film’s postscript that after breaking off her relationship with Ed, she wrote a series of hit songs for Elvis Presley.
But the central relationship of the film is the relationship between Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi. Here the film’s writers, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, do their finest job of showing the redemptive and ennobling effect Ed Wood’s friendship could have on the people he brought close to himself. When Ed first accidentally meets Bela, one of his screen idols, Bela is at the nadir of his career, a heroin addict who hasn’t been able to land a film role in over three years. Ed quickly entangles him in a series of marginal film projects, beginning with using him as an omniscient narrator in Glen or Glenda (surely Bela Lugosi’s strangest role ever), then as a misunderstood mad scientist in Bride of the Monster, and finally (and mostly posthumously) as an old man dying of grief following the death of his wife, in the unforgettable Plan 9 From Outer Space. Between the making of these movies, the film shows Ed seeing Bela through crisis after crisis, culminating in Bela’s stay in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility (interestingly, their on-screen relationship drew partial inspiration from the real-life relationship between young, amateur filmmaker Tim Burton and faded Hollywood horror star Vincent Price). Through his friendship with Ed, Bela regains his self-respect and a sense of hope. By the last days of his life, he has recovered much of his old energy and is enjoying himself and his work again, looking forward to greater things over the horizon. Ed’s friendship and unwavering faith in him have transformed him, to the point where he dies a happy man, rather than an embittered failure.
Tim Burton’s film’s true protagonist is Bela Lugosi, not Ed Wood. The transformation of Bela Lugosi from a self-pitying, drug-besotted wreck to a self-respecting, self-actualizing artist, enabled by the friendship and support provided by Ed Wood, is what primarily lends a glow to the lives of all the other supporting characters in the film. Examined in this light, I think it is fair to consider Tim Burton’s Ed Wood a minor masterpiece, a film worthy of repeated viewings.
