Listen now | This week’s movie is Ed Wood directed by Tim Burton. As you’ll hear in the episode, we are pretty divided on this movie. We’re really eager to hear your thoughts! Next week is the final movie in our “Story within a story” movie series, Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).
I'm a little late, I just listened to the episode. You asked if there were fans of "crappy" movies, I guess I would consider myself as one! I just watched Glen or Glenda by Ed Wood and there's a fantastic scene in it which I am sure inspired David Lynch for Eraserhead, his playstation ad and the tea scene in Inland Empire.
Even the jarring editing in Glen and Glenda is similar to what David Lynch does.
I saw Plan 9 from outer space a while ago, but I remember liking the weird mix of aliens, zombies and vampires ahah
Also there are the Jean-Luc Godard movies of the 70s when he made super low-budget "communist" movies. I didn't watch them in a long time, but I think this scene is super interesting as he is making fun of chaotic process of trying to do a movie by committee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urpekTdxmiI
These movies are so unconventional that even if they are not well made, there's a weird creativity going on in them. It's a bit like when Joyce wrote purposefully bad prose in Eumaeus chapter in Ulysses.
To expand on that, I would say that I see a proximity between Ed Wood and Dadaist/Arte Povera/Bad Painting art movements. Like in the Tim Burton's movie when the character talks about using discarted reels (with the buffalos and the real octopus) it's basically collage. It's difficult to compare, obviously Ed Wood is not Joyce, but there's an experimental vibe to his movies nonetheless.
Thank you for the episode, it was an interesting movie for sure and it made me discover Glen or Glenda.
There's this guy that still haunts me, who I stumbled upon long ago when I first heard about "draw every day for X days" challenges. He published daily drawings on his blog, his kids and their toys, and wife, and surroundings — and it was really, really bad. Two years later, he was still there — still exactly the same, as ugly, disproportional and cringey as it was on the first day. He was a small-scale harmless Ed Wood without the cult following, and left a much more lasting impression on me than this movie.
This was my second watching and while I remember the first time feeling fine and fun, this second viewing didn't work for me anymore.
I had no objections to Ed being complacent to the extreme and not feeling the need to improve. It wasn't enough for a satisfying story.
There was a tiny dialogue in the beginning that gave me hope — the one where Ed laments that his movies might not be any good while all he wants is just to tell the stories — but nope, that's the last contemplation that we get, there won't be any struggles for Ed further.
Lukewarm to Ed, I was looking forward to hear more about the side characters — how did they get sucked into this moviemaking for Ed? How did they feel throwing their lives away for this and how did they get by? Not for the money apparently, as Ed tended to have none. Why then? They had to have their own dreams and aspirations and it must be soul-crushing to take part in products that are universally hated. Or wasn't it?
All the filmmakers, and Vampiria, and Kathy, and everyone appears out of thin air and land there silently, wanting nothing, and exist for no apparent reason.
Thus no wonder I enjoyed scenes with Bela the most — he was the only one who had some actual motivation and desire to be with Ed at all, being lonely, forgotten and all that.
This movie did give me some threads to think about, both to reflect about my own role in some products that turned out to be terrible, and about having the audacity to move forward with own ideas and worldview — but the role of the movie was in announcing the theme, not offering any insight or unobvious take. Eh.
I totally disagree with Casey’s take that this movie’s Ed would have found a place in Hollywood.
With Glen or Glenda, he got nearly complete creative control with two requirements: it’s about a sex change, and it’s called “I Changed My Sex”. Tons of great directors cut their teeth making schlock like this for Roger Corman, but Ed can’t follow basic instructions. His movie isn’t about a sex change, and he insists on a new title! And his movie is an incoherent mess.
This movie’s Ed is extremely hard to work with. He reworks scenes and recasts parts at the drop of a hat, ignores the boring stuff like getting film permits, refuses to take advice, and puts his collaborators through hell. Sure, he’s passionate and driven, but he’s a studio’s nightmare.
I think the film strikes a great balance of celebrating Ed’s perseverance and individuality and the way he brings his weird group of misfits together, while also being honest about his failings. If he played by Hollywood’s rules, he might have been successful, kept his relationship alive, and given Bela a more dignified final act. On the other hand, tons of work-for-hire directors made boringly competent movies that nobody watches today, while Ed’s outsider art endures. The movie never pretends Ed’s movies were good or even watchable, but the very fact that they made this movie about him is some form of vindication.
I don’t think Bela’s drug use and depression are trivialized. I think the movie spends plenty of time showing his pain, especially when he calls Ed over to his house and Ed thinks he’s dying, and the scene of Ed watching his final footage is heartbreaking. Again, I feel the movie strikes a great balance. On one hand, it’s sad and pathetic that Bela was reduced to fake wrestling an octopus. On the other hand, Ed really did give Bela a new sense of purpose and roles people remember today.
I agree the ending scene at the theater doesn’t make much sense. The intention might be that this is Ed’s fantasy, as shown by the fake Hollywood model, and it’s contrasted with the reality that he died penniless, but if so that’s pretty hackneyed. I also agree that the premier of Bride of the Atom/Monster was awkward and unclear. But those are minor complaints.
Overall I think the movie’s charming and weirdly inspiring, while also being honest about the downsides of following your passion in spite of everything. I’m definitely on Team Anna here.
(Also, for future episodes: if you don’t want to deal with Amazon Video, you can always rent Blu Rays from Scarecrow in the U District, one of the few video rental stores that still exists!)
Ed Wood is a movie about a man who learns who he is and comes to terms with that. He loves making movies and that love doesn’t change whether other people like them or not. He can’t change that but he can accept it. That’s why we don’t see audience’s reaction at the premiere: it doesn’t matter. As Vonnegut once said, “Being good at things is not the point of doing them”.
The topic is reinforced in other plot lines. Women’s clothes: he learns to accept it and be at peace with it. Bela Lugosi: he’s valuable because he’s a friend, not because of what other people think of him. He might be a failure, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy working with him.
Brilliantly constructed movie, if you ask me. Everything on point, everything works. Also one of the rare Tim Burton movies about grown-up problems, unlike the majority where he pretends he’s 12 years old shooting for 12-year-olds.
I was thoroughly bored for the about half of the film. I appreciated how well made it is (direction, acting, how memorable everyone was) but the screenplay didn’t work at all for me. The two movie premieres scenes were also completely baffling to me.
I had a similar feeling of boredom, and wound up not finishing the film. I think this was a classic example of how, I liked a lot of individual scenes, but scene-to-scene I was deeply confused, because there was a lot of basic scene "joinery" that was missing and such. Somehow I totally missed that he was a transvestite and I got super confused when he came out!
But I do love that Burton-esque feel, and so I'm inclined to disagree with Casey that the "tone" didn't work; I just think that the pieces holding it all together were missing.
You may be right about the missing pieces - sometimes it's hard to guess what doesn't work about a movie when it doesn't work. I am only speculating that the tone was a problem for me - it may have been that the tone was fine, and if other elements were improved, it would come together for me...
That is basically where I was with the film as well. It didn't think it was bad, and I knew what they were going for most of the time, but it just never got there for me.
I'm with Anna on this one about the general tone of the movie. I actually like how its dark aspects were portrayed and that they weren't "serious enough", though I don't agree with that either. There were definitely scenes that were rather intense like where Lugosi calls Ed and then asks him to join him in the after-life because he wanted to kill himself. At the same time there were scenes where Lugosi just casually takes some drugs right before shooting a scene. I find that to probably be an accurate representation of the chaotic mental state of these characters, and it reflects how seriously they approach such subjects themselves: sometimes it's very serious and other times it's just business as usual.
To me this movie is about a person lost in their own delusions. That's why the happy, jolly nature of Ed works and it makes sense to me that it was more or less uniform in how Ed was always optimistic. Now, I didn't know anything about Ed Wood, the real-life person, before watching this movie. After having read up on him after the movie, I realized that the movie conveyed Ed's endless optimism throughout the whole movie very well. Every time he was about to make a new movie I actually felt like it was going to be a good, successful movie, much like he himself did. Yet every time Ed shot a new movie it ended up being pretty bad and full of techinical errors. There was this mismatch between the character's emotions and my own emotions about the movies he was making. I, like most people, didn't like them, but he seemed so fascinated by every scene thinking it was some masterpiece. All the way towards the end it felt to me like Ed would (no pun intended) finally make a breakthrough with his next movie and every time I saw what he ended up with I was disappointed (not in the movie, but the movies made in the movie, if that makes sense).
I especially liked the last scene where he's watching the premiere, looks around after the first scene, after doing his thing of mouthing the dialogue, and then waits expectingly for some form of reaction from the audience and... there is none. I was still thinking up to that point that maybe this final movie of his will be good and seeing the lack of a reaction confirmed to me that I wasn't the only one who didn't like his movies and that Ed really was just living in his own delusional world; even after the disappointing premiere he's still optimistic and proposes to Kathy.
As for the scene with the meat packing place, I didn't feel like I needed to know how he ended up there. It was clear at that point that he was desperately looking for people to fund his next movie and the fact that they didn't explain how he got there and suddenly showing that they're in a meat packing place helps emphasize that point, I think.
Also I was somewhat disappointed that you talked about the film being shot in black and white and didn't mention the scene where someone on set was asked which dress he liked more :)
Overall, I didn't think it was a perfect movie and there were definitely some scenes I didn't like, like the premiere of The Bride of the Atom (or the Monster? I don't remember), but I do think that it conveyed Ed's own mental state pretty well and that's what the movie was about to me.
I would also add, although I was lukewarm on the movie on this second viewing, I do agree with the Red Letter Media folks on some of the quotables. "Cut and print" is a great thing to say about anything clearly creatively terrible at work, for example :)
I'm a little late, I just listened to the episode. You asked if there were fans of "crappy" movies, I guess I would consider myself as one! I just watched Glen or Glenda by Ed Wood and there's a fantastic scene in it which I am sure inspired David Lynch for Eraserhead, his playstation ad and the tea scene in Inland Empire.
Here's the scene in Glen or Glenda: https://youtu.be/B0TBHaVyQao?t=2292
David Lynch used the style of speech of Bela Legusi in the tea scene in Inland Empire: https://youtu.be/c92RwEONwMs?t=743
The sound design, the smoke, the suit and the lighting are almost identical in Eraserhead and the playstation ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0Eq5GtCYdA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Laf9vpJMDjA
Even the jarring editing in Glen and Glenda is similar to what David Lynch does.
I saw Plan 9 from outer space a while ago, but I remember liking the weird mix of aliens, zombies and vampires ahah
Also there are the Jean-Luc Godard movies of the 70s when he made super low-budget "communist" movies. I didn't watch them in a long time, but I think this scene is super interesting as he is making fun of chaotic process of trying to do a movie by committee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urpekTdxmiI
These movies are so unconventional that even if they are not well made, there's a weird creativity going on in them. It's a bit like when Joyce wrote purposefully bad prose in Eumaeus chapter in Ulysses.
To expand on that, I would say that I see a proximity between Ed Wood and Dadaist/Arte Povera/Bad Painting art movements. Like in the Tim Burton's movie when the character talks about using discarted reels (with the buffalos and the real octopus) it's basically collage. It's difficult to compare, obviously Ed Wood is not Joyce, but there's an experimental vibe to his movies nonetheless.
Thank you for the episode, it was an interesting movie for sure and it made me discover Glen or Glenda.
There's this guy that still haunts me, who I stumbled upon long ago when I first heard about "draw every day for X days" challenges. He published daily drawings on his blog, his kids and their toys, and wife, and surroundings — and it was really, really bad. Two years later, he was still there — still exactly the same, as ugly, disproportional and cringey as it was on the first day. He was a small-scale harmless Ed Wood without the cult following, and left a much more lasting impression on me than this movie.
This was my second watching and while I remember the first time feeling fine and fun, this second viewing didn't work for me anymore.
I had no objections to Ed being complacent to the extreme and not feeling the need to improve. It wasn't enough for a satisfying story.
There was a tiny dialogue in the beginning that gave me hope — the one where Ed laments that his movies might not be any good while all he wants is just to tell the stories — but nope, that's the last contemplation that we get, there won't be any struggles for Ed further.
Lukewarm to Ed, I was looking forward to hear more about the side characters — how did they get sucked into this moviemaking for Ed? How did they feel throwing their lives away for this and how did they get by? Not for the money apparently, as Ed tended to have none. Why then? They had to have their own dreams and aspirations and it must be soul-crushing to take part in products that are universally hated. Or wasn't it?
All the filmmakers, and Vampiria, and Kathy, and everyone appears out of thin air and land there silently, wanting nothing, and exist for no apparent reason.
Thus no wonder I enjoyed scenes with Bela the most — he was the only one who had some actual motivation and desire to be with Ed at all, being lonely, forgotten and all that.
This movie did give me some threads to think about, both to reflect about my own role in some products that turned out to be terrible, and about having the audacity to move forward with own ideas and worldview — but the role of the movie was in announcing the theme, not offering any insight or unobvious take. Eh.
I totally disagree with Casey’s take that this movie’s Ed would have found a place in Hollywood.
With Glen or Glenda, he got nearly complete creative control with two requirements: it’s about a sex change, and it’s called “I Changed My Sex”. Tons of great directors cut their teeth making schlock like this for Roger Corman, but Ed can’t follow basic instructions. His movie isn’t about a sex change, and he insists on a new title! And his movie is an incoherent mess.
This movie’s Ed is extremely hard to work with. He reworks scenes and recasts parts at the drop of a hat, ignores the boring stuff like getting film permits, refuses to take advice, and puts his collaborators through hell. Sure, he’s passionate and driven, but he’s a studio’s nightmare.
I think the film strikes a great balance of celebrating Ed’s perseverance and individuality and the way he brings his weird group of misfits together, while also being honest about his failings. If he played by Hollywood’s rules, he might have been successful, kept his relationship alive, and given Bela a more dignified final act. On the other hand, tons of work-for-hire directors made boringly competent movies that nobody watches today, while Ed’s outsider art endures. The movie never pretends Ed’s movies were good or even watchable, but the very fact that they made this movie about him is some form of vindication.
I don’t think Bela’s drug use and depression are trivialized. I think the movie spends plenty of time showing his pain, especially when he calls Ed over to his house and Ed thinks he’s dying, and the scene of Ed watching his final footage is heartbreaking. Again, I feel the movie strikes a great balance. On one hand, it’s sad and pathetic that Bela was reduced to fake wrestling an octopus. On the other hand, Ed really did give Bela a new sense of purpose and roles people remember today.
I agree the ending scene at the theater doesn’t make much sense. The intention might be that this is Ed’s fantasy, as shown by the fake Hollywood model, and it’s contrasted with the reality that he died penniless, but if so that’s pretty hackneyed. I also agree that the premier of Bride of the Atom/Monster was awkward and unclear. But those are minor complaints.
Overall I think the movie’s charming and weirdly inspiring, while also being honest about the downsides of following your passion in spite of everything. I’m definitely on Team Anna here.
(Also, for future episodes: if you don’t want to deal with Amazon Video, you can always rent Blu Rays from Scarecrow in the U District, one of the few video rental stores that still exists!)
Ed Wood is a movie about a man who learns who he is and comes to terms with that. He loves making movies and that love doesn’t change whether other people like them or not. He can’t change that but he can accept it. That’s why we don’t see audience’s reaction at the premiere: it doesn’t matter. As Vonnegut once said, “Being good at things is not the point of doing them”.
The topic is reinforced in other plot lines. Women’s clothes: he learns to accept it and be at peace with it. Bela Lugosi: he’s valuable because he’s a friend, not because of what other people think of him. He might be a failure, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy working with him.
Brilliantly constructed movie, if you ask me. Everything on point, everything works. Also one of the rare Tim Burton movies about grown-up problems, unlike the majority where he pretends he’s 12 years old shooting for 12-year-olds.
I was thoroughly bored for the about half of the film. I appreciated how well made it is (direction, acting, how memorable everyone was) but the screenplay didn’t work at all for me. The two movie premieres scenes were also completely baffling to me.
I had a similar feeling of boredom, and wound up not finishing the film. I think this was a classic example of how, I liked a lot of individual scenes, but scene-to-scene I was deeply confused, because there was a lot of basic scene "joinery" that was missing and such. Somehow I totally missed that he was a transvestite and I got super confused when he came out!
But I do love that Burton-esque feel, and so I'm inclined to disagree with Casey that the "tone" didn't work; I just think that the pieces holding it all together were missing.
You may be right about the missing pieces - sometimes it's hard to guess what doesn't work about a movie when it doesn't work. I am only speculating that the tone was a problem for me - it may have been that the tone was fine, and if other elements were improved, it would come together for me...
That is basically where I was with the film as well. It didn't think it was bad, and I knew what they were going for most of the time, but it just never got there for me.
I'm with Anna on this one about the general tone of the movie. I actually like how its dark aspects were portrayed and that they weren't "serious enough", though I don't agree with that either. There were definitely scenes that were rather intense like where Lugosi calls Ed and then asks him to join him in the after-life because he wanted to kill himself. At the same time there were scenes where Lugosi just casually takes some drugs right before shooting a scene. I find that to probably be an accurate representation of the chaotic mental state of these characters, and it reflects how seriously they approach such subjects themselves: sometimes it's very serious and other times it's just business as usual.
To me this movie is about a person lost in their own delusions. That's why the happy, jolly nature of Ed works and it makes sense to me that it was more or less uniform in how Ed was always optimistic. Now, I didn't know anything about Ed Wood, the real-life person, before watching this movie. After having read up on him after the movie, I realized that the movie conveyed Ed's endless optimism throughout the whole movie very well. Every time he was about to make a new movie I actually felt like it was going to be a good, successful movie, much like he himself did. Yet every time Ed shot a new movie it ended up being pretty bad and full of techinical errors. There was this mismatch between the character's emotions and my own emotions about the movies he was making. I, like most people, didn't like them, but he seemed so fascinated by every scene thinking it was some masterpiece. All the way towards the end it felt to me like Ed would (no pun intended) finally make a breakthrough with his next movie and every time I saw what he ended up with I was disappointed (not in the movie, but the movies made in the movie, if that makes sense).
I especially liked the last scene where he's watching the premiere, looks around after the first scene, after doing his thing of mouthing the dialogue, and then waits expectingly for some form of reaction from the audience and... there is none. I was still thinking up to that point that maybe this final movie of his will be good and seeing the lack of a reaction confirmed to me that I wasn't the only one who didn't like his movies and that Ed really was just living in his own delusional world; even after the disappointing premiere he's still optimistic and proposes to Kathy.
As for the scene with the meat packing place, I didn't feel like I needed to know how he ended up there. It was clear at that point that he was desperately looking for people to fund his next movie and the fact that they didn't explain how he got there and suddenly showing that they're in a meat packing place helps emphasize that point, I think.
Also I was somewhat disappointed that you talked about the film being shot in black and white and didn't mention the scene where someone on set was asked which dress he liked more :)
Overall, I didn't think it was a perfect movie and there were definitely some scenes I didn't like, like the premiere of The Bride of the Atom (or the Monster? I don't remember), but I do think that it conveyed Ed's own mental state pretty well and that's what the movie was about to me.
I would also add, although I was lukewarm on the movie on this second viewing, I do agree with the Red Letter Media folks on some of the quotables. "Cut and print" is a great thing to say about anything clearly creatively terrible at work, for example :)