There are two people above all who make Ed Wood a very good movie. The first is Tim Burton, who shows much more restraint here than I’ve come to expect from him. The warped gothic art style that’s been his trademark for so long is nowhere to be found here and his taste for the macabre is very subdued. As far as I could tell, the only way that Burton made his presence known was in the decision to make the movie black-and-white. It’s a very unusual choice in this day and age (indeed, that decision reportedly put the film into turnaround for a while), but it definitely paid off. The film’s monochrome presentation and superb 50s aesthetic did a lot to establish our setting and put us in the headspaces of our characters, who themselves were making black-and-white pictures. Also, it made for a very funny joke involving costume preferences and a color-blind cameraman.
For the most part, it seems that Burton tried hard to take himself out of the picture and focus on the filmmaking onscreen. A great amount of TLC went toward the scenes in which Wood and company are shooting their pictures, so much so that even without seeing Bride of the Monster, I somehow know that Tor Johnson stumbled into a door in that movie exactly as his impersonator does here. What’s more, the opening scenes of this movie look like they might have been the opening to Plan 9, right down to the pretentious bullshit monologue and the opening credits on gravestones. Burton does absolutely everything he can to make Wood and his colleagues sympathetic, though he shares credit for that with the second person who made this movie work.
Johnny Depp is completely sublime here, portraying Wood as a sweet and energetic man of boundless optimism. He’s got ambition, the skill of a salesman, a deep love of movies, a ton of stories to tell and an overwhelming need to affect lives through his craft. Unfortunately, what he doesn’t have is talent. It all adds up to a man who’s trying to make something new and great, but just doesn’t have the ability to do so (Sound familiar?).
Far more importantly, Wood has a crippling lack of perspective. He’s so blinded by the glitz and glamor of Hollywood that he can’t see how it really works. Wood is so caught up in his own ideal cinematic visions that he can’t see the flaws in what he’s shooting or why others wouldn’t see his movies as he does. The film deals him multiple reality checks, but he shrugs off every one of them. If the real Ed Wood was like this, then I’d argue that this is the primary reason why he never made it big in Hollywood. It’s entirely possible to make it big in showbiz without any filmmaking talent at all (just look at studio execs), but no one ever got anywhere by constantly denying reality.
We see Wood make three movies in this film (basically pretending that the ones Wood made in between never existed), and I got a strange fascination out of watching how he went about the process. Wood raised money in any way he could while clinging to any shred of credibility he could find. He turned his house into his production headquarters, going so far as to answer every phone call with “Wood Productions!” He did in one take what should have been done with two or three, bought with hundreds of dollars what should have been worth thousands and did in weeks what should have taken months. He cast himself, his friends and family members in key roles and used whatever crap was available to make sets and special effects. In short, he did everything that amateur filmmakers all over the world are doing right now. Every filmmaker in the world started out like this.
I also find it interesting how Depp and Burton use a few of Wood’s personality tics as recurring jokes or themes. For example, Wood’s documented proclivity for cross-dressing is extensively utilized. It’s established early on that he keeps this a deep secret, meaning that there are many scenes (his confrontation with Dolores, dancing with Bela Lugosi, the awkward talk with Kathy) in which the act of declaring himself as a transvestite is a show of great intimacy and trust with the parties involved. What’s more, we see how these personal demons influence Wood’s filmmaking — something that Burton likely knows a thing or two about. Of course, Wood’s angora fixation also serves as comfort to him, which leads to a hilarious moment during the Plan 9 shoot.
Another example of this is how Wood idolizes Orson Welles. He talks about the latter auteur countless times in dialogue and posters for Welles’ movies are seen everywhere in Wood’s apartment. He spends the entire movie pining about how he hopes to someday be just like one of cinema’s greatest showmen. At first, it seems like this is another way to make the character sympathetic: This is just another relatable way in which Wood shoots for greatness and comes up short. But then Welles himself appears and talks with Wood about their respective problems, bringing the entire movie into sharp focus upon mentioning that Citizen Kane — now widely considered to be the greatest movie of all time — was very unpopular when it was first released. Of course, he neglects to mention that this is mostly because most Hollywood players were afraid of retribution from William Randolph Hearst, but the point is clear.
Quality and popularity, the film argues, are very elusive things. It’s really not possible to judge how works of art will be seen by the public or how they’ll stand the test of time. History is littered with poorly-received classics (It’s a Wonderful Life, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Blade Runner, etc.) and box-office hits that went nowhere (the American Godzilla, Anger Management, Paul Blart, etc.). Really, all we can do is find our passion, give it everything we’ve got and hope for the best.
As a side note, Welles is played in this movie by Vincent D’Onofrio. He looks the part, but imagine my surprise when I heard the guy talk: His voice was dubbed by Maurice LaMarche, whose Orson Welles impression I’d recognize anywhere after so many years of watching the Brain.
Another actor who deserves recognition is Martin Landau, here playing Bela Lugosi. His performance here is enchanting. He goes through the entire movie with the classic Dracula accent, though it never comes off as campy. He tirelessly makes Lugosi a very tragic figure whose best days are behind him but always on his mind. Put simply, he’s washed up and the only one who doesn’t know it is Ed Wood. The vast majority of the movie is centered around this close friendship between an old has-been and a young never-was, both of them working together to make one more paycheck and one great hit.
Depp and Landau are some other kind of astonishing, but all the other actors are phenomenal as well. Sarah Jessica Parker does quite well as Wood’s initial love interest and she gets some funny moments here and there (her reaction to a play review at the film’s start, for example). Jeffrey Jones does a great job as Criswell the phony psychic and Bill Murray plays a hopelessly over-the-top homosexual, but he makes every line hilarious. Patricia Arquette is wonderfully charming as Wood’s eventual wife, though her character of Kathy O’Hara is a little too good to be true.
For all of its creative liberties, Ed Wood is a very good movie. The screenwriting is solid, the actors are amazing and the admiration for its subject matter is pouring out of every frame. The film has a lot of heart and there are some genuinely funny moments to be found here (Bela Lugosi’s fight against the giant octopus doll comes to mind). I really do recommend giving it a look, especially if you’re an artist of any kind.