Subject: REVIEW: ED WOOD

From: [email-masked] (Scott Renshaw)
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 1994 15:58:14 GMT

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				   ED WOOD
		       A film review by Scott Renshaw
			Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw

Starring:  Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker,
Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, Bill Murray.
Screenplay:  Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski.
Director:  Tim Burton.

     It's hard to imagine a more unlikely subject for a film biography
than Edward D. Wood Jr.  When I think of bio-pics, I think GANDHI, MY
LEFT FOOT, MALCOLM X--epic tales of great and inspirational figures.
The director of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE does not seem to be cut from
quite the same cloth.  The great surprise of ED WOOD is that in his own
unique and twisted way, director Tim Burton has turned one of the worst
filmmakers of all time into one of those inspirational figures.  Rather
than holding Wood up to ridicule, Burton makes his life an example of
artistic integrity, an extremely entertaining look at an auteur unlike
any other.

     Johnny Depp stars as Ed Wood, who is a playwright, studio hand and
would-be filmmaker when our story begins.  Ed sees his chance for a big
break in a planned screen biography of transsexual Christine Jorgensen,
which Ed thinks he's perfect for because of his own closet fetish for
women's clothing.  He is also able to deliver a "big star" for the
production:  Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau), now nearly destitute and
addicted to morphine.  With Lugosi and girlfriend Dolores Fuller (Sarah
Jessica Parker), Ed makes GLEN OR GLENDA?, a phenomenally incompetent
melodrama.  But Ed is undaunted by the ridicule of others, and forges
ahead to make more films, as well as forging a friendship with the
ailing Lugosi.  Eventually comes Ed Wood's magnum opus:  the infamous
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

     Burton based his vision for ED WOOD on one question:  what if
someone had all the drive of Orson Welles, but none of the talent?
That question, and its answer, are what make Edward D. Wood Jr.'s story
a comedy rather than a tragedy.  Johnny Depp plays Ed Wood with a kind
of childlike awe in the mere fact that he is able to make films, and
his mantra of "Perfect!" after every clumsy take becomes not simply a
paradigm for self-delusion, but a reminder that sometimes process is as
important to art as product.  In one delightful scene, Ed runs into
Orson Welles (a dubbed Vincent D'Onofrio) in a Hollywood bar.  There
they exchange stories about funding problems with their latest projects
(PLAN 9 and the recently restored DON QUIXOTE, respectively).  The
sincerity with which Wood speaks to Welles as an equal, and his
determination to stay true to his vision, make him anything but
pathetic.  He becomes a strangely heroic maverick, doing it his way
even if it means doing it the wrong way.

     Yet Burton manages to tell another story in ED WOOD, that of the
curious friendship between Ed and Bela Lugosi.  It is truly an example
of mutual need--Wood needs Lugosi to lend his movies credibility;
Lugosi needs Wood to give him work, any work--but it's also something
even more touching.  As played with eerie brilliance by Martin Landau,
Lugosi is bitter, broke and depressive when Wood finds him in the late
1950s, and completely without respect.  It is respect which is the
greatest gift Ed gives him, and Laundau's portrayal of his slow return
to humanity is one of the finest pieces of acting this year.

     It is ED WOOD's niftiest accomplishment that it links these two
stories so effortlessly.  Ed Wood's uniquely wonderful naivete comes
from the fact that he never fully grasps that Hollywood was a business
first.  He is unable to understand how Lugosi could be unable to find
work, because to Ed, his talent is all that should matter.  Even
through fund-raising parties and creative recruiting of backers for his
films, it's not about the money to Edward D. Wood Jr.  It's about art.

     ED WOOD is occasionally quite slow-moving, and loses much of its
steam in its final twenty minutes.  The making of PLAN 9 seems to
deserve more than a montage, and Ed's relationship with wife-to-be
Kathy (Patricia Arquette) is given only a cursory treatment.  But the
affection in Burton's telling of this tale is infectious, and makes one
wish more talented contemporary filmmakers were as relentlessly
individual.

     On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 golden turkeys:  8.

--
Scott Renshaw
Stanford University
Office of the General Counsel