Great Character: Ed Wood (“Ed Wood”)

The Great Character theme for the month: Struggling Artist. Today: Ed Wood from the movie Ed Wood (1994), screenplay by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, book by Rudolph Grey. Here is Jason Cuthbert’s weekly Great Character post.

The multifaceted moving parts of art and commerce that must be synchronized to produce and release a motion picture continue to test and triumph over the endurance and sanity of many modern struggling filmmakers in 2015. Now try to imagine a wide-eyed optimistic moviemaker like the B-movie genre ringmaster Ed Wood in Hollywood during the 1940s, over seven decades too soon to utilize our current affordable digital video equipment and online indie-minded distribution models.

Ed Wood was played by Johnny Depp in director Tim Burton’s first R-rated biopic Ed Wood in 1994. Twenty years later, Burton has since proceeded to adapt another story of a real life artist at odds with their career trajectory — painter Margaret Keane in Big Eyes. Ed Wood on the other hand didn’t have anyone taking credit for his work; quite the opposite actually. Wood found it hard for many in the entertainment industry to stand next to his “no really means yes” screenwriting, directing, producing, acting and editing while he was active between 1947 and his death by heart attack in 1978. Wood navigated between the difficult minefields of vitriolic critic reviews, an embroiled bout with alcoholism, cross-dressing in an extremely conservative era, two marriages and ultimately a posthumous Golden Turkey Award as the Worst Director of All Time.

Ed Wood from IMDB:

An ambitious but troubled movie director tries his best to fulfill his dream, despite his lack of support.

Johnny Depp described the cumulative motivation behind his performance as Ed Wood as “the blind optimism of Ronald Reagan, the enthusiasm of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz and Casey Kasem.” From small town Poughkeepsie New York to industrial Hollywood California, Ed Wood survived on the exuberance of his fantastical story ideas that often consisted of sexploitation, pulp fiction crime, horror shock treatment and exaggerated science fiction. Luckily for Ed Wood, he could rely on his biggest cheerleader — Ed Wood.

ED WOOD: [Reading a review] Look, he’s got some nice things to say here. “The soldiers’ costumes are very realistic.” That’s positive!

Coming out as a cross-dresser to an alpha male Hollywood producer to land the directing gig for a sex change schlocky low budget flick was an act of desperation met with a brick wall of numb confusion.

ED WOOD: No, I’m all man. I even fought in W.W.2. Of course, I was wearing women’s undergarments under my uniform.

With his female fabric fetish still hidden from his serious girlfriend and creative collaborator Delores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker), it ends up being a chance meeting with fading Dracula actor Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau) that regenerates and sparks Ed Wood’s opportunistic ambitions.

ED WOOD: You know, you’re, you’re much scarier in real life than you are in the movie.

This odd couple of Ed Wood and a practically twice his age Bela Lugosi looks completely normal among Wood’s growing troupe of entertainment outcasts. But real normalcy begins to become a version of life that Delores longs for while the Ed Wood circus continues to become more peculiar to her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKM6siFQ0_8

Finding out that her boyfriend is wearing her clothing on purpose becomes quite off-putting to Delores, especially when us uses this new reality as the basis for his current screenplay. With Lugosi undergoing the suffocating weight of a drug habit, his second chance at life (and financial earnings) draws him directly into the Ed Wood fraternity, giving Woods a sense of validation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1yS4HKWhE8

To make matters worse for Ed Wood’s sour relationship and self-conscience professional and personal life, Wood has to sacrifice quality due to his lack of resources to complete a movie in less than a week.

ED WOOD: We don’t have a permit. Run!

Not only does Ed Wood’s LGBT opus implode into a box office “sink bomb” as his producer called it, but this very same producer threatens to kill Ed Wood if they cross paths again. This episode merely pushes Wood to put his plastered grin back on his face, roll up his sleeves and seek financing for his follow-up film. His impervious resilience to criticism is uncanny…to a fault.

ED WOOD: [on phone with Mr. Feldman] Really? Worst film you ever saw. Well, my next one will be better. Hello. Hello.

There is a family-orientated attribute to Ed Wood’s productions. He doesn’t see out of work character actors and brutish professional wrestlers as invisible entertainers. Wood fashions these performers on the fringes of fame as his golden tickets — supporters too second-rate and underemployed to turn his offers down.

ED WOOD: Dolores, I have five days to complete this picture. Don’t get goofy on me.

Even the death of Bela Lugosi in the midst of setting up his next motion picture is not professionally problematic to the unflustered problem solver who grows more comfortable in his angora sweater-skin and woman’s wig.

ED WOOD: Mr. Reynolds, this is the acorn that will grow a great oak! I’ll just get a double to finish his scenes, and we’ll release it as “Bela Lugosi’s Final Film”!

For his relentless pursuit of his storytelling dreams, his nonjudgemental social networking and his loyalty to his band of rejected dreamers — Ed Wood is an extremely GREAT CHARACTER in the rainy day world of struggling artist movie personas.

A timely post with the current release of Big Eyes. And just as a refresher, here are some of the best lines from the Ed Woods movie Plan 9 from Outer space:

Thank you, Jason, for this post and the entire month-long series featuring Struggling Artist characters.

You may follow Jason on Twitter: @A2Jason.

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