Saturday, October 05, 2024

Abnormal Fixation: More Awards!

Our low-budget, indie, self-produced web series, Abnormal Fixation, continues its journey through the film festival circuit (before a premiere in November of this year!)

Today, I am very proud to announce that our low-budget show is a winner at the IMDB qualifying Elegant International Film Festival!

I picked up a "Best Comedy Actor" award, (pictured above) and am quite humbled and honored to have done so!  

Chris Martin, who plays Mark Missouri, won an award in the category of Best Supporting Actor.  

And Alicia Martin was named as a finalist in the category of Best (Overall) Actor!

Congratulations to my cast and crew, and my thanks to the Elegant International Film Festival!







Thursday, October 03, 2024

30 Years Ago: Space Precinct (1994)


Just a season after Steven Bocho and ABC-TV brought extreme grittiness (not to mention four-letter words and bare behinds) to televised cop dramas with the popular NYPD Blue (1993 - 2005), veteran British producer Gerry Anderson premiered his own unique take on the cop genre: the futuristic adventure, Space Precinct.

This one-of-a-kind science fiction TV series from the nineties had roots going all the back to a never-aired pilot film -- Space Police --  in 1986.  Covered in Starlog Magazine at the time, the drama starred Shane Rimmer as an Earth cop named Brogan working in a very, very alien environment.  

By 1994, when the concept finally went to weekly series, American actor Ted Shackelford (Knots Landing) assumed the role of Officer Patrick Brogan, a family man  and  officer working in the 88th Precinct in Demeter City, on the distant planet called Altor.  

The suburbs.

And -- in an eerie repeat of what occurred with Space: 1999 in 1975 -- absolutely no one knew what to make of the new Anderson drama. Specifically, Space Precinct aired sporadically in syndication across the United States, often at 3:00 in the morning.  It hardly dented the pop-culture bubble.

Apparently, many station programmers weren't certain if  Space Precinct  was an adult drama, a kid's series, or something else entirely. The adult narratives about drugs ("black crystal") and sex suggested the former. The fanciful alien make-up design and cops-and-robbers-styled action indicated the latter.   

Frankly, no one had ever seen anything quite like it.  


From "The Snake," a booby-trapped Omega Tanker.
In brief, I'll state this: if nothing else, Space Precinct is truly a fascinating historical artifact.   

This is so because the Anderson venture is one of the last sci-fi TV programs to rely almost entirely on miniatures and models rather than CGI in terms of depicting alien space ships and environments. 

Much of the episodic action of Space Precinct occurs in a colossal Blade Runner (1982)-styled future metropolis rendered completely in miniature, and often with impressive results. Across the episode catalog, audiences see the waterfront ("near the anti-gravity processors"), parking decks ("Protect and Serve"), mom-and-pop shops ("Enforcer"), the spires of the Hotel Nirvana ("Protect and Serve"), futuristic crack-houses ("Double Duty") and other facets of the metropolis.

The program's ubiquitous flying cars, or "hoppers," are also small, meticulously-detailed models -- moved about on wires -- and there are some really terrific craft designs highlighted in Space Precinct.   

Standard issue police cruiser.
The futuristic apartment complex/space station that orbits the planet is absolutely gorgeous, for instance, and the standard-issue police cruiser -- a multi-engined, fighter-type affair -- is the utilitarian but fun workhorse of the series' action. 

Commendably, the miniatures are even used to buttress the series' pervasive and droll sense of humor.  In an episode called "Double Duty," an impressive space colossus appears in space over the orbiting precinct house, and is the punch-line to a very funny joke about an alien race seeking its lost queen.

In another episode, there's a whimsical little pizza-delivery hopper that gets pulped during a chase. And in yet another show ("Body and Soul"), the miniature work evokes a kind of anxiety or terror.  An impressive space derelict -- covered in space dust -- is discovered crashed on the pitted surface of Merlin's Asteroid.  

The big drawback to this old-school special effects approach is simply that the ships/vehicles don't always look entirely convincing while in motion over  atmospheric Demeter City.  Sometime, it is all too clear you're  watching highly-detailed miniatures.  In the worst shots, it's one step up from a Godzilla movie of the 1960s. In the best shots, the Space Precinct visuals really do pass muster, three-decades later.

Interestingly, the space-bound chase scenes -- which don't have to deal with rain, fog and other atmospherics of city-life -- are still uniformly excellent today.  In keeping with the cops and robbers, daily-life-in-space milieu of the show, these chase scenes, on occasion, even feature the futuristic equivalent of "driver's side air bags" -- inflatable ejection pods used in the event of an accident. Again, the intent of such devices seems to be to evoke bemusement or humor.

Anderson-quality pyrotechnics.

Also, well in keeping with the Gerry Anderson legacy and tradition, every episode of Space Precinct features at least one gigantic, incredibly impressive explosion.  

In "Protect and Serve," a futuristic parking deck gets totaled in glorious, fiery fashion; in "Body and Soul" a prototype derelict spaceship self-destructs after a tense countdown. In "The Snake," a mad bomber detonates a space freighter in the interstellar void, and so on.

Perhaps even more importantly than the miniature effects, the alien creature designs of the series forecast the fascinating approach of Farscape (1999-2003); namely the incorporation of puppets into the mix so that the featured aliens truly seem like aliens...and not just like lightly-retouched humans with rubber ridges on their foreheads or noses. It's a revolutionary approach that differentiates it from its contemporaries in America (namely TNG and DS9).

Now, Farscape really and truly mastered this method of creating memorable alien creatures. Space Precinct made the same valiant attempt  about five years earlier, but not on such a flamboyant and wholly successful scale.  

That said, the aliens featured in this series -- largely a rogue's gallery of cosmic criminals -- are a pretty fascinating and entertaining bunch.  After a few episodes, you don't really consciously process the fact that you are actually watching animatronic puppets. Therefore the creature designs -- while initially startling and a little too whimsical for my taste -- ultimately prove effective.

In terms of behind-the-scenes personnel, Gerry Anderson -- as always -- assembled a top flight crew.  Here, the late, great cinematographer Alan Hume (Return of the Jedi [1983], Octopussy [1983], Lifeforce [1985], Runaway Train [1985] and A Fish Called Wanda [1988]) shoots several episodes.

Amongst the directors helming individual episodes are such vets as John Glen (The Living Daylights [1987], Licence to Kill [1989]) and Sidney Hayers (Circus of Horrors [1960].  Their expertise is needed and well-deployed, especially because some of the sets (interior and exterior) seem cramped and even impractical for shooting.

Writers on Space Precinct include Marc Scott Zicree, and J. Larry Carroll.  Zicree's stories, in particular, are very enjoyable, and successfully transmit the jaunty, almost tongue-in-cheek vibe of the series.  For example, Zicree laces his efforts with little in-jokes and tributes to other famous genre programs. In  Zicree's "Enforcer" there's a joke about a "bruise the size of a horta's egg," and a passing reference to a crime called a  "1701 in progress."   

As you'll recognize, these are both fun and knowing Star Trek references.


"It's a Whole New World" 
 
The sun sets over Demeter City, on the planet Altor

Set in the year 2040, Space Precinct follows the busy happenings in Demeter City's 88th precinct, an orbital space station and headquarters for the planet Altor's multi-racial police force.

Twenty-year NYPD veteran Patrick Brogan (Shackelford) has recently transferred to the 88th from Earth, and is slowly adjusting to life on this strange alien planet.  He has brought along his wife Sally (Nancy Paul), his son, Matt, and his daughter Liz.  Together they live on another space station, the "suburb" orbiting the city-planet "downtown."

At the precinct house, humans, Tarns and Creons work together to police the dangerous city below, which is named for the Greek Goddess Demeter, who -- appropriately -- held power over "the law" and controlled "the cycle of life and death."  
 
Officer Castle (Bendix) and Officer Took -- a Tarn -- interview two witnesses.

For easy reference, the Tarns seen here are sort of "Yoda Heads," three-eyed aliens with telepathic/telekinetic abilities and elfin ears.  

By contrast, the Creons are the bug-eyed "E.T. Heads," and seem more like the (Irish?) working-class folk of Demeter City.  Captain Podly, a man who pulled himself up "from the street" by his bootstraps, is a Creon.

Brogan's human partner in the precinct is the hot-blooded Jack Haldane (Rob Youngblood), a younger officer who shares a flirtatious/adversarial relationship with the gorgeous Officer Janet Castle (Simone Bendix).  

Right off the bat -- in terms of appearance and behavior -- long-time science fiction TV fans will find the banter and relationship between Haldane and Castle highly reminiscent of the Tony Verdeschi/Maya relationship on the second season of Space: 1999. But strangely, the imitation is okay. The characterizations on the show are not deep in any meaningful sense, and the scenes between these would-be lovers add another fun, romantic element to the proceedings.

In each episode of Space Precinct, Brogan, Haldane and Castle go up against criminals in Demeter City, and Space Precinct lovingly and faithfully resurrects every cliche of the cop genre and then updates each for the future milieu.  

Two Creon police officers bracket the station robot, "Slo-Mo."

In other words, various episodes involve corporate malfeasance ("Body and Soul,") drug dealers ("Double Duty") blackmailing bombers ("The Snake"), con men running protection rackets ("Enforcer") and the ever-popular witness protection and stakeout ("Protect and Serve.")  

But, commendably, the writers do their darnedest to marry these cop genre cliches to solid science fiction concepts.  

One of the finest episodes, "Body and Soul," turns the bitter hologram replica of a Howard Hughes-type tycoon into a murdering monster with a God Complex, for instance. Another show, "Body Double" uses an Alien-like xenomorph as a mob-land assassin.

Space Precinct also relies heavily on tried-and-true cop cliches for the depiction of its main characters.  

There's the occasionally wrong-headed superior (the aforementioned Captain Podly) and the cop-with-the-traumatic past (on the bomb squad, no less...), Janet Castle.  And Brogan, of course, is overworked, even to the point where he can't take time to enjoy a candle-light dinner with his lovely wife.

Writing plainly, I can't argue that this sci-fi series is particularly deep, but in a way it reminds me -- in a positive light -- of the first season of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which was essentially James Bond in Space (or Mission: Impossible in Space).  


Haldane (Youngblood), Aleesha, and Brogan (Shackelford)

As was the case there, here you get exactly what you pay for: a cop show set on another planet, with every story adapting the conventions of the cop genre to the weird, futuristic setting

Two elements of the series render Space Precinct enjoyable all these years later.  

The first is the sense of pace: the series is downright frenetic and action-packed. It never stays put too long in any given scene, so you don't have time to linger on the elements that don't work (largely the human performances and some risible dialogue).   

Secondly, if you watch several episodes of Space Precinct back-to-back you will quickly glean a feeling for the program's quirky sense of humor.  In the aforementioned "Body and Soul," for instance, there's a talking elevator that quotes Samuel Johnson (!).  In "Double Duty", there's the great joke with the bag lady from "Megalon 7" (there's your Godzilla reference...), and it features a special effects punch-line that left me cackling. 

In point of  fact, some episodes of Space Precinct even do offer a kind of elegant story structure For example, "Double Duty" is all about the assumptions that people make on a day-to-day basis. Those assumptions are all perfectly reasonable, but nonetheless wrong. In police work, such closely-held assumptions can be dangerous, even deadly.

All three storylines -- A, B, and C -- in the episode transmit this idea. At home, Brogan is worried that his son, Matt, is hanging out with the "wrong crowd."  

An alien-esque assassin.
On the job, the "Bag Lady" wanders into the station and tells fanciful stories about how she is actually an alien queen.  

And finally, Haldane romances a beautiful, green-haired (!) witness who is mysteriously at the scene of every crime.  In each of these tales, we arrive -- along with the characters -- at the wrong conclusion.  It's a kind of charming, fun story, in its own strange, distinctly Space Precinct-ish way.

So, thirty years later, how is Space Precinct?  Well, it's kind of a gas.  I can't argue that it is consistently or even occasionally deep or meaningful.  But on the other hand, it's never boring, frequently funny and rather enjoyable.  In other words, the series is entertaining.  

Again, my feeling about science fiction series is that they don't all have to be the same.  Today, series don't need to be judged against the yardstick of Star Trek anymore. 

Space Precinct is a truly weird hybrid, drawing its manic, silly energy in equal parts from cop dramas like Fort Apache: the Bronx (1981) and TV series such as Star Trek, plus the amazing -- if perhaps antiquated -- special effects tradition of the Gerry Anderson canon.

If this description sounds appealing to you, book passage for Demeter City, and make sure your tongue is tucked firmly in cheek.

Wednesday, October 02, 2024

50 Years of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)


If you ask me, the late, great Tobe Hooper never gets enough credit for masterminding one of the most significant titles in film history; one that -- like Psycho (1960) before it -- literally re-writes the rules of screen decorum, and shatters all sense of convention.

Where Hitchcock artfully fractured the act of learning amongst three sets of protagonists in Psycho, Hooper takes the next, trailblazing step.  

He subtracts the idea of learning all together from Chainsaw, to incredible and often harrowing effect.  

The colorfully-titled 1974 film -- now half-a-century old -- arises from the context of the "savage cinema," a trend we associate with such titles as Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, Last House on the Left and Deliverance. In keeping with that sub-genre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn't spare the sensibilities, or dodge dark issues concerning human nature.

The Texas Chainsaw Masssacre depicts an. uncaring, disordered cosmos in its powerful visuals and in the discordant musical cues that open the film. The first clear composition of Chainsaw is of a rotting corpse propped up outside its grave, and this is an early visual indication that something is universally wrong.  

This ghoulish scarecrow symbolizes the idea that "death has risen" and order has been overturned. This visual is later re-inforced by a shot of road kill in the path of the protagonists.  It's an armadillo, dead on the road, and it rests upside down in the frame, a visual composition/symbol of death in the cinema since the beginning of the art form.

Over and over again, disorder reigns in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  

- A spider web flourishes inside a house, a human dwelling.  

- There's talk of a watering hole...but it's just dry earth.  

- The kids visit a gas station, but there's no gas.  

Again and again our expectation of order is confounded.  Insanity has supplanted sanity in the film, right down to its core, taboo--breaking genetic structure.

If Hitchcock denied the audience of a single identification point with the murder of Marion (Janet Leigh) in the shower, Hooper in Chainsaw denies us the idea of heroism (and therefore learning...) all together.  

Each of three kids goes into that cannibal farmhouse in rural Texas and violently meets his or her death, without passing on any knowledge or learning whatsoever to those who remain. Forget about mounting a defense or beating the bad guys; Leatherface and his kin. The movie offers no constructive second and third acts, at least not in a traditional narrative sense.

The film's structure, essentially repetitious, blocks every attempt for us to learn more; for the protagonists to learn more about their terrifying plight. This structure subverts our expectations and literally makes us feel endangered in theater. The movie's young cast, and by extension the audience, feel like it has no chance.  Madness is victorious, even if Sally escapes.  

Indeed, even at film's end, order is not restored.  Leatherface just keeps on spinning.  The world around him may be out of gas, but he's still sputtering, twirling and dancing in unending insanity and blood lust.

For fifty years now, he has been spinning, through sequels, remakes, and even 3-D, but it is the original classic film of 1974 that Leatherface grabbed ahold of our psyche. Half-a-century later, he still refuses to let go. Twirl away, Leatherface...

Tuesday, October 01, 2024

50 Years Ago: The Stranger Within


In The Stranger Within -- a TV movie that first aired on ABC in 1974 -- a painter and housewife, Annie (Barbara Eden) learns that she is pregnant.

Delight soon turns to mystery and paranoia, however. Annie's husband, David (George Grizzard) has had a vasectomy, which means that he cannot possibly be the father of the child she is carrying.

Annie insists she has never been unfaithful to David, but there is no other way to account for her unusual and fast-developing pregnancy.

David wants Annie to get an abortion, but on both occasions to have the procedure, Annie is felled by debilitating abdominal pains. After the second such attack, she declares that she intends to keep the baby. David is upset and worried. Three years earlier, Annie had a dangerous and unsuccessful pregnancy; one that nearly killed her.

The pregnancy unfolds in a sinister and unusual way. Annie begins eating plates of raw meat, and loads of salt. In her sleep, she speaks in some unknown, inhuman language. And she develops the capacity to speed read whole books in minutes. She soon comes to believe in the special nature of her child, and fiercely defensive of him.

Meanwhile, David grows more and more concerned about his wife. A hypnotist (David Doyle) learns from Annie the truth about her pregnancy.  

She was impregnated, ostensibly against her will and without her knowledge, by an alien life form…



The Stranger Within (1974) is a unique spin on Rosemary’s Baby (1968). As you recall, that Roman Polanski film, based on Ira Levin’s novel, concerned an American housewife impregnated by Satan. The Stranger Within concerns an American housewife impregnated by aliens. 

Fortunately, the great Richard Matheson is the writer behind this story, and he is able to create a tale that is more than mere knock-off. 

Of course, there are some elements in common.  


Both tales track an abnormal pregnancy, and the manner in which that pregnancy sows distrust and estrangement between a husband and wife. Doctors are involved in both stories two, though in the case of The Stranger Within, there is no conspiracy on the part of members of the medical community.

What may prove most interesting about The Stranger Within is the turn it takes after the second hypnosis. 

Annie’s husband, David, asks why this is has happened to his wife, why she is “the only one” to endure this alien gestation.  The hypnotist looks at him -- and quite chillingly -- responds that there is no evidence to suggest that she is the only one dealing with alien impregnation.

Those words actually inform the climax of the telefilm. After delivering her alien child, Annie emerges in a field in the hills, with roughly twenty other human women.  They are all carrying their hybrid progeny, and are then “taken” by the aliens, whisked away from Earth, presumably never to be see again.  

Indeed, she was not the only one.


My only problem with this surprise is that it isn’t entirely motivated in terms of Annie’s story. She went to her doctor (played by Nehemiah Persoff) many times throughout her dangerous pregnancy. He even shared her unusual test results -- the baby has two hearts! -- with his colleagues.  

If other women -- over a dozen other women -- are undergoing the same experience, it stands to reason that they too would visit doctors, and that they too would get a lot of attention from the medical community.  These women all live in the same geographic area, we must presume.

Twenty cases like Annie’s would be hard to keep secret in any one town, or even city.

The Stranger Within was released not long after Roe vs. Wade was decided by the Supreme CCourt, and abortion was made legal in the United States. I suppose one possible reading of the film is as a kind of under-the-surface pro-life tract.  

All the women involved in these apparently immaculate conceptions don’t choose to abort their children.  Their husbands -- if they are at all like David -- all counsel abortion. They can't love children they don't see as their own.  They want them terminated.

In the film’s last scene, the women and their children are assumed into Heaven, essentially, with their children, never to be seen again here. On Earth, their husbands suffer, alone and confused, never again to have a wife, or a child, for that matter.

Again, that’s just one possible reading.  

More important to me, however, is the fact that this ultra-cheap TV movie from the 1970s creates a pretty effective ending, considering the paltry budget at its disposal.

We see the women enter the clearing, and through a double exposure, they vanish from this Earth with their children. It doesn’t seem like a violent taking away (which gives rise, in part, to my interpretation, above). 

This image is cross-cut with David at home alone, as he gazes at Annie’s painting of the alien environment.





The evidence of alien involvement burns up before his eyes, smoldering and smoking. He runs to the window, apparently realizing what is happening, and we see him -- symbolically trapped within the outline of a window frame -- gazing up at the Heavens.  He is fully aware that his wife has been taken, body and soul, from him.

The camera zooms in on the sun -- our avatar for the aliens (or the Holy Ghost, if this is a pro-life tract) -- and we understand that David is being punished, his “normal” life now no more than ashes, like Annie’s painting.

Basically, this ending makes splendid use of (cheap!) film grammar, when certainly, today, we would get (expensive) CGI effects instead. 

We’d see the women beamed up to a UFO, for example, instead of simply the double exposure disappearance, and focus on the sun as a figure of mystery in the sky.  I maintain that The Stranger Within’s approach -- open to interpretation -- is far scarier.

There's something genuinely terrifying about the film's last shot. The painting just burns and burns, as end credits roll.

There are aspects of The Stranger Within that are a bit comical, for instance Annie getting drunk on coffee, or over-salting her food constantly. And yet Barbara Eden commits to the material, and the film succeeds, like so many TV movies of the 1970s, in being highly unsettling. The ambiguity is frightening, and we are left with no answers. What will happen to these women? Their children? Will they ever be returned? Where are they headed?

Rosemary’s Baby is a great film, but The Stranger Within is a cheap-jack -- if unique and memorable -- variation on a theme, and one that ends on a high (if  diabolical and upsetting…) note.

Thursday, September 26, 2024

Abnormal Fixation - Laurels and Honors

Our independent web series, Abnormal Fixation, has earned a number of laurels on the film festival circuit as we anticipate our November 2024 premiere.  I wanted to share a few of those laurels with you today.

Again, I know I speak for the whole cast and crew of this low-budget indie production when I saw how honored we are to have earned and received these.

Here are our wins so far:
















And our finalists/nominations/honorable mentions:




Some Official Selections:












Monday, September 23, 2024

30 Years Ago: Ed Wood (1994)


"Greetings, my friends! You are interested in the unknown. The mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing you the full story of what happened. We are giving you all the evidence based only on the secret testimony of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, places. My friends, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Can your heart stand the shocking facts of the true story of Edward D. Wood Jr.?"

-- Criswell (Jeffrey Jones) narrates the opening of Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994)


It would have been abundantly easy to make the bio-pic Ed Wood (1994) a mean-spirited film about the so-called "worst director of all time." It would have been safe -- and it would have gone mostly unquestioned -- if director Tim Burton had created a film version of Wood's life that aped the mocking tone of books such as the Medveds' popular Golden Turkey Awards.  

But Burton does not select that easy, familiar route here.  

Instead of crafting a film about someone who -- by accepted and widely-held standards -- made incredibly "bad" movies, Burton creates a film about someone who was inspired by and actually in love with the movie-making process.  

In other words, Tim Burton's Ed Wood is not about those characteristics and talents that separated Ed Wood from Orson Welles.  It's about the qualities those legendary cinema talents have in common.  

And that simple conceit makes Ed Wood not merely a heartfelt, emotional story of artistic endurance, but, in some sense, an inspirational tale about overcoming obstacles (including the entrenched obstacles of Tinsel Town...) and the primacy of pursuing one's own vision.  

Naturally, this film is not strictly "true," since Ed Wood never really met Orson Welles, and since details of Bela Lugosi's career and life have been altered to some degree for dramatic purposes.  And yet Ed Wood feels emotionally true because Burton sees in Wood an indomitable figure -- an eternal optimist -- who despite the mocking of the masses and the disinterest of  Hollywood power did precisely what he desired...and is remembered and even loved for it.

Like so many Tim Burton films, Ed Wood concerns a protagonist who is far afield from what society-at-large terms "the norm."   However, Wood's response to his own apparent "strangeness" is not isolation, resentment or even bitterness.  Instead, as the film reveals beautifully, Ed Wood creates a "bubble" of acceptance for those "hunted" and "despised" individuals who don't conform, either socially or sexually to society's rules or standards.   Importantly, Ed's world of film making is one entirely without harsh judgement...or judgement of any kind for that matter.  

In fact, Burton views that very absence of judgement as the critical key to an understanding of the film's lead character.  

Off-the-set, Ed judges no one's individual strangeness, and on set, he does not judge at all when an actor knocks over a cardboard tombstone, bumbles his lines of dialogue, or otherwise missteps during a take.   It is not in Ed's nature to pass judgement on others, according to Burton, only to enthusiastically support the world he and his friends now share.  The director thus paints a picture of a man who was more interested in the act of film making than, necessarily, the results of that process.

Filmed in crisp black-and-white, Ed Wood is a fairy tale about one man's triumph over a world that systematically shuns him.  Accordingly, the film is visually represented as a collision between cruel, harsh Tinsel Town and the individual fantasy worlds of Wood's unique imagination.  Burton does not shy away from harshness or ugliness in expressing this conjunction of spheres.  The needle tracks on Bela Lugosi's arm speak of a terrible world and a terrible personal surrender.  

And the ubiquitous white "Hollywood" sign looms over the film in a powerful way too: a constant shadow and explicit reminder  of the crushing "weight" of silver screen dreams.  And yet, contrarily, in some very lovely two-shots, Burton expresses well how there can be friendship and companionship  "outside" the normal world, if only one is willing to forgo "judgement."

In showcasing a special friendship -- the friendship of Bela Lugosi and Ed Wood -- Burton creates in Ed Wood "a tender, midnight-madness parable about a determined moviemaker."  And yet it's more than that colorful description too.  In some manner, Burton's film is actually about how to cope with the reality of Hollywood.  You can't change a monolith.  No, you must change how you see (and treat) the industry, and through that trajectory navigate your own path to an individual version of success.  

In the final analysis, that's the lesson of Ed Wood.  Be your own man; have your own vision...and stick to your goals tenaciously.  Despite Eddie's hardships in the film, Ed Wood is uplifting because Burton suggests the character is nothing less than indomitable.


"Ed, this isn't the real world. You've surrounded yourself with a bunch of weirdos."


Ed Wood tells the story of a young artist on hopeful but rocky ascent.  Although Ed (Johnny Depp) has assembled an entourage of colorful actors, including girlfriend Dolores (Sarah Jessica Parker) to support his work, he's bedeviled by bad reviews and a lack of interest by the public at large.  

When Wood's new play, Casual Company opens in L.A., it is met with disinterest and negativity, but Ed is able to see the silver lining around every cloud.  When a famous movie critic comments positively on the Army costumes that appear in the play, Ed trumpets his production's "realism."

Soon, Ed learns that Screen Classics is preparing a movie based on the sex change of Christine Jorgensen.  Because of his own fetish for angora and women's clothing, Ed pitches himself as director for the project.  At first he is rebuffed, but then, serendipitously, Ed meets Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau), the former screen Dracula who has not worked in years.  Ed returns to Screen Classics and pitches Bela as a participant in the sex change picture, and history is made.  Before long, Ed shoots Glen or Glenda, an autobiographical film about men who "feel comfortable" in women's clothes.

After Glen or Glenda bombs, Ed dives into his next project, Bride of the Atom (soon to be titled Bride of the Monster).  He casts wrestler Tor Johnson (George Steele) as the monstrous henchman Lobo, and Lugosi as a villainous mad scientist.  Loretta King (Juliet Landau) becomes his lead actress when she intimates (falsely...) that she has the money and inclination to support the production, a fact which alienates Dolores.  While they make Bride of the Atom, Bela and Ed deepen their friendship, and Ed learns that Bela is a morphine addict.  After the film is completed, Ed helps Bela check into rehab.

Following the disappointing reception of Bride of the Monster, Bela passes away, leaving a despondent Ed.  But with a small film reel consisting of footage of Bela that he shot before the actor passed away, Ed realizes he possesses "the acorn" of a great tree.  With funding secured from a fundamentalist Baptist church, Ed plans to resurrect Lugosi on screen one last time for his magnum opus: Plan 9 from Outer Space.  Committed to making a final film "for Bela," Wood pulls together his friends, including Bunny Breckinridge (Bill Murray), the great Criswell (Jeffrey Jones), Vampira (Lisa Marie) and Tor Johnson.

Finally, countenancing interference from the baptists on the set, Ed stands to lose everything until a fateful chance encounter with Orson Welles...

"Eddie is the only fella in town who doesn't judge people."


In Ed Wood, screenplay by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszweski, the audience meets a number of outsiders and misfits who discover a sense of belonging in the movie-making world that Wood creates.  

Primary among these characters is the great (if prideful and foul-mouthed...) Bela Lugosi, who has been shunned by Hollywood because of his drug addiction.  Lugosi lives in a tiny house, in near-poverty, and hopes to somehow turn everything around; to return to greatness.   

"Eddie, I'm obsolete," he tells Wood.  "I have nothing to live for."   He also notes that no one in Hollywood "gives two fucks for Bela."  This is the tragedy of Lugosi.  He has gone from being a movie star to less than zero, and this is a story we see played out again and again in Hollywood, across the decades.

By participating in Wood's films, Lugosi once more feels good about himself; that he is doing again, the very thing he loves. The dark side of this equation, which Ed Wood hints at but doesn't delve into, is the specter of exploitation.  Was Wood merely "using" Lugosi to get his films made?  

That question has been raised many times, but in terms of the film itself, it's clear that Wood is on the side of the angels, and that he cares deeply for Bela and Bela's well-being.  In fact, it is widely reported that Burton's mentor/student relationship with the late Vincent Price helped him to identify and understand the Wood/Lugosi friendship.  Those of us who have been fortunate enough to interact with "famous" personalities in the industry understand very well the nature of the film's central friendship.  A relationship that begins as hero worship becomes one, very shortly, in which we start to detect the foibles and flaws of a real human being.  Someone who is an icon becomes exposed as a "real" human being, and as time goes on, we see that this is exactly as it should be.  Out of that realization of common humanity comes a new, deeper form of friendship, one eminently more meaningful and "real" than celebrity worship.   Ed Wood captures this type of relationship beautifully, and in sometimes haunting terms.


Importantly, the Bela/ Wood  relationship is tinged with tragedy in Ed Wood from their first fateful meeting.  When Wood initially encounters the faded star of Dracula, he sees him in a store window....shopping for a coffin.  

Therefore, the audience first sees Lugosi in repose, with his arms folded over his chest...apparently already dead.  

This particular composition recurs in the film at least two times: once when Lugosi is in rehab, and once, finally, when he has passed away.  From his first appearance in the film, then, Lugosi is associated on screen with death, and that's very much the point.  Before he meets Eddie, Lugosi is indeed "dead" in terms of his screen career.  He claims he has not worked in four years and that he is obsolete.  Ed "resurrects" Lugosi for his films, just as -- finally -- Eddie resurrects Lugosi in Plan 9 from Outer Space, bringing the actor once more to life for audiences after his death.

The friendship between Lugosi and Wood is very much at the heart of Ed Wood, and both roles are impeccably performed. The late, great Martin Landau earned an Academy Award for his heartfelt, often very funny performance as Lugosi, and rightfully so.  Again, in a notable example of art imitating life, Landau himself had gone through a kind of "career death" in the mid-1980's before a resurgence that saw him headlining in films such as Tucker: A Man and His Dream (1987) and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).  Landau is at his expressive best here portraying a man who is not just addicted to morphine, but to movie-making itself...to the magic of the silver screen.  It's clear that only one thing makes Lugosi well: the opportunity to practice his art.  

When Lugosi delivers an impassioned speech for Wood's Bride of the Monster, the words are highly self-reflexive.   He says: "Home. I have no home. Hunted...despised...living like an animal -- the jungle is my home! But I will show the world that I can be its master. I shall perfect my own race of people -- a race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world!"  

In a weird, science-fictional way, this strange speech is very much about identity; about the homes we choose to make, rather than the "homes" from which we came, or which others attempt to assimilate us into.  Lugosi's character here is talking about not merely independence, but about re-shaping the world to his desires and needs.  And in a very real way, that's clearly what Ed has accomplished in his life.  In his film world, Wood has "perfected" his own "race of people," in his entourage, hasn't he?  "Hunted and despised" that entourage may be, but together, the group is doing what it wants to do, and in Eddie's mind, making art; telling "the stories" that he wants to tell.  On Eddie's own terms, he is a success.

Other than Lugosi, other individuals also thrive in Ed's "safe" and non-judgmental world.  Bunny Breckinridge, an openly homosexual man, is accepted without question.  In fact, he is so inspired by Ed's "coming out" in Glen or Glenda that he plans to undergo a long-anticipated sex change operation.  "It's something I've wanted to do for a long time," he says. "But it wasn't until I saw your movie that I realized I have to take action! Goodbye, penis!"  

As silly as that dialogue clearly plays, it does a good job of revealing Ed's positive influence on those around him.  His creation of a "bubble of safety" allows people like Lugosi and Breckinridge to find a safe harbor in an often-cruel town.   Notably, the woman he falls in love with, Kathy, passes the same test.  Ed informs her up front about his cross-dressing habits and she accepts them, no ifs, ands or buts.  Once Eddie knows that Kathy is accepting, little else matters.


Watching Ed Wood, we come to understand and realize the magic of this specific Burton "outsider."

 "How do you do it?"  Bunny asks Wood.   "How do you get all your friends to get baptized, just so you can make a monster movie?"  

In large part, Burton's film is about answering that very important question,  What the director finds is that Ed boasts two qualities that draw people to his cause: passion and optimism.  

In the first case, Eddie believes wholeheartedly in the films he creates, whatever their (obvious) short-comings.  And on the other front, Ed is indomitable in spirit.  The only way to survive in Hollywood (or as a writer, even) is to believe in yourself, and keep trying, no matter what.  Because you will face failures, you will face criticism, and you will deal with acerbic, cruel gatekeepers who want to keep you out of their privileged domains. 

But Eddie never lets those assholes get him down, at least for very long, and the script often references this fact.  When Eddie is told by a studio head that he made "the worst movie ever," his immediate response is "my next one will be better."   

When at the end of the film, Eddie suggests driving to Las Vegas, his girlfriend Kathy (Patricia Arquette) reminds him that it is raining, and that it is a five hour ride to Vegas.  Wood's response is, again, characteristic of his optimism: "It's only a five hour drive and it'll probably stop by the time we get to the desert. Heck, it'll probably stop by the time we get around the corner. Let's go."


Those upbeat words embody Ed Wood as a person and also, not to a small degree,  incidentally, the nature of film making.  

If you're going to let yourself be stopped by a little things like the rain, you'll never make it as a director.  

Orson Welles knew it...and Ed Wood knew it too. They didn't stop making films when confronted with rain, weird casting decisions (Charlton Heston as a Mexican?) or funding problems.  No, they soldiered on, and their films became famous and beloved.

Again, considerations of quality don't necessarily enter the picture here. There are as many people out there, no doubt, who love Plan 9 as there are those who love Citizen Kane.  And, as I wrote above, Ed Wood is much more about the qualities those films and their directors share, not the ones that separate them.

If Ed Wood has any sense of cruelty in it, it likely involves the unsympathetic treatment of the Dolores Fuller character.  In the script, she is the voice of the outside world; of harsh reality.  She calls Ed and his friends "weirdos."  She passes judgement on the movies (calling them "terrible") and she has trouble accepting Eddie for who he is (a cross-dresser).  

This unsympathetic description may not match reality, but it works for the film, because it's absolutely critical that there is an "outside" voice for society encoded in the narrative.  We need to see how Ed is seen by the world at large, and the movie depiction of Fuller is the one who provides that perspective.  There must be a doubter in Eddie's world, and Dolores drew the short straw, I guess, in the script-writing phase.

Ed Wood gives the director of Plan 9 From Outer Space the happy ending his real life plainly did not have.  In real life, Ed Wood died relatively poor while writing pulpy novels and making soft-core nudie/monster flicks.  In Burton's romanticized version of Wood's life, however, Wood finds the adoration of the masses at a well-attended movie premiere, and heads off for brave new horizons with his true love, Kathy.  

"This is the one they'll remember me for," Wood declares triumphantly, of Plan 9 From Outer Space.  

Of course, Wood was right in this assertion, but not in the way he may have wished to be right. We do remember him for that film today.  But it's because the film is so bad.

And yet, even so ironic a line is not played cheaply by Depp or by Burton. Instead, there's a breathtaking innocence and vulnerability in Depp's line reading.  Wood is happy with what he has accomplished, and uttering a comment that is, to him, accurate.  Burton's film ends with a pounding rain storm outside the premiere-- a sign that Wood's journey is not to remain a smooth one -- but as we leave the film, he is happy and resolute.  He has honored his friend and told his story the way he wanted. He has succeeded.  I absolutely love that this film boasts the audacity to turn the world renowned "worst movie of all time" into, essentially, a high-point for Wood rather than his Waterloo, and that's such an inventive, ingenious way of countenancing this biography.  Where others see failure and derision, Burton shows us success...a valediction.

Burton's films are often extremely colorful and extremely lush, and Ed Wood stands in stark contrast to that normal approach.  The director often holds up misfits and outcasts as heroes or role models too, but in Ed Wood, there's a special alchemy to consider on that front.   The milieu of movie making adds a kind of extra layer of meaning to the tale.

Artists can control their art to some degree, but they can't control the response to it. Hence the insecurity of so many filmmakers, writers and actors. What if we bomb? What if we step up to bat...and strike out?   Ed Wood is very much about that notion; with Tim Burton himself exploring the idea of being an Ed Wood, a talent "hunted" and "despised" for sticking to his own, admittedly-bizarre perspective of the world.  

And for that reason, "this is the one" I'll always remember Tim Burton for. I admire many of his films (namely Edward Scissorhands and Big Fish), but Ed Wood is the one that really gets to me on a deep, emotional level.  It reminds me that failure may be inescapable, even inevitable, but that our response to failure is the thing that separates the real artist from the wannabe or poseur.  

Make the worst movie ever made?  The next one will be better...

Abnormal Fixation: More Awards!

Our low-budget, indie, self-produced web series , Abnormal Fixation , continues its journey through the film festival circuit (before a prem...