Ed Wood

Edward D. Wood Jr. (Depp) is a likable young man in 1950s Hollywood who wants nothing more than to become a writer-director in the tradition of his hero, Orson Welles. The problem is not just that the motion picture industry is difficult to break into; the problem's that even when he is given a chance, he seems to like being a director more than he likes actually directing. To Wood, every scene, whether flubbed or not, is "perfect"; every line is either mired in cliché or so badly conceived ("Pull the string!") that it's hard to figure out what he's going on about. His girl Dolores (Parker) has touching faith in him at first, but that rapidly goes south under the twin blows of his habitual cross-dressing and even more disconcerting self-delusion.

Ed's career has been so very hopeless, in fact, that it's capable of being given a substantial boost by his chance encounter with the legendary Dracula star Bela Lugosi (Landau, in an Oscar-winning performance). Lugosi is embittered, out of work, in debt, believed to be "dead" by the major studios who haven't hired him for years, and in the final stages of addiction to heroin; he's so volatile by now, so paranoid, that one of Ed's visits to his home becomes life-threatening when the one-time star answers the door waving a gun and trying to enlist his young friend in a murder-suicide. Still, he was a star once, and as such he offers Wood something approaching bankability. With Lugosi's famous name attached to projects, Wood has the chance to live out his dreams by writing and directing the cross-dressing drama Glen or Glenda and the delirious mad-scientist thriller Bride of the Monster. In return, Wood's films and friendship help keep Lugosi from spiraling even deeper into the depression that threatens to claim him.

But Lugosi's an old man in failing health, whose stint as "the first celebrity to enter rehab" fails to prevent the inevitable. Wood, who has recently started a new relationship with Kathy O'Hara (Arquette), a sweet young woman who, apprised of his cross-dressing, thinks it over for a second and says "OK," has nothing left of Lugosi but a few minutes of silent home-movie footage, in which Lugosi sniffs a flower and weeps. Surely that's not enough to build another Ed Wood blockbuster around, especially with a guy who looks nothing like Lugosi hired as his body double. Or ... is it?

Can you prove these events didn't happen?

Screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewki had a problem. They had written a hit movie, Problem Child, but they lost control of it after handing in their script, and the thing that made it to cineplexes was widely (and accurately) perceived as one of those awful, awful, awful movies whose wild success at the box office was less a testament to its quality than an indictment of tragic bad taste on the part of the public. Unable to get another project started, even told by one producer that their next idea sounded interesting but that they were not good enough to write it, they perversely seized on the story of another filmmaker notorious for the wretchedness of his product, and in the process restarted their careers. (They have since then done films both good and bad, high points including two other unconventional biofilms, The People vs. Larry Flynt and the Andy Kaufmann bio Man on the Moon).

Ed Wood may be a bit lumpy as far as dramatic arc is concerned, due to the very stop-and-start nature of Wood's career and the constant need to keep introducing personalities like Tor Johnson (George "The Animal" Steele) and Vampira (Lisa Marie) who figured in his story. But it has heart, and it functions as four separate love stories, combining to create a portrait of a man who might not have been much good behind the camera but who seems to have been, at least at that point in his career, a hell of a nice guy to know. The first and most prominent of these love stories is of course Wood's love for his friend and idol Lugosi, the second is the sheer joy he takes in being a director (if not in the actual work of directing), the third is of course his adoration of angora, and the fourth his discovery of a woman willing to accept him, eccentricities and all. The movie culminates in the triumphant release of Plan Nine from Outer Space, widely called the worst movie of all time despite the existence of a number of movies that are demonstrably worse, a fine substitute for a happy ending in a life that actually spiraled further into alcoholism, poverty and obscurity.

Ed Wood was not a hit. People had trouble dealing with its subject matter, and many were scared off by its black-and-white cinematography. But it's fine entertainment, with great comic performances from just about everybody concerned, from Bill Murray as Wood's fey friend Bunny Breckenridge to Jeffrey Jones as the cheerful fraudulent Criswell. Depp, a Tim Burton regular, is very good as Wood, even if his line readings sometimes seem to channel Jon Lovitz. But the film's centerpiece is the towering work of Landau, an actor who started his career working for Hitchcock and whose career nadir working in things like The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island must have made it very easy for him to relate to the sad plight of a veteran like Lugosi, stuck for years in vehicles beneath his talent, who (unlike Landau) never came out the other side. It's no mere borscht-belt imitation. His Lugosi is bitter, regretful, unstable, sometimes savage, lost in memories of old triumphs--and very much responsive to the respect he receives from the likes of Wood and company. Not to put too fine a point on it: It's genius.