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| I don't know if Ed Wood made it to heaven, but he might think we already live there. |
Wherever you are right now, I want you to take a moment and look around you. Pry your eyes away from your phone, tablet, or laptop and study your surroundings. Are you impressed with what you see? Well, you should be, because you are living in paradise. At least from Ed Wood's perspective, you are.
Let me explain.
Filmmaker and author Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (1924-1978) spent the last three decades of his life living in Hollywood and trying to find a place for himself in the movie industry. He never really found one, so he was relegated to the margins of show business, working first in low-budget independent pictures and then in pornography. Along the way, he supplemented his income by writing paperback books, short stories, and magazine articles, usually of an adult nature. Prolific as he was in all fields, Ed never made enough money to cover his expenses and so lived in abject poverty for decades. He was also a heavy drinker and chronic smoker. These factors, along with job-related stress and poor diet, led to his early death at the age of 54.
I would suggest that many of the problems Ed Wood faced in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s have been either alleviated or eliminated altogether by the 2020s. Had Eddie been born at a later time, he still might never have found mainstream success—his work is simply too idiosyncratic for that, regardless of budgetary concerns—but he would not have had to live as miserably and die as prematurely as he did. And I say that because of a few larger societal trends.
If Ed Wood were able to venture into our time and see how we live today, he would (like any time traveler) be amazed and baffled by a great many things. Keep in mind that, when Eddie died, there was no such thing as the internet or smartphones. If you wanted to keep up with the news, you did so through newspapers, magazines, and TV and radio broadcasts. And, unless you were a hobbyist with money to burn, your entertainment options were generally limited to what was playing on TV or in your local movie theater.
It's true that the pornographic loops Ed made in the 1970s were sold through mail-order and were intended to be shown in people's homes, but these brief movies were quite expensive and therefore impractical to collect in any great number. You'd better hope you enjoyed the 10 minutes or so of dirty footage you just bought because it's probably all you're getting for a while. Eddie may have made these movies, but he probably could not have afforded them! He'd have been his own worst customer.
So Ed would likely be astonished by the sheer volume of media and information available to us at any given moment. Imagine... all the Buck Jones movies a person could ever want, just a few clicks away! But I think Eddie would be even more impressed by the resources and tools available to the independent filmmaker.
Making a movie in Eddie's time was a burdensome chore. You can see that throughout the biopic Ed Wood (1994). One of my favorite moments in that movie is when Eddie (Johnny Depp) is filming the window-shopping scene from Glen or Glenda (1953). He is in full drag, as he is both directing and acting that day. The script calls for his character, Glenda, to stare wistfully into a women's clothing store and then walk away without going in. Simple enough, right?
The crew has just started filming when Paul Marco (Max Casella) makes a terrible announcement: "Hey! Cop!" Eddie looks over his shoulder and sees a patrol car on the horizon. He informs the crew that he has no permit and instructs them to run. The crew members, mostly older men, groan as they pick up their heavy equipment and escape.
At other times during Ed Wood, you can see Eddie and his crew filming in rented soundstages rather than out on the street, but these facilities had their own headaches, like inconveniently wanting money. In the biopic, the production of Bride of the Atom (1955) even shuts down for a while because Eddie can't pay the studio owners the money they're demanding.
I believe that, if Ed Wood were around and making movies today, he would undoubtedly be amazed by digital photography and the relative ease it offers directors, not to mention digital editing and post-production. It is much, much easier for a no-budget filmmaker today to deliver a film that looks professional even without the use of clumsy, difficult-to-carry equipment. Drones are now within the price range of small-timers, allowing for impressive overhead shots. And green screens are commonly used by amateurs, allowing for actors to be composited into all kinds of scenes. So Eddie wouldn't have needed a shower curtain and a slide rule to simulate the cockpit of an airplane for Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957).
Since new footage was so difficult to come by in the 1950s, Ed Wood routinely padded his films to feature length through the use of stock footage, i.e. preexisting scenes that he had no hand in making but merely appropriated for his own use. Today, stock footage is still routinely employed by amateur and low-budget filmmakers, and there are searchable online databases that make it a snap to find exactly the kind of scene you need to complete your project. The other great shortcut today, naturally, is generative AI. The term alone raises hackles among many, and the use of such material is highly stigmatized, but I am dead-bang 100% positive Ed would have no such compunctions.
2. The veneration of so-called junk culture
I started conceiving this article way back in September when we were in the midst of "spooky season." That's right. Spooky now has its own season. The buildup to Halloween now takes months. It's threatening to eclipse even Christmas as the most-anticipated holiday of the year. In September and October (and even in late August), Halloween paraphernalia is everywhere. Not only are there pop-up Spirit Halloween locations across America, but Halloween merch is available in virtually every big box store and supermarket you can name. For about two and a half months, there are vampires, ghouls, zombies, werewolves, and mummies at every turn. Given his lifelong devotion to Famous Monsters of Filmland and classic Universal horror movies, Eddie would have been enchanted, I'm sure.
Horror is one of the few movie genres that remains economically viable, not just on streaming services but in theaters. And fan interest in classic horror has not gone away. This can be seen in the popularity of MeTV's Svengoolie, Shudder's The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs, and the sheer proliferation of merchandise based on classic horror icons like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Vincent Price. Then there are all the podcasts and YouTube channels devoted to horror movies, including the Universal and Hammer movies of the past.
A few short decades ago, it was generally understood that stories about superheroes, monsters, and dragons were strictly kid stuff. Light entertainment at best. When you got older and more mature, you were supposed to graduate to more serious, thought-provoking fare. That assumption has gone away in the 21st century. Somewhere along the line, we decided as a society that we didn't want to graduate to boring stuff. We wanted to stick with the fun stuff we'd enjoyed as kids. Hence The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Marvel movies, etc. Thanks to the 50 Shades of Gray franchise, even smut has gone mainstream. I call this the "cookies for dinner" era of American entertainment. We're done with eating our cultural vegetables. Bring on the cookies, we say!
It's my contention that Ed Wood would revel in all of this. Suddenly, his interests are America's interests! And thanks to the internet and the proliferation of fanboy culture, it's easier than ever to indulge in your passions and connect with others who feel the same. It's very possible that, were he around in the 21st century, Eddie would be a fixture of the convention circuit and happily posing with loyal devotees dressed as the characters from his movies.
3. New avenues of fundraising and distribution
I've previously talked about the technical difficulties that a low-budget movie director might have faced in the 1950s. But, god, that's not even half the story. Just getting to make a movie in the first place was an incredible privilege. Either you had to be anointed by the studio system and entrusted with a production of your own or you had to raise the money somehow from somewhere. No dough, no go.
Very appropriately, Ed Wood spends a lot of screentime on the fundraising part of the business. Eddie meets with a few potential employers over the course of the film, including George Weiss (Mike Starr), an independent producer, and Mr. Feldman (Stanley DeSantis), an executive at Warner Bros. Weiss hires him; Feldman doesn't. Eventually, at the urging of his girlfriend Dolores (Sarah Jessica Parker), Eddie decides to raise money to fund his next movie, Bride of the Atom. This leads to a couple of unsuccessful galas at the Brown Derby where Eddie wines and dines potential backers and tells them whatever he thinks they want to hear. ("It's scary, and if you don't like that, it's romantic!")
The Brown Derby is gone, apart from a replica at Disney's Hollywood Studios. And I think fundraising dinners like the ones we see in Ed Wood are a thing of the past as well. Nowadays, however, a low-budget or no-budget producer can turn to crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, Patreon, GoFundMe, Indiegogo, and more. Just as I am certain that Eddie would be using AI in 2025, I am certain that he'd be cyberbegging to get his next movie funded.
And what about distribution? We shouldn't leave that part of the equation out. After all, what good is making a movie if you have no place to show it? This is a problem that plagued Eddie throughout his career. Even his magnum opus, Graverobbers from Outer Space (1957), didn't really find distribution for two years. And it changed titles along the way, becoming Plan 9 from Outer Space!
In 2025, Eddie might still have trouble getting his movies on the big screen, at least on a nationwide level. Oh, he'd probably score a few screenings at film festivals and conventions, but I doubt that the big multiplexes like AMC would come knocking on his door unless, through some miracle, he struck a deal with Blumhouse or A24. (Can you imagine an A24 Ed Wood movie?) Instead, Eddie would probably be aiming for one of the many, many, many streaming platforms. Tubi maybe. Shudder perhaps. If all else failed, he could simply upload the movie himself to YouTube and hope for some ad revenue. The point is, if he wanted to get his work out there, he'd have some options.
I don't seriously mean to suggest that 2025 is any kind of utopia. A quick glance at the headlines (on any given day) will disabuse you of that notion. But I do contend that Ed Wood's career path would not have been so difficult had he come along at a later time. He'd still be trudging uphill, but the grade wouldn't be so damned steep.
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