Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Lost Greg Javer/Keith Crocker Commentaries [PART ONE]

Keith and Greg talk Ed. (Header image by Brendon Sibley.)

Not long before he died, Greg Javer (aka Greg Dziawer) contributed some commentary tracks to the deluxe three-disc collection Hard Wood: The Adult Films of Ed Wood (2024) from Severin Films. Looking back, this was one of the last major Wood-related projects of Greg's too-brief life. If you purchase that set, you can hear him give his thoughts on Necromania (1971), The Only House in Town (1971), and The Young Marrieds (1972). If you're missing Greg, and I know many of you are, these tracks allow you to spend some time with him.

But these were not the only recordings Greg made for Hard Wood. He and I, for example, recorded a jovial and hopefully informative commentary for the rowdy, rural comedy Shotgun Wedding (1963), which Eddie scripted for director Boris Petroff. Unfortunately, that track got lost in the shuffle and never made it into the finished set. If you're interested in hearing it, I have made it available in a previous blog entry.

Meanwhile, teaming up with film historian Keith Crocker, Greg recorded commentary tracks for six (!) of the adult loops that Ed Wood made as part of the Swedish Erotica series in the early 1970s. These, too, were unfortunately lost in the shuffle and did not make it into Hard Wood. But fear not! Recently, reader Brendon Sibley forwarded these tracks to me and asked for me to present them on my blog. How could I resist an offer like that? 

In fact, I will devote this week and next to the lost Javer/Crocker commentaries. Three this week, three next week. Does that sound like a plan? For obvious reasons, I cannot present the loops without some visual distortion. YouTube has very little sense of humor about these things.

Podcast Tuesday: "The Top 5 Garry Marshall Movies of All Time"

Garry Marshall sure did make some films, I tell you what.

Every pretentious film geek on the internet has a "hot take" on the movies of Quentin Tarantino, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese. And they probably have plenty of opinions about David Fincher, Steven Spielberg, David Lynch, and Paul Thomas Anderson, too. But how many of them have bothered to watch all the movies of Garry Marshall, huh? Probably not too many. Well, that's why you come to my blog. I pick up where the others leave off. I go where no nerd has gone before.

Garry Marshall was a very successful writer and producer of TV sitcoms in the 1960s and '70s, scoring hits with The Odd Couple, Happy Days, and Laverne & Shirley. (Of course, there was also the occasional Blansky's Beauties or Me and the Chimp. Hey, they can't all be winners.) By the 1980s, he naturally wanted to graduate to feature films. And so, he made 18 of them, including some box office smashes and a few major bombs. Along the way, he worked with some of the biggest actors in movie history and turned more than one newcomer into a superstar. For all these reasons and more, I think his films—good, bad, or indifferent—are as worthy of study as those of any famous director.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, my cohost and I give you our picks for the Top 5 Garry Marshall Movies of All Time. And we talk about what we liked and didn't like about our journey through Garry's filmography. Doesn't that sound like fun? Click the play button below and find out.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 266: How accurate is 'Ed Wood' (1994) [PART 3]

Ed Wood (Johnny Depp) looks guilty in this scene from Ed Wood.

It just isn't true, okay?

The "Dolores Fuller" character in Tim Burton's movie Ed Wood (1994)—the temperamental, ambitious-to-a-fault ingenue played by a peroxided Sarah Jessica Parker—is not a fair or accurate depiction of Indiana-born actress and songwriter Dolores Agnes Fuller (1923-2011) who dated Edward D. Wood, Jr. in the early 1950s and appeared in three of his best-known movies. In transforming Eddie's messy, complicated life into a tidy, two-hour biopic, screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski streamlined certain aspects of the story and exaggerated others. Somehow, along the way, Dolores got turned into a cartoon. I honestly think the culprit was this extended quote from Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992):

Dolores Fuller explains why she left Ed Wood.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 265: How accurate is 'Ed Wood' (1994) [PART 2]

Ed Wood (1994) references this production of The Casual Company.

When Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (1924-1978) relocated to Hollywood from his native Poughkeepsie in the late 1940s after his stint in the Marines, his goal was to break into the movie business. The silver screen had fascinated him as a boy, so once he became a man, he took Horace Greeley's famous advice: "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." Once settled in California, instead of relying on job offers from the major studios (Universal, Fox, Paramount), Ed Wood attempted to produce and/or direct his own low-budget movies. This was a youngster with initiative. A dreamer, you might say.

A young Ed Wood.

Unfortunately, Eddie's earliest Hollywood projects, like the crude Westerns Range Revenge and Crossroads of Laredo (both 1948), were never truly completed during the filmmaker's lifetime and were only released posthumously. I've pinpointed the made-for-TV melodrama The Sun Was Setting (1951) as the first production Eddie actually saw all the way through to completion, though I can find no record of it airing anywhere. Ed's attempts at making television commercials "on spec" and then selling them to clients likewise proved futile. You can still watch some of Eddie's self-made TV commercials today, but I don't think any companies ever used them.

What's most remarkable about Ed Wood's earliest years in Hollywood is how many short-lived production companies he managed to start and how many backers he managed to sweettalk into giving him money, despite having no proven track record of success. Eddie's graveyard of failed ventures includes: Wood-Thomas Productions, Story Ad Films, W.D.C.B. Films, Atomic Productions, and more.

Meanwhile, to earn a little money and (potentially) get his name out there, Eddie did a little theater work during those early years in Hollywood. The great James Pontolillo covers this topic extensively in his book, The Muddled Years of Edward D. Wood, Jr., 1946-1948 (2025). Besides acting in The Blackguard Returns, Eddie managed to stage a farce he'd written himself called The Casual Company: The Laugh of the Marines. This lighthearted office comedy, based on Ed's own military experience, had a brief run at the Village Playhouse in late 1948. In the October 26, 1948 edition of The Valley Times, critic Henry Arntsen described it as a "three-acter" revolving around "a group of pencil-pushing Marines at a Naval hospital." 

Podcast Tuesday: "Skype, We Hardly Knew Ye"

Julia Roberts in Mother's Day.

When Garry Marshall was directing Mother's Day (2016), did he know it was going to be his last movie? He must have at least suspected. He was 81 when this lighthearted all-star ensemble comedy was released, and he died of pneumonia less than three months after it premiered. At the time, he hadn't even made a feature film for five years, the longest significant gap in his directing career. He hadn't completely disappeared during that time, still working regularly as a character actor and popping up as a frequent talk show guest, but he was definitely slowing to a halt.

In a way, it's nice to know that Garry went out doing what he loved. I have rarely encountered a director who so wholeheartedly loved the filmmaking process. It was important for Garry that his actors were having a good time on the set, even when the movie they were making was of questionable quality. Even Rosie O'Donnell and Dana Delany had fond memories of making the abysmal Exit to Eden (1994). It's no wonder that actors kept working with Garry over and over.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we review Mother's Day in all its maternal glory. Is it one of Garry Marshall's proudest achievements? Or did his career end in disappointment? That's what we aim to find out.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 264: How accurate is 'Ed Wood' (1994) [PART 1]

Jeffrey Jones in Ed Wood. Inset: Criswell in Night of the Ghouls.

Ed Wood Wednesdays is, by far, the longest-running series in the history of this blog. It may be the most significant project of my entire life. I started it nearly 13 years ago, and it's nowhere near completion. But within that one big project, there have been a lot of smaller sub-projects, like my reviews of every story in Blood Splatters Quickly (2014) and my 2022 Ed-Vent Calendar. These have been some of the most enjoyable articles for me to write, so I'm always on the lookout for the next possible series-within-a-series. And now I think I've found it.

What I plan to do for the next however many weeks is go through Tim Burton's glossy biopic Ed Wood (1994) scene by scene and discuss how accurate—or inaccurate—it is, compared to the real life and career of Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (1924-1978). Before you get upset, please know that I am doing this purely as a tribute to the movie. I am not trying to criticize director Tim Burton or writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski for taking liberties with the facts. I'm completely fine with them taking liberties with the facts, and I love Ed Wood just the way it is. But this series will (hopefully) allow me to talk about numerous aspects of Eddie's real life and work in an entertaining way.

Oh, and I fully expect to be corrected and nitpicked along the way by you, the readers. If you feel I've made a misstatement, let me know and I'll update the article. Anyway, let's get started.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 263: Victor Crowley himself

"Screw you, Miss Crowley."

Early in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), Ed (Johnny Depp) and his loyal repertory players gather at a cozy L.A. cocktail bar called Boardner's after staging a performance of Eddie's achingly earnest World War II play, The Casual Company, at a small theater in Hollywood. Even though it's raining and the press didn't actually show up for "press night," their spirits are nonetheless high. Ed even tells eager beaver actor Paul Marco (Max Casella): "Paul, your second act monologue actually gave me the chills."

A review from Miss Crowley.

Then, actor Conrad Brooks (Brent Hinkley) bounds in with a copy of The Los Angeles Register and says he has "the early edition, hot off the presses." He hands the paper to Ed Wood. As the smiling actors crowd around him, Eddie eagerly flips to a newly-published review of The Casual Company by theatrical critic Victor Crowley. But the mood soon sours as they read the article, which Burton shows us in a closeup. Here is what Mr. Crowley has to say about their efforts:

World War II, a time for brave men with "guts," forms the backdrop for "The Casual Company," which opened last night in Hollywood. Let me tell you this is definitely a play about "guts." It certainly took "guts" to stage this disappointment. Penned by one Edward D. Wood, Jr., who also has the "guts" to take credit for directing this foxhole piece, "The Casual Company" takes place on a bare stage with only rudimentary lighting. Fortunately, the soldiers' costumes are very realistic.

The actors, once boisterous, now fall silent. Bunny Breckinridge (Bill Murray) is the first to speak: "Oh, what does that old queen know? She didn't even show. Sent her copy boy to do the dirty work." Meanwhile, poor Paul is trying to figure out what "ostentatious" means, while Dolores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker) wonders aloud: "Do I really have a face like a horse?" 

But Eddie, the eternal optimist, zeroes in on the one compliment: "The soldiers' costumes are very realistic." Later in the movie, he'll bring this up when he interviews for a directing job with producer George Weiss (Mike Starr): "I just did a play in Hollywood, and Victor Crowley himself praised its realism!" Eddie also says that good reviews are not necessary for showbiz success and points to "the latest Francis the mule picture" as an example.

Podcast Tuesday: "Garry Marshall Drops the Ball"

Zac Efron and Michelle Pfeiffer in New Year's Eve (2011).

A vintage matchbook.

Are you a New Year's Eve person? Does that holiday mean anything to you? I can't say that December 31 holds too many special memories for me, fond or otherwise. For the last few decades—not just years, but decades—I have stayed home on the last day of the year and only intermittently glanced up at the countdown festivities on TV. So a movie like Garry Marshall's New Year's Eve (2011), in which a bunch of celebrities celebrate the titular holiday in various wacky ways, does not have a lot of intrinsic appeal for me. File it alongside Rudolph's Shiny New Year (1976). Nice try, but I'm not terribly interested.

However, if I rummage through my own storehouse of memories in search of ones related specifically to New Year's Eve, I can zero in on a now long-gone restaurant called The Greenery in Clio, Michigan. A classy place, the kind you might take your grandparents for an evening out. The food there was pretty bland, and my family definitely didn't go there on a regular basis. But, for whatever reason, my parents took us to The Greenery every New Year's Eve for years. The place's best feature was an extremely generous and varied dessert bar. That was definitely the highlight of December 31 for me. (The lowlight was the drive home, since there always seemed to be a winter storm raging that night.) Other than that, I can't say I'm for or against this particular holiday.

Nevertheless, in this week's edition of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we are tackling the aforementioned New Year's Eve movie from 2011. As with Valentine's Day (2010), Garry Marshall assembled a boatload of TV stars, movie stars, and pop stars and put them in little, interconnected vignettes, all happening on one special day. If you've ever wanted to see Jon Bon Jovi, Halle Berry, Hilary Swank, Robert De Niro, and Ludacris in one movie.... well, here's your chance. Our review is included below. Do me a favor and listen to it. Thanks.