 |
| Billy Zane (in nurse uniform) leads an all-star cast in Ed Wood's I Woke Up Early the Day I Died. |
One of the longest articles in this series—and, indeed, the history of this entire blog—is my review of Aris Iliopolus' I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1998), a film based on a script that Ed Wood worked on for years under many titles but never managed to get produced during his own lifetime. Only after Rudolph Grey's book Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) and Tim Burton's film Ed Wood (1994) did this long-gestating script finally see daylight, so to speak.
 |
| A poster for the rarely-seen film. |
When discussing I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, it's easy to focus on the film's gimmicky nature. That's what most of the reviews do, including the one I wrote ten years ago. Beyond the Ed Wood-penned script and the It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)-style cast, there's also the fact that the story is told without dialogue in the tradition of silent movies of the 1920s and early '30s. Rausch and Pratt even freely compare it to the works of Chaplin and Keaton.
What's potentially getting lost here is the story Ed Wood wanted to tell with this film. That's why he held onto this script for years, even when getting evicted from various residences and having to ditch his other possessions. As the title character in Ed Wood, Johnny Depp even says, "All I wanna do is tell stories." So how well does Aris Iliopulos' film do that? Admittedly, I haven't spent a lot of quality time with I Woke Up Early in the last decade. But when Woodologist Angel Scott mentioned on Facebook that the film had resurfaced online, I thought it was a golden opportunity to rewatch it and see if I could look past the gimmickry and get to the heart of this material.
Admittedly, the film makes this tough to do at first. We begin with an elaborate, lengthy opening title sequence that highlights all the fabulous guest stars we're about to see. Imagine The Love Boat (1977-1987) gone punk. The credits themselves look like they were typed on a typewriter, reminding us of author Ed Wood's ghostly presence. Even after the credits, Aris Iliopulos chooses to put a scene heading ("1. INT - SANITARIUM - DUSK") on the screen, accompanied by typewriter noises. Excerpts from Wood's script appear as captions throughout the film. So the director definitely puts the gimmickry front and center. Maybe that's why we're five paragraphs into this article and I haven't even started talking about the plot or content of I Woke Up Early.
Very briefly, this film tells the story of a character known only as The Thief (Billy Zane, then at the crest of his fame), a violent madman who escapes from a sanitarium and goes on a multi-day crime spree of theft, assault, and murder in Los Angeles. Along the way, he steals $15,000 from a loan office and impulsively kills one of the employees. He puts the ill-gotten money in a briefcase that he unwisely stows in a coffin at a cemetery. The briefcase then goes missing, and The Thief spends most of the movie tracking down the people who may have taken it, all of them members of a strange Hollywood cult. His journey takes him to a variety of locations: a lighthouse, a carnival, a mortuary, a flophouse, and various bars and nightclubs. Ultimately, he winds up in the same cemetery where he originally hid the money, and there his story reaches its untimely end.
Look, this is not a naturalistic or realistic film in any way. The costumes look like costumes. The wigs look like wigs. The acting is often unsubtle. And the plot progresses in a dreamlike, surreal manner. Those expecting a conventional motion picture will be deeply frustrated by this movie. Instead, I'd say the tone of I Woke Up Early is closer to that of sketch comedy, particularly the short films you might see on, say, Saturday Night Live (1975-present) and Kids in the Hall (1988-1995). I'm particularly reminded of the "Mr. Heavyfoot" films from Kids in the Hall, since those were dialogue-free. With his continual bad luck, The Thief also reminded me of the unspeaking title character in the Pink Panther animated shorts (1969-1978) produced by DePatie-Freleng.
The point of this experiment was to see whether I could look past the film's stylistic oddness and its numerous celebrity cameos and enjoy I Woke Up Early as the story that Ed Wood wanted to tell for so many years. And, happily, I found that I could. While I'm not so sure I can agree with the authors of Cinematic Misadventures and call it Eddie's "greatest film," I'll say that this movie is the closest in spirit and tone to the breathless, often-ghoulish short stories that Ed Wood wrote in the 1960s and '70s, the ones anthologized in Blood Splatters Quickly (2014) and Angora Fever (2019). If you enjoyed those books, you'll more than likely enjoy this film.
As for the celebrity cameos, I basically stopped thinking about them after a few minutes. Earlier in this review, I compared I Woke Up Early to Stanley Kramer's Mad Mad World. That film, too, boasts an all-star cast, with all the leading, supporting, and even blink-and-you'll-miss-'em roles played by famous comedians. And yet, when I'm watching Mad World, I put that aside and get wrapped up in the story of these desperate middle-aged motorists looking for Smiler Grogan's money. I don't see the celebrities as themselves; I see them as the characters they're playing. The same basic thing happens while I'm watching I Woke Up Early. Sure, it's fun that some well-known folks from TV and film pop up throughout the running time, but it doesn't take me out of the story. If I'm giving out any best-in-show awards, I'll mention Bud Cort as a thrift store owner and Tippi Hedren as a deaf woman. Oh, and Maila "Vampira" Nurmi has a fun little scene where she does as little as possible.
 |
| Billy Zane as The Thief. |
But I wouldn't want to tamper with this movie too much, because the other great strength of I Woke Up Early is its eye-popping cinematography. Director Aris Iliopulos and cinematographer Michael Barrow give us one striking image after another, boldly using lighting, composition, and camera angles (including numerous overhead shots!) to expressionistic effect. There is nothing timid or restrained about this movie; Iliopulos goes full comic book, and it pays off. Most of the film was shot on location in various sites around Los Angeles, and it's remarkable how Iliopulos captures the seamy underbelly of the city yet manages to give it a curious glamour at the same time. It's really a shame that he never went on to make another feature film.
The key question is, would Ed Wood approve of what Aris Iliopulos did with I Woke Up Early the Day I Died? Well, he's not here to tell us, so all we can do is speculate. Eddie was certainly used to other directors filming his scripts. It happened fairly frequently from the 1950s to the 1970s: Steve Apostolof, Adrian Weiss, Don Davis, Boris Petroff, William Morgan, Ed DePriest, and more. He seemed perfectly content to hand off his work to someone else, as long as they paid him upfront, preferably in cash. Occasionally, Ed would even include phrases like "to the discretion of the director" in some of his screenplays, in case someone besides him wound up making them.
But I Woke Up Early was obviously something special to Ed Wood, not mere work-for hire like some of those other films I alluded to. He spent years on this script and held onto it as long as he possibly could. Perhaps he saw something of himself in The Thief, a desperate man without resources or even a home in Los Angeles. An outcast. A freak. A man on the run. The Thief makes the mistake of pursuing money, and it brings him nothing but grief. But what are his choices? You have to have money to survive in this world. Ed Wood knew that all too well.
Ultimately, I am confident that Ed would have been flattered by this movie. By all accounts, he was thrilled with any attention his work received, even if it were derogatory or parodic, so it would have blown his mind that a script of his went into production 20 years after his own death—with a star-studded cast, no less. Sure, he would have been bewildered by the use of Darcy Clay's snarly, aggressive "Jesus I Was Evil" over the opening credits, but the soundtrack also features more sedate fare by The Ink Spots and Nat "King" Cole, plus a sumptuous instrumental score by Larry Groupé. If nothing else, the cameos by his wife, Kathy, and his old pal, Conrad Brooks, would have warmed Eddie's drunken heart.