Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 256: Carl Anthony (1932-2021) [PART 1 OF 2]

It's time to shine a spotlight on a key player in the Ed Wood canon.

I have not been especially kind in my descriptions of actor Carl Anthony (1932-2021), a friend of Ed Wood who played prominent roles in both Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and The Sinister Urge (1960) and who later appeared as an interview subject in the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992). Here are some of the adjectives I've applied to Carl's work over the years: "colorless," "pedestrian," "stiff," "dull," and "uncomfortable." Not exactly the rave of the century. Hey, at least Carl got his own trading card in Drew Friedman's Ed Wood Players set. 

Carl's trading card.

Look, if you're studying the work of Edward D. Wood, Jr., you're going to spend some time (vicariously) with Carl Anthony. Hearing his voice. Looking at his face. And Carl is maybe, just maybe, not the most fun actor to watch. Though they're on opposite sides of the law, his characters in both Plan 9 and Sinister are kind of the same: surly, impatient, and unimaginative. This actor has the demeanor of a man waiting for a bus that will never arrive. And he has a pebble in his shoe the entire time.

But Christmas is a time for forgiveness and reconciliation, and I thought I'd give Carl's work a more charitable evaluation this year. Perhaps it will help to learn more about the man himself. He was born Carl Anthony Wuco in Garfield Heights, OH, a suburb of Cleveland, on November 4, 1932. That makes him one of the younger members of the Ed Wood repertory company. Of his Plan 9 costars, the closest in age would have been Conrad Brooks, born in 1931.

Carl's parents, Anthony and Gloria, stayed in Garfield Heights while their son moved first to Florida and finally to California to pursue his show business aspirations. According to back-to-back obituaries that ran in the August 22, 1965 edition of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, both Anthony and Gloria died "suddenly" on Monday, August 16, 1965. Details about their deaths will be included in next week's article.

Carl Anthony Wuco had two older brothers: Walter (who died in 2004) and Raymond (who died on December 30, 2014 at the age of 86). Raymond's elaborate obituary in the January 7, 2015 edition of The Cleveland Plain Dealer is quite an entertaining read by itself. Raymond was a distinguished mathematics teacher who spent 25 years as a religious Brother in the Marianist Catholic order but left the order in the early 1970s and married a woman named Lynn Valin in 1975. The two met when Raymond was teaching at a college in California. His academic career lasted 50 years and spanned both the monk and non-monk eras of his life. The obituary also reveals that the family name Wuco was originally Vuco, which is Croatian in origin. If you're wondering where Carl Anthony got his dark wavy hair and strong jawline, it's his Croatian roots.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 255: Is this the most complete cut of 'Glen or Glenda' (1953) yet?

Austin Wolf-Southern has assembled the jigsaw pieces of Ed Wood's debut film.

Like Blanche DuBois, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. Well, maybe not always. Actually, when I started writing these articles in July 2013, I was pretty much on my own. I had two books, Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) and Rob Craig's Ed Wood, Mad Genius (2009), to use for reference, as well as the documentaries Look Back in Angora (1994) and Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992). Other than that, I was flying solo. What did I bring to this topic? My own thoughts, my own ideas, my own... personality. I wrote Ed Wood Wednesdays by myself for myself. 

But very early on, people started emailing me. Some wanted to ask questions. Some wanted to make corrections. And still others wanted to share Ed Wood-related things with me—trivia, photos, sometimes even entire books, articles, and films. And then there were those who had Woodian projects of their own and wanted to tell me about them. Some were making music. Some were making films or comics. Several were writing or had already written books about Ed. And they sent much of this material to me to see what I thought of it. And, if I were feeling industrious that particular week, I told them. The main reason this column has lasted over 12 years (with no end in sight) is that my readers have supplied me with so much material.

One such person is comedian and Ed Wood superfan Austin Wolf-Southern. He has embarked on a project that should be of interest to all Woodologists: assembling a "complete cut" of Eddie's debut film, Glen or Glenda (1953). I've long said that this movie is the Rosetta Stone for understanding Ed Wood's entire career—not just his other films but his literary work as well. But, to this day, there is no "definitive" or "authoritative" version of it. Over the years, through various theatrical and home video releases, Glenda has had scenes added to it and subtracted from it. And Austin has taken it upon himself to comb through all this material and assemble it, almost as a Frankenstein monster, into one movie.

Podcast Tuesday: "God Bless Us, Every Fonz"

Henry Winkler in An American Christmas Carol.

One of the most anxious nights of my childhood happened sometime in the mid-1980s. At the time, I was in elementary school and living at home in the suburbs of mid-Michigan with my family. We were Catholic and attended mass regularly. One December, it happened that a holy day of obligation, a midweek mass, fell on the same night that CBS was planning to rerun the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott. Mass was at 7:00; the movie was at 8:00.

I was already a Christmas Carol obsessive at this tender age, so this constituted a crisis. I didn't want to miss a minute of the movie, since it's so important to see this story from the very beginning. Luckily, there were a few things on my side. Midweek masses typically lasted only 45 minutes or so, and we did not live far from the church. Seeing the entire movie was still possible. We made it home just as the opening credits were starting, much to my relief. But I can tell you that I took very little, spiritually, from that midweek mass. I'm sure I did not hear a single word the priest said. I was too busy thinking, "Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up!"

Now, you might think that since both A Christmas Carol and Happy Days have played such important roles in my life, I would be extremely familiar with the 1979 made-for-TV movie An American Christmas Carol starring Henry "The Fonz" Winkler. I certainly knew of this movie's existence, but until 2025, I had never actually watched the darned thing from beginning to end. This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we talk about our reactions to An American Christmas Carol. This'll be our last episode of 2025. We'll catch you again in 2026.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 254: Is 'Jail Bait' (1954) film noir?

A moody moment from Ed Wood's semi-obscure crime thriller Jail Bait.

"It has always been easier to recognize a film noir than to define the term."

-James Naremore, film scholar

If you look up Edward D. Wood, Jr. on the Internet Movie Database (as I have done many hundreds of times while writing this column) and sort his credits by genre, you'll see that only two of his films have been designated "film noir" by the site's users: Jail Bait (1954) and The Violent Years (1956). I'd have thought The Sinister Urge (1960) would qualify, too, but currently that one is designated simply a drama. Not moody enough, I suppose. Or maybe no one thought to label it as such.

Noir namer Nino Frank.

Whatever the case, we have just lived through another November or, as film writer Marya E. Gates has famously dubbed it, Noirvember. This is the time each year when cinephiles are encouraged to study and appreciate film noir (literally "dark film"), a genre first named by French film critic Nino Frank in 1946. Appropriately, in keeping with the gloomy spirit of the season, Mike White's podcast The Projection Booth just did four noir-themed episodes last month, and YouTuber James Rolfe posted a thoughtful 23-minute video essay called "Why I Love Film Noir" to his Cinemassacre channel. 

All of this material has been buzzing around in my brain recently, and I started to think about how Ed Wood fits into this whole picture. That's my curse. I have to apply everything to Eddie's career. It's become the prism through which I see the world. He's not thought of as a "noir director," but certainly these movies had an effect on him. It's a topic worth exploring. Should I have done this article back in November? Yes. But I had other articles I was working on at the time, so this one had to wait. I'm getting to it now. We'll call it Noircember, okay?

Since Ed Wood did not direct The Violent Years himself -- those duties were handled by one-and-done director William Morgan -- I am concentrating my attention on Jail Bait, Eddie's oft-overlooked sophomore feature. As I've said before, it remains the neglected middle child of his 1950s films, likely because it does not feature flying saucers, graveyards, or men in angora sweaters. Criswell, Bela Lugosi, and Tor Johnson are AWOL as well. (Since Bela was busy with his Vegas revue, his part was given to the wheezing Herbert Rawlinson.) Even though Eddie made this bleak crime thriller between Glen or Glenda (1953) and Bride of the Monster (1955), the biopic Ed Wood (1994) skips right over it, as if it never existed. Well, it did and does. But is it film noir?

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 253: We are living in Ed Wood's paradise

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.

Podcast Tuesday: "A Tyler Perry Movie for White People"

Lindsay Lohan and Dermot Mulroney in Georgia Rule.

Garry Marshall got his start in show business as a writer, working for sitcoms and variety shows and even crafting material for standup comedians like Phil Foster. He became known and established in the entertainment industry as a "comedy guy," which led to more work. When Garry started producing his own TV shows, including the sitcom Happy Days (1974-1984), he wanted to prove that he was more than just a joke machine. He could handle serious topics, too. That led to such Happy Days episodes as "Kiss Me, Teach" and "Such a Nice Girl," both of which deal with the subject of sexual assault.

Garry's urge to tell darker, more meaningful stories continued when he became a film director in the 1980s. As I've made my way through his filmography, I've seen him waver between the desire to entertain and the desire to educate. Young Doctors in Love (1982), Overboard (1987), and the two Princess Diaries movies (2001-2004) are mindless, cotton candy comedies, while Beaches (1988), The Other Sister (1999), and Nothing in Common (1986) tackle some weightier themes.

And then there is Georgia Rule (2007), a comedy-drama about an exceptionally tricky subject: child abuse. As is often the case with Garry's movies, this one has an incredible cast, led by Jane Fonda as the highly religious title character and Linsday Lohan (then at the height of her tabloid infamy) as her rebellious granddaughter. This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we talk about this highly unusual movie and our strong reactions to it. Please do join us.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 252: Additional thoughts on Bela Lugosi's appearance in Plan 9

We know Bela Lugosi appears in Plan 9. But how did that footage get there?

As Americans prepare to travel and reunite with loved ones for the Thanksgiving holiday, I thought I'd share some feedback I received about last week's article. If you'll recall, I prepared an alternate cut of Ed Wood's notorious sci-fi/horror hybrid Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) that only includes the silent footage of actor Bela Lugosi (1882-1956). The legendary Hungarian actor famously died before the movie was ever completed, and Plan 9 was somewhat deceptively marketed as his farewell performance. I challenged my readers to consider what they might have done with this footage if they'd been in Ed Wood's high-heeled shoes.

New and gloriously stupid project: 100 Buddy Hollys

Ten of the proposed 100 Buddy Hollys.

What is life without its pointless projects? As I look back on my own half century of existence, I see that I have always been the most productive when the work I am doing has no practical application in the real world. If it's completely and utterly useless, I'm all in. Often, the work only has "meaning" because it brings me some strange, indefinable enjoyment or satisfaction. I suppose this entire blog (which has been running since October 2009) is my ultimate boondoggle. I have faithfully maintained this madman's journal largely for my own amusement and at the expense of more noble or profitable pursuits. But it's far from my only folly.

Lately, for instance, I have embarked upon what might be my single-dumbest endeavor: a project called 100 Buddy Hollys. The idea is to create 100 different parodies and remixes of the 1994 Weezer song "Buddy Holly" and post these to my YouTube account, mostly as shorts. Why this song? Why now? I don't know and I don't know. But the project is already moving forward at a furious pace. I started on October 19 with a video called "Buddy Holly but Rivers fired the rest of the band and replaced them with The Moog Cookbook." I have since created several dozen sequels, combining "Buddy Holly" with numerous other pop culture properties and rearranging the song in various ways.

The most popular of these videos has garnered about 1,800 views -- not even a blip on the YouTube radar. The least popular currently sits at a miserable 23 views. I have no idea why some of them perform better than others, and I don't really care. All I know is that, at some point, I decided I'd make a hundred of these things and then stop. Will I make it? Will I lose interest or run out of ideas? Stay tuned, true believers.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 251: The last footage of Bela Lugosi

A scowling Bela Lugosi made his last onscreen appearance in Plan 9.

It's one of the most famous anecdotes in the life of Edward D. Wood, Jr. It could even be the linchpin of the entire Wood saga, the source of much of Eddie's mystique. According to legend, the director took a few minutes of footage of a dead actor and built a whole movie around it—not just any movie, either, but an infamous movie! If you've seen the Tim Burton-directed biopic from 1994, it's a story you already know well. But how much of it is the truth? Let's talk about it.

"This is the acorn."

When legendary Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi died in August 1956 at the age of 73, director Ed Wood was devastated. Not only had he lost a good friend, he'd lost his leading man. Bela had starred in Glen or Glenda (1953) and Bride of the Monster (1955) for Eddie and was supposed to star in numerous upcoming Wood productions, like The Ghoul Goes West and The Vampire's Tomb. Now those plans were permanently canceled.

But Eddie had an ace up his sleeve: a reel of silent test footage he'd shot of Bela Lugosi shortly before the great man's death. Sure, it was only a few minutes of film and it didn't really tell much of a story, but Ed Wood still felt it could be the starting point for a feature-length motion picture. As Johnny Depp puts it in the Tim Burton film: "This is the acorn that will grow a great oak." Eddie's plan was to film a bunch of new scenes and extend Bela's role through the use of a carefully-disguised body double. 

The amazing thing is that Ed Wood actually carried out this seemingly insane plan. The result was a completely bonkers sci-fi/horror hybrid called Graverobbers from Outer Space, which premiered in Hollywood on March 15, 1957. It was later retitled Plan 9 from Outer Space and eventually gained a reputation as the worst movie ever made, thanks to coverage in various sci-fi/horror fan magazines and the book The Golden Turkey Awards (1980). It is, hands down, the most famous project Ed Wood was ever involved in.

Podcast Tuesday: "Garry Marshall is for the Children"

Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement.

About a quarter of a century ago, author Meg Cabot had a revelation: girls like stories about princesses. Cabot herself liked stories about princesses as a child and still did as a grownup. And so she wrote The Princess Diaries (2000), a popular YA novel in which an American teenager named Mia finds out she is the rightful heir to the throne of a small European country called Genovia. Director Garry Marshall successfully adapted Cabot's book to the big screen in 2001 with Anne Hathaway (in her first major screen role) starring as the clumsy but endearing Mia. Cabot has since written many more books in the Princess Diaries franchise, while Marshall and Hathaway reunited for a sequel to the first movie called The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement in 2004.

I've yet to read any of Cabot's novels, but I have now seen both of Garry Marshall's Princess Diaries movies. To me, this is a classic "chosen one" narrative. At the beginning of the first film, Mia feels very un-special. Her prep school classmates either mock her or ignore her entirely. Even her one friend, Lily (Heather Matarazzo), treats her with some degree of scorn. But then, out of nowhere, her grandmother Clarisse (Julie Andrews) shows up with the very unexpected news that Mia is of royal blood. According to Clarisse, the unassuming American girl may be Genovia's last hope for survival. And so, Mia has to overcome her own self-doubts and rise up to claim her rightful place on the throne.

There's no denying that the Princess Diaries movies were made in the shadow of another, even more popular multimedia franchise about a chosen one. The first Diaries movie actually beat the first Harry Potter movie to theaters by three full months, but J.K. Rowling's books had been a worldwide sensation since 1997. To me, the influence of Harry Potter on The Princess Diaries (at least the movie version) is undeniable. It's a very short distance from "You're a wizard, Harry" to "You're a princess, Mia." Mia is Harry. Clarisse is Dumbledore. Clarisse's bodyguard Joe (Hector Elizondo) is Hagrid. Lily is Hermione. And throughout the film, Mia divides her time between a fancy private school and the Genovian embassy (where she studies to be a princess). Put these two together, and you've got Hogwarts. Mia even has a snotty, blonde-haired rival, Lana (Mandy Moore), the equivalent of Draco Malfoy.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we talk about The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. Is this sequel merely a cynical cash grab or does it manage to tell a compelling, entertaining story on its own? That's what we're hoping to find out. Please do join us.

So I was on TV, talking about Happy Days...

Adding some necessary labels to TV We Love.

It used to mean something to be on television, especially national television. When I was a kid, there were only three major networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC), plus PBS and a handful of independent stations that didn't always come in clearly. And that was your home entertainment, apart from books, magazines, newspapers, etc. The internet was still far in the future. There was no such thing as "streaming." Even cable and VCRs were but distant lights on the horizon back then. And so, my family and I would gather around the television set in our shag-carpeted, wood-paneled basement and watch shows like Alice, Fantasy Island, The Wonderful World of Disney, and Happy Days. Mainstream fare, in other words.

Many decades hence, long after television became irrelevant, I finally made it onto the boob tube. On Monday, November 10, 2025, my episode of the documentary series TV We Love aired on the CW. Had I not been on the show, I never would have heard of it. But I was, so I did. What can I say? It was still exciting to see myself on the screen, talking about Happy Days. My sister's family watched. Some of my internet pals and high school classmates tuned in. I tried to get some of my coworkers to watch, but I soon realized they had no idea what the CW even was.

Did you watch? If not, I have some good news: my entire episode is available for free right here. Enjoy! And if you want to know how I got involved in this project and what making the documentary was like, you can find out here.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 250: Bill Ash (1926-2011)

Bill Ash has a brief but memorable turn in Plan 9.

There are just 21 credited actors in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). The majority of these folks were members of Eddie's social circle and worked with him on multiple projects, often spanning years. If you're reading this article, you know their names by now: Criswell, Duke Moore, Connie Brooks, Dudley Manlove, Tor Johnson, Lyle Talbot, Carl Anthony, and so on. The troupers. The ride-or-die crowd. Even Vampira and John Breckinridge, neither of whom ever appeared in another Wood film, found their names forever linked to Eddie's because of Plan 9.

But some of the credited performers in Plan 9 must be considered ringers. Or, better yet, hired guns. Eddie cast them for this one project only, then never worked with them again. These were fledgling actors in mid-1950s Hollywood, and Plan 9 was likely just another job. How odd it must have been for them to realize that this cheap little sci-fi throwaway would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Gregory Walcott (who played Jeff Trent) eventually learned to have a sense of humor about it. Joanna Lee (who played Tanna) didn't. Guess who seemed to be having more fun.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 249: The Tragicall Historie of Plan the IX (2018)

Let's get Shakespearean all up in here.

This series is called Ed Wood Wednesdays, and it aims to cover the wonky oeuvre of Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (1924-1978) in its bewildering totality—from the primitive Westerns he made at the beginning of his career to the even-more-primitive porn loops he made at the end of it. But I could have limited myself to discussing Eddie's most famous film, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), and still not run out of material for many years. This one movie, just an hour and twenty minutes in length, has inspired an absurd amount of spinoffs over the years: books, articles, essays, stage adaptations, merchandise, and countless parodies. There's even a video game. It never ends.

There's so much Plan 9 flotsam in the world, frankly, that I cannot keep up with it. Just two weeks ago, for example, I reviewed Killian H. Gore's Plan 9 from Outer Space Quiz Book (2018). As the title indicates, it's a collection of trivia questions about the movie, supplemented with an original sci-fi short story. You'd think, as a certified Woodologist, I would be smack dab in the middle of the target audience for such a product, and yet I only stumbled upon it (seven years after it was published!) by pure chance while searching for something else entirely.

So what was the "something else entirely" I was trying to find?

Where is the 'Krapopolis' discourse?

The cast of the animated series Krapopolis.

The Fox animated series Krapopolis is currently in its third season. It has already been renewed for two more. Fifty episodes have already aired. The show's creator, Dan Harmon, is the man behind the cult classic NBC series Community and the co-creator of the pop culture juggernaut Rick & Morty. The voice cast includes Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry of The IT Crowd, as well as Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso. Numerous famous comedians and character actors have lent their voices to the show as well.

Fox has not been bashful in its promotion of Krapopolis, which currently airs in the 9:00 EST Sunday night timeslot as part of the Animation Domination block alongside such hits as The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers. The animation budget is obviously robust, and the stories are often quite ambitious, referencing both ancient history and Greek mythology while commenting slyly on the foibles of modern times.

So why is no one talking about this show?

Seemingly every aspect of The Simpsons has been scrutinized, parodied, analyzed, criticized, and recontextualized over the course of the last few decades. Similar attention has been paid to South Park, King of the Hill, Bob's Burgers, Beavis & Butt-head, and many other so-called "adult animation" shows. This genre tends to attract obsessives with strong opinions. But it's rare that I see anyone online discussing Krapopolis. Where are the video essays? Where are the think pieces? Where is the fan art? Where are the memes? Where are the tweets?

There should be plenty to discuss here. Krapopolis is set in Ancient Greece and centers around a family that contains gods, humans, and monsters. (Yes, all three in one family.) These characters have a lot to deal with, since they're always fighting among themselves and fending off attacks (often supernatural ones) from outsiders. And if that's not enough, the family is also attempting to get civilization off the ground and govern the first-ever city, despite the general public not understanding what a city is, what civilization is, or how government even works. Big things happen every week on Krapopolis. The characters embark upon quests, go to battle, cast spells, etc. Just this season, a major power shift has occurred within the family, with neurotic human Tyrannis (Ayoade) ceding the crown to his jovial, hard-partying father, Shlub, a combination centaur and manticore. And, again, this is all presented as satirical commentary on the modern world.

Somehow, despite its prominence on the Fox schedule, Krapopolis has managed to remain functionally invisible since it premiered in 2023. I think this is the first time I've written about it, and I've seen nearly every episode. That's the weirdest thing about this show. I generally find myself indifferent to it—not bored or irritated, necessarily, just strangely unmoved. In the abstract, I can appreciate the cleverness of the writing, but I can't honestly say the show has ever provoked me to genuine laughter. I'll never find myself thinking back on some joke from Krapopolis and snickering with delight.

My guess is that the rest of the world is as indifferent to the show as I am. And so, Krapopolis exists in an airless, soundless comedic vacuum. Fox will continue to produce and air episodes of it. The public will continue not to care. And the cycle will continue for, what, eight or nine more seasons? It's like this show is a "blockbuster" movie that plays to empty houses but continues to get sequels that no one asked for. I'm starting to suspect this entire enterprise is some sort of money laundering scheme or tax writeoff.

Am I wrong? Do you have strong opinions, positive or negative, about Krapopolis? Let me know.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 248: Tor Love Betty (1991)

A semi-obscure 1991 comic book combines two great celebrities of the 1950s.

I feel sorry for the comedians of tomorrow, especially the ones who do celebrity impressions. That job is getting more and more difficult all the time. Eventually, it'll be damned near impossible.

Thanks to advances in technology and an overall shift in the way we consume media, pop culture is becoming homogeneous. And so, too, do our celebrities become homogeneous. And I think that makes them more difficult to caricature. When actors and pop singers become more or less interchangeable, all basically looking and sounding alike, how do you effectively parody them? "Weirdness" is now one of the great sins an artist can commit. Audiences demand predictability, familiarity, and consistency. That's good for algorithms but bad for comedy.

Peter Lorre in Hollywood Steps Out.

It was not always thus. Have you ever seen one of those old Looney Tunes cartoons with cameos by Hollywood celebrities of the 1930s and '40s? MGM, Disney, and even the smaller, independent animation studios did cartoons like these, too, but I remember the Warner Bros. ones best. Examples include Hollywood Steps Out (1941), Malibu Beach Party (1940), and The CooCoo Nut Grove (1936). They show you how distinctive entertainers used to be in the old days. There was no mistaking Mae West, Peter Lorre, Groucho Marx, Edward G. Robinson, or Humphrey Bogart for anyone else.

How did we lose this? I think the rise of television in the 1950s was the beginning of it. Now that entertainers were performing every night in a little box in people's living rooms, rather than on a stage or on the silver screen, they had to tone down their personalities somewhat so as not to be too overwhelming. And so, little by little, pop culture became more even-keeled. Sure, there were reactions against this—think of Tiny Tim on Laugh-In in the late 1960s or the colorful pop stars like Cyndi Lauper and Billy Idol who dominated MTV in the early 1980s—but the overall homogenization process could not be stopped.

The 1990s was the last golden age of quirkiness before the Great Evenness took hold for good. Perhaps dreading where pop culture was headed, hipsters of the era began to dig through the archives in search of oddball celebrities from the past. In an increasingly same-y world, we yearned for something different. (Or something weird, you might say. Hint, hint.) Eccentric filmmakers, musicians, and other wacky celebrities of the past suddenly became beautifully imperfect role models. I don't think it's a coincidence that this was when writer-director Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1924-1978) experienced his second wave of posthumous popularity. This was the era of Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992), Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), and numerous Wood documentaries and VHS rereleases. Eddie represented an era of Old Weird Showbiz that was fading away.

Podcast Tuesday: "Hot Lutheran Love!"

Kate Hudson in the somewhat forgotten 2004 film Raising Helen.

When I sat down to screen Garry Marshall's 2004 romantic comedy Raising Helen for the podcast, I knew virtually nothing about the movie other than its title and the fact that it starred Kate Hudson. I didn't even know about the tragic incident that sets the plot in motion. In other words, I went into the movie as blank as possible.

However, within just a few minutes of pressing play on Raising Helen, I started to suspect where the film was going. Kate plays Helen Harris, an "executive assistant" at a chichi New York modeling agency run by the Anna Wintour-esque Dominique (Helen Mirren). Helen's life is frantic and fast-paced, but she's good at her job and seems to be enjoying herself immensely.

I knew that this couldn't last. By Hollywood law, Helen would have to be tamed over the course of the movie. By the end of the story, she'd either be married or at least in a serious relationship, and she'd probably given a child to raise, too. And if the plot could get her from the city to the suburbs, all the better.

Was I right? Do any or all of these things happen to Helen? Listen to the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast and find out for sure.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 247: Killian H. Gore's Plan 9 from Outer Space Quiz Book (2018)

Tor wants you to answer a few questions.

As Conrad Brooks taught us all in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), "It's tough to find something when you don't know what you're looking for." Which is true. But sometimes, it's also tough to find something when you know exactly what you're looking for. I'll give you an example.

I found this by accident.

If you've ever read one of Shakespeare's plays, you know that his scripts are not formatted like those for modern day stage plays. For one thing, his stage directions are brief, sparse, and very vague. For another thing, his characters often speak in iambic pentameter, so their speeches are formatted like poems. 

I was under the impression—false, it now seems—that there was a version of the Plan 9 script formatted to look like a Shakespearean play. I had a strong memory of such a book existing, and I thought it might make interesting fodder for the blog. It's October, and I wanted to do something suitable for "spooky season." So I searched for it. And searched. And searched. I eventually came to the conclusion that no such book was ever written. I can't find anything remotely like it.

NOTE: After this article was published, reader Ed Goldstein informed me that such a book definitely does exist. It's The Tragicall Historie of Plan the IX (2018) by Ryan D. Smith, and it is indeed a rewrite of Plan 9 in iambic pentameter. There is apparently a filmed performance of the play, also from 2018. The cast includes Dana Gould, Tonjia Atomic, MST3K producer Greg Tally, Jackey Neyman Jones, and others. I do not have a copy of the play or the movie, but they are both candidates for future discussion.

But you know what I did find? Killian H. Gore's self-published Plan 9 from Outer Space Quiz Book (2018). The title tells you exactly what to expect: a collection of trivia questions about Ed Wood's best-known movie. But who is this Killian H. Gore and what caused him to compile such a volume? And could this humble little book actually teach me a thing or two about a movie I've seen dozens of times? I was able to snag a copy from Amazon for only about seven bucks, so I took the risk.

Like many of the hyper-specialized books about Ed Wood that I've read for this blog in recent years, the Plan 9 from Outer Space Quiz Book was print-on-demand, so it arrived extremely quickly. Personally, I love this new publishing model. It allows us to have physical copies of works that might have limited or niche appeal. But Gore's book is also available in a Kindle edition for just 99 cents, should that be a more attractive option to you.

The book runs just over a hundred pages and contains four quizzes in total. The first is a general quiz about Plan 9 consisting of 150 questions. The second is an "out of this world difficult" quiz about Plan 9 with ten additional questions. This is followed by a 25-question quiz about alien invasion movies and a 25-question quiz about zombie movies. Naturally, answer keys are provided for all four quizzes. Gore rounds out the book with an original short sci-fi story called "The Truth Will Astonish Us," which I will discuss later in this review. All in all, pretty decent value for money.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 246: "5 Questions with Bob Blackburn"

Who better to consult on Ed Wood's birthday than Bob Blackburn?

October is Ed Wood's birth month. The director/writer/star of Glen or Glenda (1953) would have turned 101 years old on October 10, 2025. I couldn't just let this milestone pass without adequate fanfare. And so, I bring you the following conversation with the illustrious Bob Blackburn, one of two heirs to the estate of the late Kathy Wood. (That makes him the de facto spokesman for the Ed Wood estate as well.) A second-generation radio industry professional, Bob is also a musician and author. In addition to his 2024 memoir, Kathy Wood & I, he has compiled three indispensable volumes of Ed Wood's magazine work from the 1960s and '70s: Blood Splatters Quickly (2014), Angora Fever (2019), and When the Topic is Sex (2021).

Despite all this, Bob was never a guest on The Ed Wood Summit Podcast during its original run (2021-2023) when it was hosted by the late, much-missed Greg Javer. Bob has certainly given plenty of interviews about Ed Wood over the years, but he somehow never wound up on this particular show. Well, today, we change all that. On this episode, Bob shares some rare items from his collection of Ed Wood memorabilia and answers some general questions about Ed and Kathy. I think it's a fun and informative chat. Enjoy.

Podcast Tuesday: "Straight Outta Genovia"

Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries.

August 2001. It must have happened. There must have been one. The month before everything changed. America's Last Days of Pompeii. 

Thinking back, that was a very busy month for me. That was when I quit my customer service job in Flint and moved to Joliet, Illinois to become a middle school Spanish teacher. It was also the first time in my life I ever had my own apartment and lived totally on my own. (I don't count living in the dorms.)

Yeah, August 2001 was a pivotal time in my life. And yet, for obvious reasons, I barely remember it. Because of... well, you know.

This week on These Days Are Ours, we review a movie from August 2001: Garry Marshall's The Princess Diaries starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews. The lightest of light entertainment. Just the thing for a late summer movie. I hope America enjoyed the holy hell out of it.

But how does it hold up in October 2025? Push play on the podcast below and find out.

Update regarding that 'Happy Days' documentary that I'm in!

Some promotional artwork for TV We Love.

In case you don't follow me on any of my social media accounts, I have some exciting news about the Happy Days documentary that includes an interview with me. The show will air on the CW on Monday, November 10, 2025 at 8:00 EST and 7:00 CST! The title of the series has changed from TV That Changed the World to TV We Love, and it has switched networks from CBS to the CW. That's showbiz, I guess. I'm just happy that it's finally going to air, and I hope you will watch it.

In the meantime, TV We Love will air every Monday night on the CW for the next eight weeks. The show premiered tonight with a look at I Love Lucy. Future episodes will cover Dynasty, Cheers, The Love Boat, The Brady Bunch, and more.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 245: The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen (1999) [PART 3]

Director Steve Apostolof poses with actress Rene Bond, who starred in several of his movies.

It's taken me a while, I realize, but it's finally time to wrap up my look at the 1999 Something Weird compilation tape, The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen, gifted to me by reader Brendon Sibley. What can I say? There was just too much material in The Erotic World to cover in a single article. Or two articles. I spent five years working on a book about Stephen C. Apostolof, and there were things on this tape even I hadn't seen in my research.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 244: The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen (1999) [PART 2]

Steve Apostolof looks over a script, probably an erotic one.

So where were we?

Two weeks ago, I started discussing Something Weird Video's The Erotic World of A.C. Stephen (1999), a compilation of clips from the films of softcore director and frequent Ed Wood collaborator Stephen C. Apostolof (1928-2005). Reader Brendon Sibley sent me a copy of this rare tape, and I was happily making my way through its contents. When we left off, I was talking about Bachelor's Dream (1967), a very obscure short film that began life as some black-and-white test footage that was shot for Orgy of the Dead (1965).

But that was just the opening act! The Erotic World has so much more to offer. After Bachelor's Dream ends, we see some trailers for Steve's non-Ed Wood films: Office Love-In (1968), Motel Confidential (1969), Suburbia Confidential (1966), and College Girls (1968). These were nudity-filled, black-and-white exploitation flicks from Steve's "confidential" phase, when he was busy exposing the seamy side of average, everyday American life. Several of these films feature Steve's most-frequent leading man, Harvey Shain (aka Forman Shane), and his most-frequent leading lady, Marsha Jordan. 

Podcast Tuesday: "Julia Roberts in Love is Nice"

Not Pretty Woman 2 but an incredible simulation.

Director Garry Marshall had the biggest hit of his life with the romantic comedy Pretty Woman (1990), but he didn't spend the next few years trying to copy it. His follow-up film, Frankie and Johnny (1992), was an adaptation of a Terrence McNally play, and he only slightly watered it down and gussied it up for Hollywood. It did acceptably. But then came what I think of as Garry's Trilogy of Terror: three back-to-back critical and box office disasters that should have had him seriously rethinking his career. Ignored by audiences and reviled by the press, Exit to Eden (1994), Dear God (1996), and The Other Sister (1999) were all major miscalculations on Garry's part.

Did Garry Marshall start to have self-doubts? Maybe, because he then reteamed with Pretty Woman stars Julia Roberts and Richard Gere for Runaway Bride, a romantic comedy expressly designed to remind people of the previous film. The script had been bouncing around Hollywood for years, with various stars attached to it. But the version that got made was the movie we're reviewing this week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. To hear what we thought of it, go ahead and push the play button on the podcast below.

My Month of Bowie: A bluffer's guide to the Thin White Duke

The many haircuts of David Robert Jones (1947-2016).

In September 2025, I decided to write a series of articles about British rock legend David Bowie. Why? Well, I figured I'd been ignoring his music for too long, and it was high time I changed that. But I couldn't possibly listen to everything he ever recorded. So I decided to make a speed-run through just his official studio albums, reviewing one a day for the entire month. Below, you'll find a list of the articles I wrote during that time.

My Month of Bowie, day 30: 'Toy' (2021)

Being dead didn't stop David Bowie from releasing one more studio album.

The album: Toy (ISO, 2021)

The baby who sold the world.

My thoughts: Until now, I have stubbornly resisted talking about Toy, an album David Bowie recorded in 2000 that was shelved by his label and remained unreleased until 2021, five years after the singer's death. For one thing, a posthumously-released LP seems to fall into the dreaded "apocrypha and miscellanea" category that I pledged to avoid at the beginning of the month. (Not part of the canon? Not interested.) Secondly, I knew that Toy mostly consisted of remakes of songs David Bowie had originally written in the 1960s. Unless we're talking about last night's pizza, leftovers aren't usually too appetizing to me.

But I changed my mind for a couple of reasons. First, when I wrote my defense of Bowie's under-loved Pin Ups (1973) album, I said that people should forget it was a collection of covers and just try to experience it as a half-hour of great rock music. So for me to dismiss Toy, which is Bowie covering himself, would be hypocritical. Second, and even more important, I listened to the first few tracks on Toy and enjoyed them enough to want to keep listening to the LP. So I guess we're doing this.

Most of these tracks are from early singles recorded before David's 1967 debut LP, which means that they're entirely unfamiliar to me. Or new, you might say. (Remember that NBC slogan from the '90s? "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you." Hard to argue with that.) Honestly, based on its sound and knowing nothing of its origin, I would have thought Toy to be just another early 2000s Bowie album. Even though it was produced by Mark Plati, who worked with David on Earthling (1997), it takes a lot from the Tony Visconti playbook. This is a very sonically-satisfying, richly-produced album that shows off Bowie's voice to best advantage.

I think it's significant that, when he was in his 50s, David Bowie revisited the songs he wrote when he was a much younger man—a mere lad, really. It's like finding a journal you kept when you were a kid and thinking, "Was that really me? Did I ever really think that way?" Bowie (in great voice, incidentally) brings some gravitas to these tunes that they might have lacked when they were sung by a teenager. Take the song "Baby Loves That Way" as an example. Being in a toxic relationship when you're 18 is very different from being in one when you're 54. And then there's "London Boys," which sounds like the older Bowie is gently lecturing his younger self about the follies of trying to be cool to impress your peers.

If there's a standout track on Toy for me, it's "You've Got a Habit of Leaving," originally a single Bowie released in 1965 when he was still Davy Jones. It's another toxic relationship song, so I'm guessing Bowie's personal life was already complicated in the '60s. To me, the remake could have been a hit in 2021 with its stark refrain: "Sometimes I cry/Sometimes I'm so sad." I was so taken with the Toy track that I listened to the original from '65 and found a charming but disposable Merseybeat bop. Maybe the reason why Bowie dug these songs up in 2000 is that he felt he could do them justice the second time around. He'd sure spent a lot more time in recording studios by then.

And that, I suppose, brings us to the end of My Month of Bowie. Thirty days hath September. But I don't think this is the end of my David Bowie journey by any means. What I wanted out of this project was a basic roadmap of David's career. And I got that. But I got more. A lot more. Who knows? Maybe some additional Bowie content will make its way onto this blog. God knows, there's plenty more to cover. I think I've reviewed about 5% of the man's total discography. So much territory to explore. Let's reconvene in September 2026.

P.S. Before I go, I want to share this clip of David Bowie on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He performs "Life on Mars?" and "Ashes to Ashes." Isn't this neat? Thank you, algorithm, for bringing this to me.

My Month of Bowie, day 29: Iggy Pop's 'Lust for Life' (1977)

What, him worry? Iggy Pop lusted for life in 1977.

The album: Lust for Life (RCA, 1977)

Smile for the birdie, Iggy!

My thoughts: I distinctly remember learning that singer Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis had once been a very successful duo in the 1950s. This was very confusing to me as a kid. The tan, tuxedoed guy who sang "That's Amore" and the twitchy, adenoidal comedian from the annual Labor Day telethon? How would that possibly work? And yet... somehow... it's true. There they are on TCM, yukking it up in hit films like The Caddy (1953) and The Stooge (1951). They were rock stars before rock stars existed, and their 1956 breakup was as bitter and well-publicized as that of The Beatles. In the minds of an entire generation, these two very different men—crooner and clown—are eternally linked.

You've probably already guessed that I'm using Martin and Lewis as a metaphor to describe the equally unlikely pairing of David Bowie and Iggy Pop in the late 1970s, with David as Dean and Iggy as Jerry. Only this pairing did not end in a contentious divorce. In fact, Iggy has been quite gracious over the years in acknowledging that Bowie not only resurrected his career but saved his life when the two moved to Europe and started writing and recording together while they kicked their respective drug habits. This fertile period led to three albums for Bowie and two more for Pop, all considered classics to one extent or another.

Iggy's second solo LP Lust for Life came out just half a year after The Idiot but does not follow the template of that record, at least musically. Experimentation and change were the keynotes of that era, so it would not have interested Bowie or Pop to imitate an album they'd just done. While The Idiot has been called an honorary Bowie album, since David's control over it was so great, Lust for Life sounds like Iggy Pop forging the identity he would use for his decades-long solo career. And what is that identity? Put simply, Iggy Pop is the man who's been through it all so you don't have to. He's done enough drinking, drugging, and screwing for any ten people. Lust for Life is the sound of a man who's been in his share of fistfights and hasn't necessarily won all of them. 

This album contains two of Iggy Pop's most justly-famous songs, the thundering title track (written with Bowie) and the haunting "The Passenger," and it's instructive to hear these familiar tunes in their original context. It reenergizes them. "Lust for Life" has been used in so many TV shows, movies, and commercials that we've forgotten or ignored the song's harrowing, William S. Burroughs-inspired lyrics about the junkie life. Which reminds me: there's an entire episode of This American Life about Burroughs from 2015, narrated by Iggy Pop. If you're still reading this article, you'll want to hear it. Naturally, the title track from this very album is a key part of that episode.

Lust for Life also contains a couple of songs that Bowie later revisited in 1984: "Tonight" and "Neighborhood Threat." In both cases, I'd have recommended leaving well enough alone, especially with "Tonight." Even though David's solo rendition adds a guest vocal by the always-welcome Tina Turner, the song loses almost all of the punch and immediacy it had in 1977. After hearing this Iggy Pop album, I'm starting to understand what people meant when they said David's creativity was running low in the '80s. Why take songs you'd already nailed and remake them unless you have something really vital to add to them? 

I said earlier that Lust for Life departs from the template established by The Idiot. Which, musically speaking, is true. Lust ditches the Kraftwerk-inspired sound of the previous record in favor of scrappy, Nuggets-style garage rock. Lyrically, though, I think Iggy Pop was working through a lot of the same issues on this LP as he was on the earlier one. Namely, Iggy is a man who's been at the banquet of life too long and has seen the underside of the table where all the chewed-up gum has solidified. You hear that theme coming through on tracks like "Some Weird Sin" and "Success." Sex, drugs, and rock & roll ought to come with a warning label, telling you they're contraindicated for anyone who wants to live to see retirement age.

P.S. I noticed that brothers Hunt and Tony Sales, sons of comedian Soupy Sales, worked on this album as musicians and songwriters on the closing track, "Fall in Love with Me." The Sales brothers would later join Bowie in Tin Machine about a decade later. Is this where the Tin Machine saga begins? I may have to check out that band after all.

Next: Toy (2021)