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

Yes, it's already time for a sequel.

I can still remember a few years back when Greg Javer aka Greg Dizawer excitedly emailed me about an Ed Wood project he was working on for Severin Films. To be honest, I didn't quite understand what the project was. I knew that it had something to do with a company restoring and rereleasing some of Ed's adult movies from the 1960s and 1970s, but beyond that, I was in the dark. Eventually, what resulted from all this was a three-disc collection called Hard Wood: The Adult Features of Ed Wood (2024).

It gives me some consolation to know that Greg was still alive when Hard Wood was released on Blu-ray. It's also nice to know that Greg lived to see Ed Wood receive an official New York State historical marker in his hometown of Poughkeepsie, NY. Greg's time on this planet was far too brief, but he managed to have a lasting impact on the field of Woodology.

And we still haven't heard the last of Greg, a year and change after his death! Recently, reader Brendon Sibley sent me some commentary tracks that Greg recorded with film archivist Keith Crocker that were intended for Hard Wood but did not make it into the released version of that set. Drawing on their vast knowledge of vintage erotica, Greg and Keith recorded their reactions to six of the Swedish Erotica loops that Eddie allegedly made in the early 1970s. What was the full extent of Ed's involvement in these silent movies? That's been a subject of debate for decades, and these commentary tracks hopefully provide some insight.

Last week, we presented Greg and Keith's thoughts on The Virgin Next Door (parts 1 and 2) and Western Lust. This week, let's enjoy their commentary tracks for Girl on a Bike, 15" Commercial, and Devil Cult. Again, I had to distort the visuals just a bit to appease the YouTube and Blogger censors, neither of whom would have allowed me to post these films as they originally appeared. You'll just have to imagine actor Keith Erickson's skin tag, among other things.

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 Features 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.