Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 268: The Ed Wood Wednesdays Disclaimer, annotated

This disclaimer belongs in a museum.

When the Dead 2 Rights blog started in 2009, it was a spinoff of a zombie movie podcast and was, therefore, mostly about zombie movies and television shows. (This was the heyday of The Walking Dead.) When that podcast ended in 2013, I could have let the blog come to an end, but I decided to keep it going. In my search for a new focus, I launched the Ed Wood Wednesdays series of articles in July 2013. It was supposed to run for a couple of months but has now been going for nearly 13 years. By September 2013, I'd already accumulated enough articles to justify an index page. To this day, I continue to update and revise that index as necessary.

In 2021, eight full years into the project, I decided to add a "big fat disclaimer" to the index page. That disclaimer remains there today. I've tinkered with the wording over the years, but the current incarnation reads like this:

BIG FAT DISCLAIMER: Ed Wood Wednesdays is not a reference work. It makes no claim of being definitive or scholarly. It was written strictly for my own amusement and is intended only as entertainment. As such, the articles listed below may contain factual errors, spelling and grammar mistakes, and other glaring omissions. Also, many of these articles were written years ago, so they may contain outdated information and dead links. If that bothers you, please do not read them. I fully acknowledge that you, the reader, may know more Ed Wood trivia than I do. While I cannot stop you from sending corrections to me, I encourage you to start a blog of your own instead. Thank you.

I consider this the single most important paragraph in the entire, 13-year history of Ed Wood Wednesdays, but it is also one of the least-read. How do I know this? Because people keep sending me corrections and complaints rather than starting their own blogs. My advice to the nitpickers remains the same after all these years: instead of complaining about what I've written, write something of your own and show me how it's done.

So today, let's go through the disclaimer line by line and see what it all means.

Ed Wood Wednesdays is not a reference work. It makes no claim of being definitive or scholarly.

I'm not a professional film critic or historian. I'm not a professional anything. I'm just some random jerk with a Blogger account. There is nothing "official" about this blog or the Ed Wood Wednesdays series. Some readers feel that, when they point out factual errors they have found in my articles, they are somehow correcting the historical record so that readers in the future will know "the truth." If that's your concern, I recommend that you send your corrections to Wikipedia or the IMDb instead. Those will endure in a way that my blog will not.

It was written strictly for my own amusement and is intended only as entertainment.

While I have made occasional, unsuccessful attempts at becoming a professional writer, this blog is strictly an amateur endeavor. You'll notice that there are no ads here—no paywall, no monetization of any kind, not even a tip jar. I have given away years and years of content and asked literally nothing in return. And the old saying remains true: you get what you pay for.

As such, the articles listed below may contain factual errors, spelling and grammar mistakes, and other glaring omissions.

I tend to write Ed Wood Wednesdays in quick little bursts, whenever I have time. Very little fact-checking, proofreading, or copy-editing goes into it. So, yeah, there are factual mistakes and typos in pretty much every article. Just goes with the territory. The "glaring omissions" part, by the way, is a hidden reference to The Simpsons. In the classic 1992 episode "Kamp Krusty," Bart says that Krusty's autobiography is "self-serving with many glaring omissions."

Also, many of these articles were written years ago, so they may contain outdated information and dead links. If that bothers you, please do not read them. 

One thing that I could not have anticipated when I started this series 13 years ago is that so much new information would come out regarding the life and work of Edward D. Wood, Jr. Also, as I learned more about this man and what he did (both in his work and in his private life), my opinions about him would evolve. Meanwhile, the internet itself continues to change rapidly every minute of every day. An article, video, or entire website may be gone in an instant. So if you're reading a blog post from, say, 2018, you should know in advance what you're getting into.

I fully acknowledge that you, the reader, may know more Ed Wood trivia than I do. 

When I started this series in July 2013, my main goal was to comment on Ed Wood's movies from a critical or aesthetic standpoint and sprinkle in a little history, mostly taken from Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992), for context. I was writing for a general audience, not necessarily Ed Wood experts. Indeed, in the early days of this series, a typical article might get several thousand views. Nowadays, an Ed Wood Wednesdays article will get maybe a couple dozen views, and nearly all of those views come from the die-hards and experts. "The trivia wizards," I call them. I try to appease them with fresh trivia (the only thing they crave), but it's admittedly a strain. 

While I cannot stop you from sending corrections to me, I encourage you to start a blog of your own instead. Thank you.

A few years ago, I made a vow to myself to avoid what I call the three C's of the internet: complaining, criticizing, and correcting. To be clear, I still do all of those things, but I try not to do them when commenting on content (videos, podcasts, articles) that others have posted. If I'm really pissed off by something someone has said or if I think they have their facts really wrong... well, I just walk away. If I feel strongly enough about it, I'll create some content of my own. And that's what I wish people would do when they take issue with something I've written for Ed Wood Wednesdays. There are many free platforms on the internet where you can express yourself. Take advantage of them.