Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 154: Another grab bag article

Yeah, it's another one of these articles. Sorry.

Because we're such good friends, I can tell you that my original idea for this week's article went bust-o, and I had to scramble for a replacement idea at the last minute. Oh well. These things happen in bloggerdom. So I decided to make this week's column another one of those "grab bag" affairs. Sometimes, they're a good way of covering little items that wouldn't quite merit an article on their own.

A dying gardenia.

Like, for instance, did you see the career-spanning interview that actress Patricia Arquette recently did with Vanity Fair? It's one of those deals where they show you clips from your old movies and TV shows and ask you to comment on them. I wondered if they would ask her about her role as Kathy in Ed Wood (1994), and to my delight, they did. Patricia shared this anecdote, which I don't think I'd heard before:

I got to meet Kathy O'Hara, who I portrayed in Ed Wood. My sister Alexis was already dressing in drag and doing shows in drag but hadn't really come out as transgender. And there was this whole storyline with Ed Wood, where he was a cross-dresser. And being able to talk to Kathy, who accepted Ed, loved Ed, didn't judge Ed for being a cross-dresser in the 1950s, was really a beautiful thing. 

I remember, she said to me, "You know, Eddie was so funny, the way he looked at the world. And he saw beauty in everything. One day, I showed up, and I was meeting him, and I was wearing this kind of rust-colored suit. And Eddie goes, 'Stop! Stop right there! I gotta get you something!' He ran down the street and then ran back, and he was like, 'Look at this gardenia! It's exactly the color of your suit!'" Now, of course, that's like a dying gardenia. It's like a rotting gardenia. It was so beautiful, like, Eddie didn't realize that it was something other people would cast away. He saw the beauty in this. And she saw the beauty in Eddie seeing the beauty in this thing and his innocence of his vision of the world. So beautiful to see somebody who could love people like that. It's nice.

Naturally, readers keep sending me little tidbits of information as well, bless their Wooden hearts. Recently, a reader named Matty (@Reverend_Banjo on Twitter) sent me this very interesting missive:

Hey Joe. You've commented before on whether a scene in Fugitive Girls was influenced by A Clockwork Orange. As you say, Eddie kept tabs on pop culture, but I'd also like to point out that he used the phrase "ultraviolence" in 1965's Hollywood Rat Race, long before the film version of A Clockwork Orange. I'm interested in where he could've picked up "ultraviolence," since it's used in a (characteristically) idiosyncratic way. "If nudity is used for ultraviolence..." Perhaps he read the novel? 

This sent me down a little bit of a rabbit hole. Did the term "ultraviolence" actually originate with Anthony Burgess' 1963 novel, A Clockwork Orange? That book certainly popularized the term, but I found it in newspaper articles as early as 1923 in America and 1935 in England. Meanwhile, Google's Ngram Viewer says it goes back at least to 1926. It's certainly possible, though, that Eddie read the Burgess novel. I know he scoured the newsstands looking for fodder for his own writing, so a copy of A Clockwork Orange could have reached him there.

Finally, I want to say a word or two about Meatcleaver Massacre (1977), since a reader named Steve Frisch contacted me through Facebook to ask about this film and my review of it. Eddie's involvement is still speculative, but I want you to know that the film is now freely available on Tubi in a print that is much, much better than the one I reviewed. Sadly, this version lacks the explanatory Christopher Lee footage. Oh well. Can't have everything. We do, however, have our clearest view yet of the extra who is supposedly Ed Wood during the press conference scene. Judge for yourself.

Is this Ed Wood in Meatcleaver Massacre?

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 96: The voice of Edward D. Wood, Jr.

This article takes you where we've never taken you before -- into Ed Wood's larynx.

DISCLAIMER: This article is strictly for fun. Apart from one linguistics class in college, I have no training in any of what I'm about to discuss. If you want or need to correct me, please get in touch. This is meant to start a discussion, not settle one.

Performance or party trick?

When an actor portrays a real-life figure from history, he must decide whether or not he is going to do an impression of that person. Audiences have come to expect actors in biopics to mimic the vocal and physical mannerisms of the people they're pretending to be. And it's well known that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a weakness for uncanny impressions. A few weeks ago, for instance, Renee Zellweger brought home an Oscar for her studied portrayal of Judy Garland in Judy, just as Rami Malek had done a year earlier for channeling Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

A lot depends, I suppose, on whether the subject of the biopic is a celebrity (or at least a public figure) and whether there are sufficient audio and video recordings of that person upon which to base a performance. As an example, people know what the real John F. Kennedy looked and sounded like, so an actor portraying JFK is obliged to study the man's speeches and press conferences.

But at what point does this leave the realm of acting and simply become a party trick? If you slavishly imitate every little tic of a real life person, you don't have much opportunity to make the character your own.The great thing about Shakespeare's historical plays is that the people being portrayed in them are long dead. Who's to say what the real Richard III sounded like? The actor, then, has a little more breathing room when it comes to inventing the character.

The question of imitation is one that must have faced nearly every cast member of Tim Burton's 1994 biopic Ed Wood. After all, this is a film about people in show business -- public figures, each and every one -- and there is sound footage of just about all of them. A couple of supporting characters, including Eddie's grouchy boss Mr. Kravitz at Universal and skeptical Mr. Feldman at Warner Bros, are fictional. But just about everyone else is based on an actual human being.

Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood.

Martin Landau faithfully impersonated Bela Lugosi and won an Oscar for his troubles. Lugosi must be one of the most mimicked actors in Hollywood history, so Landau's path was clear when he took this iconic role. The miracle of that performance is that it does transcend the status of party trick. Even within the confines of doing a Lugosi impression, with his face slathered in makeup by Rick Baker, Landau manages to imbue his character with genuine pathos and vulnerability.

But what of Landau's co-stars? With the exception of George "The Animal" Steele as unintelligible Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, most of the actors in Ed Wood basically use their own, natural speaking voices. The infamous prognosticator Criswell spoke with a breathy, slightly sing-songy Indiana drawl, but actor Jeffrey Jones simply gives him a deep, stentorian tone. Late in the film, Burton uses some archival audio from Plan 9 from Outer Space and we get to hear the melodious voice of the real Criswell. The difference is a little jarring. If you'd only seen Ed Wood and not Plan 9, you might not know this is supposed to be the same guy.

Similarly, when Sarah Jessica Parker says the name "Glen," she doesn't elongate it to "Glee-yun" the way Dolores Fuller did. Notoriously, Parker opted not to spend any time with Fuller while preparing for Ed Wood. But I can't say that it would have mattered much. Max Casella did meet Paul Marco, yet it didn't really affect Casella's performance in any noticeable way, at least not audibly. Elsewhere in the film, Lisa Marie and Bill Murray sound more like themselves than they sound like, respectively, Vampira and Bunny Breckinridge.

A special exception must be made for Vincent D'Onofrio as Orson Welles. His entire performance was post-dubbed by cartoon voice mainstay Maurice LaMarche, whose Welles impression is legendary. Burton must have felt that this was a case in which the public would expect a spot-on impersonation of a celebrity's voice. For what it's worth, D'Onofrio reprised the role of Orson Welles in a 2005 short called Five Minutes, Mr. Welles and provided his own voice.

But at the center of this film is Johnny Depp in the title role. Johnny obviously found a voice for the character, but was it anything like Eddie's real voice? Well, let's refresh our memories a little. Here is the real Ed Wood talking for four and a half minutes straight. I've taken this audio from two sources: the 1953 film Glen or Glenda and the 1974 trailer for Fugitive Girls. This way, you get to compare and contrast Eddie's voice from two different eras of his life. I think that, in the Fugitive Girls voice-over,  you hear the accumulative effects of 21 years of rotgut whiskey and California smog in Eddie's delivery.

So, having listened to that, how would you describe Ed Wood's voice?

 In the Glenda excerpts, he sounds low, smooth, and gentle. I'd say that Eddie's voice is oral rather than nasal and almost musical in nature, marked by occasional quick inhalations of air and a slight sighing tone. His accent is vaguely East Coast, but I don't hear any traces of the stereotypical "New York" accent. Ed is definitely a rhotic speaker, meaning he pronounces his r's in words like "before" and "after." If a word starts with h, he'll propel it forward with a little extra breath, as in "I hope not. I really hope not."

By the time of Fugitive Girls, Eddie's voice had a little more grit to it, and his diction was less precise. Most English speakers pronounce the word "girls" with a z sound at the end, i.e. "gurlz." When Eddie pronounces it, he ends the word with a hissing sound: "gurlssss." The musicality was still there in his voice, though, perhaps even more so than in Glenda.

The truly strange thing is that Ed Wood's voice is very recognizable to me by now, yet I'm having difficulty describing or categorizing it. If I were trying to do an impersonation of Eddie, I wouldn't know where to start. Ed's voice is tough to pin down, let alone mimic.

Given that, I'd say Johnny Depp captures the essence of Ed Wood's personality without doing a precise imitation of the man. Depp has cited numerous inspirations for the voice he gives to Eddie. In this interview, he describes the character as an amalgam of Ronald Reagan, Casey Kasem, and Jack Haley's Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. Meanwhile, he denies the longstanding rumor that the voice is based on Jon Lovitz's lying "Tommy Flanagan" character from Saturday Night Live. "I wouldn't be that blatant," Depp explains.

I'd like to suggest another, perhaps subliminal influence on Johnny Depp's performance. Obviously, in prepping for this film, he must have watched Glen or Glenda numerous times. About six minutes into the film, there's a voice-over monologue delivered by Patrick/Patricia, the suicidal cross dresser played by Walter "Mr. Walter" Hadjwiecyz. ("The records will tell the story.") I've assembled a brief side by side comparison, so you can hear how Johnny Depp talks in Ed Wood and how Patrick/Patricia talks in Glen or Glenda. Listen for the little tremble in the voice and the intimate, almost whisper-like tone.



I don't know if Walter Hadjwiecyz recorded that voice-over himself or simply played the part of the dead body. But I don't think it's too fanciful to suggest that the monologue had an influence on the way Johnny Depp played Ed Wood.

By the way, if any of this article interests you, I'd suggest you check out a series of videos made by Wired featuring Hollywood dialect coach Erik Singer. They offer a truly astonishing breakdown of various actors portraying real-life people. So far, Erik hasn't gotten to Ed Wood. Here's hoping, though.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 48: 'Rudolph Grey Presents: Short Films, Home Movies, and Other Miscellanea' (2014)

Manhattan's Anthology Film Archives.

Well, folks, I guess there is going to be an "Ed Wood Wednesdays" column this week after all, but it's not the typical sort of heavily-researched, carefully-constructed piece I usually do for this series. Instead, while the memories were still semi-fresh in my brain, I wanted to record some thoughts and feelings about attending the penultimate night of The 10th Dimension: Edward D. Wood, Jr., a week-long retrospective currently running at Manhattan's Anthology Film Archives (AFA). The AFA is not your typical movie theater. Instead, it's a nonprofit center for the preservation and exhibition of offbeat and rare films.

As its name suggests, in addition to holding screenings, the AFA is also a vast storehouse of films and videos, preserving these artifacts for future audiences. This year, in addition to a slew of other programs, the center decided to honor the work of Edward D. Wood, Jr. They've shown films both famous (Plan 9 from Outer Space) and obscure (Nympho Cycler) from Ed's entire career, with selections from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Tonight, Wednesday, September 17, was a very special show -- the linchpin of the entire festival, in fact -- because it was an assortment of rarities hosted by Rudolph Grey, author of Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992).

In order to give this article some semblance of structure, I'll break down my reflections by sub-topics.

I. ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES itself

The Internet was a good friend to me this time around.  Though the Comfort Inn where I'm staying is not exactly a five-star luxury resort, it is within easy walking distance of the AFA. So thank you, Internet, for finding this place and suggesting it to me. And special thanks to Google for providing easy-to-follow walking directions, even though I somehow managed to get lost several times on the way there and the way back because I have no innate sense of direction. You know that inner compass that most people seem to have? Mine was removed surgically at birth. New York City doesn't give you much help either, by having "1st Street" cross "1st Avenue" and "2nd Street" intersect with "2nd Avenue." I had to traverse all four of these similarly-named arteries to get from my hotel to the Archives.

I actually passed the AFA a few times because, with its red brick exterior, it looked more like a church or a school than a cinematheque. In fact, according to Wikipedia (which is never wrong about these things), the building used to be a courthouse before the film archivists moved in during the late 1970s.

This gives you an idea of what the
AFA's screening rooms are like.

Once inside the building, I noticed how humble and unprepossessing the lobby was: just a small waiting area and a lonely ticket booth with a bearded, horn-rimmed glasses-wearing dude inside. The biggest thrill for me, at least initially, was seeing that they had the New York Times article that mentions me displayed at poster size in the lobby. I mentioned this to Mr. Beard-O, and he just kind of shrugged and said, "Cool." He told me he hadn't bothered to read it and didn't really know which poster I was referring to. What can you say to that? It takes the wind out of your sails a bit, certainly.

I was getting a "semi-amateurish, mom-and-pop" kinda vibe from the Archives, but I could see traces of professionalism there as well. They show movies on at least two screens, for instance. One theater was located up a couple of flights of stairs, while another was on the ground floor. Every Wednesday seems to be devoted to showing the work of new filmmakers. I got there in plenty of time to see this week's chosen newbie: Shawn Batey's hour-long documentary, Changing Face of Harlem. The crowd was polite but very sparse. Unperturbed, Ms. Batey herself was there to introduce and explain the movie, which chronicles the rise and decline of Harlem, along with the gentrification that threatens to dilute the neighborhood's identity and drive away poor and middle-class African-Americans. Batey said she'd been working on the modest but provocative documentary for about 14 years now. The screens at the AFA have an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, but they are large, and the picture and sound quality are both quite good. Provided they promote the screenings themselves, young directors might well consider the New Filmmakers night at the AFA as a viable showcase for their work.

But this was all happening upstairs. Downstairs was where the real fun was brewing. A decent-sized crowd turned out for the program I'd come there that evening to see -- Rudolph Grey Presents: Short Films, Home Movies, and Other Miscellanea. There were enough spectators on hand to fill up the ground floor theater at the AFA. Let us now venture into the dank, humid depths of that exhibition.

II. RUDOLPH GREY, host/curator 

Rudolph Grey as he appears in Dad Made Dirty Movies.

I'd never met Rudolph Grey, musician and author, before this. But I'd certainly read his book, Nightmare of Ecstasy, countless times and seen him in documentaries like Jordan Todorov's Dad Made Dirty Movies (2012). So I recognized him instantly. I'd describe him to you as a combination of Tom Waits, a 1940s film noir detective, and mid-1980s Bob Dylan. Giving off an air of jaded, world-weary cool, he seems to hide behind his fuzzy hair, scraggly beard, and crumpled posture. But he's not imposing or intimidating in any way. He looked benign enough, so I thought to myself, "What are the odds that I'm ever going to be in the same room as this guy again? I have to say something."

This turned out to be a miscalculation. When I walked into the AFA screening room, Grey was seated in the first row, puffing on an e-cigarette and resembling a new millennium Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade. I approached him with a smile on my face, told him how many times I'd read his book, and then stumbled through some semi-coherent explanation of who I was and what "Ed Wood Wednesdays" was all about. He was anything but interested and gave me the dreaded Queen Victoria "we are not amused" look. So I backed off, humbled, and went dejectedly back to my seat. Whoops.

Despite this initial setback, Rudy's presentation was funny and informative nevertheless. This is a man who has clearly done his homework (hundreds of interviews, he claims), and once you get him started talking about a topic that interests him, he can be downright effusive. But he can become taciturn or inscrutable at a second's notice, too.

The evening was co-hosted by a film historian somehow connected with the Anthology Film Archives -- a well-spoken, professorial, middle-aged guy with a neatly-trimmed beard and rimless glasses. (His name eludes me. Sorry.) I got the impression that he and Rudy were friends or at least had some history together. Generally, he asked open-ended questions, and Rudy either answered them or tried to answer them. You could tell, though, that the professorial guy had to do a little work to coax the answers out of Rudy, and there were a few times when the proceedings threatened to grind to a halt. Odd conversational hiccups abounded, you might say. 

Rudolph Grey doesn't say reassuring things like "yes" or "definitely." Speaking with a heavy New York accent, somewhat reminiscent of Peter Falk as Lt. Colombo, he's more likely to cut you off with "sure" (his favorite expression) or "right" or "of course" and then not say anything else after that unless you give him more prompting. (A typical exchange might go: "Is your apartment full of tapes from old interviews?" "Sure.")

Still in all, the conversation was chock full of valuable information for the aspiring Wood-ologist. Some highlights:

• Rudolph Grey first became aware of Ed Wood in the early 1960s when Plan 9 from Outer Space and (later) Bride of the Monster started airing on local television in New York. But back then, he had no idea about the man behind the movies. "It was just a name to me."

• Grey believes that Eddie's reputation as "the worst director of all time" started in the 1960s with such horror magazines as Forrest J. Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland and Castle of Frankenstein, which would run stills from Eddie's movies like Plan 9 with derogatory captions. Despite this, Eddie considered Ackerman a friend. These film magazines, aimed at what Grey called "nerds," were where the "bad movie" cult around Ed really began.

• Harry and Michael Medved's Golden Turkey Awards book brought Ed a lot of negative postmortem publicity and made Grey's work difficult in the early 1980s when he began his research into Wood's career. Nobody connected to Ed wanted to talk to Rudolph Grey because they didn't trust him or didn't understand his motives. Kathy Wood, Ed's widow, was especially hesitant to talk to Grey but eventually relented. 

Richard Bojarski's book.

• Ed died, Grey said, just as Glen or Glenda? was catching on in a few cities as a cult movie. "Bad timing," he concluded. Grey didn't realize that, during the late 1970s, he could have just looked up Ed's name in the Los Angeles telephone directory and found him that way. By December 1978, Ed was dead, and it was too late. Rudolph Grey never got the chance to meet or interview Edward D. Wood, Jr. One author who did was Richard Bojarski, who talked to Wood in 1977 as part of the research for his own book, The Films of Bela Lugosi (1980). Bojarski generously shared his archival material with Grey. I believe some the taped interviews that Bojarski did are excerpted in the movie The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. 

• Grey bristles at the term "oral history," even though that's what Nightmare of Ecstasy really is. He says he chose the format of the book -- which consists of a string of quotes from Wood's friends and associates with very little commentary from Grey himself -- because writing a straight prose biography had not worked and, besides, he wanted to preserve the speech cadences of the people he interviewed. He modeled Nightmare of Ecstasy after Jean Stein's Edie: An American Biography (1982), a book about Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick.

• One of Rudy's first big accomplishments in his research was landing an interview with Ed's mother, Lillian Wood. Grey speculates that Lillian did not really understand what her son's life or career were like. When Grey showed her a picture of Bela Lugosi, for instance, she said, "Oh, I know him!" Wood also had a sibling, a brother, who was always jealous of Eddie and didn't want to talk about him. In deference to Lillian, Rudy left the brother alone.

• Vampira, he says, started out as something of a snob. But he talked to her for hours anyway, and eventually she admitted that she had misjudged Ed Wood.

• Since the initial publication of Nightmare of Ecstasy, most of the interview subjects have died. The plus side to this, Grey contends, is that he can now publish an updated, expanded version of the book with anecdotes that would have given people heart attacks back in '92. Pressed for an example, Grey mentioned a blabbermouth starlet who claimed to have been Ed Wood's lover.

• The material being shown in this evening's presentation came from a group of films discovered at Los Angeles yard sale several years ago. Some Wood-related documents were also found at this sale. It was quite an extraordinary cache of Wood memorabilia. And speaking of those precious artifacts, let's get to them now.

III. THE FILMS

Tonight's program consisted of : two complete television productions, Final Curtain (1957) and The Sun Was Setting (1951), plus an extremely rare outtake reel from The Sun Was Setting with dialogue that didn't make it to the finished version; the generic but lovable Story-Ad television commercials (1949); about 15-20 minutes worth of Ed Wood's personal home movies; and finally the hysterical, Wood-narrated trailer for Fugitive Girls (1974). I have already done thorough write-ups on most of this material, so please follow the links to the appropriate articles to read my thoughts on these.

It was tremendously satisfying seeing all of these rare movies on a big screen with an audience. People came to this evening for a variety of reasons. Along with the die-hard Wood-ologists, including your humble narrator, there were those who simply wanted to watch something "weird" or "campy" or "so bad it's good." I even heard a few people behind me talking about other Wood films they'd seen and speculating that Crossroad Avenger (1953) must have been either written or edited by someone else because it wasn't offbeat enough to be Eddie's work. I refrained from correcting them on this point, but the truth is that not everything Eddie did was like Glen or Glenda? or Plan 9 from Outer Space.

One thing I learned from this evening, however, is that Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s work inspires laughter to this day. That's just a fact of life. Even though you may not want to mock or belittle Eddie, it is difficult to keep a straight face throughout the entire running time of Final Curtain, in which Dudley Manlove's apoplectic and absurdly flowery narration is juxtaposed with shots of bulldog-faced Duke Moore pretending to be bug-eyed with fear. The film moves so incredibly slowly, with Moore obsessing over each little detail in the darkened theater where the entire story takes place -- the lights, the windows, the seats, the stairs, the railing, the hallway -- all to compensate for the fact that virtually nothing is happening onscreen.

The same is true for The Sun Was Setting with its hambone acting and soap opera dialogue. The essential premise -- that the heroine, who seems perfectly fine, even vigorous, is so delicate that going nightclubbing in "the Village" for an hour would kill her -- is so stilted and unbelievable that the audience cannot help but giggle a little.

The berserk trailer for Fugitive Girls may have been the biggest hit of the night, with its nonstop barrage of shameless ultraviolence and hopelessly square references to "flower children" and "lesbians." Ed Wood's own narration contains a truly staggering number of sensational adjectives. The descriptive words just keep coming without mercy! Eddie must have written his copy with a thesaurus by his side!

IV. AFTERTHOUGHTS

Ed Wood at home.

On a more reflective note, the home movies are an incredible find. I'd seen some of this material before, but nothing like what was shown tonight. It was mostly from celebrations and holidays -- a string of birthdays and Christmases, all in the warm California sun. Along with the expected shots of Ed and Kathy Wood, you get glimpses of Valda Hansen, Kenne Duncan, Duke Moore, David Ward, and Tom Keene, along with many other unidentifiable folks -- friends and neighbors, most likely. There are many minutes of footage of Ed Wood in drag, both "camping it up" at parties and trying on various dresses, girdles, and sweaters at home.

Grey said that these films were probably made for Eddie's own private amusement and that the late director probably would not have wanted them included in a retrospective of his work. But here we were, watching them in New York City in 2014. Initial laughter gave way to awed fascination. These home movies give the modern viewer some insight into the private life of the Woods and show that the couple indeed had some happy times before those tragic last years of theirs. One recurring motif, for instance, is dogs and the happiness they bring to the lives of humans. The Woods and their friends were seemingly all "dog people," judging by these movies. Above all, they loved to see dogs imitate human behavior, whether that meant hopping around on their hind legs or eating birthday cake with a fork.

Everyone's smiling and laughing in these silent movies. Most of the time, they appear drunk, and they probably were. But there's something melancholic about them, too, because they seem like relics of a world that has passed away and cannot be recovered. Once again, I am reminded of Roger Ebert's so-called "8mm omen," which states that movies that begin with old home movies are rarely about happy lives. Ain't it the truth, brother?