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 50: "Meatcleaver Massacre" (1977)

Believe it or not, this poster actually does sort of summarize the plot of Meatcleaver Massacre.

catholic [kath-uh-lik, kath-lik]  

adjective

1. broad or wide-ranging in tastes, interests, or the like; having sympathies with all; broad-minded; liberal. 
2. universal in extent; involving all; of interest to all.
3. pertaining to the whole Christian body or church.

Ed's 1977 novel.

What might Ed Wood have given for the opportunity to direct a non-porno movie in 1977? His situation was exceptionally grim that year, with his only known creative output being a single transvestite-themed paperback, TV Lust (billed as "The Fictional Memoirs of One of America's Best-Known Drag Queens"), for a publisher called Eros Goldstripe, which had previously released his novels Forced Entry and Diary of a Transvestite Hooker in 1974. Thwarted projects from that period include Shoot 7, an unproduced musical about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and Venus de Milo, a proposed film vehicle for Ed's nascent punker neighbor Shannon Dolder involving a search for the missing arms of the titular statue.

As intriguing as Shoot 7 and Venus de Milo sound, such never-to-be endeavors clearly do not pay the bills. Eddie was broke, drunk, in showbiz exile, utterly lacking direction, and only a year away from his untimely death. So seedy and crime-ridden were his surroundings that he lived in a state of constant fear and paranoia, a situation that served to exacerbate his racial and ethnic prejudices. There were even times when, according to his wife Kathy, Ed pawned his typewriter -- his only conceivable source of future income, mind you -- to pay for booze. All he really had left with which to bargain by then was his immortal soul.

Under those circumstances, Ed Wood might have made a tempting mark for Mephistopheles. Had the Horned One come knocking on the door of Eddie's squalid Yucca Street apartment in Hollywood, clutching a sheaf of parchment, would Eddie have affixed his name in blood to the cursed document? Would he have even flinched?

I ask these questions because of the strange, occult-themed movie that serves as our focal point this week. Though I had never even heard of it until a few months ago, the title kept recurring with regularity throughout the course of my Wood-ian inquiries. Which books and movies do you cover and which do you ignore in a series such as this?

There are definite, identifiable levels of orthodoxy in Ed Wood scholarship and journalism. Some ultra-strict observers limit themselves to the six feature films he wrote and directed under his own name between 1953 (Glen or Glenda?) and 1960 (The Sinister Urge). Most will at least allow for the films he wrote under his own name in the 1950s and 1960s (The Violent Years, Orgy of the Dead, Bride of the Beast, etc.). Heartier explorers will make room in their lives for the softcore and hardcore pornographic films Ed wrote and/or directed in the 1970s, some of which (like The Snow Bunnies and Fugitive Girls) were even done under his own name.

But then, my friends, there is a whole world of speculative Wood work: projects Eddie may have, might have, could have, sort of, supposedly, allegedly, or probably worked on. What does one do with such movies? I grew up in the Catholic faith, a religion whose very name means "all-encompassing," and I have taken an appropriately catholic approach to Ed Wood's filmography and bibliography. Certainly, some of what I cover will be fool's gold. But to neglect these auxiliary films is to potentially miss a large -- perhaps even the largest -- chunk of Eddie's career. Eddie labored in Hollywood for 30 years, and for much of that time he was an undocumented worker.

My job, then, is to do some documenting. Let's proceed.