Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Preview Odyssey by Greg Dziawer

Plenty of time to get some popcorn at the refreshment stand.

Things are happening, folks. Exciting things that I can't wait to share with you.

I have a lot of upcoming articles in the works for Ed Wood Wednesdays. In fact, I have too many balls thrown in the air! As we wait for one to come down, I'd like to preview just some of the topics I'll be covering in the coming weeks and months.

• Ed Wood's career in sponsored and industrial films has gone largely undocumented until now. In addition to discussing Eddie's work with Story-Ad Films in the late 1940s, I'll detail the nature of the closed circuit live television broadcasts that Ed listed on his resume, while working at Autonetics at the dawn of the '60s.

An article from the Poughkeepsie Journal, September 18, 1949.

• I'll also be covering the distribution history of the final four films that Ed is known to have directed in the 1970s: Take It Out In Trade, The Only House in Town, Necromania, and The Young Marrieds. All four of these adult movies made the rounds before disappearing into decades-long obscurity. We'll find out where and when they played, and ID the films they were paired with. It's quite a wild story. The Young Marrieds, for instance, was astonishingly still playing in theaters into the early 1980s! But more on that to come.

An ad for Take It Out in Trade.

• In addition, I'll take a closer look at a couple of vital figures from Ed Wood's past: Eddie's young brother Howard William Wood (who typically went by William) and his close friend from high school and beyond, George Keseg.

• The unseen garage-cinema of Ed and Bela (1986) will finally get its due. Ahead of its time in more than ways than one, this biographical short film's interpretation of Bela Lugosi eerily anticipates Martin Landau's award-winning performance in Tim Burton's Hollywood biopic Ed Wood (1994).

• If that isn't enough to get your attention, I'll also be attempting the most comprehensive index yet of Tor Johnson's wrestling matches.

Tor with hair, 1936.

All this and much more awaits you, true believer, right here at Ed Wood Wednesdays. Whatever you do, keep watching this space for updates!

Some thoughts from a Coen fanatic on the new 'Hail, Caesar!' trailer

George Clooney can't remember his lines in Hail, Caesar!

A new day has brought with it a new trailer for the Coen Brothers' upcoming film, the 2016 comedy Hail Caesar! As a long-time Coen superfan who has seen all of their films multiple times and written about them extensively, I'd like to share my thoughts about what stands out from this new, two-and-a-half-minute trailer. If that sounds good to you, then let us proceed.

• The brothers like to work with the same actors repeatedly, so there are lot of familiar faces here: Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men), George Clooney (O, Brother, Where Art Thou?), Frances McDormand (Fargo), Scarlett Johansson (The Man Who Wasn't There), and Tilda Swinton (Burn After Reading). The IMDb says Fred Melamed from A Serious Man is in this thing, too. No Buscemi or Goodman this time, though.

• Big-deal newbies include Ralph Fiennes, Channing Tatum, and Jonah Hill. The IMDb has a few more interesting names in its cast list: Dolph Lundgren, Fisher Stevens, and Christopher Lambert. Jonah Hill, it should be noted, seems to have inherited Barton Fink's glasses.

• It's another kidnapping flick, the Coens' fourth at least, after Raising Arizona, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski. Those boys do love them some kidnapping. Like Lebowski, this one even has a close-up of a ransom note.

• Another Coen staple: what I call the Big Stash O' Cash. The brothers love to have suitcases, briefcases, envelopes, and bags full of money in their films. Here, it's a tasteful brown leather briefcase, stuffed with $100 bills.

• Hey, this film takes place at Capital Pictures, presumably the same fictional movie studio from 1991's Barton Fink. Studio bigwig Jack Lipnik (Michael Lerned) is not in evidence, though, which is troubling because -- if my interpretation of Fink is accurate -- Lipnik is the Coens' stand-in for God. I guess God died during World War II. Hail, Caesar! seems to be set in the 1950s, even though the trailer uses "Rumble and Sway" by Jamie N Commons from 2013.

• Tilda Swinton is playing gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, which gives her the chance to snoop around the way Manhattan Argus reporter Jennifer Jason Leigh did in The Hudsucker Proxy. One of my pet theories about the Coens' films is that Leigh's character in Hudsucker, a sharp-tongued, fast-talking redhead, is an archetype who recurs in their later films: via Julianne Moore in The Big Lebowski and (yes) Tilda Swinton in Burn After Reading. They all have that same, slightly snooty, not-quite-British accent.

• Scarlett Johansson seems to be playing an Esther Williams-type star, which allows the brothers to do the kind of old-school production numbers they previously sent up in The Big Lebwoski.

• Another weird Coen staple: the kidnappers seem to have a comically tiny little dog, like the ones from Intolerable Cruelty and, again, The Big Lebowski.

And that's basically what I noticed on my first viewing of the Hail, Caesar! trailer. The usual behind-the-scenes team, including cinematographer Roger Deakins and composer Carter Burwell, are on board once again. The film comes out next February, which seems to indicate that maybe Universal doesn't have a great deal of commercial faith in it. Doesn't matter. I'll be there anyway. Hail, Caesar!

P.S. - Back when I was in the Flushing High School marching band, we had a little cheer we'd do during the football games. It went like this:

Leader: Hail, Caesar! 

Crowd: Hail, Caesar! 

Leader: Hail, Flushing! 

Crowd: Hail, Flushing! 

Leader: Hail, [insert name of opposing team]?!?

Crowd: Hail no!

Finally, a mock trailer for 'Jaws 19' as prophesied in 'Back To The Future II'

Remember when Jaws seemed to be Hollywood's most-unkillable franchise?

There is one sequel of which the Internet truly cannot get enough. And, no, it's not anything from the Jaws franchise. The sequel I mean is less sharky and more time-travel-y. And I'm part of the problem, since I've written about it online myself, with Craig J. Clark aiding and abetting.

Originally released in November 1989, Robert Zemeckis’ Back To The Future Part II was set in the then-far-distant year of 2015. Well, actually, only a third of it was. The other two-thirds took place in 1985 (or, for the purists, “1985-A”) and 1955, respectively. Still in all, the Internet has been obsessed lately with which of the sequel’s prophecies about 2015 have and have not come to pass, despite the fact that Zemeckis and his writing partner, Bob Gale, have freely admitted that movies about the future always get the details wrong, even Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Did Back To The Future Part II avoid the curse? Much of this discussion has revolved around hoverboards, which stubbornly remain impractical. The Chicago Cubs are at least in playoff contention, however, and Pepsi is doing its darnedest to make Pepsi Perfect a reality, too. The film itself is even returning to theaters this month.

But what of Jaws 19, the Spielberg sequel which was supposed to be playing in 2015, according to Back To The Future Part II? Regrettably, that fishy franchise conked out with its fourth installment, the infamous Michael Caine vehicle Jaws: The Revenge in 1987, and was never revived. Gladly, however, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has provided its own mock trailer for the never-to-be Jaws 19, which also updates viewers on what went down in Jaws 5 through Jaws 18. It turns out that the franchise went through some weird, weird phases after the fourth film. Along with the expected prequels and reboots, the intermediate Jaws films also did some some genre-hopping, including multiple attempts at both erotica and science fiction. Of these wished-for sequels, perhaps none is more intriguing than Jaws 17: Fifty Scales Of Grey, in which the titular shark “learned about love from a mysterious stranger,” presumably before devouring said stranger. Jaws 19 has more of an ecological bent. “The oceans are disappearing,” says the announcer, “and to save their home, the sharks must attack! Jaws 19. This time it’s really, really personal.” So that’s what Marty McFly could have seen if he and Doc Brown had gone to the movies in 2015 Hill Valley.

Check out the trailer for Wayne's movie with Jeff Bridges!

I like to tell people I was in a Jeff Bridges movie. This is kinda, sorta, technically true-ish in the sense that Jeff Bridges is in this movie and I am also in this movie... but not in the same scene.

Either way, here's the trailer. See if you can spot your humble Wayne-meister in it. Those of you who listen to MOZ know what my voice sounds like. Keep in mind that I was heavily disguised that evening and do not much resemble my usual, dapper, living impaired self. But the voice, for better or worse, is the same.