From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ed Wood
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Tim Burton
Produced by	Tim Burton Denise Di Novi
Written by	Rudolph Grey (book) Scott Alexander Larry Karaszewski
Starring	Johnny Depp Martin Landau Sarah Jessica Parker Patricia Arquette Jeffrey Jones Vincent D'Onofrio Bill Murray
Music by	Howard Shore
Cinematography	Stefan Czapsky
Editing by	Chris Lebenzon
Distributed by	Touchstone Pictures
Release date(s)	September 28, 1994
Running time	127 min.
Country
Language	English
Budget	$18 million
Gross revenue	$5,887,457
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Ed Wood is a biopic directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp as the cross-dressing cult movie maker Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film, shot in black and white, was made in 1994 and based in large part on Rudolph Grey's biography Nightmare of Ecstasy. The film focuses on the period in Ed's life when he made his best-known films, and also his relationship with Bela Lugosi (played by Oscar winner Martin Landau), the down-on-his luck actor who had starred as Dracula in the eponymous film. Though a box office failure at the time of its release, it was critically hailed.[1] It resulted in a 1995 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award win for Martin Landau and an Academy Award for Makeup for Rick Baker, Ve Neill and Yolanda Toussieng.

Contents 1 Cast 2 Factual inaccuracies 2.1 Bela Lugosi 3 Production 3.1 Origins 3.2 Burton and Wood 3.3 Pre-production 4 Reaction 5 DVD 6 References 7 See also 8 External links

• Johnny Depp as Edward D. Wood, Jr.
• Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi
• Sarah Jessica Parker as Dolores Fuller
• Patricia Arquette as Kathy O'Hara
• Jeffrey Jones as Criswell
• Vincent D'Onofrio as Orson Welles
• Bill Murray as Bunny Breckenridge
• Mike Starr as Georgie Weiss
• Max Casella as Paul Marco
• Brent Hinkley as Conrad Brooks
• Lisa Marie as Vampira
• George "The Animal" Steele as Tor Johnson
• Juliet Landau as Loretta King
• Maurice LaMarche as Orson Welles (voice)
• Conrad Brooks (cameo) as Bartender
• Gregory Walcott (cameo) as Financier

The film includes cameo appearances from actors who had worked with Wood on Plan 9 From Outer Space. Conrad Brooks (who played one of the comic policemen) appears as a bartender, and Gregory Walcott (who played the hero) appears as one of the potential financiers of Bride of the Monster. In addition, Paul Marco, the other comic policeman, can be spotted in the background.

Ed Wood and Sweeney Todd are the only Tim Burton films not to have a score written by Danny Elfman; the soundtrack for Ed Wood was by Howard Shore with Lydia Kavina featuring on Theremin.

The factual accuracy of this section is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (April 2007)

Although the film is avowedly stylized and heightened for comic effect, most of the events it depicts are fairly close to reality, despite their oddness. Still, there are some departures from truth.

In Burton's film, Dolores Fuller learns of Wood's transvestitism after reading the screenplay for Glen or Glenda. In reality, she remained unaware until the film was finished.

We see Wood (Johnny Depp) dressed as a woman doing an Arabian-type dance at the wrap party for Bride of the Monster, and later directing Plan 9 dressed in drag. These events did not happen, but Wood did double for leading lady Mona McKinnon in one brief exterior shot.

The film implies that Glen or Glenda was the first film ever written or directed by Wood. In reality, Wood wrote and directed Streets of Laredo in 1948; wrote, produced and directed The Sun Was Setting in 1951 and wrote Lawless Rider in 1952.

Burton depicts Tor Johnson as a newcomer to the movies whom Wood "discovers" around the time of the production of Bride of the Monster in 1955. In fact, Johnson had acted in films since at least 1934, appearing in a number of films in uncredited roles. Johnson is also seen at the premiere of Plan 9 from Outer Space with two plump young children (this was a sight gag) when, in reality, his children were adults by that time. In fact his son secured the police uniforms for the film.

Loretta King is shown getting the lead role in Bride of the Monster, over Dolores Fuller, but due to a story of her financing the film.

Contrary to Burton's film, the Baptists who sponsored Plan 9 were not opposed to the title Graverobbers From Outer Space. The exact circumstances are unknown, but the film, which took three years to release, was distributed as Plan 9 From Outer Space without any acknowledgment of the congregation. It is possible that Wood, or his distributor, were trying to avoid paying royalties. ^[1] In addition, although the entire cast was baptized, only Tor Johnson's baptismal took place in a pool due to his size.

Bunny Breckinridge is depicted as an old friend of Ed Wood's, but in fact they did not meet until the filming of Plan 9, after being introduced through mutual friend Paul Marco. Similarly, Marco was in fact introduced to Wood by Criswell.

Wood is depicted as always upbeat and hardworking, totally ignoring his crippling alcoholism. In truth, Wood spent far more time getting sloshed in bars than working on scripts.

In order to give the film a somewhat uplifting ending, the script takes its most serious licenses at the end. Wood never met Orson Welles at the Musso & Frank Grill,^[2] though this scene was most likely done to show the common troubles between the two directors, despite their status in the film world. However, Welles is shown griping about the casting of Touch of Evil (1958) which was not in production in 1956. Plan 9 also did not have the glamorous premiere depicted. In fact it was not released at all until three years after its completion.

Most points of contention, if any, with the film's liberties have had to do with the depiction of Bela Lugosi. Lugosi's son, Bela Lugosi Jr. initially disapproved of his father's portrayal in the film, despite not having seen it. After a long correspondence with Martin Landau, Lugosi, Jr. was persuaded to view the film in Landau's company, after which he declared that Landau had "honored" his father with his portrayal, and the actor and the late star's son became friends as a result. Among the inaccuracies:

Wood did not meet Lugosi by chance on the street as shown in the film. He was introduced to Lugosi by his writer-producer friend Alex Gordon in 1952. Gordon wanted them to film his story, The Atomic Monster. When the financing fell through on this project, Wood went on to make Glen or Glenda with Lugosi. In 1955 Wood added more dialog to Gordon's story and turned it into Bride of the Atom (later Bride of the Monster.), taking most of the writing credit. Gordon went on to help form American International Pictures (Source: Starlog, November 1994.)

Being an old fashioned European, Lugosi was not prone to fits of swearing, particularly in front of women. When Tim Burton realized how funny it sounded hearing Lugosi shout curse words, he decided to clean up the language of the other characters to spotlight the joke.^{[verification needed]}

Lugosi was well known for his courtly manners and professional behavior on the set. The expletive-filled tirade over Boris Karloff as depicted during the filming of Glen or Glenda is fictitious. However, in private, Lugosi did express his bitter resentment over Karloff's continuing success and popularity while he was destitute and struggling to find work.

Also in the Glen or Glenda segment, a makeup artist notices a row of needle marks on Lugosi's forearm. He was a morphine addict but did not inject into his arms. Instead, he injected the drug into his lower leg and covered the needle marks with band-aids. While getting his makeup applied he was actually afraid someone would notice the band-aids. (Source: Lugosi: The Man Behind the Cape, by Robert Cremer, Henry Regnery Co. 1976.)

Lugosi is depicted as living in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood in southwestern Los Angeles. In reality, Lugosi lived in Los Feliz, a Los Angeles neighborhood near Hollywood, at the time, and never lived in Baldwin Hills. This inaccuracy in the film may have been a deliberate aesthetic choice on Burton's part, because of Burton's love of 1950s suburban architecture, quite common in Baldwin Hills, most of which was developed after World War II, but rare in Los Feliz, which was developed in the 1910s and 1920s.

The scene of Lugosi freezing up on television is loosely based on a 1954 incident on Milton Berle's show. Berle began ad-libbing and Lugosi, being almost deaf at this point and a stickler to scripts, simply continued his dialogue while attempting to ignore Berle. Though a very awkward moment, the sketch did not grind to a halt as shown in the film.^{[verification needed]}

The attempted suicide by Lugosi depicted in the film is based on an account given by Ed Wood, but his is the only testimony of this incident. Most of Lugosi's friends and family have stated that he was deeply afraid of death and suicide would be completely against his nature.

Wood had no direct connection with Lugosi entering a rehabilitation center, though he did visit him often.

The account of Lugosi having to leave the hospital prematurely is only partially accurate. Lugosi was asked to leave the Motion Picture Country Home Hospital due to ineligibility after three weeks, so he quickly checked into Los Angeles General Hospital. There, he made a full recovery and newsreel footage exists of him leaving under his own power. In the interview, an ebullient Lugosi expresses his eagerness to start work on Wood's The Ghoul Goes West. (Source: This and other interviews were released as The Lugosi Files by Sinister Cinema.)

In the film, the famous footage of Lugosi picking a flower takes place outside Lugosi's house. In reality, the house belonged to Tor Johnson.

The Burton film depicts Lugosi as dying alone and miserable. Lugosi's wife of 20 years, Lillian, did leave him in 1953, but he remarried in 1955 to Hope Lininger. They were together until his death a year later, but the marriage was largely unsuccessful. This fact, plus any reference to Lugosi's teenage son, Bela Jr., are omitted.

In the bio-pic, Lugosi's funeral is attended only by Ed Wood and his acolytes. In reality, Lugosi's funeral was well-attended by his family and numerous friends, though the ceremony was comparatively low-key to most Hollywood funerals.

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski had been thinking about writing a screenplay on Ed Wood's life since they were students at the University of Southern California film school.^[3] Alexander even proposed making a documentary about Wood entitled, The Man in the Angora Sweater in his sophomore year at USC.^[4] However, Karaszewski figured, "there would be no one on the planet Earth who would make this movie or want to make this movie, because these aren't the sort of movies that are made."^[4] After school, they became established Hollywood screenwriters known for the Problem Child movie series. They wrote a ten-page treatment and pitched it to director Michael Lehmann who had also gone to USC. Karaszewski remembers that they sold it as "the guys who wrote Problem Child and the guy who directed Hudson Hawk making a movie about the worst filmmaker of all time."^[4] Lehmann showed the treatment to producer Denise DiNovi and a deal was struck where Lehmann would direct and Tim Burton and DiNovi would produce.^[3] Burton was due to direct the Jekyll and Hyde adaptation movie, Mary Reilly, and was staying in Poughkeepsie, New York when he was approached with the offer to produce Ed Wood.^[5] The director began reading Nightmare of Ecstasy by Rudolph Grey (ISBN 0-922915-24-5), a full-length biography, which draws on interviews from Wood's family and colleagues. Alexander and Karaszewski wrote a 147-page script in six weeks, working 14-hour days, seven days a week^[4] and this got Burton interested in directing the film.^[6] The deciding factor for the filmmaker came when the studio wanted to make Mary Reilly sooner than he would have liked and starring Julia Roberts instead of his choice, Winona Ryder.^[6] Burton decided to abandon the project and to direct Ed Wood instead with Lehmann moving to direct Airheads.

Burton admits to having always been a fan of Ed Wood, which is why the biopic is filmed with a certain sympathy and admiration rather than derision of Wood's work. Burton acknowledged that he probably portrayed Wood and his crew in an exaggeratedly sympathetic way, stating he did not want to ridicule people who had already been ridiculed for a good deal of their life. He said in an interview, "I've never seen anything like them, the kind of bad poetry and redundancy - saying in, like, five sentences what it would take most normal people one...Yet still there is a sincerity to them that is very unusual, and I always found that somewhat touching; it gives them a surreal, weirdly heartfelt feeling."^[5] Burton's respect for Wood is also hinted at in his film Edward Scissorhands - the director has stated that he named the lead character in the film Edward because that's Wood's full first name. The relationship between Wood and Lugosi in the script echoes closely Burton's relationship with his own idol and two-time colleague, Vincent Price. He said in an interview, "Meeting Vincent had an incredible impact on me, the same impact Ed must have felt meeting and working with his idol."^[3]

The film was originally in development with Columbia Pictures but when Burton wanted to shoot it in black and white, the studio wasn't going to back it because they claimed it would be a hard sell in foreign markets and on video^[7] and unless they had a first-look deal.^[3] The director insisted on total control and a month before shooting was scheduled to start, Columbia put the film in turnaround. Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, and 20th Century Fox became interested in optioning the film, but Burton went with Disney because they gave him total creative control on the condition that he work for scale.^[3]

Ed Wood gave Burton the opportunity to make a film that was more character-driven as opposed to style-driven. He said in an interview, "On a picture like this I find you don't need to storyboard. You're working mainly with actors, and there's no effects going on, so it's best to be more spontaneous."^[6]

To get a hold on his character, Martin Landau started with make-up tests with Rick Baker. He didn't use extensive make-up applications, only enough to resemble Lugosi and allow Landau to use his face to act and express emotion.^[8] For research, the actor watched 25 of Lugosi's films and seven interviews between the years of 1931 and 1956.^[8] According to the actor, he did not want to deliver an over-the-top performance. "Lugosi was theatrical, but I never wanted the audience to feel I was an actor chewing the scenery...I felt it had to be Lugosi's theatricality, not mine."^[8]

To portray Wood, Burton called Johnny Depp and "within 10 minutes of hearing about the project, I was committed," the actor remembers.^[9] To get a handle on how to portray Wood, Depp approached Burton who suggested Andy Hardy. The actor said in an interview, "So I saw some Andy Hardy stuff. I had a couple of other things that spiced it up a bit. I came to him and I said, 'Listen, Andy Hardy, but look Ronald Reagan.' And Tim went, 'Wizard of Oz or Casey Kasem.'...We just boiled up this stew and shot it."^[7]

Shooting began in August 1993 and lasted 72 days.^[7]

Opening in two theaters on September 30, 1994, the film grossed $71,566 in its opening weekend and when it went into wide release on October 7, 1994 in 623 theaters, it grossed $1,903,768 in its opening weekend. As of May 31, 2007, it has grossed $5,887,457 in North America, well below its estimated $18 million production budget.^[10] Despite the film being a commercial failure, Burton is very proud of the movie. He said, "I love the movie...It's just that no one came. I guess if I was like everybody else, I would just blame a bad marketing campaign. But that's too easy."^[3]

The film was also shown at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.^[2]

Reviews were highly positive. As of September 16, 2007, it was given a rating of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes (dropping to 67% for their "Cream of the Crop" designation).

In his review for the Boston Globe, Jay Carr wrote, "Burton makes Ed Wood glow with conviction...Never has such a loser been transformed into such a winner."^[11] Hal Hinson's review in the Washington Post praised the film: "Making a movie about the life of Ed Wood certainly qualifies as an impossible dream, but Burton has pulled it off with wit, imagination and something amazingly close to grace."^[12]

Kim Newman, in his review for Sight and Sound magazine, wrote, "It is ironic that for all its anecdotal and elliptical approach, Ed Wood is Burton's most successful piece of proper storytelling."^[13]

The DVD edition of Ed Wood initially had difficulty reaching store shelves in North America due to unspecified legal issues. In February 2004, a DVD was shipped to stores, only to be recalled again without explanation—though some copies quickly found their way to collectors' venues such as eBay. The DVD was finally released on October 19, 2004, minus the transvestitism-themed featurette "When Carol Met Larry", which is highly speculated was the reason for the legal woes. (Others claimed that Burton thought the featurette mocked transvestites, counter to the themes of the film.) However, on the Dutch edition of the DVD (and probably the rest of region 2) this featurette is present.

Another theory states that the producers did not have the legal right to release a film including the song "Que Será Será" on DVD. The song barely plays in the background of one scene, but is featured prominently in the cut sequences included.

Yet another theory is that it was due to a deleted scene where Lugosi refers to 'those bastards at Universal'. This is supported in that this scene can only be found as an Easter egg on the final DVD release.

• Transgender in film and television
• Cross-dressing in film and television
• List of recent films in black-and-white

• Ed Wood at the Internet Movie Database
• Ed Wood at All Movie Guide
• The Tim Burton Collective: Ed Wood

v • d • e Tim Burton

Director: The Island of Doctor Agor • Stalk of the Celery • Vincent • Frankenweenie • Pee-wee's Big Adventure • Beetlejuice • Batman • Edward Scissorhands • Batman Returns • Ed Wood • Mars Attacks! • Sleepy Hollow • Planet of the Apes • Big Fish • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory • Corpse Bride • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street • Alice in Wonderland Producer: The Nightmare Before Christmas • Cabin Boy • Batman Forever • James and the Giant Peach • 9

v • d • e Films starring Johnny Depp
1980s	A Nightmare on Elm Street · Private Resort · Dummies · Platoon
1990s	Edward Scissorhands · Cry-Baby · Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare · What's Eating Gilbert Grape · Benny & Joon · Arizona Dream · Ed Wood · Nick of Time · Dead Man · Don Juan DeMarco · Donnie Brasco · The Brave · Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas · Sleepy Hollow · The Astronaut's Wife · The Ninth Gate
2000s	Chocolat · Before Night Falls · From Hell  · The Man Who Cried · Blow · Lost in La Mancha · Once Upon a Time in Mexico · Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl · Happily Ever After · Finding Neverland · Secret Window · The Libertine · Charlie and the Chocolate Factory · Corpse Bride · Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest · Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End · Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street · Shantaram · The Rum Diary