Ed Wood I

1959's Plan 9 From Outer Space has been called "the worst film of all time," its creator Edward D. Wood Jr. "the worst director." But Plan 9 and the rest of Wood's canon have since become beloved cult classics. The first of a two-parter of the life and work of Ed Wood, featuring writers Bill Shute and Katharine Coldiron, and family-friend Bob Blackburn.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
For a time. We tried to contact him by radio,
but no response. Then they attacked a town, a small town,
I'll admit, but nevertheless a town of people, people who died.
Ephemeralist production of My Heart three D A for full
exposure Listen was that phones. Every so often an artist

(00:28):
comes along who challenges the core tenets of their medium,
raising questions like is there such a thing as objective
quality in art? What makes something good art or bad are?
And who's to tell the difference. One such figure was
director Edward D. Wood Jr. A legend of genre films

(00:49):
from the nineteen fifties and sixties. Some would say he's
the worst director of all time. Others might label Edward
as a groundbreaking visionary who did things no other Hollywood
contemporary could do. Some are still not sure what to
think today. Ephemeral producer Trevor Young takes us on a
journey through Woods filmography and wades into the decades old

(01:12):
debate on the director's unique output. It was the year
nineteen Hollywood filmmaking was at an all time high, with
releases that year including The Shining I Said I'm not
gonna hurt you, I'm just gonna bash your brains and

(01:34):
star wars. The Empire strikes back equally you I am
your father. But despite the recent abundance of fantastic cinema,
film critic brothers Harry and Michael Medved decided they would
highlight something else, the worst of the worst in film.
So that year the Medved brothers published a book called

(01:57):
the Golden Turkey Awards, featuring winners for categories like worst
performance by a politician, Well you can't you tell me
here now, or I'll drag you up before the Senate
and you'll tell me there. And most embarrassing movie debut.
How could you a Roman magistrate believe that perjurer? A

(02:17):
sniveling little toady look at him fawning on Linus, waiting
for his reward. The worst director was Edward D. Wood Jr.
And the worst film was Wood's nineteen fifty nine sci
fi film Plan nine from Outer Space. Greetings, my friend,
we are all interested in the future, for that is

(02:38):
where you and I are going to spend the rest
of our lives. And remember, my friend, utual events such
as the will affect you in the future. But despite
being labeled as the worst director and having the worst film,
of all time. Edwood is insanely popular even today. His

(02:58):
films are still played in theaters around the country and
they appear regularly on TV. Tim Burton directed a biopick
about would aptly called ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp. Well,
Mr Wise, look no further. I'm your man. I worked fast,
and I'm a deal. I write and direct and I'm good.
I just did a play in Hollywood, and Victor Crowley

(03:20):
himself praised its realism. And on the Internet you'll find
legions of Wood fans dedicated to talking about his work
or collecting Edward. I myself find his work inspirational because
he did so much with so little. He had so
many things against him, but he was able to create

(03:43):
films that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of
people saw in their initial release, not even counting the
revival of them later. So he's a figure whose work entertains,
who's worked, his thought provoked in and who inspires people
to create today. What more could you ask for for

(04:07):
a legacy? My name is Bill Shoot, poet and professor
of English at San Antonio College, and I wrote the
introduction to the new book by Edward Jr. When the
topic is sex. A five hundred forty five page collection
of Woods non fiction articles for nineteen seventies adult magazines

(04:31):
published by Bear Manner Media. As you can tell Bill
Adores Edwood. I discovered edwoods work in the late sixties
or early nineteen seventies as a child, watching low budget
films and horror films on UHF television and independent TV stations.

(04:55):
The films I saw on television prior to any Edward
revival were, of course, Bride of the Monster and Plan
nine from Outer Space, and I certainly knew that those
were unique works. I probably saw them at least a
half dozen times on television, So when Edwards started getting
attention in the late seventies, I was very excited to

(05:18):
see more of his films and to learn more about him.
Bill sites those two films, Bright of the Monster and
Plan nine from Outer Space as his favorites by Edwood.
In Plan Nine, there was just something special, almost dream
like about that film. It puts you almost in an

(05:40):
alternate state of consciousness. People turning south in the freeway
were startled when they saw three flying saucers high over
Hollywood Boulevard. Bride of the Monster was a more conventional
film than Plan nine from Outer Space, but that had
some amazing sequences in it. I Haven't No Home like

(06:05):
Bella Legosie's soliloquity where he talks about I have no Home.
I think that moved me to tears as a child
when I saw that on television living like Animal Jungle,
that I will show the world that I can beat fasta. So,

(06:30):
just from being introduced to those films, I knew Edward D.
Wood Jr. Was someone I wanted to see more of
and no more about. Those are glowing reviews you might
not expect for someone commonly regarded as the worst director
of all time. So what's going on here? Who is

(06:51):
Edward really? And how did the director of low budget
sci fi films from the nineteen fifties become such a
cult phenomenon. Well, let's start by learning a little bit
about what's background. Well, he was from Poughkeepsie, New York,
which is upstate. After serving in the Marine Corps in

(07:12):
World War Two, he went to Hollywood, as so many
people did, and he had some background in drama. He'd
written to play Casual Company. Do you believe in ghosts? Tommy?
That's just kiddie spook stories. Once You're dead, stayed dead.

(07:33):
I don't know Bill on that battlefield today, I saw
this woman and dressed in white floating above the dunes.
Or maybe it was just fatigue, or maybe it's the
indignities of war, or maybe it's something else. He went
to Hollywood and did sort of day work around the studios,

(07:56):
and he started a production company in nineteen forty seven
or nine with a man named Crawford John Thomas. They
made a short silent called Crossroads of Laredo, which has survived,
and it looks very much like a low budget sound

(08:17):
western of the early thirties or silent from the late twenties.
Wood grew up on that kind of thing, and he
used a lot of supporting players who had been in
little budget independent westerns in his films. Throughout his career,
he also made some commercials which are rather novel. He

(08:39):
and Crawford Thomas came up with an idea for doing
little dramatic commercials that did not actually have the name
of the sponsor. Just one thing before you shoot, but yeah,
bury me with my boots on okay tech, Say what
do you get some boots? Mighty fine looking Footwell, why

(09:00):
I got these at the bus shoe store in town
and had a mighty fair price through Well, bar gone
about putting me down to that shoe store right now.
It would be like an ad for jewelry, and it
would be about a diamond or whatever, and the local
sponsor would cut in their name to this, and now

(09:24):
we would sail away. Then we will be the only
ones to know where that fine turns your chest of
jewelry is buried. One day we'll come back and dig
it up and live like Queen Rye passing Kitty. That
test is checked full of the most beautiful jewelry in
all the world. Sure hope that story never runs out
of that fine stuck And he made some other short films,

(09:48):
and he made some pilots for television, things that were
aired locally. Industrial film work, the usual things that someone
does as they're working their way into the lower wrong
of independent film and genre filmmaking. Tegot the old timer,
I'll get a doctor, I Am for me to. Edward

(10:15):
wrote and co wrote some westerns during this period for Again,
an independent low budget film Cowboy, by the name of
Johnny Carpenter, and Carpenter later appeared in Edward Films. They
had a long relationship. No Timer, I'm not writing. I'm

(10:36):
going to stay here and find out what's going on
at the Double D ranch. Around this time, Edwood met
Bella Legosi, known best for his iconic role as Dracula
in the film of the same name. I Am the
document Listen to Them Children Off the Night what Music named.

(11:08):
Legosi was one of Wood's childhood heroes, so Wood befriended
him and asked Legosi to star in one of his movies.
At the time, Legosi was older and mostly out of work,
so he agreed, and with Legosi on board, Edward was
able to secure funding for his first feature film in
nineteen fifty three, Glenn or Glenda Man's Constant Growthing of

(11:34):
Things Unknown, drawing from the endless reaches of time brings
to light many startling things. His first film, Glenn or Glenda,
made for the producer George Weiss. Weiss had previously released

(12:00):
a film called Test two Babies that he had produced
the Doctor Wright. Has there been much work done in
this artificial examination field? I mean, is it just to
be a radical thing or has it been done before?
A tremendous amount of work has been done an artificial exsemination.
Mrs Bennett, I'll admit it. Up to the past few years,
a great majority of it has been done with livestock.

(12:23):
And in a sense, glennar Glenda was mining the same
vein as that. A kind of salacious, exploitative title. And
glennar Glenda was originally conceived as a film about Christine Jorgensen,
who had had a sex change operation and was in

(12:45):
the news at the time. She did not care to
work with George Weiss on a film, so Edwood and
Weiss came up with the concept of dealing with a
cross dressing in individual. He dares to enter the street
dressed in the clothes he so much desires to wear.

(13:05):
Glenn is engaged to be married to Barbara. Glenn's problem
is a deep one, but he must tell her soon.
She's begun to notice things. And of course ed Wood
was a person who dressed in women's clothing in his
own life. Anyone who has seen the Tim Burton film
ed Wood is likely familiar with this fact. I like

(13:28):
to dress in women's clothing your fruit, No, not at all.
I love women. Wearing their clothes makes me feel closer
to them. No, I'm all man. I even fought in
w W two. Of course, I was wearing women's undergarments
under my uniform. One of Edward's most interesting quirks was
his subversive and public desire to wear women's clothing what

(13:50):
today we might call drag. Back then, they might have
used the outdated and somewhat derogatory term transvestite. Nature makes mistake.
It's proven every day. This person is a transvestite, a
man who is more comfortable wearing girls clothes. The term
transvestite is the name given by medical science to those

(14:12):
persons who wear the clothing of the opposite sex. Many
a transvestite actually wishes to be the opposite sex. The
title of this can only be labeled behind locked doors.
Give this man satin undis, a dress, a sweater and
a skirt, or even the lounging outfit he has on,
and he's the happiest individual in the world. He can

(14:34):
work better, think better, he can play better, and he
can do more of a credit to his community and
his government because he is happy. So he basically wrote
a film that dealt with that, but at the same
time dealt with the sex change element. Because of Christine
Jordan's a lot of people who see Glenn or Glenn

(14:57):
to feel that it's kind of schizophrenic in this sense
that cross dressing and sex change are kind of not
the same thing at all. But in a way, the
film really explores gender identity and gender fluidity, which of
course can't be narrowed down to a couple of simple

(15:17):
terms or a couple of simple categories. But glennar Glendo
was his first feature film as a director, and my opinion,
if he never made anything else, he would still be
remembered well, just for that film. In the ed Wood fandom,
there are some interesting theories as to where Ed's cross

(15:39):
dressing originated. So supposedly Ed's mom wanted a girl, and
as a young kid dressed Ed in girl's clothing. Others
say that one of his favorite things as a young
child was a soft fur sweater. I don't know if
it was an Angora sweater, something soft and furry, that
kind of at that pattern for that fetish for the

(16:02):
rest of his life, for his fetish Friendora, But that
was a part of him. My name is Bob Blackburn.
I was a friend of Edwards widow Cathy Wood, and
technically I am one of her airs, which makes me
one of Edwood's heirs. Bob has a ton of insight
into the personal lives of Ed and Cathy would He

(16:25):
says that before Kathy, Ed had a girlfriend named to
Lauras Fuller, who actually started Glenna Glenda. Those fingernails have
got to go, you know, I didn't realize there as
long as they are. My goodness, they're almost as long
as mine, maybe even prettier. We'll have to paint them
sometime just for the fun of it. Will trim them,

(16:47):
that's for sure. The two of them fell in love
and they moved in together, and she actually had a
couple of kids from a previous marriage, so it was
kind of a messy situation, kind of up until Doris
found out that Ed was wearing her Anglora sweaters. She
didn't know if that might be gay, might be a pervert.
I mean, in her mind he was a pervert. Therefore

(17:09):
she just she kicked him out. But then Wood met
Kathy O'Hara. The night that they actually met and got together,
she went home with him to his apartment because did
the old you know, hey, you want to see my
scrap books, And he really did have scrap books of
his films and stuff like that. And she went in
to use his bathroom and she noticed there was like

(17:31):
women's lingerie hanging off the show art pole, and so
you know, she thought, oh god, he's got a girlfriend.
So she comes out and she says, hey, I do
you have a girlfriend? You know, I kind of don't
want to get too far along here if I'm gonna
get in somebody's way. So Ed confided the first night
to Kathy, the first night that they actually met, that

(17:52):
he liked to sometimes wear a women's clothing. Do you
if you have a problem with it, well, you know,
here's your chance to walk out the door and whatever.
And she thought about it, and here's a woman from
provincial Canada, Vancouver. She'd been a corporate secretary, has seen
a little bit of the world if you can call
Canada and Toronto, New York and then l a a

(18:15):
little bit of the world. And she accepted it, and
she accepted it for the rest of their time together.
She wasn't maybe always happy with it, because he kind
of flaunted it from time to time. In the nineteen fifties,
glennar Glenda raised a lot of questions about Ed's sexuality.
I asked Bob for his take on the matter and

(18:35):
to clear it up for us. He was not gay,
he was not trans. And it's kind of interesting the
gay community kind of has him as a bit of
an icon. So many of his friends, Paul Marco, Criswell,
other people, and his circle of friends were gay. Because
he himself was such an outsider, he attracted outsiders who

(18:58):
knew that he would be a steadfast friend, and he
had his alter ego named Shirley. Ed wasn't averse to
going out in public as shortly. Cathy told me stories
that they would go to Hollywood parties where there would
be some stars all dressed in dragon they'd be talking
about their big, nice long gloves and their first soles,

(19:19):
and you know, the him and their stockings and whatnot. So,
I mean, Eddie was really a pioneer, especially because in
the fifties in early sixties you could get arrested for
that here in California, in Los Angeles. But by the
mid late sixties it became legal. And he mentions that
in some of these articles about transvestives, and and he'll say, well,

(19:43):
now that California has legalized it, you'll see a lot
more men being dressed as women walking parading around the
streets of Hollywood, which is what he did. According to
Bill Shoot, that struggle for acceptance is explored in a
surprisingly well and nuanced way in Under Glenda. One thing
that makes glennar Glenda quite different from the sex exploitation

(20:07):
films of the late forties and nineteen fifties is that
it doesn't have much of a slee's factor to it,
and the empathy that it has for the subject is unique.
And again, to have the director himself play the lead
character and do a good portion of the film and

(20:30):
drag himself is an amazing accomplishment. Forty three. I was
put in jail recently. Why because I, a man, was
caught on the street wearing women's clothing. This was my
fourth arrest for the same act. In life, I must

(20:52):
continue wearing them. Therefore, it would only be a matter
of time until my next rest. This is the only
way let my body rest in death forever, in the
things I cannot wear in life. Why are you taking

(21:22):
that gun? Why? I might be walking down a dark
street and then robber might jump at me. I want
to be protected. I just paid a thousand dollars bail
because you carried one of those things tonight were sisters.
I was very sisterly on it. You know that gun
is jail baiting. Edward's next feature film, Jail Bait, was

(21:43):
a little different. Who was about a young man who
gets involved with a dangerous criminal, resulting in a robbery
gone horribly wrong. I thank you thinking get away with it.
Let us worry about that, but come through tonight man,
I'll be on. Most of edwoods films are the ed

(22:11):
Wood attempt to work in an existing genre, and of
course this would be the crime film. It's certainly a
novel film. The ending of it is unexpected. It's a
strange film in that the soundtrack, the kind of flamenco
guitar and keyboard soundtrack, is kind of off putting. And

(22:36):
also so much of the film is murky and dark
and either shooting at night or looking like it's shot
at night, that it creates a kind of dream like
fuel to it. And it's a unique product. I've probably
watched it fifteen or twenty times over the years, and
I always find it fascinating. Had I seen that on

(22:58):
a double bill and four or fifty five I would
have thought it was a satisfying and different kind of experience.
I think it definitely succeeded. And while it has a
lot of the tropes we associate with ed Wood, on
its own it's an interesting, low budget crime film and

(23:20):
it works on that level. Basically, you're as finished as
a kid is. I wasn't in on your job. I'm
not in trouble. Why should I used to go on
and take what's left? What is left has been with
a gun, has been, baby, I've only just begun. I
didn't set you up in all this luxury just to
have your walk out on me. I pulled you out

(23:42):
of that main street dive and made something out of you. No,
you're not gonna walk out on me. Try it nice
where you'll never walk out on it. And again, so
if they do pick me up, it's only a robbery rap.
I didn't kill that cop. Nobody will know about the
kid there. Next up was one of bill favorites, Bright
of the Monster. What are you doing to me? We

(24:06):
would assumed as speak of the giant straight a waity
men like all the others did. That was a film
that was shown a lot on television when I was Young.

(24:30):
It's a classic independent, low budget horror film. I think
it's very much rooted in the Bella Legosi Monogram films
of the early forties, and I'm sure Edwood loved those
films because it's very much like them, and it's like
the roles that Legozi played in those films. They were

(24:52):
like a step above what Edwood was making in terms
of budget, but they were still very low budget quickie films.
I'm really happy that he had the opportunity to do
a starring vehicle for Bella Legosi where he could be
at his best. I am I'm not the Eric ornav

(25:14):
You had a severe How did I get here? Oh
that's not important for the moment. What you need now
is rest rest. He was clearly a friend and supporter
and fan of Bella Lagosi, and I'm sure it made

(25:35):
would extremely happy to give him a vehicle where he
could do his thing. If you look at the trailers
for that film, whoever wrote the copy refers to Legosi
as the screens master of the Weird, so he knew
what a gift he had with Bella Legosi. He created

(25:59):
a great low budget laboratory and of course all you
need is, the flashing lights and some beaker's. It was
a classic mad doctor's laboratory. And of course you had
the amazing Toward Johnson. Toward Johnson was a Swedish wrestler

(26:22):
and actor who would discovered and befriended. At six ft
three and over four hundred pounds, Johnson's hulking figure made
him perfect for the monster rules in Woods movies. So
you had a monster in it, you had a mad
doctor in it, you had murky lightning, flashing, and all

(26:46):
the kind of set pieces that you would need for
a horror film. Now it had some quirky elements to it.
It also had the earnestness that you see in some
of the Edward films where he had a message, he
managed to shoehorn in some of his philosophical gropings into

(27:09):
the dialogue and into the themes, and he certainly did
that with Pride of the Monster. Twenty years ago, I
was banned from my homeland, parted from my wife and son,
never to see them again. Why Because I suggested to

(27:29):
use the atom elements for producing super bees, beings of
unthinkable strength and size. I was classed as a madman,
a charlatan outlawed in the world of science, which previously

(27:50):
honored me as a genius. Now Here in this fars
shaken jungle, hell, I have proven that I are right.
The following year would begin production on what would become
his magnum opus, Plan nine from Outer Space, originally titled

(28:13):
Grave Robbers from Outer Space? My Friend, Can your Heart
stand The Shocking Facts about Gray Robbers from Outer Space?
He had plans to include his friend and frequent collaborator,
Bella Legosi, but Legosi passed away before primary production began. However,

(28:36):
Edward was able to shoot a few scenes with Legosi
before he died. The home they had so long shared
together became a tomb, a sweet memory of her joyous living.
This guy to which she had once looked was now
only a covering for her dead body. It grew out

(28:58):
of wood having footage of Bella Legosi that he had
shot and feeling he could make a film around that.
He sometimes had existing footage that he would hope later
to build a film around. There was a project called
Hellborn that never came to fruition, and some of the

(29:21):
footage that was kind of like a j D Juvenile
delinquent thing. Some of That footage was used in other
Wood films from later years, and other filmmakers have done that.
Fred Ole and Ray shot footage of John Carradine. I've
been waiting for you. I came as soon as I heard,
you know, exactly as instructed, not knowing exactly what he

(29:49):
was going to use it in, but because he had
the opportunity to do it, he had a creative mind
can do something like that. God bless them. Bill says
that Edwards the use of recycled material was central to
his style. I was watching an Edward documentary and Vampira,
who certainly knew Edwood well, described his work as decoupage

(30:15):
in the sense that he had pieces that interested him,
and he would assemble those chunks and just sort of
put a veneer over it to united he thought in
terms of individual set pieces, not so much in terms
of the overall work. That cardboard headstone tipped over this

(30:39):
graveyard is obviously phony. Nobody will ever notice that filmmaking
is not about the tiny details, It's about the big picture.
I was just reading Wood's book, Hollywood Rat Race, and
in that he says that he generally did not have
endings to his films. When he started them, and he

(31:00):
just kind of saw what would happen. Usually for budgetary reasons.
Wood was also well known for padding out his movies
with cheaply acquired stock footage. This is fantastic. What are
you gonna do with it? Probably follow it away. I'll
never see it again. It's such a place. Why if
I had half the chance, I could make an entire
movie using the stock footage. This is especially true in

(31:23):
early movies like Glennar Glenda, where you might see the
same shot of highway traffic multiple times. The world is
a strange place to live in, all those cards, all
going someplace, all carrying humans which are carrying out their lives.
The patchwork film has a long history in low budget

(31:44):
and exploitation films, going back to the silent and early
sound era, where a film would be caught up and
re contextualized and sold over again. So of course that's
an important aspect of the Wood style. One other thing
you might notice about woods films is that he uses

(32:05):
a rotating cast of friends and other trusted actors, almost
like a Wood verse. Some were famous, like Bella Legosi
or Vampire Round, others were just friends. He got some
of his regular crew together along with colorful figures like
John Bunny Breckon Ridge. I have need of your other

(32:26):
ships elsewhere. Even though you have risen three of the
Earth did the plan is far from successful, and you
Eros has proven an operational success the for more time
energy ships and your countrymen maybe spent on it. And
Paul Marco, did you do that thing? Did you get it?

(32:48):
Wait at it? Well, it didn't fall like fired everyple
that I had Lyle Talbot. Of course you realize, Mrs Gregor,
that if your brother fails to show up for trial,
you will forfeit the bail money inspector does no criminal Well,
that will be established later. He was carrying a gun.
There are much worse crimes. Carrying a gun can be
a dangerous business and of course unique people like Vampira.

(33:13):
What I need is a vampire cocktail to settle by.
It will not only settle them, it will petrify toward
Johnson finding a mess like this? How to make anyone? Try?
Have one other boys, technical guy and a girl. Back
to Tom. You take shots, okay, Inspector, what are you

(33:34):
going to do? Look around? Pretty dark out there once
you get beyond the range of those lights. You won't
be able to see your hand front of your pain.
I will get one of the lash light from the
patrol car. Be careful, played, I'm a big boy, not Johnny.
So you have a mix of industry professionals mixed with
non professionals, mixed with people who were starting out in

(33:56):
the industry. Oh look, tennant. Maybe this doesn't mean my
but Jamie Meat found a great that looks like it's
been busted into what where? What? What? Come on? Man?
Odd with it? We haven't got all dataway? Just over
there beyond the crip, all right, show us away. So
you get a lot of people who are interesting personalities,

(34:18):
who may not be professional actors, and who may basically
bring their unique persona. But many directors, Fellini among them,
worked in that way and liked a good face or
a good presence and didn't worry about the person's ability
to perform Hamlet. That's something that Edward brought to his films.

(34:42):
Family friend Bob Blackburn says Wood was less focused on
who was right for the part and more focused on
having a family of filmmaking friends. I don't think he
was looking to get anything from these people besides their friendship.
You know, if they wanted to act in one his movies,
or they want to go out and have a drink,
totally cool. You know. I don't think he was going, oh,

(35:04):
there's vampire writing, you know, I want her to be
in my film. I don't think that came about that way.
Ed loved hire. These older actors had had a name
Kenny Duncan, who was one of his favorite Western guys,
or Tom Osborne, or some of these other people who
Ed knew and who were I don't want to say
they were down on their luck, but they were in
between jobs, will put it that way. And if Ed

(35:26):
could offer them a couple hundred bucks for one day's
work or a couple of days work, sure, why not?
So he would go back to those people. Plan nine
was like a who's who of Wood's best friends and
closest collaborators. According to Bill Shoot, It's also where he
took his wacky ideas and went in full force. You

(35:47):
had the kitchen sink surrealism of Ed Wood really at
full killed. I want to ask you about your strange
experience the other night when you saw the flying stater.
After that the police brought me home. I hope I
never see such a side again after you were forced

(36:09):
to the ground. But that blast of wind, was it
a hot or cold blast? It's kind of hard to explain.
It wasn't hot, wasn't cool, Just to terrific force. We
couldn't get off the ground. Who I blinded me so badly.
I couldn't see a thing. We could only feel the
pressure of the wind until it was gone. When the

(36:29):
glare left us, we could see a glowing ball disappearing
off in the distance, which way towards the cemetery. The
other most obvious characteristics of woods films are the low
budget and the technical areas, and this becomes the most

(36:51):
contentious element of woods work. I really truly love parts
of his movies, I don't love the overall experiences of
watching them. My name is Katherine cold Iron and I'm
the author of a monograph on Plan nine from Outer Space.
Catherine's book looks at the numerous glaring technical problems and
Plan nine, as well as explores why we enjoy watching

(37:14):
quote bad movies. I asked her how she sees Edward
as a filmmaker. I think of him as an auteur
because he's one of those guys who has to right direct,
produce everything himself. What quality of art here he is
is much more mysterious, and I think he's proof that

(37:37):
autiers exist at all levels of quality in the cinema.
Where he is in terms of bad cinema is a
little bit more difficult to estimate, I think, but he's
I would say, the most famous bad film aut here,
probably in wider culture. I also ask Catherine what she
sees as edwards shortcomings. Edward doesn't know how to block

(38:01):
at all, and by that I mean he'll sort of
have characters coming onto the screen in the same direction
and running in circles in the cemetery, and you don't
really get a sense of where anyone is in space.
I mean he has some knowledge of how to do
time in film, in that the scene on the porch,

(38:24):
he knows that you show the passage of time with
a push in by the camera and then a pull
out by the camera. He's aware of that, but he's
not aware, for instance, that dissolving means that time passes
and cutting means that time doesn't pass. So there's a
scene where a car pulls up to the cemetery and
it's clear to him that a certain period of time

(38:44):
has passed between the last shot and this one, But
because it's a cut instead of a dissolve, the audience
doesn't realize it. But unless that bag of bones over
there can reassemble itself, it's all they're running out. His
lighting is very harsh and uniform across the film. It's

(39:07):
always very bright, and that's actually, I think, better than
a filmmaker who just turns the lights down and you
can't see anything. But it also means that day for
night is a joke in Plan nine? Then how about
when the policeman arrived in daylight but now it's suddenly night?
What do you know? Haven't you heard of? Suspension of disbelief?

(39:27):
And the way that he draws connections between things leaves
a lot to be desired. I think that you're supposed
to know that the aliens are involved with the cemetery
business early in the film, but the film doesn't, like
very literally make those connections until way later. What plan
will you fallow? Now? Plan nine? It's been absolutely impossible

(39:51):
to work through these earth creatures. Their soul is too controlled.
Plan nine, ah, yes, Plan nine. Deals of the resurrect
of the Dead long distance electrode shottened opinion of pituitary
glands of recent dead. So the plot is hard to
follow because there's so much irrelevant stuff that's sort of

(40:12):
jammed in there that the way that an American audience
can normally follow a film is just not present in
plan mind from matter space, Catherine says that for her,
it's less to do with woods budgetary constraints. To me,
it's his his incapacity to see when he should have
done better. Like a movie maker like Roger Corman is

(40:34):
always doing the best with the resources he has, and
the resources he has failed him. There is meat here
killing go back. No. I came to find the truth alive,
the old stories, the ancient law. We came to hunt,
not to destroy the word. But when Roger Corman has
given a little bit of a budget, like he can

(40:55):
do amazing things, that's where something practical is inhibiting you
from making something good. Whereas with would you could give
him all the money in the world and he wouldn't
be able to make a good movie. It's just not
in his wheelhouse. So what sets him apart for me
is not that he doesn't have the resources to do it,

(41:16):
and not that he doesn't have the time and energy
to do it, but instead that he simply doesn't have
the capacity to do it. Like if they flow the line,
like retake the scene now you can bring the total
destruction of the entire universe served by our sun. As
you might guess, Bill Shoot has a completely different opinion

(41:37):
on wood style, low budget filmmaking and independent filmmaking. You
have to bring to that when you watch it willing
suspension of disbelief. People don't have a problem with that
when they see a play. When you see a play,
you know that's a painted backdrop. You know that you're

(41:58):
not looking at a courtyard in New Orleans or Paris
or something like that, and you can accept it. People
who used to go to these kind of films, or
even people who watch low budget straight the video product today,
you just accept that this is not a hundred million
dollar film and that things represent the reality of the situation,

(42:23):
and you don't have a problem with that. So I
don't really focus on the things that people make fun
of in Edward films, because you see that in a
wide variety of low budget product. When someone's making a
feature film for twenty dollars or less that comes with
the territory. I think some of the people who pick

(42:45):
on that sort of thing haven't seen a lot of
low budget product and they don't know that that's what
the marketplace was like, and that's what the typical product
was like. I don't think that's an excuse when you're
making work, especially if you're making a movie, Why would
you give it anything less than you're all. Something that

(43:06):
I realized when I was researching is that most genre
movies from the late fifties are crap, Like, most of
them are not good. It was just a genre that
sort of didn't have good quality films until late sixties. Really, however,
there are movies from that period that stand out, like
The Incredible Shrinking Man. But even as I touched the dry,
flaking crumbs of nourishment, it was as if my body

(43:30):
had ceased to exist. There was no hunger, no longer
the terrible fear of shrinking. And then the fly. I
saw that funny looking fly again, which shall we go to?
You saw where it is going to get it by

(43:51):
the bench in the garden. Oh yes, they have bad
quality ease sure, and the special effects are not great,
and there are all these reasons why they're lesser, but
the fact that movie makers could make those at the
time means that the vast majority of movie makers who

(44:13):
made impermanent art to turn a quick bucke at the
box office and then be forgotten forever. It's just no excuse,
Like you could still do a good job and you
chose not to. So perhaps whether one enjoys Wood is
a matter of subjective preference and whether you find his
technical errors to be charming or distracting. But despite her criticisms,

(44:35):
Catherine also enjoys some things about woods movies. Oh, I
delight in how unstudied everything is. I love really really
bad performances in his movies, like the actress at the crypt.
First his wife, then he tragic tell me something. Why
was his wife buried in the ground and he failed

(44:57):
in a crypt? Something to do with family today, a
superstition of some sort. Oh, she's just she can't even
deliver the word oh properly. Like I think that's super
delightful and enjoyable. And the mechanism of enjoying bad movies
is something that I've studied a lot, but I haven't
quite figured out and what that is when you look

(45:17):
at something that's incompetent and you laugh, but you're not
like actively making fun of it when you're enjoying it
because it's bad, but not thinking of it as something risible,
something to you know, tease. That is a mystery to me.
What I think it is is that bad movies are
endlessly surprising, because if you've seen any number of movies

(45:39):
in your lifetime, you will recognize what a three x
structure is without having to be told what it is.
You'll recognize that the peaks and valleys of mainstream commercial
film are very engineered that everything about them you know.
From minute to minute, you know exactly what the experience
is going to be, and you can broadly predict what's
going to happen in the movie. Even if it has
twists and turns, you can still figure it out. Bad

(46:00):
movies just don't follow those rules, either because the filmmakers
never learned those rules or because they don't really care.
The films are always gonna show you something that you've
never seen before, and even if that thing is incompetence,
at least it's surprising. It's not the same thing over
and over again. Catherine is getting into a phenomenon largely
pioneered by ed Wood, that focuses on bad film as

(46:23):
its own form of entertainment. You've probably heard of films
that are quote so bad they're good. The other most
notable example is Tommy Wise, Oh is the room right?
Can I help you? Can? I have a dozen red roses? Please? Hi, Johnny,
I didn't know was you here? You go? That's me?
How much is keep the change? Hi? Dog? You you're

(46:46):
my favorite customer. Thanks a loud bye. I do not
believe it's a schadenfreude instinct. I think that there are
two distinct types of bad movie watchers. And there's the
type that has schadenfreuda and they want to laugh at movies,
and then there's the type that is just genuinely delighted
by bad movies. I don't understand the mechanism, even though
I'm one of them, of people who love bad movies

(47:07):
because they're delightful. I think what keeps us coming back
to these movies again is just their ability to surprise
and to be nothing like the pattern. It's a little
bit like, do you want to listen to pop singers
like Britney Spears and Taylor Swift or do you want
to listen to Radiohead? And like, maybe there's not a
lot of difference between them in terms of career structure,

(47:30):
but there's a huge amount of difference in how they
pass in and out of your brain. It's much more
difficult to listen to Joanna Newsome than it is to
listen to Britney Spears. And there are moods for both.
You know, there are nights when I want to watch
a really good movie, and then there are nights when
I want to watch a movie where I can turn
my brain off, so I'll watch a Marvel movie. And
then there are knights when I want to be challenged

(47:52):
and also laugh, and so I'll watch Neil Breen. You know,
I think that there are people who want very narrow
artistic experiences, and then there are people who want a
wide variety of them. And I think the latter category
is much more interested in that film. Here's Bill Shoot's opinion.
I am a total opponent of the bad film phenomenon.

(48:17):
I'm a champion of low budget artists in many different genres.
If you take the small labels of the nineteen fifties
and sixties, there would be a lot of things that
were considered technical flaws as opposed to something recorded in
l a by the wrecking crew that was professional in

(48:38):
every way. But you had people with enormous creativity and
limited budgets trying to capture what was in their mind,
trying to capture the vision that they had with the
limited technical facilities that were available, in the limited funds
that were available to them. I've onto showings in Austin

(49:01):
of low budget horror films, indie films of all sorts,
and there's always some people in the audience who were
making fun of the filmmaker and pointing their fingers at
the kind of things you see in low budget films,
And to me, as I said earlier, on some level,
it's I don't think they've seen a lot of those

(49:23):
films to know that that is not uncommon. But there's
also a kind of elitism that I find kind of
offensive anyone who's worked in the arts as I have.
With limited money and limited technical facilities, you do what
you can to kind of fake an effect. I grew

(49:44):
up during the punk rock era and the kind of
cut up xerox esthetic of punk growing out of you know,
Warhole William Burrows, that sort of thing was also a
way of using very minimal budgets and kitchen sink abilities

(50:04):
to create something that was transcendent because you didn't have
access to the technology. So when I see a film
of that sort from an independent filmmaker, whether it be
Edwood or Bill Robaine or Larry Buchanan, I'm just amazed
at what they can do on such a low budget.

(50:25):
I just take my hat off to that kind of
inventiveness and creativity. As far as quote bad film creators go,
Catherine believes there's one positive quality that sets Edward apart.
Edwards sincerity is part of what makes his films fun
to watch instead of unfun to watch. For instance, the

(50:45):
output of the Asylum that they made, Sharknado, and like
a bunch of movies like that. I know you're scared.
I'm scared too. They're sharks. They're scary. No one wants
to get eating. But I've been and I'm here to
tell you it takes a lot more than that to
bring a good man down. Those films are not as

(51:06):
much fun to watch for me because they're very cynical.
They think that they're laughing at themselves, but they're actually
not they're more making cynical trash. What's charming about Edwood
is that he has the love, but he has no skill.
He has the will to make a film, but he
doesn't have the talent to make a film. That's kind
of like watching little bitty kids play soccer trying to

(51:28):
kind of kick the ball around the field, but they
don't have the capacity in their arms and legs to
have that kind of coordination. So watching them is kind
of cute because they're trying really hard, but their bodies
are failing them, and Wood's talent fails him, and that's sweet.
You know, it's sad a little bit, but also kind
of lovely to witness. So between Catherine and Bill, we

(51:52):
have two very different opinions on the matter. But before
we move on, I want to share one more approach.
Here's family friend Bob Blackburn. Again, I'm right down the
middle of this, to be honest with you. There was
a book, The Cinematic Misadventures of Ed Wood. I think
it was where the guy took a very scholarly approach

(52:13):
to all Ed's films, and I went, WHOA, you're really
reading some stuff in there that I just don't see
or whatever. But I appreciated the fact that somebody took
ed that seriously to actually write it. Now, I don't know,
but I would assume that in some film schools Edward
is taught, maybe at U c l A Film School

(52:33):
or USC Film School. There's a class and so bad
it's good. I would hope it's so bad it's good thing.
I kind of shake my head at it. I don't
see it. It didn't study film, he didn't go to
USC Film School. He didn't apprentice for a famous film director,
even though he may have worked at universally. It's like
in the prop department, you know. He was smitten with movies.

(52:57):
So his knowledge was from what he saw and from
people he met, people he talked to and trial and air.
If you see his very early things like cross Roads,
Avenger Crossroads or Laredo or any of the the TV things,
the cardboard, very short coffin, things of that nature, people
getting off a horse on the wrong side. He wasn't

(53:18):
a technician at all. It's easy to laugh at the mistakes,
but you have to kind of understand why there are
the mistakes, you know, and again there's other people that
were learning how to make movies. Ads they were making them.
You know, there's always going to be those kind of people,
for better or worse. Plan nine from Outer Space was

(53:38):
edwards boldest most artistic statement, but it was far from
the end of his career. Edward would go on to
make six more movies throughout the nineteen sixties, and he
also wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and other adult content.
On the next episode of Ephemeral, We're going to dig
into Ed's later work and tell the story of his

(53:59):
final years, and we'll talk about Woods cult revival, the
eventual Tim Burton biopic, and how he reached new heights
of fame after his death. This episode of Ephemeral was

(54:29):
written and produced by Trevor Young, with producers Max and
Alex Williams. Bill Shoot is a writer and professor of
English at San Antonio College. He also wrote the introduction
for the new book of posthumously released essays by Edwood
When the Topic Is Sex. Bob Blackbird is a family
friend of the Woods who edited and compiled the stories

(54:51):
for When the Topic Is Sex, which you can find
on Bare Manner Media's website or wherever books are sold.
And Catherine cole Dire is author of the book Plan
nine from Outer Space. See more of her work at
k cold Iron dot com. We'll be back in two
weeks with part two of our dive into ed Wood.

(55:12):
In the meantime, find links to these and more on
our website, Ephemeral dot Show. And while you're there, check
out my conversation with Movie Crush host Chuck Bryant about
Tim burton biopic ed Wood. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

(55:33):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.