Ed Wood II

We continue our deep dive in the life and work of director Ed Wood with an exploration of Wood's later years and his posthumous rise to fame. Then the hosts of Ephemeral sit down together to geek out about their favorite Wood films.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Ephemeral is a production of five heart three D audio.
For full exposure, listen with that phones. The last night
I saw a flying obdue they couldn't have possibly been
from this planet. But I can't say a word. A
muzzled by Amy Brass, I can't even min I saw
that they On the last episode of Ephemeral, we explored

(00:32):
the illustrious career of filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. We
looked at Wood's most famous films, including Plan Nine from
Outer Space and Bride of the Monster, and we debated
the inherent quality of Wood's output and how much that
even matters. Here. Our producer Trevor Young picks up the story.

(00:58):
Edward filmed Plan nine from Outer Space in nineteen fifty six,
but I wouldn't premiere until three years later in nineteen
fifty nine. In the meantime, Wood directed my personal favorite
of his Night of the Ghouls. Through my powers of
the supernatural, I and I alone can bring him to
this room tonight, from that place in the deep blackness

(01:21):
of death from which no visitors to return, where the
sun is seen to rise, the sun is seen to set,
where the gracious Moon comes from the east and its
long journey across the night sky to the west Wingate Foster,
through the powers of doctor Actula, will again be permitted

(01:41):
to walk. Here's Bill Shoot, author and professor of English
at San Antonio College. In some ways, the companion piece
to Plan nine, Night of the Ghouls is even more surreal,
though it's not as well known because it did not
get a theatrical release. It wasn't released until the VHS

(02:05):
era in the eighties. When my children were young, I
had the VHS tape of that and they requested to
watch it over and over again when they were like
ten years old, and I think my children have watched
it ten or fifteen times. The story behind that film's
delayed release is an interesting one. Apparently, Edward had failed

(02:27):
to pay the laboratory that developed the negatives for the film,
so the laboratory stowed the film away until Edward paid
the fees, but he never did so it sat in
a warehouse for twenty five years until super fan Wade
Williams paid the bill himself and released the movie on
VHS tape into Despite the issues with that film, Edward

(02:50):
carried on and kept writing scripts. In nineteen sixty Wood
wrote and directed The Sinister Urge. Well, what's happened now?
Least rated Jaffee Studio. That again they picked up Lila, Sally,
Carol Jaffee, the whole crowd who took them Our old friend,
Lieutenant Matt Carson. Oh boy, something's going to have to

(03:12):
be done about him. As we move into the nineteen sixties,
he did direct The Sinister Urge, which is a kind
of sex crime oriented film. It's really an early kind
of slasher film in some ways, although you could only
go so far without in ninety two, but it also
was a sex exploitation film in that it dealt with

(03:35):
as it was called by the police and the film
the dirty picture Racket, the smut picture racket. I read
in the morning paper where the police departments we signed
a special detail to clear up this silly dirty picture business.
That was the last I guess we'd say, mainstream film
directed by Edwood. This became a big turning point in

(03:58):
what's career keeping and to write more exploitation material in
the form of both screenplays and novels. As softcore sex
films came in in the sixties, he wrote and later
directed films of that sort. Orgy of the Dead, based
on one of his novels, was a classic. Although he

(04:19):
did not direct that, he wrote it. He was on
the set and it has a very Edward ambiance to it. Ah,
the curiosity of you on the road to ruin? May
it ever be so adventurous? It's so frightened? Well, we
certainly can't stay here. Come on where in there? It

(04:42):
frightens me silly? There's nothing in there to be afraid? Dog?
Then then what's that music? That's what I want to
find out? And as the sixties moved on, he moved
into the sex film and also sex writing fe He
in a way was a pioneer of that in that

(05:03):
he moved into the hardcore eight millimeter loops. People who
are historians of West Coast Horn have pointed out that
one of the series that he was involved with, the
Swedish Erotica, was a very pioneering series, and Ed directed

(05:24):
a number of those loops. Eventually, Wood moved away from
directing movies and focused on his adult content. Ed wrote
a lot of sex oriented novels and short stories and
also non fiction prose, and that's how he paid the bills.

(05:46):
There are at least seventy five if not a hundred
novels that he wrote, often under pseudonyms, but he kept
a record of those works and was proud of those
works and gave signed copies of them to friends. And
they're quite interesting field for people to read. I don't
know that people want to read seventy five of them,
but you could easily acquire a handful of them. There's

(06:09):
some collections of the short stories that are available, and
all of the qualities that people like about his films
really are there in his writings. Also, as Edward moved
away from filmmaking throughout the sixties and seventies, his personal
life also started to change. Here's family friends, Bob Blackburn,

(06:30):
who knew Cathy would as widow. They were both alcoholics,
and I'm not afraid to say that because it's the
honest truth. And even when I knew her, she was
still drinking. There's people and their stories that the two
of them were kind of like the battling Bickerson's like
when they were both in their cups and a little

(06:51):
bit trunk, that things would fly and they could get
physical at times. Bob tells us that would shift into pornography.
Is a double edged sword. He was good at it,
and there was money there, but it was also something
that would was forced into, largely by his inability to
make it in Hollywood as a traditional filmmaker. A lot

(07:12):
of people don't realize that Edward was a porn pioneer
working for Bernie Bloom for Pendulum Publishing in starting like
in the nineteen sixty nine and then his heyday in
the early seventies. He was writing the short stories and
he was writing the articles. He was also writing some
of the editorials. He was writing a lot of the

(07:33):
descriptions for the pictorial layouts, you know, for the girls.
You know, they had to have a little story or
fantasy for the guys presumably who were buying the magazines
and the drinking increased, so they because they include Cathy
and this, they were kind of in a downward spiral.

(07:54):
These years were tough on the Woods. Ed was struggling
to find work and money was inconsistent. They moved around
a lot. They actually bought a house out in North Hollywood,
and once the house was repossessed and their cars got
repossessed just because they couldn't make the bills. They had
to put a lot of their furniture and personal artifacts

(08:16):
and storage. They couldn't pay that that got sold off,
So a lot of Ed's memorabilia got sold off, went
to a collector, a couple of collectors, and actually ended
up being bought about seven or eight years ago by
the step nephew of Paul Marco, a guy named Jason
in Sulaco who lives here in l A. And he

(08:37):
bought what we called the trunk, which had all of
ed scrap books and a bunch of memorabilia. I was
attempted to a bid on it myself. He went for
about thirteen thousand dollars plus the fees plus the ship.
Being so but they kind of were always one step
ahead of the landlord when they moved into their apartment

(08:58):
right up here on Yucka's Street, where they lived for
the last four or five years of Ed's life. By
December of nineteen seventy eight, they were in arrears of
six months worth of rent, and on the morning of
December seven, they were forcibly evicted from their apartment they're
on at on the street. All their possessions, like file

(09:21):
cabinets that Ed had. I heard, you know, rumors of
a bail Legosi biography that he was working on called
Lugosi Postmortem. That could have been something in there. All
they had was a close on their back and a
little tiny leather suitcase that held some personal papers. Unfortunately
not that manuscript, but they did have the manuscript for

(09:42):
Hollywood rat Race, as well as a shooting script for
Ed's Pride and Joy called I Woke Up Early the
Day I Died, which was a film which actually ended
up getting made in the late nineteen nineties, but it
never technically released. A friend of theirs, an actor friend
of theirs named Peter co said he would come get
them and brought them back to his apartment up in

(10:03):
North Hollywood, and three days later, on Sunday, the tenth
Ed was in a bedroom feeling bad. There's I guess
the TV with a football game on, and Kathy and
Peter and a couple of other friends were in the
living room having drinks, and one of their friends went
in the bedroom that had was sleeping in or lane
and with the game on, and he had passed away.

(10:26):
So she came out and said, Hey, I think Eddie's died.
They all went in there to look, and in fact
he was, and Cathy said his eyes were open as
if he'd seen death. Edward D. Wood Jr. Died on
December tenth, and it seemed as though the sad story
of Edwood had come to a close. But just a

(10:48):
couple of years later, Wood's story would reach millions of
new people and he would finally get the fame he desired.
For most of his life, Wood's work was somewhat underground

(11:11):
or obscure, but after his death he started to gain
a little more popularity. Some of this stuff was starting
to get known a little bit among collectors, you know,
a hardcore cult movie film buffs, video tapes were starting
to come in a little bit, maybe just a hair
later in early eighties, but there was an underground collector

(11:32):
circuit that would, you know, trade here's robot monster. Here,
I'll trade you to Edward Films for you know, this
streaming sheet creature or whatever. But then came Edward's big
break in the Medved Brothers published their book The Golden
Turkey Awards, naming ed Wood the worst director and his

(11:53):
film Planned nine from Outer Space the worst movie of
all time. That one look started that whole ball rolling.
I don't think we'd be sitting here talking right now
with that book handic and that because I don't think
ed ever would have gotten a notoriety that he has, because,
for one, the Tim Burton film would never gotten made

(12:14):
with that that book. The fame of that medved Brother's book,
like the influence of that cannot be underestimated. I would
say millions of people watched Plan nine because of that,
and that means that it was kind of cemented into
the cannon in a way that few other movies happen.
That was writer Katherine Coldron, who we talked to last episode.

(12:38):
Intentional or not, Edward became a household name almost overnight.
Suddenly Edward films were everywhere, movie theaters, video stores, on TV.
Here's bill shoot the kind of worst film of all time,
Golden Turkey Thing. I was never a fan of that.

(12:58):
I never liked the con to say mentioned in that,
But I have a feeling that ed Wood was around
long enough that he had the attitude that if they
spell the name right, any publicity is good publicity. He
certainly was a man who had a sense of humor.
Am I happy that that happened, Well, if it makes

(13:19):
the film is well known, I'm very happy that it happened,
And I'm glad that he has been rediscovered. The fact
that Edward is famous for making What's you Know? Been
called the worst movie of all time. I don't know
if that's the legacy that he would have chosen, but
I do think that he must be very happy that

(13:39):
people have watched his movie in such enormous droves. Kathy
always used to say, Eddie would have loved the attention.
He would have been out there, he would have been
appearing at everything in talking and he would have It
would have given him a new hope in a new life.
As Bill tells us, the revival was good timing because
the eighties saw a huge boom in cult films and

(14:01):
physical media collectors. You had fanzines and magazines like Psychotronic Video, Watchdog,
The Phantom of the Movies, and many of the other
folks of that sort. You had vhs. You had Rhino
video with catalogs in hand. I wonder through these sacred decades,

(14:23):
be it rock and Roll, Country, Rhythm and Blue Comedy,
Children's Fair, or the Unravaged Home Video, Oh Sweet Rhino,
Virtuous Rhino, you had the early days of something Weird video,
and you had people like Elvira with her television show.

(14:46):
Hello darling, it's me Elvira and Mistress of the Dark.
That video cutie who makes the boys stand up and Saluti. Well,
it's time to reach into the old vault for today's
video treasure boy talking about scraping the bottom of the barrel.
It smells like a really ripe one. Let's see it's

(15:08):
killers from space. Oh yeah, right, well, I'll just stick
this where the sun does shine. No, not there in
the DCR. I'm sorry that Edward passed away when he did,
of course, I'm sorry he passed away at all. But
had he lived into the eighties, I have no doubt

(15:30):
that he would have thrived in the straight to video
market of the eighties. He certainly know how to make
a slasher film. The Sinister Urge from the early sixties,
with a little more explicit violence and sex and shot
in color would have been a perfect low budget slasher film.
And some of the straight to video things were made

(15:51):
for five thousand dollars during that period. So I think
that there are people who admired Edwood, who put a
qut of perhaps gotten him set up in that world,
and then he could have gotten into the world of
the conventions the way that someone like Herschel, Gordon Lewis
and Ray Dennis Steckler, these people were able to benefit

(16:14):
from the renewed interest in their work. Edward could have
had a successful second career during the eighties and nineties
had he lived, and who knows what kind of works
he could have created there. So I think that's a
horrible lost opportunity because of his passing at a relatively
young age, and we can just dream about the things

(16:38):
he could have created had he lived longer. And it
didn't stop there. Here's Bob Blackburn again, and all of
a sudden people started discovering a few of his other
films like Glennard Linda or Ride to the Monsters, and
they started having the college screenings like U c. L

(16:59):
A Film school had a screening like an eighty one
or eighty two. Now when you're in college, I used
to see the Marks Brothers films because that was like
in the late sixties orly seventies, like they were screening
Duck Soup and Horse Feathers and all because you get
high and you go to watch these funny Marks Brothers movies.
So they were doing the same thing with this on
college campuses, get high and watch Edwood movies, which I'm

(17:23):
sure led to the so bad it's good and so
that it's hilarious moments because you're stone and you're watching
Plan nine and it doesn't make sense, and you're going, well,
wait a minute, is that a shower curtain? What? You know? What? What?
It's daytime, it's nighttime, it's daytime, it's nighttime. Are those hubcaps?
What the heck is that? But I think some people

(17:45):
started taking Ed's work a little bit more seriously than that.
They started discovering things in it that they went, well,
wait a minute, there's more here than what appears on
the screen. The more they found out about Ed, the
deeper the film's got, and it just kind of snowballed
a little bit for people that took a bit of

(18:05):
a more serious approach to filmmaking in general. To odd
tours had just been called that. One of the Edwards
super fans from this period was Rudolph Gray, who wrote
an extensive biography called Nightmare of Ecstasy, The Life and
Work of Edward D. Wood, Jr. Released in It was
the first time that Ed's personal story had been made

(18:28):
public and widely available, and it got noticed. Soon a
bio pick about Wood's life was in the works at
Columbia Pictures. The director was Tim Burton, famous for films
like Edward Scissor Hands, Joyce. I just saw a strange
did you get a good look at and Beetle Juice?

(18:53):
You help me? Look how much you might call Nila?
And Okay, I want out for good. In order for
me to do that, Hey, I gotta get married. Hey,
these are my roles? Come to think of it, I
don't have any roles. And Johnny Depp was cast to
portray Edwood. Mr Legos, why are you buying a com

(19:13):
planning on dying? So? No, that's title of Cities and
ten Days. If that's conceivable. Do you know that I
saw you performed Dracula into Keepsie. That was a terrible production.
I thought it was great. You know you're you're much
scarier in real life and you're in the movie. The

(19:35):
film was being written by screenwriters Larry Karazowski and Scott Alexander.
I recently attended a Q and A with Karazowski at
the Secret Movie Club in l A, where he talked
about the process. We didn't want to make Edward a
figure of of laughter. Uh, nothing's worse than me see
a movie about like bad filmmakers and they're they're they're

(19:56):
they're purposely trying to make them bad. Befo Wars. Edward
was always meant to be a figure of giggles. It
was always like the worst filmmaker of all time, the
worst film festival of all time, There's all that kind
of stuff. Maybe part of it was we had made
a film before this is called Problem Child, which got
the worst reviews of all time, and so we we
we sort of went into the this a little more sympathetically.

(20:19):
We're like, what if you don't make fun of that,
but celebrate in the weird way and celebrate his passion
and celebrate the fact that he actually was a successful filmmaker.
He had a vision, he had a passion, and he
got that passion up on the screen. That heartfelt story
is what attracted Tim Burton. Tim Burton sort of became

(20:41):
curious about this movie when it was just just like
literally a three page treatment, And when we met with him,
we literally just said Ed and bella love story, because
for us, that what it was all about, much like
the friendship between Bella Legosti and ed Wood. Tim Burton
had a father early relationship with Vincent Price. He saw

(21:03):
in me a persona of the unreal, somebody who he
knew was a guy named Vincent Price, and that intrigued him.
He wanted to identify with somebody who was real but unreal,
and so the filmmakers agreed on making that place of
empathy central to the film. The movie titled ed Wood

(21:24):
Premier to you control everyone's fature like the puppet master.
So I pull up, Yes, you pull the string, pull
the strings. I liked that I was able to ask
Larry how accurate they thought Depth's portrayal of Edward really was,
and if he was actually as eccentric as he seems

(21:46):
in the movie. When you talked to the people who
worked with Edwood, they talked about what just he would
call him up at one of the Plan nines on
you Gotta Get Up. He was always this enthusiastic cheerleader,
and obviously he had to be that person, uh, in
order to get these I think he made something like

(22:07):
nine movies you know, as a director, made because he
was just like you know, he created this whole little
family of people who she believed in him and he
believed in them, and in all fairness, most of these
people no one ever believed in them ever, So I
don't think we were dishonest in anyway whatsoever. It was
he Johnny Depp. I'm not sure he's Johnny Depp, but

(22:29):
that being said, one of the best days on the set.
This is actually a great story and it kind of relates,
kind of doesn't. But um, we were shooting on Hollywood
bullets off a Hollywood bull of the Muslim Frank scene.
One of our crew members came over. I wasn't even there.
One of the crew members came over to Scott and said,
there's this woman over there waiting for the bus. And

(22:53):
she said she was married to Ed. And Scott was like, what,
what the hell and she was She's literally carrying like
bottles of boots and things. And it went over and
it was Cathy Would. And none of us had met
Cathy Would at that point, and so Scott went over
and said like Kathy, and she's like yes, yes, and
He's like, oh my god, this is going to meet you.
I'm Scott Alexander wrote this thing, and you know, like this,

(23:15):
You're it's it's it's such any to meet you. And
she's like, I'd love to beat Johnny. Can I meet Johnny?
And we're like oh, and Scott was just like okay, sure,
And so Scott brought over to the set and knocked
on Johnny's trailer and Scott came in and said, like, Cathy,
what is out there? And it was the day of

(23:35):
the Musso scene. So Johnny was like in address and
he was makeup, was smeared and all these things. And
Johnny was like, I can't go out the meter like this.
She's gonna think we're just like making fun of her husband.
And then I was like five minutes Johnny come to
set and he's like, you know all right, and he

(23:55):
opens the door and he walks out and Cathy sees
him and she's like, you look just like my Eddie
and it says totally was great. And she went home
and she came back and she brought Edward's wallet. We
had it still had his I D and all these
other things and hand the Johnny said like, please keep
this and be and and have this in your pocket

(24:15):
when you make all those things. So even though it
was obviously there's quotation marks all over the things that
happened in this movie. His wife recognized it as being
like close enough. That is more or less backed up
by Bob Blackburn, who has gotten a firsthand account of
Ed's personality through Kathy. He was a party kind of guy.

(24:37):
He loved having people around when they could afford it.
One of their apartments out in North Hollywood had a
swimming pool and Edward have pool parties all the time.
One of my favorite stories that Kathy told me, and
this tracks me up. Ed was taken a bath one
day in their North Hollywood apartment and here's a knock
or and ring on the doorbell and he so he

(24:58):
put to towel and grabs the towel and goes out
and opens the doorners a fuller brush salesman there, and
Ed cracks up and he goes, hey, I'm right in
the middle of a bath. If you want to come
in and try and sell me something, I'm willing to listen.
And the guy goes, Okay, I know it could make
a sale here. So it goes back into the sits
in the tub, but the guy sits on the john

(25:18):
and they start talking. The guy pulls his brushes out
and it grabs one and thrubs his back and stuff
and says, hey, you want to drink and a guy yeah, yeah, okay,
So it gets a bottle again and they became fast friends.
It was that kind of guy that I think you
would like. The movie was a critical success and as
widely regarded as one of Tim Burton's best films, but

(25:41):
perhaps more importantly, it redefined ed Wood for a whole
new generation. Here's bill shoot. The Edwood movie was written
by two people who are super fans of Edwood. That
sort of gave him immortality. Now how do I view
the Edwood film? I view it very much like the

(26:02):
Buddy Holly Story was to Buddy Holly. They changed things
for dramatic license. Composite characters were created. Was it accurate No?
Was it six accurate? Maybe? But it was made by
people whose heart was in the right place, and the
Buddy Holly Story did a great job of getting people

(26:24):
interested in Buddy Holly. With Johnny Depp as ed Wood,
with the great Martin Landau as Bella Legosi, it was
a great film. Was it accurate? No? There are things
that were invented for the film. There were parts of
his life that were not included but at the end
of the day, it was respectful. It got people interested

(26:48):
in his work, and if it does that, then I'm
glad it exists. And I think so many people got
their introduction to Edward through that film. It's still a
popular film to day. I don't think Edwood or anyone
could have imagined a z Grade George Weiss produced film

(27:09):
having the making of that recreated in a multimillion dollar
Hollywood movie. There's something mind blowing about that on some level.
I guess you never know what will be rediscovered for
future generations. Edwood never got to work for Columbia or
Allied Artists, but in his death and in his posthumous fame,

(27:33):
he is up there now in terms of recognition with
the people he admired and he looked up to that
were wrongs above him on the ladder. And there's something
validating about that. And to me, there's something inspiring that
makes me happy and warms my heart about that. To me,

(27:55):
this begs the question was what happy with his status
as a low budget filmmaker. In his book Hollywood Rat Race,
he describes some to stay for Hollywood and the movie business.
So how did he feel about his own work. What
more might he have wanted for himself. Here's Bill Shoot,
followed by Bob Blackburn. Edwood would have loved to have

(28:19):
worked for an outfit like American International or Lippert or
one of the smaller allied artists. He was always aspiring
to that level, and I'm sure he would have been
happy to work on that level, to work for Sam
Katsman or someone like that. But he was a wrunger
to below that. He was a Hollywood outsider. He recognized

(28:42):
that and realized that. But no, he would have loved
to broken those doors down and been Alfred Hitchcocker, been
the orsen Wells that everybody says he would have loved
to have been. He would have loved to have the
power and the ability to make the movies he wanted
to make down the road with the actors that he
would have love to have worked with. But he did
what he did with what he had, and that, to

(29:06):
me is the victory for Edwood, is the fact that yes,
he came to Hollywood to make movies, and guish darn it,
he did make movies. You know, Over the years, the
Edward fandom has only grown, and with the help of
the internet, various lost works have been discovered. I have
a private Edward Facebook group, and we found out recently

(29:27):
that ed had been hired to write a script based
on a book biography of Frank Leigh He who was
the notiter Dame football coach in the forties. And this
guy who was a friend of Frank Lahis had written
a biography and somehow had contacted Ed in the mid
seventies to write a script based on this. Well this
none of us had ever heard of it, but somebody

(29:48):
found it in a library at St. Mary's College. It
turned out to be actually in Edward script that nobody
had never heard about, and there's going to be a
book about it. I mean up with the script and
some notes about the script by a couple of Edward scholars.
I will call them for lack of a better word,
but there are people that dive much deeper into Edwood

(30:09):
than I do. So it's amazing that a lot of
things that Ed wrote or producer did are still coming
to light, you know, thirty some plus years, forty years
after his death. Bob Blackburn says his online community is
hoping to keep the Edward flame alive. I get a
lot of these people in there who are just passionate

(30:32):
who call themselves Edwood. Oh files because they really dig
deep into Ed's history, his work, his friendships, his working relationships.
They are the ones that discovered this script, uh in
the in this library, they've discovered a couple of novels
that went under a different title than what we knew

(30:54):
them as a couple of people in there are working
on books about Ed. There's a gal who's uh doing
a biography that I think focus is a little bit
on Ed's spiritual qualities. He's an intriguing person. I mean
from just the human standpoint, he was an intriguing guy,

(31:15):
and I think people want to get to know who
this person was and why he was and his triumphs
and especially his failures, you know, because he had both,
some more than others. But what drove him where was
his creative well that he drew from a lot. Here's
a MovieMaker author and was talking about him today, and

(31:40):
really Wood's legacy goes further than his own career. In
a way, he blazed a trail for future artists to come.
I think we should celebrate the ingenuity of the z
Grade Poverty Row filmmaker who is like a sleight of
hand artist who makes you think you're seeing things you

(32:02):
don't actually see, or you see something that represents something larger,
and he can't afford to do this something larger. But
if you flash it for a second or two, and
if you're in the right spirit, it's not a problem.
It works. It's ghoulish, or you're afraid of it, or
it shocks you, and it does what it needs to

(32:24):
do and you move on to the next scene. We
need to remember, an Edwood film, most of the time,
is instantly recognizable. You watch a minute of it and
you know that it was directed by him, or that
he wrote it if he did not direct it. So
that in itself is a great achievement. How many people
can have that said about their work, that it is

(32:47):
instantly recognizable. So we need to take our hat off
to Edwood for creating works that are still entertaining people
decades and decades and decades after they were made, that
originally played on the most marginal circuit, but which are
known and loved, and which people quote dialogue from today.

(33:11):
That is an amazing achievement. And people are writing about
him and rediscovering his works and republishing his writings. I
hope that in that great film set in the Sky
or that modest film set in the Sky, that Edward
is aware of the love and appreciation that his work has.

(33:32):
All three of us producers on Ephemeral are huge Edward
fans in the most sincere way possible. So after this break,
we're going to come back and talk about a few
of our favorite films. To finish up our deep dive
into Edwood, we wanted to step back and have a

(33:52):
casual conversation about Woods films. So joining me now are
my fellow Ephemeral producers slash hosts X and Alex Williams Tevin.
Where did you become acquainted with Edward films? In our family?
So bad It's good movies are like the number one
way that we communicate with each other as human beings. Yeah,

(34:16):
Like if I go home for Christmas, the conversation is
mostly just about whatever the new riff tracks stuff is.
And we just didn't We just did and watched all
these bad movies and make fun of them. Um, but
where did it come in in your life? I like
would see his stuff like in my local video store
growing up. You know, they had like posters and things

(34:36):
like that. So I like new about like Plan nine
for Matter space, for example, but I never really like
watched it. I think like a lot of like fifties
sixty genre movies just like didn't appeal to me growing
up necessarily. So it was really the Edward biopic. I
think the Tim Burton movie in that like kind of
piqued my interest. And I think that's like probably true

(34:57):
for a lot of people, at least a lot of
people in my age bracket. I'm a millennial, and um,
I've always loved Tim Burton, so I like love and
trust anything he does. But that movie especially just like
really blew me away. The first time I saw it.
It was just like so different from anything else he's
ever done. You know, it was like very much grounded
in reality. It was like this very kind of funny,

(35:18):
lovable story about a director. And you know, I would
like go on to love similar types of movies, like
The Disaster Artists, which paints a pretty interesting picture of
Tommy Wiz oh something about those kind of like biopic
movies are always just great to me. Um, I love
that we can take these people who are typically kind
of laughed at and culture and like see like the

(35:42):
heart behind them and really like come to appreciate them
and understand them as people. So anyways, long story short,
I loved that movie and so from there I started
like actually going back to Edward movies. And at around
that same time, I got really into VHS collecting, So
I started collecting all these old you know VHS tapes
of Wood movies and watching them on my CRT and

(36:03):
having a great time with them. So I'd say probably
like the last five years, I've been really digging into
all the old Edwood movies and coming to actually really
like them. So like The Disaster Artist, I think in
the Disaster Artists, over the credits they actually show side
by side, um, like the scenes that they did in

(36:23):
the Disaster Arts movie and the scenes from the room
and just to show you how like on the nose
they got the costumes and the blocking, the blocking, the
blocking enclothes and everything and and plan and um. The
ed Wood the Tim Burton biopic or biopic if you will,
I think it is super on the money too, I
mean the down to like you know, the cardboard um headstones,

(36:47):
getting you know, tossled and whatever. Yeah, I mean it's
It's pretty incredible. How good of a job they did.
If nothing else has just like got you really inspired
to like go back and see the original movies. I
wish they had done like a side by side. I
met somebody on YouTube's done it just like did that
exact same thing you were describing from the disaster artist.

(37:07):
Do you all have a favorite Edward movie, Trevor, You
maybe said that yours this Night of the Ghouls Trumpet, Yeah,
something about the trumpet and the silly Seance and the Skelly.
I love Skellies, man. I don't know what it is. Um.
If I was gonna be honest about which ones I

(37:29):
like enjoy an ironically, Um, I actually think like Glennard
Glenda is like his best actual film. Like if you're
judging it on the merits that we normally do for
like a standard film, I'd say Glendard Glenda. Yeah, I
think it. Um is like way more sincere. I think
the scripting and the subject matter is like a lot

(37:53):
more nuanced. You know, it still makes use of a
lot of like be your role and other patchworky things,
but like whatever, it's like a lot more forgivable in
the context. Uh No, I just the the use of
Baule in that movie is absolutely bizarre, where it's this,
it's this. I agree with you that the narrative has

(38:14):
the sincerity of of a cross dressing and it actually
Edward actually plays the title character in it, doesn't he So,
like Bill shoots said something really interesting and the interview
take that kind of took me back that if ed
would only made Glennar Glenda, he would still like have
a place in the history books. And I don't I
don't know. I mean, a few weird things had to

(38:35):
transpire for anyone to be talking about Edwood now, I think,
But but I don't know that. I was like, Okay,
I kind of buy that Bill, Yeah, like Glennard Glenda
is a is a completely unique film. But the use
of bear roll so it's this, this cross dressing narrative
about personal identity, and it's a little far, you know,

(38:56):
it's a little far reaching him and and kind of
goes all over the place. But then there's Bella le
Ghostie as this random narrator figure with bureau footage of
buffalo running projected behind him, screaming, just stringing, and so

(39:16):
I don't know, I don't know how you fregive something
like that. I mean, it's so it's so brilliantly bizarre
that your I gruth. I think glennar Glenda is definitely
his best one. Like I was watching them, I got
to that one like a little bit later on, and
I think I'd already watched Plan nine and like Brought
of the Monster. I was like, Okay, this was actually
a little bit better. That blows him out with Glenn

(39:39):
Glenda obviously, Like yeah, like what is Bella leghostie doing there?
Like what is his purpose in this movie? He's just
there because he has Bella ghost Yeah, Like Brand of
the Monster is just like really boring, and it's just
kind of like this very stereotypical like fifties horror film type. Yeah,

(40:00):
and then like Plan nine is just awful. I mean,
start to finish, it's just terrible. So you think Edward
got worse and worse and worse, And he got worse,
He got worse. His ability to conceptualize a plot, like
a plot like a leads to be leads to see yeah,

(40:20):
and even really to have a story like this is
like the overarching tale of like what's happening? Um is
pretty muddled. I can't really think of a movie of
his word where the story and the plot come through
pride of the monster maybe the most, but even that

(40:41):
is very confusing. Yeah, the girl gets like lost slash
abducted by like mad scientists who like creates monsters in
his lab. He wants to like keeper, and he's like
super bitter because he was like ostracized from his community
or his country because he wanted to experiment with making
a people atomic people, right, And then cops come in

(41:03):
and save the girl, kill the dude, and leave. I
guess it's pretty straight. And don't don't forget about all
the thirst trapping they do, like like slowly the shirt
guy's shirt this keeps getting more and more destroyed. I
mean it's it's very intentional. So Max, which one is
your favorite then? Or I would say Glennard Glenda or
I mean it doesn't it doesn't couch as a short,
but the final curtains it's it's weird. It is objectively

(41:27):
really kind of like creative. There's it's like all done
through narration and stuff. It's it's it's really interesting. It's
like I feel like those are ones we can see
like ed Woods, like really trying to be creative with
this stuff. When it's like I guess he was trying
to be creative with Plan nine. Just what came out
is just yeah, I'll probably say those are my two favorite.

(41:50):
I Plan nine, hands down is my favorite. It's one
of my favorite UM so bad It's Good films or
just like you could call it a genre film of
the fifties, but it's barely a genre film because it's
so outside the norms of of storytelling. But it's got

(42:10):
so many iconic moments to meet. I mean just the
opening which he uses in other films, to the opening
with Criswell in the casket Bcarly that that is also
what's great is Chris wall is a character in UM
Night of the Ghouls, right, that is pretty cool, I
will say. And his voice is always echoing everyone else's

(42:30):
voices norm and this is always going yeah, I mean,
you got a point. Their Plan nine, I think is
like his most like quotable and easily recognizable, I think
for a reason, right like the Grave, very vampire with
Tour Johnson as the detective, given the other detectives instructions
that you can barely understand vampire having no words, Um

(42:55):
the Great Flying Saucer special effects from I think the
like lack of continuity or consistency between those things, like
how the one guy describes it as like a cigar
shaped ship, and then when you actually see it it's
like a saucerer. It like looks nothing like a cigar.
I love stuff like that because I will say that
when it comes to historical accounts, the early ones of

(43:16):
UFOs were as cigar shaped. The saucer came later on,
so it's like he got his like stories and the
plot mixed up. I do like that a fist fight
on the ship causes it to blow up and catch
on fire. There's nothing, they're just they're just punching each
other and the ship catches on fire. It's like in
the whole time, it's like you stupid, stupid people. It's

(43:36):
like the aliens are supposed to be so sophisticated by
all you have to do is just getting a fist
fight and their ship blows up. So one interesting question.
I guess this is like the bigger philosophical question. I
wanted to kind of broach with you too. You know,
in the episodes, we have very different opinions about like
you know whether it's like okay to sort of suspend

(43:57):
disbelief when you're like seeing stuff like that just so
you can like authentically genuinely enjoy it. Um, or do
you kind of like take this more MST three K
approach to it and like is that the way you
should enjoy stuff like ed Wood? Um? I'm kind of
down the middle, frankly, Like they're just times where it's
so just like obviously not good that like you can't

(44:20):
help it's just like laugh at it for that reason.
But they're like there are other times where like actually
just like turn my brain off and like have a
fun time watching whatever's on the screen. So I don't
really have an answer. I'm just curious what you all think.
I think the question is kind of ancient and potentional
answerable about um is aesthetic value objective? Like what does

(44:44):
it mean if something is good or bad? I don't
and I don't really know if there's a way that
anything should be enjoyed. I don't think you necessarily need
to know anything about Edwood. I don't think you. I
think maybe if you had never seen another movie it
might help to enjoy. But yeah, I don't know. I
mean Um, I call it so bad that it's good,

(45:08):
maybe as a little bit of shorthand because they are
so difficult to talk about because they're just so different
than anything else that's out there. But I mean, I
have what I would call very sincere enjoyment. Maybe not
from all of them hashtag Nite of the Goals, but
like Plan nine, y'all. I have watched probably a dozen times.

(45:28):
It's I've used little clips from it in lots of
ephemeral episodes because it's in the public domain. Um, and
it's just got great lines like in the future, which
is where all of us will live someday, in all
of us will live the rest of our lives exactly
I wish I had memorized. There's been parts in my
life where I have really had a lot of stuff

(45:49):
memorized from from Plan nine. But yeah, so like that,
I would say the enjoyment that I have watching Plan nine.
When I slewt Max and I think you were it
was Max and Mom and Dad. I saw it in
a theatrical simulcast with the riff tracks guys, and it
was colorized, and I had never seen a colorized before,

(46:10):
and that just took it to the next level. I
probaised them Abe at least a dozen times. I would
watch it right now. I genuinely enjoy it um and
I laughed the whole time. Oh yeah, I mean like
I don't know. I was thinking about this, like when
we were doing the episode about her Carvey. It's like,
you know, Carnival Souls. If you just kind of sit
there and watch Carnival Souls, it's not a good movie.
I mean what they made it with like twe dollars. Uh.

(46:34):
There's like those scenes where it's like the worst time
I think of. It's like she's in the doctor's office
and he turns around and it's the cool and there's
just that long pause and then there's a But it's
like I could say I legitimately love that movie after
watching it all those times. It's like, I don't know,
it's just like dogs point, it's like what is good?
What is bad? I don't know. I mean, objectively, if

(46:57):
you really want to put it up on this whole grade,
it's like, yeah, there's not a single Edward film that's
even decent. But at the same time, it's like, you know,
I I enjoyed going back and watching a bunch of these,
like including the ones like I did not remember how
much I enjoyed glennor Glenda despite what that eighteen minute
long scene that's just nothing. It's just like almost softcore porn,

(47:18):
that's about it. I mean, I don't know, it looked
like they needed to get another eighteen minutes into the film.
But I'm like, yeah, actually I remember this movie being terrible,
and it is terrible, but it's a lot better than
I remember it being. And I enjoyed it, and I
enjoyed watching all these and I don't know. That's That's
what matters to me, is like do I actually enjoy
it or not? And I enjoy it wood stuff all
the time, especially the colorized Plan nine. So first of all,

(47:42):
Her Carvings Carnival Souls is a great film, and I
will not accept any slander about that film. I think
it's like a a low budget masterpiece frankly, But um, yeah,
I guess as far as like the enjoyment thing, I
guess like I never want to feel like I'm part
of a group of people who are like punching down
or like making fun of something that was just kind
of like, you know, incompetence. It would feel wrong too,

(48:07):
just like crap on somebody just because they don't have
like the skills or the money. You know, like if
they didn't do a good job at something and they
were just like totally pretentious about it, like maybe that
I would make fun of them. But you know Edward's case,
he was just like had struggles and he was totally

(48:27):
sincere in the thing he was wanting to do. And
so yeah, I guess I'm just saying I feel like
some sense of like guilt at like laughing at the
thing he did. Sometimes maybe it's inevitable, but I don't know.
I mean, I think there's this interesting phenomenon that there's
a jilion pretty extremely dull, low budget genre movies from

(48:49):
the fifties and the sixties sci fi and lots of
others westerns and and and crime films and whatever. But
like there's about a sou I mean, there's gonna be
thousands of other sci fi movies that this would, you know,
like on paper, like a movie like Plan nine or
Bright of the Monster Slash Bright of the Atom would

(49:11):
would fit into. And yet you could watch dozens of
those without any of them standing out to you. Probably
maybe an element here or there, edwards stuff stands out
for whatever reason. It's just so it's so very different
than any than anybody else's work. Yeah, I know. It's
just like there are plenty of movies that are just

(49:32):
as bad as Monster, Like you know, there are a
ton of movies like that, but that one does stand out.
It's something about Edwards style. It's I don't know, it's
like how genuine you could tell the people are you
know that you tell they're trying, you tell TORR. Johnson
is actually really trying to deliver those lines and Plan nine.
It's just nobody can understand it. And I don't know,

(49:54):
it's like you know that you can you can see
a passion and stuff that you know, there's there's a
good level of respect that I have, Like, you know,
they're badly made movies, but they tried really hard. There
are I mean, the craft of filmmaking in them is
extremely low. So the lighting, the blocking, the set design,
the acting, the writing. Yeah, the craft is very the

(50:16):
craft the craft is doesn't demonstrate a whole lot of dexterity.
So though, I mean, I think there's like a certain
charm to that. And maybe that's just because I grew
up as like a a nineties kid in video stores,
and there was just like a certain sort of like
aesthetic charm I think to like low budget filmmaking. You know,
it was like never good, but there was this kind
of like fun culture around it, right, Like the kind

(50:39):
of sillier a like you know, videotape cover or poster
was like the more compelled I felt to be like
hell yeah, I want to grab this, you know. Um.
And like even today, this kind of like retro culture
that kind of glamorizes that sort of like eighties low
budget thing is like huge right now. And I think
it's huge for a reason, you know, I think, you know,

(51:00):
even if it doesn't measure up to like the quality
of proper filmmaking, it stands on his own as like
its own sort of valuable genre. I think, But well
it's worth something like, um, this is maybe a dated
reference in a different way, but something like the Grindhouse,
the Rebert Rodriguez Quentin Tarantino double feature kind of misses
the mark for me, because like I I appreciate, I

(51:23):
kind of I don't know, empathize with with the love
letter to these maybe like hokier tropes of of older
B movies. But it's it's just like a little insincere.
Maybe that's the wrong word. It's it's just to make
of maybe a little too much polish, you know, the

(51:45):
polish to make it look bad doesn't come through in
the same way that you know that it doesn't in
the original. Yeah, that's another like topic I think is
this thing about like camp. You know, camp is usually
like unintentionally being bad, usually as a result of being
a budget and you can't like fake camp, right, like
you can't fake low budget. I don't know, and some

(52:06):
people do that, Like I think, um, you know, the
certain things like Shark Nado or whatever, like attempts to
be bad on purpose and it just comes off being
cringe e to me at least, like it just has
to be that authentically right, it has to be like
a happy mistake where it's not real or it doesn't count,
you know. I think Catherine cold Iron's point, Um she

(52:27):
brings up Shark Nado. It really resonated with me too.
That like the overall impression that you get from him
like that is cynicism. And the impression that you get
from an Edward movie is kind of like a muddled
hopeless optimism. Yeah, and I guess I I opt for

(52:47):
the ladder. The ladder seems like more of a good
time to me, like a better date, a better night
in Yeah. Maybe on that note, than um, I don't
know what are you? What do you? Guys? Just like?
Favorite things about watching an Edward movie the end, Paul Mark,
Paul Marco. He plays the same character over and over again. Kelton,
He's like the real Like, oh jeez, why do I

(53:08):
gotta go out to the cemetery again. It's the same character.
It's like Proud of the Monster, Plan nine and Night
of the Goals. It's the exact same character. He's referencing
things that's happened in the previous movies and stuff. He's
got a really good scene actually in um Night of
the Goals. They give him they give him a little
bit Night of the Goals, like he actually has some

(53:28):
character in that one. Yeah, I think to echo, I
think my favorite thing is just the characters that he's
able to bring on. I think there's just so many
memorable people. I mean, I love Chriswell for how cheesy
he is, you know, I love Paul Marco for how
silly he is. Yeah, Yeah, I mean obviously towards Johnson
for just being like absolutely unhinged all the time. I

(53:50):
don't think he ever says well, no, I was gonna say,
I don't think he ever says any actual words in
any Edward movie. But there's like a short period in
Plan nine where he's like a cop at the beginning.
It says a couple of lines very badly, but otherwise,
like I love that that he's just like constantly screaming.
Like Edwards screen direction was just like go out there
and grunt and like slap them, and you know, I

(54:12):
have a good time, and as a result, I have
a good time. So I rewatched the riff tracks Plan
nine from out of his Face and it's just like
you see every time he hits somebody that movie, it's
just like he pats them. Yeah, he's just like open handed.
Like I love the Bale of the Ghost See and
all of it. I just love Balor the Ghost See,

(54:35):
even his little bit in Plan nine and the News
when he's replaced by the person that is like a
foot taller than him covering their face. Yeah, I love that.
They like made a a point to highlight that in
the Edward Timburton movie, right, like he just like meets
the guy in the diner. He's like, you look just
like I mean, like holds the thing up to cover
his mouth. I agree. I think bellele ghost. He is

(54:55):
another one of those characters who just like really makes
it happen. I know you were talking about the pull
the strings Stephen Glennar Glenda, but I can't help it.
It's great. It's a great scene. It's when it stands
at my head, You're just like you sit and you say,
what did he How did this end up in this movie?
Why are why are these the same film? And it's
one of the great mysteries. It's one of the great

(55:17):
mysteries that Edward left behind unanswered. I will say another
thing that I really do love is it's kind of
like the same cast of actors through and through on
all the films, because it kind of gives you that
feel like it was like, you know, like friends and
friends making films together and stuff. Because it's obviously toward
Johnson and Paul Marco, but like, uh, you got like

(55:39):
Duke Moore is in a bunch of them and stuff.
It's just like I like that whole like they were
all a team together making these things and doing the
best they could, and unfortunately the best they could was
Planned nine from Outer Space. I wouldn't have it any
other way. I'm glad it happened exactly the way it did. Frankly,
I do I do wish that had I don't. I

(56:00):
don't know what more of a chance looks like, because
he got to make like nine films or something, but
he had such a sad ending to his life. Um yeah.
I think a couple of people said in the episodes
that you know, he probably would have had like a
really big, like cult revival potentially like a second wind
of a career in the like eighties nineties had he
been alive, And I see that as being very true.

(56:22):
I think people would have absolutely loved some new Edward
stuff in the eighties, you know. I mean they are
according to IMDb at least there is an ed Wood
film coming Grave rovers from out of Space, which is
you know, kind of nine. Yeah, but like there's also
like the Firstsaken Western's Crossroad of Avenger, which was that

(56:43):
seriously he had worked on for like they made a
I don't know an episode out of it in seventeen,
so you know, there's still people out there trying to like,
you know, I guess preserve it. I mean, I don't
know how real all this stuff is, but he's giving
credit as a writer on a lot of this stuff. Yeah,
that's a good point. I mean, Ed's interesting from a
point of view of lost media. For sure. I would

(57:05):
not be surprised if there are tons and tons of
movies and scripts and things like sitting in warehouses that
we don't know about that are going to come to
light in upcoming years, you know, especially with like the
Internet and like the huge like Edwood community online. I
would be very surprised if those things don't start surfacing
and getting funded somehow or whatever. So last question then, right,

(57:27):
the show is called ephemeral. Do you guys own any
Edward Ephebora. I feel like we probably have planed nine
on VHS. Oh, I think we do. Yeah. I mean
by we, I mean the Williams family. My father has
a closet full of VHS tapes, and I think probably
there's a plan nine VHS. I mean I don't think
he has anything else of than that. I mean, I

(57:49):
don't think we had brought of the monster, and definitely
don't wouldn't have Glenard Glendah. Yeah, I've got some some
VHS tapes over there. I think I've got Plan nine
right of Monster Glen or Gonda, and I think I
actually have the Tim Burton movie on HS as well.
But oh so do we you know, the biopic. All

(58:09):
of these were just like regular watching for like in
our family we would watch stuff like The Blob and
like Creature from the Black Lagoon, and like, these are
just like movies that we would just watch regularly as
a family. And h Edward, especially Planned nine, but the
other Edward films too, and the Edward biopic. We're all
films that we watched a lot as a family, and

(58:30):
we sit around, you know, at the dinner table. I
could say something like Edi, make me Goolash, but I
don't know how to make Kolash Balat and my favor,
my favorite one from that movie. And Martin Landa, I
think we won the Oscar for it, and he sure
did deserve it because he did such a good job.
He brought so much humanity but also so much creepiness
to that role. Um and camp is what he's sitting

(58:55):
there looking at the TV trying to command the TV
and doing this weird thing with his hand, and and
Johnny Depp Edwood is like, oh my god, Bella, how
do you do that? He's like, you have to boot
double jointed Hungarian. My favorite of force is Carlin off
Sidekick God Love Sucker. Yeah. Anytime Bella Let's character like

(59:24):
cusses or or said some something derogatory about someone else,
it's just gold. This episode of Ephemeral was written and
produced by Trevor Young, with producers Max and Alex Williams.
Bill Shoot is a writer and professor of English at

(59:47):
San Antonio College. He also wrote the introduction for the
new book of posthumously released essays by ed Wood When
the Topic Is Sex. Bob Blackburn is a family friend
of the Woods who edited it and compiled the stories
for When the Topic Is Sex, which you can find
on bare Manner Media's website or wherever books are sold.

(01:00:08):
And Catherine cold Iron is author of the book Plan
nine from Outer Space. See more of her work at
k cold Iron dot com. You also heard from screenwriter
Larry Karazowski, who co wrote film ed Wood Big. Thanks
to the Secret Movie Club in Los Angeles for hosting
this Q and A and letting us record. You can

(01:00:31):
check out their calendar at Secret Movie Club dot com.
How do you feel about Edwood? Love him, hate him?
Tell us why on social media. We're at Ephemeral Show
and for more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. If the desert had been above the

(01:01:02):
coffently copingst the business of