Sin #37: Eddie

Has anybody seen “Glen or Glenda”? This is director Ed Wood’s cautionary tale about intolerance at a time when cross-dressing and homosexuality were seen as society’s scurrying diseases (it’s sad to think that in 60 years much hasn’t changed). Nobody argues against the morals or overall message of “Glen or Glenda”; most people nowadays focus on its ineptitude. Here’s a film that’s so awful and incompetent that even though it’s only 68 minutes long it feels like it takes a lifetime to be over. I’m sure it was a passion project for Wood (himself a cross-dresser) but why did he decide to make it so inaccessible, bizarre and utterly incomprehensible?

It is said that Ed Wood was the worst director in cinema history but I digress sometimes on the subject…Uwe Boll might be worst than Wood (I’m not really in the mood of watching their entire catalogue of productions to really find out, although watching “The House of the Dead” was pure torture). The point is that even though Wood’s movies are pretty terrible, they were deeply personal and there’s a sense that he tried his very best to deliver. It’s a shame that they don’t acquire the quality of being so bad they’re good (they could at least have been unintentionally funny like the recent cult classic “The Room”, but no, they are all boring as hell).

The best thing associated with Ed Wood is Tim Burton’s film about the director. In another wonderful performance, Johnny Depp plays him as a cheerful and energetic moviemaker that was just too happy to be making movies. He didn’t care about cheesy sets or costumes, bad performances or incoherent narratives; he just thought about giving his audiences an unforgettable spectacle. The most touching aspect was his relationship with Bela Lugosi (brilliantly played by Martin Landau), an actor too washed out and deep in his drug addiction for anyone to ever want to work with him anymore. Bela appears in “Glen or Glenda” as a sort of puppet master or god-like character (“pull the strings!”) that doesn’t really have a reason to appear on the film (the devil also makes an appearance, it must be said).

“Ed Wood” is my favorite movie of Tim Burton because it’s a celebration of Kitsch and it introduces the joy of moviemaking. Ed Wood might have made the worst movies ever but few people had more fun making them; his energy is contagious enough to cheer for him.