Ed Wood (film)

Ed Wood
Year	1994
Directed by	Tim Burton
Produced by	Tim Burton Denise Di Novi Michael Lehmann
Written by	Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski
Music by	Howard Shore
Studio	Touchstone Pictures
Cast	Johnny Depp Martin Landau Bill Murray Sarah Jessica Parker Lisa Marie
Run time	127 minutes

“	Really? The worst film you ever saw? ... Well, my next one'll be better! ... Hello?	”
	- Edward D. Wood Jr.

Ed Wood is a 1994 American light drama film directed Tim Burton. It dramatizes the career of filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. and focuses on his friendship with actor Bela Lugosi.

Plot

Struggling filmmaker Ed Wood meets and befriends aging horror movie star Bela Lugosi. The men collaborate on several projects while Wood finds love and struggles with his penchant for cross-dressing.

Cast

• Johnny Depp as Edward D. Wood Jr.
• Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi
• Bill Murray as Bunny Breckenridge
• Sarah Jessica Parker as Dolores Fuller
• Patricia Arquette as Kathy O'Hara
• Juliet Landau as Loretta King
• Jeffrey Jones as Criswell
• Max Casella as Paul Marco
• Brent Hinkley as Conrad Brooks
• Lisa Marie as Vampira
• George "The Animal" Steele as Tor Johnson
• Mike Starr as George Weiss
• Rance Howard as Donald E. McCoy
• G.D. Spradlin as Lynn Lemon

Notes

• Ed Wood received two Academy Awards, one for Best Supporting Actor (Martin Landau) and one for Best Makeup (with Rick Baker as one of the recipients).
• Some of the real people depicted in the film appear in small roles, including Gregory Walcott and Conrad Brooks.
• The film dramatizes the production of Wood's films Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster, and Plan 9 from Outer Space.
• Vincent D'Onofrio appears as Orson Welles, but his voice was dubbed by voiceover artist Maurice LaMarche.
• Actor Juliet Landau appears as Loretta King. She is the daughter of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. She later had recurring roles on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (as Drusilla) and Bosch.
• A video tape labeled Ed Wood appears in the MST3K Little Gold Statue Preview Special, but no clips from the film were used.
• Martin Landau's final scene as Bela Lugosi (alive) takes place in front of a theater that displays a poster for the film Half Human starring John Carradine.
• The film implies that Gregory Walcott had little-to-no acting experience and was hired for the heroic male lead in Plan 9 from Outer Space at the insistence of the producers. Walcott was actually an established actor at the time, and he appeared in Plan 9 as a favor to producer Ed Reynolds.
  • Additionally, the film omits actor Carl Anthony from its depiction of the production of Plan 9, replacing him with Conrad Brooks.
• In the scene in which Ed Wood meets Orson Welles, Welles refers to an in-production thriller at Universal in which Charlton Heston plays a Mexican. This is presumably a reference to Welles' 1958 film Touch of Evil.

Critical Response

• Leonard Maltin wrote: "3 stars. A loving look at Edward D. Wood, Jr., a man of boundless enthusiasm and no talent who made some of the worst movies of all time ... There isn’t much story thrust here, but the vivid re-creation of time and place makes this a must for any old-movie buff."