This Week In Retro: Ed Wood

October 10, 1924: Ed or Shirley

by Diamond Feit

When you're a kid and you first discover the magic of movies or television or video games, you don't ask questions about where things come from. The giant logo or brand name you see at the beginning declares who made that which follows. Whenever I saw the spinning CBS Special Presentation logo, I primed myself to watch The Muppet Show. Now that Disney owns all of Fox, I wish they'd put the classic spotlight introduction back on all the Star Wars films because that's how I experienced them for the first 30 years of my life.

Once I reached middle school, I started to wonder about the people behind all my favorites. Seeing famous faces over and over taught me which actors I liked, but even at that age I knew the people behind the camera mattered just as much; not every Harrison Ford movie provided the same level of entertainment to a 12-year-old.

Speaking of children, I was exactly the right age for Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, the 1985 road movie centered on Paul Reubens' perpetually adolescent character Pee Wee Herman. I wouldn't learn the difference between Paul and Pee Wee until years later, but watching the film's opening credits as many times as I did, I came to learn two names by heart: Composer Danny Elfman and director Tim Burton. When the two collaborated again on Beetlejuice in 1988, the commercials had me eager to see it despite Pee Wee's glaring absence.

Six years and three Tim Burton films later, news of his latest opus had me intrigued if a little confused. How could a black & white movie about a man I had never heard of whose reputation painted him as "the Worst Director of All Time" make for a compelling story? Yet Ed Wood would introduce me to another fiercely original filmmaker, albeit one whose work famously flopped with critics and audiences.

First, the skinny on Mr. Edward D. Wood Jr: Born in Poughkeepsie, NY, he fell in love with movies and moviemaking at an early age. He joined the Marines at 17 after Pearl Harbor and served in the Pacific, moving to Los Angeles after the war to pursue a career in show business. We may never know the full extent of his work, in part because so little of it survives but also due to Wood's penchant to exaggerate or flat out lie about his output—and himself. He died in 1978 from a heart attack just two years before The Golden Turkey Awards by Harry and Michael Medved would single him out as history's Worst Director.

Even if you've never heard his name, you've likely heard of his most famous feature film, Plan 9 from Outer Space. Wood served as writer, producer, editor, and director of the sci-fi/horror tale of aliens seeking to conquer Earth by reanimating the deceased to start a zombie army. The movie premiered in 1957, had a general release in 1958, then spent almost 20 years airing in obscurity on television. Again, a lengthy write-up in The Golden Turkey Awards led to a write-in vote awarding Plan 9 from Outer Space the dubious honor of Worst Film Ever, an infamy it retains to this day.

It's easy to see why people react to Plan 9 from Outer Space with such open mockery, given the film's many obvious shortcomings. Cheap sets, flimsy props, and Wood's awkwardly-written dialogue all work in unison to draw derisive laughter from audiences. I remember my first viewing on a college campus in 1995 with a raucous crowd jeering everything from the performances to simple continuity errors.

Yet I feel Plan 9 from Outer Space perfectly encapsulates a contradiction which I often contemplate whenever popular opinion classifies a creative work as "so bad it's good." If I watch a movie or play a video game or approach any piece of art and I come away amused, entertained, or even moved, how can said art qualify as bad? The world is chock full of media that exists to fill time and an executive's ledger, products that say nothing and leave no impact on the audience. This fact of life drives me to view Ed Wood's oeuvre as particularly fascinating, for while I can certainly recognize his many shortcomings, the man successfully made movies that only he could possibly make.

In the wake of Tim Burton's biopic and my hilarious encounter with Plan 9 from Outer Space, I searched local video stores for Ed Wood's other films. A friend and I rented Glen or Glenda expecting to laugh; it delivered plenty of guffaws, but sandwiched them between inscrutable material such as women clawing at each other on a sofa and a curious cutaway to a radiator. We decided that people had it wrong, for Plan 9 from Outer Space actually made sense as a story while Glen or Glenda was Ed Wood's—and therefore Hollywood's—true worst film.

Imagine my surprise when I found Glen or Glenda streaming on Amazon Prime Japan and watched it in the 21st century, now through the eyes of a self-aware queer person. Time has done nothing to smooth its rougher edges, although learning about its troubled production does explain the inclusion of some of its incongruous footage; apparently the producer felt Wood's cut ran too short. On the other hand, I marvel at Wood's attempt to portray queerness in a sympathetic light during an extremely conservative era of American history.

Glen or Glenda mashes together two loosely connected story threads, ostensibly in order to cash in on the then-recent social hubbub surrounding Christine Jorgensen, an early American recipient of sex reassignment surgery. Wood based the bulk of the script on his own experience as a transvestite, electing to also star as a man named Glen who sometimes goes by Glenda. Only late in the picture does anyone actually discuss a man who physically transitions, and this portion is mostly delivered via narration and stock footage—a cost-cutting maneuver that Wood would return to time and again.

However clumsy the execution, Glen or Glenda pleads with viewers to accept sexual minorities rather than ostracize them. The entire tale kicks off with the death of a cross-dresser despondent over their fourth arrest for appearing in public in women's clothes. The police find the body next to a suicide note; the victim's final words read "Let my body rest in death forever in the things I cannot wear in life." This hit me a lot harder today now that I know the astonishing number of LGBTQ children who, faced with rejection from their own families, elect to kill themselves.

Unfortunately, Ed Wood's fondness for fabulism means we cannot know for certain where his own preferences fell on the spectrum. In Glen or Glenda, his self-insert protagonist vehemently asserts his own heterosexuality, insisting that he merely enjoys wearing women's clothes. In Tim Burton's Ed Wood, Wood—as played by Johnny Depp—similarly denies any homosexual tendencies. Yet at least one person who knew Ed Wood personally claimed he did have relations with men while dressed as a woman using the name Shirley. In Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy, another of Wood's friends claims Ed expressed a desire to be reborn "as a blonde, a woman blonde."

This is not to say that we need to posthumously declare Ed Wood as bisexual or transgender or queer. Rather, I wish to laud him for using his limited means and talents to tell stories about—and hire—queer people, as this alone qualifies as a radical act. Bigots often imply that LGBTQ lives don't matter because they believe our very existence is just a fad. Using anecdotal evidence, they claim that since they never saw any transgender youths in their childhood, we all must have emerged during the social media age. Yet Glen or Glenda came out in 1953 when many baby boomers were still babies.

Queer issues aside, I also admire Ed Wood because he embraced his passion for filmmaking by becoming a filmmaker. Laugh at his work or laugh with it, but no one can deny Wood moved across the country and turned his dream into a reality. Had he reached his 60th birthday he would have spent his later years connecting with newfound fans thanks to The Golden Turkey Awards and VHS releases of his films.

Digital cameras, digital distribution, and the rise of the internet has made it easier than ever for aspiring auteurs to shoot their shot and share their vision with the world. Yet for every Tommy Wiseau or Neil Breen there are a thousand voices whose art leaves no impression at all. Only time will tell if anyone from this era strikes a nerve and reaches the cultural infamy of Edward D. Wood, Jr, but it's hard to imagine anyone clamoring to turn the making of Birdemic: Shock and Terror into a motion picture.

For me, the ultimate takeaway from Ed Wood—both the movie and the man—is to celebrate creativity over competence. I watch a lot of movies, I read, I play video games, I experience a broad range of artistic expression across various mediums. I refuse to accept Plan 9 from Outer Space or Glen or Glenda belong in the conversation surrounding the worst films ever made, not when I can watch either picture and feel connected to them. I'll gladly take that over expensive, star-studded affairs like Argylle where all I feel is emptiness as the events on-screen mean and say nothing.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.