What a great idea to come up with!

Rating: Null/10 (8 May 2004)

To come up with the idea that people acting in Ed Wood's movies would have lives that were far more unique and entertaining than the actual movies, is an achievement of it's own.
An example: one scene from "Ed Wood", where Ed Wood's team are filming in the middle of the night. They have got a bad "motorized rubber octopus"-prop without the..um.. motor. Actually, they just stole the octopus from a prop stock. The team have just finished the "sea" for the octopus, then the scientist, Bela Lugosi, about 70 at the time, steps in the water to "fight" with the octopus (ie. sit on it, scream, and flap it's rubber flippers around like a kid lost in his toys) after taking a shot of morphine.
If that really happened - and stuff like that must've happened around Ed Wood - the people in the set were sure to remember it for the rest of their lives.. surreal, funny, unique situations.
Funny film - at times you just feel sorry for Ed Wood, the center of this network of outcasts and weirdos - he basically wanted to make things happen as soon as possible without having the skills to pull them off. Johnny Depp really gives the impression of Ed Wood's will to make it big, and of course, how that driving force ends up making the movies so bad.
The whole film has a very surreal feeling to it, at times it feels like a "normal" biography, and at times it's very much like a 50s-movie with that black and white soul to the acting. The end result gives you a great feeling of the mood that must've surrounded Ed Wood, almost lets you smell his bad props. Nice work by Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Bill Murray, and especially Martin Landau.