Burton: "We remember, we care"

Rating: 8/10 (1 March 2004)

This is Tim Burton saying that no matter how many people don't care about B-horror pictures, he does, and showing us that there can be poetry in them. "Ed Wood" is a bio-pic of real-life B-hollywood director Edward D Wood Jr, done in the style of one of his pictures - unexplained framing devices, like Criswell's introduction, noirish lighting for no apparent reason, and incidental performances by actors who look like they've just shown up and not been told what part they're supposed to be playing. These last, like the doctor in Lugosi's hospital, are provided for colour, but are an example of the balance struck in this picture. It has the expression of a comedy - yes, we're asked to laugh at Wood's haphazard way of making pictures, and we can laugh about how terrible the pictures are, but beneath the comedy a great truth is found, and a message Tim Burton is passionate about is expressed. The heart of Ed Wood is really in the character of "washed-up" Dracula star Bela Lugosi (played to a tee and rewarded with an Oscar, by Martin Landau).

Twenty years after Dracula, Lugosi's career was over. Nobody cared about him. It was like, as is Hollywood lore, you're only as good as the last thing you've done. And whatever classic roles or films you may have done, it all counts for nothing if you do a bad picture. This theme of the cruel way Hollywood forgets its greatest talents is also why the name Orson Welles keeps cropping up. Its not because Welles made pictures like Ed Wood's, its because, like with Lugosi, Welles's having made what is considered to be the greatest picture of all time, Citizen Kane, counted for nothing in Hollywood. If your pictures didn't make money, you were useless - so Hollywood did everything it could to keep him from working - RKO sabotaged his Ambersons, and eventually he could not get backing for many great pictures in Hollywood that, and here there is another analogy with Ed Wood, he raised money for himself and made independently. It is this determination to succeed, and persist in your work no matter what others think of it that makes Ed Wood (thanks to a terrific fun performance from Johnny Depp) such an important and admirable character. You can't help liking Ed, for his irrepressible spirit and optimism. It was Ed Wood who gave Lugosi another chance, the content of which Burton romanticises and focuses on in his film. Ed Wood cared about Lugosi's work - Wood didn't care about popular opinion which said Lugosi was "washed up," whatever that meant. Wood had seen Dracula, and Lugosi was a legend, and that was all that mattered. Wood gave him the chance to be in pictures again, symbolising the appreciation of great works, not recent moneymakers. Burton and Martin Landau give the legend of Bela Lugosi his last great performance, turning him into the tragic figure to end all tragic figures. His performance of his "I have no home speech" set to stirring, haunting music, on the steps of the hospital - his performance of the infamous flower-smelling scene from Plan Nine from Outer Space, the last footage Lugosi ever shot - all have the tone of appreciating a legend, giving Lugosi his due, saying who gives a sh*t if Hollywood doesn't remember, we remember.