The X-Files: Fight the Future

When the first X-Files film came out in 1998, the television show was at the height of its popularity. It made sense that its creator Chris Carter would capitalize on his show’s status within the popular culture zeitgeist by making the jump to the big screen and thereby placing the world he created on a larger canvas. In keeping with the template set forth by the show, there were two routes he could have gone with Fight the Future – a stand-alone adventure or tap into the show’s ongoing storyline: a complex government conspiracy to cover-up the existence of extra-terrestrials. He choose the latter and in doing so had to tread a fine line between making the film accessible to the average filmgoer while still appealing to the show’s dedicated fanbase.

In North Texas, a group of young boys uncover human remains in a pit. One of them (Lucas Black) falls in and is infected with some kind of black liquid. Naturally, the United States government quickly moves in and takes the boy. We meet FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in Dallas investigating a terrorist bomb threat on a government building. The X-Files division has been officially closed by their superiors and so they have been relegated to routine work (well, routine for them anyway). Mulder and Scully discover the bomb and narrowly avoid being blown up in a thrilling sequence that eerie evoked the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, still fresh in a lot of people’s minds. As the dust settles, questions remain – who did it and why? And why did the lone FBI agent (Terry O’Quinn) left to disarm the bomb do nothing?

Fight the Future starts with our heroes really up against it what with the X-Files closed and Mulder and Scully split up after the fallout in Texas. When Mulder is at his lowest, he meets a friend of his father’s – Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil (played rather nicely by Martin Landau) who tells him that the explosion was part of a larger cover-up involving the boy and the mysterious black liquid. Whatever is going on you can bet it involves the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis), a shadowy government operative in charge of keeping the government’s involvement with extraterrestrials a secret. Mulder and Scully spend the rest of the film trying to find the answers to these questions.

It’s good to see the chemistry between David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson worked just as well on the big screen as it did on the small one. Having done five seasons of the show prior to the film, the two actors were, by then, quite familiar with their characters and made the transition with ease. Carter placed more emphasis on the "relationship" between Mulder and Scully in Fight the Future. Over the course of the show they grew to care deeply for one another, but without actually expressing it sexually. This touching concern for one another is usually downplayed in the series, but in the film it provides a strong, humanistic core instead of relying solely on government conspiracies and things that go bump in the night to keep our attention. That being said, Carter isn’t above playfully messing with a faction of fan that wanted to see Mulder and Scully become romantically involved (they almost kiss!).

Duchovny is good as the dry-witted believer who buys into the alien conspiracy because of a personal involvement, while Anderson works well playing off of him as the jaded cynic who relies on science and logic to make sense of the things they encounter. What makes Mulder and Scully work so well is their chemistry and how their respective strengths and weaknesses compliment each other. By this point, they’ve been through so much together and seen so much that they genuinely care about one another. As a result, fans became emotionally invested in their episodic adventures, which is in turn kicked up a notch with the film.

The X-Files was a T.V. show that always had a distinctly cinematic look to it. This approach set it apart from most shows at the time that opted for a bland, homogenous look. It was nice to see Carter enjoying a substantial increase in budget ($66 million!) while not losing the intimate appeal of the show – Mulder and Scully. With a significantly larger budget, Carter expanded the scope of the series by sending Mulder and Scully to the farthest reaches of the globe, from Washington, D.C. to England to Tunisia. This results in some truly breathtaking landscape shots that could not be recreated on T.V. – their impact would not be as great. It’s not an insult to call Fight the Future an expensive episode of the show.

While the film does attempt to bring newbies up to speed – albeit via a clumsy exposition scene where a drunk Mulder tells a bartender (Glenne Headly wasted in a cameo) what he does for a living – it largely appeals to fans of the show and assumes that anyone watching is familiar with its mythology. Carter also trots out several of the show’s recurring characters, like the gruff Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), Mulder and Scully’s hard-nosed boss, and the trio of conspiracy theorists known as the Lone Gunmen whose charming wackiness is relegated to a disappointing cameo that feels tacked on.

The show’s creator Chris Carter and co-producer Frank Spotnitz came up with the plot for Fight the Future over eight days and described it as “an adventure story with political under currents, more like The Parallax View than a monster episode of X-Files.” Carter wrote the screenplay for the film during the break between seasons four and five. In addition, he had to anticipate what would happen in the latter season – before it was even made! “It was all fresh ground for us. We had to plan long in advance.”

Carter hand-picked regular series director Rob Bowman to helm the film, which was a wise choice considering he had worked on over 20 episodes. He also helped regular cast members make the adjustment from T.V. to film seamlessly because of the rapport he already had with them. Principal photography took place during the spring and summer of 1997. The cast were certainly aware of the difference between making the show and working on the film and in the case of Gillian Anderson thrived on it: “What was exciting about it was the intensity of it. Knowing that there are three, four, five, six cameras rolling at one time getting different angles, different aspects of what’s happening.”

Carter was certainly aware of the risks of making a film while the show was still airing original episodes: “The movie was a calculated risk. You always take the chance of damaging the series because if the movie fails, people might not come back to the show.” In addition, the studio was worried that the film’s plot would be too dense or unclear for the uninitiated moviegoer not familiar with the show, but Carter claimed that it “will bring new people into our ongoing story, but won’t offend the hardcore viewer.”

Fight the Future received mostly positive to mixed reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “I liked the way the movie looked, and the unforced urgency of Mulder and Scully, and the way the plot was told through verbal puzzles and visual revelations, rather than through boring action scenes.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Mr. Duchovny sustains enough cool, deadpan intellect and suppressed passion to give the story a center. Ms. Anderson has the harsher, more restrictive role, but she plays it with familiar hardboiled glamour.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B+” rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, “Distrust, anxiety, the dread-heavy need to constantly peel away layers of lies and cover-ups in search of The Truth imbue this honest first feature with just the right overtones of late-20^th-century anxiety.” However, the Washington Post’s Rita Kempley wrote, “The X-Files movie is really just a two-hour teaser for the series’s sixth season. And little else.” Finally, the Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan wrote, “Things get more or less explained by the close, but the fun of The X-Files is clearly more in the creation of unease than in the cleaning up of mysteries.”

Fight the Future works well as a bridge between seasons five and six, expanding the show’s mythology in a way that justified making the jump to the big screen instead of feeling like they were going for quick cash grab on the part of the studio. Carter successfully raises the stakes in the film by splitting up Mulder and Scully and shedding more light on another part of the alien conspiracy. Much like the show, the film works best when it follows Mulder down shadowy alleyways and dimly-lit rooms talking to men who feed him tantalizing bits of information about the larger conspiracy at work. These scenes illustrate one of the primary influences on the show – paranoid conspiracy thrillers from the 1970s – and how Carter and his writers cleverly fused them with stories about aliens and the supernatural.

SOURCES

Carter, Bill. “X-Files Tries to Keep Its Murky Promise.” The New York Times. November 7, 1998.

McIntyre, Gina. “Action Anderson.” The X-Files Movie Official Magazine. June 1998.

Tucker, Ken. “Playing with Fire.” Entertainment Weekly. June 12, 1998.

Blu-Ray Review of the Week: Frankenweenie

Since the 2000s, Tim Burton has played it relatively safe, often falling back on his name as a familiar (and marketable) brand that mainstream audiences know and recognize. With the horrible misfire that was the Planet of the Apes (2001) remake, he directed a series of impersonal studio blockbusters that included the likes of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and Alice in Wonderland (2010). Sure, there was the occasional, more personal effort, like Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), but Burton only seemed to turn off the autopilot on animated projects like Corpse Bride (2005).

It seems like Burton uses his clout from big budget box office successes to make more personal projects. Case in point: Frankenweenie (2012), a black and white stop-motion animated film that expands the live-action short he made early on in his career into feature-length. Unfortunately, this quirky, deeply personal film was released around the same time as several other similarly themed animated films and only had a modest performance at the box office. It’s too bad really, as it is Burton’s best film in ages.

Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) is a bit of a loner – a child who spends most of his free-time making crude, animated movies rather than making friends with kids his own age. He doesn’t need friends so long as he has man’s best, his dog Sparky. However, tragedy strikes one day when Sparky is accidentally killed. Understandably distraught, Victor is inspired by his science teacher (who looks suspiciously a lot like Vincent Price) and his love of horror films to resurrect his beloved pet a la Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Complications arise when his creation escapes the confine of his house and escapes out into the world.

Frankenweenie is Burton’s most personal and engaging film in years as it harkens back to his early work. Victor crosses the boundaries of life and death, which echoes the Maitlands in Beetlejuice (1988). Victor and his family live in the same kind of homogenous suburbia as Ed and his adoptive parents in Edward Scissorhands (1990). Victor makes the same kind of rudimentary yet goofily heartfelt monster movies as Ed Wood does in Ed Wood (1994). It’s no coincidence that these aforementioned films are also among Burton’s very best.

Frankenweenie also sees Burton reunited with past collaborators like Catherine O’Hara (Beetlejuice), Martin Short (Mars Attacks!), Martin Landau (Ed Wood), and Winona Ryder (Edward Scissorhands) providing the voices for several characters in the film. Behind the scenes, frequent collaborator Danny Elfman returns to provide an evocative score that pays tribute to the Universal horror films of the 1930s.

As the title suggests, Frankenweenie is basically Frankenstein (1931) for children but with plenty of sly references for his older fans (at one point, Victor’s parents are watching Christopher Lee as Dracula in a Hammer horror movie). Victor fits in quite nicely with Burton’s roster of cinematic outsiders marginalized by the ignorant masses that misunderstand them. The atmospheric black and white stop-motion animation has a texture to it that almost feels tangible unlike most of the CG animated films being made today. Sadly, this throwback to an older style of animation, coupled with it being in black and white, probably did not help it commercially but I think Frankenweenie will be rediscovered on home video where its audience will grow and its legacy will endure. Hopefully, its modest commercial returns will not scare Burton off from making more personal films like this one.

Special Features:

“Original Short: Captain Sparky vs The Flying Saucers” is the clever movie within a movie that Victor creates (with Sparky’s help) and is included in its entirety. It is a loving homage to alien invasion films from the 1950s.

“Miniatures in Motion: Bringing Frankenweenie to Life” takes a look at the stop-motion animation process for this film. We see how the animators brought Burton’s original drawings to life. It is wonderful to see all these people crafting a film with their hands instead of relying predominantly on CGI.

“Frankenweenie Touring Exhibit” is a brief featurette about a traveling exhibit of props and production sketches from the film displayed for people from all over the world to see.

“Original Live-Action Frankenweenie Short” was made in 1984 and was shot in gorgeous black and white. It’s about a young boy named Vincent (Barret Oliver) who decides to resurrect his dead dog Sparky a la Dr. Frankenstein. Shelley Duvall and Daniel Stern play his very Leave It To Beaver-esque parents. Also featured is the late-great Paul Bartel as Vincent’s science teacher.

Finally, there is a music video for “Pet Sematary” by the Plain White T’s. It is your standard tie-in video with the band playing over footage from the film.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream

Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola has always been at odds with the Hollywood studio system. He has spent the majority of his career trying to make movies without their help. He is a genius and an innovator in the area of film but has had to relinquish his dream of independence and submit to the system he despises. This makes him the perfect person to do a film about Preston Tucker, a 1940s automobile designer who dreamed of making cars outside of the established system, only to be defeated by the said system. The parallels between Coppola and this intriguing historical figure are very similar and it is easy to see what attracted the director to a project that celebrated a distinctive vision, innovation, and a passion to create something truly unique. Coppola not only sees these attributes in his subject, but in himself as well. The end result: Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), an enthusiastic and entertaining tribute to a misunderstood dreamer.

Tucker is a film cleverly presented as a kitschy promotional film/documentary straight out of the 1950s, complete with a cheery narrator and flashy titles that occasionally decorate the screen. However, these amusing details never distract us from the story that concerns Preston Tucker's (Jeff Bridges) dream of making a safe and reliable family automobile — a rather radical idea for his time. As a result, the established car manufacturers considered his car a threat to their products and with good reason. Tucker's car could be built for a fraction of the money it took the mainstream car makers to build one. His car also featured a wide array of extras like disc brakes, seat belts, a fuel-injected engine in the rear, a padded dashboard, and a front windshield that popped out in a severe collision. As amazing as it seems, these ideas were considered revolutionary at the time, and as Tucker began to make his car a reality, the powerful Detroit automobile makers and the authorities in Washington, D.C. worked together to ruin him. Even though Tucker's life is ultimately one that encompasses a tragic rise and fall, the film does not feel like a somber lament but rather a colorful celebration of the wonderful things that he achieved.

The film's inception can be traced as far back as 1976 when Coppola considered it as a potential project with Marlon Brando playing Tucker. Nothing ever materialized and so Coppola ended up meeting with composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein with the idea of transforming the film into a musical comedy. This approach was deemed "impractical" and the film was shelved again. It didn't hurt that anyone less than 30 years of age would even know that this person actually existed. A studio wasn't interested in doing a film on a rather obscure historical figure like Preston Tucker.

It wasn't until 1986 that Tucker became a viable commodity in the eyes of a studio. This was due in large part to the involvement of Coppola's close friend and cinematic contemporary, George Lucas who guaranteed a $25 million budget for the film. Lucas' timing couldn't have been more perfect for Coppola. He was still mourning the death of his son, Gio (Coppola dedicated the film to him) and the opportunity to do a motion picture with this much creative and financial freedom renewed his love affair with film.

Coppola had a certain amount of personal affiliation with the material. His father had been one of the original investors in Tucker stock and since Coppola was a young boy he had always admired the inventor's short-lived legacy. Although, he stated in an interview that, "It was that beautiful, gleaming car that caught my imagination, but it was also something else: the whole notion of what our country was going to be like in twenty or thirty years, based on our new position in the world...our technological inventiveness." However, if one begins to examine the careers of both men, a strong parallel between the two begins to emerge. Tucker tried to push the existing boundaries of car manufacturing much in the same way that Coppola attempted to experiment with the rules of mainstream filmmaking. Like Coppola refusing to work in Hollywood, the established area to make films, Tucker resisted the urge to conform and manufacture his cars in Detroit, the heart of America's car makers. The more the lives of both men are examined and compared, it is readily apparent to see that a boyhood admiration of the man was not the only thing that drew Coppola to this project; he saw much of himself in Preston Tucker.

By this extension, Tucker could also mirror the life of filmmaker Orson Welles, another dreamer whose ambitions often outdistanced his grasp. It's no secret that Coppola greatly admired and was influenced by Welles. Many of his films contain echoes of Welles' films — in particular Rumble Fish (1983) which is an homage of sorts to the techniques that the director made famous with Citizen Kane (1941). "I not only always admired Orson Welles, I always was drawn to the kinds of things he seemed to have been interested in — the theatre, magic, cinema, as having powerful illusion-creating abilities. And just innovation in general, to be able to use the tools of theatre or radio in a new way, that's a most wonderful thing." Tucker continues Coppola's love affair with the life and work of Orson Welles by imparting some of the man's characteristics into Preston Tucker and by using many of the director's celebrated techniques (low angle shots and deep focus photography) in his own film.

Principal photography for Tucker began on April 13, 1987 shot on location in and around the Bay Area. Lucas' input on the production side of things helped Coppola immensely as his wife, Eleanor remembers, "Usually he's at odds with the production side of things; they haven't understood him, and haven't given him money in the areas where he needed it. On Tucker, he felt relieved to turn over some of the responsibility to George, who's a fellow filmmaker." Lucas not only leant his state-of-the-art sound facilities to Coppola, but his own expertise in filmmaking as well. This resulted in one of the director's most enjoyable and entertaining films to date.

With Tucker, Jeff Bridges shows yet again why he is one of the best actors working in film today. He plays Tucker as the eternal optimist; no matter how bad things get he remains positive. And yet, the car manufacturer does not come across as a grinning idiot, which is due in large part to Bridges' ability of showing us glimpses of Tucker's darker side — the frustration and anger he feels whenever his dreams are consistently set back. Ultimately, the enthusiasm he imparts on Tucker's character is contagious — you can't help but root for him and hope that he succeeds. Johnny Depp would channel this same kind of irrepressible optimism as filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994).

Martin Landau's character, Abe Karatz, Tucker's right hand man, is the perfect foil for Bridges' character. Abe remains a crabby cynic and sober realist throughout the film and this acts as a nice counterbalance to Tucker the dreamer. Landau's performance is nothing short of impressive and it is easy to see why he was nominated for an Academy Award — he steals every scene he's in. But Landau's best moment is when he confronts Tucker one night to tell him that he's resigning from the team. The FBI has exerted a tremendous amount of pressure by threatening to bring to light Abe's criminal past. It's an emotionally charged scene as Abe tells Tucker, "If you get too close to people, you catch their dreams." It is at this moment that Abe transforms from cynic to dreamer.

These two actors are in turn supported by a wonderful cast that features Joan Allen, Dean Stockwell, Coppola regular, Frederic Forrest, Mako, Elias Koteas, Christian Slater, and Lloyd Bridges in an uncredited role as Senator Ferguson, Tucker's most formidable opponent in his battle to make automobiles. Even though each of their respective screen times vary in length they are all important in the telling of Tucker's story.

Another excellent aspect of the film is its look. With longtime collaborators like cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro and production designer Dean Tavoularis, Coppola created yet another visually impressive film. Every frame of Tucker looks beautiful and evokes a nostalgic image of the '50s with its warm color scheme that consists of brown and golden hues. This film also contains an incredible amount of detail, from the period clothing and hairstyles of the characters, to the look of Tucker's cars. All of this gives the impression that you've time warped back to America in the 1950s or at least the way most people would like to remember it.

Coppola’s film was generally well-received by most critics. However, Roger Ebert wrote, “Tucker does not probe the inner recesses of Preston Tucker, is not curious about what really makes him tick, does not find any weaknesses, and blames his problems, not on his own knack for self-destruction, but on the workings of a conspiracy. And it makes the press into a convenient and hostile villain.” In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, “His emotional connections with Tucker cars and this project are inextricable … And that heartfelt passion seems to have fueled what could be a needed and satisfying commercial breakthrough for Coppola.” Time magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “But there is another more common, more potent American Dream, which involves not the invention of products but the invention of self. And this movie, genial and fierce, is proof of Tucker's success in that more basic line. And proof of its sure grip on our imaginations.” In his review for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “Francis Coppola's stylish and heartfelt tribute to the innovative automobile designer Preston Thomas Tucker turns out to be one of his most personal and successful movies.”

If there is one drawback to the film, it is Coppola's omission of the more unsavory aspects of Tucker's life, like the disappearance of the $26 million that he raised. This mystery is never resolved — a significant blemish on this otherwise excellent film. Tucker makes a compelling argument against the stifling of artistic expression and innovation. If people like Preston Tucker were encouraged rather than oppressed perhaps the world would be a better place. Coppola's film argues that the country needs more people who are willing to think big and have the courage to take risks — two of the many attributes that the United States was founded on — if we are to progress and develop as a civilization. By this reasoning, the last line spoken in Tucker could actually be the film's credo: "It's the idea that counts, and the dream."

SOURCES

Corliss, Richard and Jean McDowell. "How Bridges Fights Boredom." Time. August 15, 1988.

Cowie, Peter. Coppola: A Biography. Da Capo Press. 1994. 

Garcia, Chris. "Martin Landau Rolls Up in a New Vehicle." Austin American-Statesman. August 7, 1988. 

Lindsey, Robert. "Francis Ford Coppola: Promises to Keep." The New York Times. July 24, 1988.

The Movies About Movies Blog-A-Thon: Ed Wood

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of the Movies About Movies Blog-A-Thon being coordinated at the goatdogblog.

“There are times in history, like Paris in the ‘20s, when groups of artists happen to get together at the same time. I think of this as kind of the bad version.”
-- Tim Burton

For those of us who have always loved to watch movies Ed Wood (1994) is a gloriously atmospheric, black and white love letter to cinema. Tim Burton's film recalls a bygone era when one could see movies in theaters with palatial stages and grandiose art deco architecture. He understands that for the devoted cineaste, the best moments in life have often been spent in a darkened movie theater being enveloped by a film and becoming one with the environment it creates for two hours. Watching a movie is a form of escape from the harsh realities of the real world and Ed Wood argues that making films can also do the same thing. Of course, Burton's movie takes this idea to an extreme. The characters that populate the movie are perhaps a little too devoted to their craft — so much so that they develop an intense denial towards the awful elements in their own lives.

No one understands and appreciates this devotion to cinema more than Burton. From Beetlejuice (1988) to Mars Attacks! (1996), his films are lovingly crafted homages to the horror and science fiction B-movies that the director enjoyed in his childhood. Burton once commented in an interview, “There’s a roughness and a surprising nature to most B movies that you don’t get in classic films — something more immediate.” With Ed Wood, Burton indulges this obsession completely by telling the story of a man who loved to create and watch movies.

Initially, Ed Wood may seem like a rather odd vehicle in which to celebrate a love of movies. What does the infamously touted "worst filmmaker of all-time" have to do with what makes movies so great? As Burton's film amply demonstrates, what filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. lacked in technical merits to make a good movie, he more than made up for with heart and enthusiastic perseverance.

Ed Wood was born in Poughkeepsie, New York on October 10, 1924. He spent his youth watching westerns and Universal horror films. Wood first got bitten by the filmmaking bug when his parents gave him a movie camera at eleven years of age. After serving as a Marine in the Pacific during World War II, he moved to Hollywood in 1948. He started off as an actor in local theater and idolized Orson Welles. Wood spent a few years doing little but making contacts, including aspiring producer Alex Gordon who helped him meet Bela Lugosi.

Wood and Lugosi became friends and when he finally scraped together enough financing to make Glen or Glenda (1953), he gave Lugosi a role as an omniscient master of human fates. Wood gave Lugosi a larger role in Bride of the Monster (1955), despite the actor’s increasing ill health. Lugosi’s various drug addictions and his bad health finally took their toll and he died on August 16, 1956. Wood was crushed. However, before Lugosi’s death, Wood shot some generic footage of him in a cemetery and outside his home. This footage became the basis for Wood’s most infamous film, Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959). He made Plan 9 for only $6,000, armed with stock footage and a script he had written in less than two weeks. The film barely got a distributor, made no money and was shortly pulled from theaters. By the 1960s, Wood was reduced to writing trashy novels and making low budget sex films. He died from a heart failure on December 10, 1978 in North Hollywood.

Ed Wood spans the six year period in which he made his most celebrated movies. Starting with the autobiographical Glen or Glenda and climaxing with the release of Plan 9 From Outer Space, Burton's film eschews the traditional biopic format for a looser, more impressionistic take on Wood's life. This approach is necessary because many of the details of the cult filmmaker's life are contradicted by those who knew him or are simply not known, as documented in Rudolph Grey’s excellent oral biography, Nightmare of Ecstasy. Burton opts for a more intimate character study of the director and his small but dedicated crew. He never puts these people down, but rather celebrates their intense love of making films.

The origins for Ed Wood can be traced back to two men. During his sophomore year at the University of Southern California, Scott Alexander wrote a proposal for a documentary about Ed Wood entitled, The Man in the Angora Sweater. Fellow classmate and screenwriting partner, Larry Karaszewski remembers that they had "always talked about what a great biopic it would be. But we figured there would be no one on the planet Earth who would make this movie or want to make this movie, because these aren't the sort of movies that are made." The two film students were not interested in "making fun of Ed Wood the way most traditional things written about Ed up to this time had done," Karaszewski recalls. "What's interesting is that since Ed Wood was so on the fringe of Hollywood, the story became one that was more about someone who wants to be a film director than about a guy who actually is a film director."

Alexander and Karaszewski went on to write the Problem Child films but the Ed Wood movie was always in the back of their minds. Out of frustration from being pigeonholed, they wrote a 10-page treatment for film school buddy Michael Lehmann with Karaszewski's tongue-in-cheek pitch, "the guys who wrote Problem Child and the guy who directed Hudson Hawk making a movie about the worst filmmaker of all time." Lehmann showed the treatment to his producer, Denise DiNovi, who in turn showed it to Tim Burton. The trio struck a deal where Lehman would direct and DiNovi and Burton would produce the film.

Burton originally was going to take the role of producer because he was set to direct Mary Reilly (1995), a version of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story but told from the perspective of the doctor's housekeeper. However, Columbia Pictures was interested in speeding up the production faster than Burton wanted and they also rejected his casting of Winona Ryder as the housekeeper in favor of Julia Roberts. Frustrated, Burton left the project and regrouped at a farmhouse in Poughkeepsie, New York. He started reading Grey’s Nightmare of Ecstasy book in preparation for the movie. The more he read, the more interested he became in Wood and his world, to the point where he wanted to direct the film.

Burton was attracted to Wood's unusual hopefulness. He recalled in an interview about how he was drawn to the man's "extreme optimism, to the point where there was an incredible amount of denial. And there's something charming to me about that." The filmmaker also identified with the Wood-Bela Lugosi relationship as it mirrored, in some ways, his relationship with Vincent Price. "Meeting Vincent had an incredible impact on me, the same impact Ed must have felt meeting and working with his idol."

However, no screenplay had been written at this point. So, Alexander and Karaszewski worked 14-hour days, seven days a week for six weeks writing what would eventually become a 147-page screenplay. For the two writers, there was a certain level of desperation that inspired such a large output in such a short span of time. Alexander told Film Threat magazine that "there was a bit of mercenary attitude behind the script in the fact that we were trying to appeal to Tim's instincts. He's a very personal filmmaker and everything with him is on a gut level . . . We knew we had one shot, and so we tried to put in scenes that would work for him on an iconographic level or would parallel his relationships." This angle paid off as Burton liked their first draft so much that he agreed to direct and use said draft without any revisions — a practice virtually unheard of today where screenplays are re-written and doctored to death. Lehmann, who was originally supposed to direct, was developing the screenplay for Airheads (1994) into a movie and so he and Burton swapped roles on the Ed Wood movie.

Ed Wood was in development with Columbia Pictures but this soon changed when problems between the studio and Burton arose. The director wanted to shoot the film in black and white with total creative control. Karaszewski remembers at the time that "the studio was saying, 'How about if we shot it on a color negative and released it here in black-and-white, but then later on if the film is not that successful we could make it a color video?' Tim said no way." Burton recalls, “I went through that ten years ago on Frankenweenie. It looks like shit. If you’re going to make a decision, make a decision. You don’t hedge it.” Columbia responded by putting the film in turnaround a month before principal photography was scheduled to start. Almost immediately Warner Brothers, Paramount and Fox became interested in optioning the film but Burton went with Disney because they agreed to give him complete creative control and an $18 million budget but only if he worked for scale.

After working on large-sized, multi-million dollar productions like Batman Returns (1992), Burton saw Ed Wood as a chance to be more instinctive in his filmmaking approach. "On a picture like this I find you don't need to storyboard. You're working mainly with actors, and there's no effects going on, so it's best to be more spontaneous." This attitude towards the filmmaking process results in Burton's most accomplished movie to date. Ed Wood is a perfect blend of the filmmaker's unique visual style and his pre-occupation with what Gavin Smith calls, "the irrepressible outsider who will not be denied." Wood fits in with other Burton protagonists, like Pee-Wee Herman, Batman, and Edward Scissorhands, who do not fit into normal mainstream society but struggle to achieve their dreams anyway.

With this in mind, it seems only fitting that Burton cast Johnny Depp as Wood. It was the second time that the two had worked together (the first being Edward Scissorhands) and further reinforced the belief by many film critics that Depp was actually Burton's cinematic alter-ego. For Depp, the appeal of Ed Wood was the era that the filmmaker and his crew lived in:

“There must have been a kind of optimism that we lack today. People wore suits then. People wore overcoats and hats. Somehow that meant something to me. People cared. There was a kind of enthusiasm about the country. That was the big thing that had to be put across. It was an innocent time."

Depp portrays Wood as a naïve dreamer who loves the movies. He even gets ideas for movies from discarded stock footage that a stagehand runs for him. "Why if I had half the chance, I could make an entire movie out of this stock footage," he says as he dramatically constructs an absurd tale from a montage of completely unrelated footage that could only come from his brain. There is something contagious about this approach that makes you root for Wood to succeed — even if you are aware of the director's eventual downward spiral into poverty and obscurity.

To play the pivotal role of Bela Lugosi, Burton cast legendary character actor, Martin Landau. For the director, Landau was his only choice. "Martin has done great movies. He's done weird cheesy horror movies. He's done it all." The veteran thespian was no stranger to genre films and immersed himself completely in the part. The first thing he did was make-up tests with Rick Baker to capture the external essence of Lugosi. Baker didn't use extensive applications on Landau, just enough to allow the actor to use his face to act and express while also resembling Lugosi physically. As Landau remembers, "I could then react, not as I would react, but as Lugosi would react. Ultimately I walk differently, I behave differently and I sound differently."
To augment the rather Method style of getting into character, Landau also did extensive research on his subject, watching 25 of Lugosi movies and seven interviews with the man between the years of 1931 and 1956. From this research Landau constructs a Lugosi that is a gruff, grumpy old man who spits out obscenities when provoked. He's the jaded counterpoint to Wood's youthful optimism. At one point he says, "this business, this town, it chews you up, then spits you out. I'm just an ex-bogeyman." He underlines perfectly one of the most important unwritten rules that governs Hollywood: you're only good as your last movie.

And yet, Lugosi also talks about what's wrong with modern horror films: "they don't want the classic horror films anymore. Today, it's all giant bugs. Giant spiders, giant grasshoppers. Who would believe such nonsense?" For Lugosi, the older films were "mythic, they had poetry." Even though he is talking about horror films of the '50s, Lugosi could easily be talking about the horror films of today where subtlety and imagination has been replaced by sterile, state-of-the-art special effects and formulaic stories. The clunky effects of these older movies, with their rubber-suited monsters and fake blood, have a certain texture to them that you can almost touch. There is something comforting about this because you know that it's real. Computer effects, for the most part, lack any real textures and are too perfect looking — they lack any kind of personality.

If Ed Wood is a loving homage to movies, it is all the more fitting that Orson Welles, the patron saint of cinema, is celebrated throughout. From the obvious touches, like the poster of Citizen Kane (1941) that hangs in Wood's office, to the use of deep focus photography (where the fore, middle and background are all in focus) and low angle perspective shots favored by Welles, his presence is felt everywhere. This culminates in a meeting between the auteur and Wood at Musso and Frank Grill, a famous West Coast eatery. With his stocky build and deep voice, Vincent D'Onofrio bears an uncanny resemblance to Welles. As he and Wood share a drink and commiserate about their struggles to get films made, there is a particularly important exchange:

Triumphant music plays in the background as Welles delivers this sage advice and it inspires Wood to go back and finish Plan 9 his way, right of wrong. For Burton it was important to include this scene even though it never actually happened because Wood often equated himself with Welles.

Ed Wood ends with a triumphant screening of Plan 9 From Outer Space at the same theater where Bride of the Monster failed. Even though this never really happened, it is a nice way to end the movie — on a high note instead of what really happened. Wood became an alcoholic and was reduced to making schlocky nudie films. Burton clearly means to celebrate the man and his love of movies and so this bit of revisionism can be forgiven. After all, there are many articles and books that document the less savory aspects of Wood's life.

With Ed Wood, Burton transforms the filmmaker into the ultimate cinephile. Wood criticizes Vampira for not giving Lugosi's movie the proper amount of respect and mouths the dialogue to movies as he watches them — totally enraptured in the experience. As Gavin Smith pointed out in his interview with Burton, Wood is the “patron saint of movie junkies, raptly mouthing his own films’ dialogue Rocky Horror-style, his own number one fan.”

Ed Wood had its world premiere at the 32nd New York Film Festival at the Lincoln Center. Burton's film was also shown later at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. When it went into wide release on October 7, 1994 in 623 theaters, it grossed $1.9 million in its opening weekend. The film went on to gross $5.8 million in North America, well below its estimated $18 million production budget.

Reviews, however, were highly positive. Roger Ebert, in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote, "Burton has made is a film which celebrates Wood more than it mocks him, and which celebrates, too, the zany spirit of 1950s exploitation films – in which a great title, a has-been star and a lurid ad campaign were enough to get bookings for some of the oddest films ever made." USA Today gave the film four out of four stars and declared it, "Burton's best since Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and if that doesn't tickle you, stay away from Ed Wood movies." In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin said that the film was "an unobtrusively gorgeous black-and-white film with a wide range of striking visual effects." Despite the film being a commercial disaster, Burton is very proud of the movie. "I love the movie, I'm proud of it. It's just that no one came. I guess if I was like everybody else, I would just blame a bad marketing campaign. But that's too easy." As Landau put it in an interview, the real joy came from the experience of making the actual movie. “I loved the challenge of doing it. It was a great set to work on, and Tim and Johnny and I had a day of mourning when it was all over.”

And yet, Ed Wood has endured. It went on to win two Academy Awards (one for Landau's performance and one for Baker's make-up) and a slew of critics’ awards. The movie has also become a favorite of film buffs everywhere, which is rather fitting considering that this is exactly its target audience. Sadly, Burton went on to make Planet of the Apes (2001), a paint-by-numbers action film with expensive computer effects that lacked any of Burton's distinctive personality — the complete antithesis to Ed Wood. Hopefully, he has not become completely absorbed by the Hollywood system and that there is still some of the spirit of Ed Wood left in him.

Special thanks to the Depp Impact site for the stills from the film. Here is a page dedicated to film from the best website dedicated to Burton and his films. This is actually were this article was originally published.

Val brought to my attention a wonderful short film that Vincent D'Onofrio directed called Five Minutes Mr. Welles that debuted at the 2004 Venice Film Festival and addresses his performance in Ed Wood as Orson Welles and how his voice was actually dubbed over.

SOURCES

Arnold, Gary. (1994-10-02). "Depp sees promise in cult filmmaker Ed Wood's story." The Washington Times. October 2, 1994.

Clark, John. "The Wood, The Bad, and The Ugly." Premiere. 1994.

French, Lawrence. "Playing Bela Lugosi." Cinefantastique. October 1994.

French, Lawrence. "Tim Burton's Ed Wood." Cinefantastique. October 1994.

Gore, Chris and Jeremy Berg. "Ed or Johnny: The Strange Case of Ed Wood." Film Threat. December 1994.

Salisbury, Mark. Burton on Burton. Faber & Faber. 1995.

Thompson, Bob. "Quirky Arquette Learns to Play Normal." Toronto Sun. October 4, 1994.