Beetlejuice

Tim Burton's films are populated by outsiders and non-conformists with their own unique vision of life that sets them apart from mainstream society. It is this affinity for the disaffected that is perhaps the most personal aspect of his work. The success of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985) paved the way for Burton's next feature, Beetlejuice (1988), his calling card – a breakout film that led to his getting the job to direct Batman (1989). It is also one of the purest examples of his distinctive sensibilities – a skewed sense of the world as seen through the eyes of someone who is an outsider.

Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin) are a happily married couple living in a small town when they are killed in a car accident on the way home from running an errand. In a darkly whimsical touch, their demise hinges on a small dog perched precariously on a plank of wood that sends them off a bridge to a watery demise. The Maitlands come home with no recollection of how they got back. It slowly dawns on them that they’ve died. Maybe it’s the presence of a book entitled, Handbook for the Recently Deceased (“It reads like stereo instructions,” Adam laments) or maybe it’s when he steps out of the house and finds himself in a nightmarish realm populated by a gigantic sandworm.

At first, Barbara and Adam think they’re in some kind of heaven – getting to spend eternity in a home they love, but their idyllic existence is shattered when the Deetzes arrive and move in. Delia (Catherine O’Hara) fancies herself an artist (“This is my art and it is dangerous!” is a priceless bit she says in describing her work), but is actually quite awful. Her husband Charles (Jeffrey Jones) is a crass former real estate developer. Lydia (Winona Ryder) is their daughter, a brooding girl decked out all in black and who lives by the credo, “My life is a dark room. One big dark room.” Only she can see the Maitlands (“I myself am strange and unusual.”) and becomes sympathetic to their plight.

Thrown into the mix is Otho (Glenn Shadix), a trendy hipster interior decorator (“So few clients are able to read my mind. They just aren’t open to the experience.”) that helps Delia transform the Maitland house into a Yuppie nightmare. Barbara and Adam want to get rid of the Deetzes and seek help from the afterlife. First, they go to a kind of Department of Motor Vehicles from the beyond and are assigned a caseworker by the name of Juno (Sylvia Sidney) who gives them some advice.

The waiting room on the way to meet Juno is an amusing tableau of grotesques, from a woman cut in half to a man with a shrunken head to a man with a shark still attached to his leg. It is all of these little touches that bring the afterlife scenes vividly to life and are so memorable, like the sickly yellow and green lighting scheme that portrays it as some kind of bureaucratic hell, or when Juno has a cigarette and the smoke exits the slit around her neck.

When her advice doesn’t get rid of the Deetzes, but instead encourages them to stay (in a memorable scene where the Maitlands force the Deetzes and their friends from the city to lip-synch and dance around to “The Banana Boat Song” by Harry Belafonte), they enlist the help of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), a self-professed "bio-exorcist" who helps the recently deceased from being "plagued by the living,” and acts like a perverted used car salesman. Not surprisingly, he has his own agenda, which soon puts him at odds with the Maitlands, culminating in a wonderfully surreal battle royale between the good ghosts and the bad mortals with Betelgeuse ping-ponging back and forth like a bee on acid.

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are well cast as the nice but rather bland Maitlands. All they want is to be left in peace and see the Deetzes as an affront to everything they value. The Maitlands represent wholesome, small-town America and much of the humor in the film comes from the culture clash between them and the insensitive big city Deetzes. 1988 was a good year for Baldwin who showed versatility in several films, including Married to the Mob, Working Girl and Talk Radio, but playing such a “normal” guy in Beetlejuice was quite a departure from these other roles. Likewise, it was a strong year for Davis who also appeared in Earth Girls Are Easy and The Accidental Tourist, which featured the actress playing very different roles. Their easy-going charm and how comfortably the play off each other made Baldwin and Davis a believable couple.

Michael Keaton’s Betelgeuse is the comedic equivalent of a whirling dervish – a force of nature as he makes the maximum impact with his limited screen-time. Betelgeuse is a venal degenerate willing to say or do anything to get what he wants. Keaton embodies him with just the right amount of manic energy. The scene where Betelgeuse meets the Maitlands for the first time and lists his “qualifications” is a marvel of comic timing and tempo as the actor bounces off of Baldwin and Davis’ intimidated couple. Keaton conveys a zany energy that recalls his feature film debut, Night Shift (1982), only cranked up another notch. Beetlejuice was the culmination of a string of comedies for Keaton and served as a fitting conclusion to an impressive run of films (although, he did star in 1989’s The Dream Team) and so it’s not surprising that he went all out with this role. He would go on to play Batman in Burton’s two contributions to the franchise and then tried his hand at more serious fare.

Beetlejuice was a breakout film for a young Winona Ryder whose Lydia was a poster child for young goths everywhere. She does a nice job playing a death-obsessed girl who isn’t overly fond of her parents and finds herself increasingly drawn to the Maitlands. Ryder’s performance goes beyond the superficial trappings of her character to reveal a deeply unhappy person. The most obvious character who represents Burton's loner motif would seem to be Betelgeuse with his outrageous appearance and worldview that threatens to dominate the whole film, but it is Lydia who is also the most autobiographical character in Burton's film. Lydia's all-black attire and dreary credo, "my life is a dark room," mirrors the filmmaker's own fashion sense and personal assessment of himself. Therefore it seems only natural that Lydia is the actual emotional center of this film, not Betelgeuse, with the true conflict being the resolution of her morbid fixations, while the larger battle of life vs. death rages on around her. The success of Beetlejuice would lead to her signature role in the pitch black comedy Heathers (1988).

Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Jones play vain, self-absorbed Yuppies that are the complete antithesis to the Maitlands. O’Hara, in particular, is excellent as the sometimes shrill wannabe artist who feels the need to impose her taste on others. She plays well off of Glenn Shadix’s pretentious interior decorator as evident in the scene where they go through the house, picking out color schemes for various rooms. Coming out towards the end of the 1980s, Beetlejuice can be seen as a cheeky critique of Yuppie materialism as embodied by the egotistical Deetzes who see the quaint small-town as an opportunity for them to exploit it for commercial gain. They are set-up as the film’s antagonists and we can’t wait to see them their comeuppance at the hands of Betelgeuse.

After Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Tim Burton was offered screenplays with the word “adventure” in it and found that they lacked originality. “I had read a lot of scripts that were the classic Hollywood ‘cookie-cutter’ bad comedy. It was really depressing.” He finally started work on a script for Batman, but it was put on hold by the studio until the director proved his box office appeal. Eventually, record industry mogul turned movie producer David Geffen gave him the script for Beetlejuice, written by Michael McDowell. For Burton, McDowell’s script had a “good, perverse sense of humor and darkness … It had the kind of abstract imagery that I like.”

Burton worked on the script with McDowell and producer Larry Wilson for a long time until they felt that a fresh perspective was needed. Script doctor Warren Skaaren was brought in to provide some logic. Burton ended up casting several actors with a knack for improvisation, which was incorporated into the shooting script. For example, when Michael Keaton was cast as Betelgeuse, Burton would go over to his house and they would come up with jokes, creating the character through lengthy discussions.

Burton originally wanted to cast Sammy Davis Jr. as Betelgeuse, but fortunately the producers rejected that notion. It was Geffen who suggested Keaton, but Burton hadn’t seen him in anything because he preferred to meet with the actor in person. When they met, Burton began to see Keaton as Betelgeuse. For the look of the character the director wanted him to resemble someone that had “crawled out from under a rock, which is why he’s got mould and moss on his face.”

Geffen had overspent on their remake of Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and so they allocated only $13 million for Beetlejuice’s budget with $1 million designated for its extensive special effects. To this end, artist Alan Munro was hired and worked closely with Burton storyboarding the film in the spring of 1986. They quickly found a common affinity for movies that came up with creative ways to create SFX cheaply. This translated to effects that were “more personal … What people will see are effects that are, in a sense, a step backward. They’re crude and funky and also very personal.”

Burton and Munro decided early on to avoid costly post-production opticals in favor of performing the effects live on set. Munro was brought back two months after completing the storyboards to oversee the visual effects when the producers realized it was going to be a bigger job that originally anticipated. To help out Munro, Burton brought in frequent collaborator effects consultant Rick Heinrichs. He and Munro spent the first few weeks of production filming tests to show the crew that they could create effects via “cheap, stupid, easy methods.” The crew wasn’t convinced and Munro remembers, “There weren’t a lot of believers when we were actually working on the film.” Heinrichs remembers that they ran into problems creating the effects live and this made for “one of the most exhausting and frustrating experiences I’ve ever been through.”

Beetlejuice received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, “But the story, which seemed so original, turns into a sitcom fueled by lots of special effects and weird sets and props, and the inspiration is gone.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Mr. Burton, who seems to take his inspiration from toy stores and rock videos in equal measure, tries anything and everything for effect, and only occasionally manages something marginally funny.” The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley called it a “stylish screwball blend of Capraesque fantasy, Marx Brothers anarchy and horror parody … Not since Ghostbusters have the spirits been so uplifting.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, “There’s a distinctive feel to Beetlejuice, a deliberate Brecht-Weill jerkiness that allows satire and just plain silliness to play off each other most successfully.”

Beetlejuice has the polished, yet personal, handmade feel of Burton’s previous film complete with old school effects that included stop-motion animation, matte paintings and practical makeup effects, which have helped the film age well over the years. Like his other films, Beetlejuice is interested in outsiders, people like Lydia and Betelgeuse that don’t fit in or taking people like the Deetzes, who are at home in a big city like New York, and making them fish out of water in small-town Connecticut. The Maitlands are also taken out of their comfort zone of a living existence and thrust into the strange world of the afterlife.

Beetlejuice serves up many of the clichés of life after death and the supernatural and proceeds to gently poke fun of them in an entertaining way with a showstopping performance by Keaton at the heart of it. It remains one of Burton’s signature films and one of the best examples of how he managed to marry an idiosyncratic style with commercial appeal. Beetlejuice’s success would lead to a short-lived cartoon and occasional talk of a sequel that has gained some traction in recent years.

SOURCES

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

Shapiro, Marc. “Explaining Beetlejuice.” Starlog. May 1988.

White, Taylor L. “Making of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice and His Other Bizarre Gems.” Cinefantastique. November 1989.

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.

DVD of the Week: The Nightmare Before Christmas: 2-Disc Collector's Edition

When The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) debuted in theaters, it was a modest commercial success but hardly the massive hit Disney had hoped for, especially with the pedigree of Tim Burton’s name above the title. It was well-received by critics who felt that it was too scary for children and the film went on to become a cult classic with its own vast merchandising empire. The film was given an excellent DVD release a few years ago and Disney has gone back to the well, re-mastered it and added some new extras.

Halloween Town is a magical place inhabited by vampires, witches, ghosts and skeletons hanging from talking trees where the Mayor (voiced by Glenn Shadix) gives the vampires an award for most blood drained in a single evening. Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon) is the Pumpkin King and is bored with the same old routine and “weary of the sound of screams.” Sally (voiced by Catherine O’Hara) is a Frankenstein-esque creation, a stitched together rag doll created by mad scientist Dr. Finkelstein (voiced by William Hickey) who can scratch his own brain when he feels like it. She secretly pines for Jack.

Depressed and directionless, Jack wanders through the forest and finds a door leading to Christmas Town. He lands in a place covered in snow with Christmas lights hanging on every house. Jack is revitalized with this colourful new realm which is the complete opposite of the gloomy, dreary Halloween Town. Jack decides to introduce the spirit of Christmas to the denizens of Halloween Town. He also kidnaps Santa Claus and, with help from his friends, takes over his job on Christmas Eve. Sally believes that what Jack is doing is wrong and proceeds to restore order and rescue Santa from the evil ghost Oogie Boogie (voiced by Ken Page).

All of these creatures are lovingly rendered with stop motion animation that evokes the old Rankin and Bass cartoons albeit with an Edward Gorey vibe. The animation in Nightmare Before Christmas is impressive with such care and attention to each and every character. They all have their own distinctive look and personality. There is a personal, handcrafted feel to everything that creates a tangible texture missing from completely computer animated films.

All of the songs in this musical are insanely catchy and part of the film’s enduring appeal. Danny Elfman is the mad genius behind the music which comes as no surprise being a veteran of numerous Tim Burton productions. Thanks to the film’s premise, Nightmare Before Christmas works for either Halloween or the Christmas season. It features a vibrant color scheme and beautifully realized characters created by Burton, top notch direction by Henry Selick, and dialogue written by Caroline Thompson who wrote Edward Scissorhands (1990). This really deserves to be regarded as a modern classic and one of the best things to ever spring out of Burton’s brain.

Special Features:

So, if you already own the previous Special Edition is it worth double dipping for this new version and what is new? The good news is that with the exception of a DTS soundtrack and director Henry Selick’s solo commentary track, everything from the previous edition has been included in this one.

Disc one includes a new audio commentary by producer Tim Burton, director Henry Selick, and music designer Danny Elfman. They were recorded separately and then edited together. Burton talks about the classic animated holiday TV specials that made a huge impression on him. He was always intrigued by the visual combination of his two favorite holidays: Christmas and Halloween. Elfman claims that this is his favorite collaboration with Burton and talks about how he got involved. There is a significant amount of overlap from the numerous featurettes included on this set.

A new extra is “What’s This? Jack’s Haunted Mansion Holiday Tour,” which takes you through a haunted mansion ride based on the film. The attention to detail and decor is fantastic, done in Gothic fashion. You can also take the tour with a trivia subtitle track imparting all kinds of factoids. Also included is a featurette examining how they added the Nightmare Before Christmas style to the classic Haunted Mansion design.

Also new is “Tim Burton’s Original Poem,” narrated by none other than veteran genre actor Christopher Lee. This provided the original inspiration for the film. Lee’s great voice narrates over evocative concept art.

“The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” takes us through various stages of the production, including the music, storyboards, art direction, and animation. It provides a detailed look at all of the work that went into creating the film and the challenges of stop motion animation.

The second disc starts off with “Frankenweenie,” a short film Burton directed in 1984. He offers a new introduction and mentions that work has begun on a feature-length stop motion animated film. 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.

“Vincent” is an animated short film that Burton made early in his career about a young boy who idolizes Vincent Price, who, incidentally, narrates the story. It has a wonderful, Expressionistic look reminiscent of early silent horror films.

Also included are three deleted storyboards and four animated sequences introduced by Selick. They feature sequences that didn’t make the final cut, some were never animated. Selick explains that they were cut for reasons of time and pacing.

“The World’s of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” explores the characters that inhabit Christmas Town, Halloween Town, and the Real World with all sorts of character designs, animation tests and concept art. It allows you to see the various incarnations of these beloved characters.

“Storyboards-to-Film Comparison” takes a look at a scene from the film and allows you to watch it simultaneously with the corresponding storyboards.

Finally, there are “Posters and Trailers,” a collection of poster art, a teaser trailer and a theatrical trailer.

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.