| Master Fan
Joined: Jun 2004
Posts: 11,964
| Filmstew.com has a really great review of the Ed Wood DVD. Johnny gets some really nice mentions (in bold).
Quote:
Ed Wood
Somehow, it seems entirely appropriate that the DVD commentaries for Tim Burton’s ode to the famously ineffectual filmmaker were patched together from pre-existing interviews.
By Todd Gilchrist
Pauline Kael once wrote, ‘Usually, when an actor plays a freak you can still spot the feet-on-the-ground professional. Nicolas Cage doesn’t give you that rootedness.’
She was referring specifically to Cage’s work in Vampire’s Kiss, but she just as easily could have been referring to Johnny Depp in Ed Wood, or just about any other role Depp has played in his two decades as an actor. His second collaboration with Tim Burton wasn’t merely a feather in the cap of a man who established himself by playing outcasts of all shapes and sizes (think Benny & Joon, Edward Scissorhands, Cry Baby), but a turning point in his career: never before had he established one of these freaks as a living, breathing human who audiences really cared about, at least insofar as their freakishness seemed relatable to the drudgery of daily existence.
Ed Wood at long last makes its way onto DVD this week, and even though it’s a black and white film about a failed ‘50s filmmaker, it hasn’t aged a day since its release in 1994. Depp plays Wood, an indefatigable film fan who dumb-lucks his way into a film career after finding that investors will throw money - even if it’s only a little - at anything that has a star attached to it.
Wood’s star was actor Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau), whose days as a screen icon were way behind him, as were years of drug abuse and dwindling health. Together, the pair formed an entirely likely bond - Wood the fledgling director and Lugosi the former star in dire need of a hit - and began what turned out to be a long upward crawl towards significantly less likely success.
Tim Burton has done more than any director in Hollywood in the past 20 years to further the cause of the outsider in mainstream filmmaking. Ed Wood notwithstanding, almost all of his main characters have been largely misunderstood creatures, eschewed by mainstream society but in possession of a poetic soul that can see the truth hiding behind his enemies’ domesticated facades.
Part of that can no doubt be attributed to Burton’s perception of himself as an outcast, the boy who was drawing Jack Skellington while his classmates were doodling about firefighters and astronauts. But it is too short-sighted an observation to consider the director a true malcontent or pariah; Burton has always worked within the studio system, and yet always made movies the way he wanted to. For every Edward Scissorhands, there’s a perfectly conventional vehicle like Batman or Planet of the Apes to maintain his position as the industry’s most sought-after oddball.
What’s remarkable about his achievement with Ed Wood is that he for the first time, he was able to turn that perennial outsider into an insider. Wood was nothing if not a scrappy, talentless filmmaker, but Burton makes him a tragic, poetic figure that is not to be derided but embraced by the mainstream as an embodiment of our values. Edward Wood Jr., the infamous filmmaker from Poughkeepsie New York, who passed away in 1978 at the age 54, is proof positive that anyone can succeed when they apply themselves with enthusiasm, determination and a little help from their friends.
Counted among the co-conspirators who worked on Burton’s 1994 film were Hudson Hawk director Michael Lehmann and Problem Child screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, all of whom perceived themselves as outsiders, and yet were ushered into Hollywood’s golden gates after the success of their respective projects. It seems that disparate feeling of exclusion propelled Ed Wood towards completion as a cathartic experience for all involved, since they were now using Tinseltown dollars to tell the story about a man who couldn’t get on a studio lot without climbing the fences in the middle of the night.
Much of this is detailed on the disc’s commentary track, which contains no fewer than six of the principal collaborators involved in the film’s making; Bela Lugosi “hosts” the commentary, differentiating between Burton, Landau, the screenwriters, Director of Photography Stefan Czapsky and costume designer Colleen Atwood. Though watching the myriad featurettes reveals that the producers of the DVD did not in fact enlist cast and crew to do an actual commentary, instead relying on interview materials, the audio track provides a highlight reel for those too busy (or disinterested) to avoid the other bonus materials.
Burton’s triumph with this film was to meld the “outsider as hero” story of his peculiar milieu to something irresistibly commercial, while still managing to obviate everything conventional about a biopic or even a standard-fare comedy or drama. The black and white imagery isn’t merely anachronistic; it’s period-perfect, down to the supporting actors’ bulldog mugs and the leads’ sense of ‘50s-era timelessness.
The story doesn’t acquiesce to Wood’s conflicted background as a soldier and dress-up doll for his mommy at an early age, but mentions them obliquely in the context of one of Alexander and Karaszweski’s many inspired gags, and then deals selectively with his life history to maximize the effectiveness of the story they were trying to tell. It’s a technique these screenwriters would go on to use with great effect in their later efforts The People Vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon.
Meanwhile, Burton’s camera isn’t overbearing or archly ambitious in the way of some sort of homage or send-up of Wood’s bare-bones oeuvre; instead, he addresses the characters with static, locked-off shots that highlight the drama, not the director’s far-reaching interest in the macabre and bizarre, and tells the straightforward story that would later make it possible for Burton to direct more mainstream (Planet of the Apes) and conventionally satisfying (Big Fish) fare.
Ultimately, for better or worse, the success of the project all comes back down to Depp. He is, after all, the key to convincing audiences that Wood is a hero worth sympathizing with, regardless of his appetite for angora or penchant for paper-plate flying saucers. And the actor does his job resolutely, without embarrassment or self-consciousness, humorlessness or vanity; not only does he sell the trannie look, he does it with a mouth full of false teeth.
Perhaps, like Kael said of Nicolas Cage, Depp is ‘an actor before he’s a human being,’ and, ‘does some of the way-out stuff that you love actors in silent movies for doing, and he makes it work with sound.’ In that respect, Cage and Depp are similar; but they differ in that Depp can do it in color and black & white, too. | |
It was on TV a year ago here and my video recorder didn't record it 
Johnny in drag.
I'm so happy! But there is this really weird music video on it where this dancer is dressed up like Vampira and all she does for ages is swirl her head round and round - its so funny! 
