Observations of an Ed Wood Ignoramus

He had it …

I’m an Ed Wood Neophyte.  There … I said it.  Whew!  That feels good.  All the shame, all the hiding, all the knowing, snarky comments on other peoples’ blogs, when really, all I wanted was a little understanding, a little love.  But now it’s out: I’m out:  I am an Ed Wood ignoramus.  And because of that, I have no idea what to write for this blogathon. Way back when Greg announced it, I thought: cool.  I’ll whip something up, and it will be wonderful, and I will feel part of something big, something now, something wow! But no: nothing came to me, no inspiration, nothing. So here are some paltry observations about the Spirit of Eddie Wood. (I presume I can call him “Eddie” because there are some folks around here who do and who couldn’t possibly have known him …)

1.  I have only seen two Ed Wood movies:  Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space. While I love them both, I don’t seek out his films.  Why?  Well, I’m just not a big fan of schlock.  Maybe that doesn’t make me a true cinephile, somebody who loves all cinema, but there it is.  Unlike a lot of my blogging sisters and brothers,  I didn’t grow up watching  grind-house fare or Troma classics.  Rather, I grew up watching 50s science-fiction, classic comedy, and some Saturday-night horror, but not a lot.  When The Attack of the 50-foot Woman or Them comes on some channel or another — which they do with decreasing frequency — I watch them, but again: I don’t seek them out.

In fact, I don’t have a preference for any one genre over another.  I’m not like the estimable Arbogast, who specializes in horror, or Stacie Ponder, who loves slasher flicks.  I’m a film generalist,  surfing the genres, sipping first from Westerns, dabbling next in Horror,  then flitting (but in a manly way) over to a rom com for dessert.  It’s kind of the way I’m made, I guess.  Maybe Adderall would help.

But I don't think he does …

2.  The Spirit of Ed Wood is remarkably hard to pin down. Just look at Tim Burton.  He’s often cited as having it, but I just don’t see it.  I like Burton well enough, but he’s a consummate technician, his films — even the marginal ones, like the Planet of the Apes remake or Mars Attacks (which I personally have a fondness for) are very accomplished technique-wise.  And his ambitions — for all his desire simply to entertain — are surely much higher than Wood’s, who just wanted to be in the movies.  Plus, he is the poster-child for irony — more about this later in the post.

Perhaps the Spirit goes where it wills, as a certain other writer once said, and where it goes no-one can know.  Perhaps it just comes upon a person, willy-nilly, maybe swooping down on obvious strings like the saucers in Plan 9, maybe pulling its cape up over it’s eyes because it’s really a chiropractor from L.A.  Maybe the Spirit is a woman  standing in the crowd, watching Scorsese or Mann set up a shot.  Maybe I’ll shut up now.

3.  There are a lot of marginally-talented people pinning a bit of fame, and trying to make a buck, on Ed Wood’s corpse. And not all of them are bloggers, either.  Case in point:  The Church of Ed Wood, which has been in existence since 1996, and the website of which looks like it’s been around since then as well.  Somebody named Reverend Steve Galindo uses the site to put up pictures of his pets and family vacations.  You can even buy t-shirts and other crap from cafe press, which aren’t very interesting or witty, either.

And I KNOW they don't.

But of course, I could be wrong (see point #1 above).  It could be that folks like the Reverend Steve are the Spirit of Ed Wood personified, in their yearning for fame and fortune, and the complete inability to competently attain it, in the half-assed way they go about it.  But see, I don’t think so:  The Spirit of Ed Wood is above all sincere, after all is said and done, and that leads us to my final point:

4.  My Totally Uninformed View of What the Spirit of Ed Wood is. Really.  I have no credentials for any of this (see point #1 again),  but it seems to me that it’s hallmark is sincerity.  Whoever is animated by it truly feels that what they’re doing is great art.  They have the child-like conviction that what they are making is the best thing since canned beer or sliced bread, even, and cannot understand why it is not so.

A corollary of this might be called “ye shall know them by their fruits”: films (or other works of art, for that matter) by people infested by the Spirit of Ed Wood lack all irony whatsoever, they are themselves completely sincere, just like their makers.  There is no irony in them, no meta-self-awareness, no knowing winks.  Therefore, we cannot a priori decide who has the Spirit.  We can only look at their art and judge it after the fact.

A second corollary might be:  films that exhibit the Spirit are not likely to be made today, or at least they are much less likely to be made.  Irony infects everything in this post-modern era, and irony is the Enemy of Sincerity (you can see by the caps how sincere I am).  Even kid’s movies are full of self-knowingness, and there is no such thing as a straight action flick these days, much less straight horror.  Meta is everywhere and in everything, and if it’s not there to begin with, we infect it, retro-inject it, as it were.  Witness the smarmy Mystery Science Theater.

But, I could be wrong about all this.  After all, I am an Ed Wood Ignoramus.

[In case you didn't get it, this is all part of the Spirit of Ed Wood Blogathon over at Cinema Styles.]