Plan 9 From Outer Space
Others have attempted stage versions of Ed Wood’s famously awful films. The late, not-so-great Interplay fumbled an adaptation of Glen or Glenda several years ago. And just last fall psychotronic man-about-town Michael Flores adapted, directed, and manned the overpriced lobby concession stand for a stillborn version of The Bride and the Beast that left audiences begging for less. Both productions were dogged by indifferent direction and poor comic performances. But what really did them in was the obvious contempt of all concerned for Ed Wood and his brilliantly flawed creations.
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One of the great paradoxes of parody is that parodists must have at least some affection for the thing they’re lampooning. Otherwise they don’t take the material seriously enough to understand how it works. (Or, in the case of Ed Wood, why it doesn’t work.) The same rule applies to biographers. Ted Newsom’s uneven documentary Ed Wood: Look Back in Angora is best when he revels in Wood’s foibles: his awful ear for dialogue, his poor eye for talent, his inability to tell a coherent story. It’s weakest when Newsom gets snotty and reveals a sense of his own superiority in choices that telegraph that we’re supposed to look down on Ed Wood (like using Laugh-In veteran Gary Owens to narrate the film).
