Fame In Film - Ed Wood - Alissa Harris

Edward D. Wood, Jr.: Boy, Mr. Lugosi, you must lead such an exciting life! When
is your next picture coming out?
Bela Lugosi: I have no next picture.
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: You gotta be joking, a great star like you? You must have
dozens of them lined up!
Bela Lugosi: Back in the old days, yes... Now, no one gives two fucks for Bela.
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: But you're a big star!
Bela Lugosi: No more. I haven't worked in four years. This business, this town,
it chews you up, then spits you out.

When looking through the list of suggested movies for this project, I saw that, although all fine movies in their own right, I had seem them all before and didn’t want to re-watch a movie for this project, so I began looking for a film that both dealt with fame but was also perhaps a hidden gem of a movie. The movie I found that seemed most promising during my search was ‘Ed Wood’, a 1994 biographical movie about the notorious ‘50s B-movie director, often called “The Worst Director of All-Time”. Though panned by critics upon its release, I feel like ‘Ed Wood’ is not only one of Tim Burton’s best films (surely I can’t be the only one who thinks that ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ gets way more than its fair share of praise?) but it also deals heavily with fame (both attaining it and maintaining it) and the whole world of celebrity. As you’ll see from the evidence presented in the coming paragraphs, I think this movie addresses the issue of fame just as well as the suggested films.

The movie focuses on four main characters: Edward D. Wood, Jr. (Johnny Depp), the motivated-yet-failed director and closet transvestite; Dolores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker), Ed’s long-suffering girlfriend; Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau), the “has-been” horror movie star; and Loretta King (Juliet Landau), the young, naïve starlet who has just come to Hollywood looking for her big break. The plot deals with how all four of these main characters view fame and their experiences chasing it and often failing to obtain the fame and fortune they so desire, or longing for the glory days of the past.

All of the four main characters have different experiences with fame or lack of it throughout the film: Ed, the struggling director of such films as ‘Glen or Glenda’ and ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’, is constantly making movies, yet he’s always struggling for acceptance, cash, and success, three things he fails to find throughout his career. All of his movies are hokey, with low production value and horrible acting, but he believes in them wholeheartedly and never gives up on his dreams, even though all of the studios and the mainstream audience continue to ignore him. He is relentless on his quest for fame, but from what’s seen throughout the movie, he seems to also genuinely believe in his “craft” and the movies he makes, so perhaps he’s not solely motivated by seeking fame. On the other hand, both Dolores and Loretta are struggling actresses, constantly looking for their big break and obsessed with finding the path to fame and fortune. Dolores is already an established actress and Ed casts her as the female lead in most of his films, until Loretta comes along – a younger, prettier starlet who also offers to fund his films. Though they’ll both seemingly do anything for fame (for Dolores, this means sticking with Ed, who steals her sweaters to satisfy his angora fetish, whereas for Loretta, it means giving up her life savings to help fund one of Ed’s movies), by the end of the film, we assume that they were never able to rise about acting in B-movies, never achieving the Hollywood success that they sought.

On the other hand, Bela Lugosi has already experienced the fame that the rest of the cast can only dream about: he achieved a great amount of critical and commercial success years before playing one of the most famous screen villains of all time, Dracula. He dominated movie screens in the 1930s, scaring audiences throughout the world with his portrayal of the most famous screen vampire of all time. However, with the advancement of movie technology and special effects, new monster movies began to dominate movie screens and audiences no longer wanted to watch a creepy Hungarian man seduce and then drink the blood of helpless women, and roles began to dry up for poor Bela. He became a has-been, appearing only on the occasional TV show, and developed a crippling heroin habit that would contribute to his death at the end of film (sorry, spoiler alert!)

As you can see from the quote included in the beginning of this paper, Bela considers himself to be finished in the movie industry, but Ed finds him in the bowls of Hollywood and begins to put him in his movies, trying to reignite his career. It’s hard for Ed to get his films approved, even though he tells the studio executives that he has a “big star” (Bela) signed on for the picture, because all of the directors laugh at him and say that Bela’s nothing but a drug-addled has-been who’ll never get work again. Even though he experienced fame, whereas most people never get the chance, he’s still bitter about the whole experience: throughout the film, Bela is always bitching about his legacy and about how he wasn’t the most famous movie monster of his time, always holding a grudge against Boris Karloff for having more success with his portrayal of Frankenstein than he had with playing Dracula.

The only way we find out what happens to a person’s life when they become famous is by looking at how Bela’s life changes: he went from starting out with nothing, then grew to fame and notoriety in his ‘30s by playing Dracula, where he earned a lot of money and enjoyed all of the trappings of success. However, once the roles dried up, he lost all of his money and ended up alone in a ranch house in a rundown suburb of Hollywood, struggling with his aforementioned drug habit. He went from nothing, to the talk of the town, then to a Hollywood in-joke with nothing once again. The rest of the characters don’t become big-movie-star-famous throughout the course of the film, except Ed becomes infamous for his personal exploits (like the cross-dressing, womanizing, and outrageousness).

The fans in this film are viewed as being fickle – even though they may love you in one film or in one era (like they did with Bela and his portrayal of Dracula), it doesn’t mean that they’ll always love you in every project. The fans are also seen as being violent and downright hostile toward Ed and his crew and actors – when they go to a theatre for a movie premiere, the fans are so pissed off at the film that they begin to riot, ripping out the theatre seats, throwing popcorn, fighting, and eventually chasing the actors out of the theatre and into a taxi. There’s little mention of fans in the film besides these two examples, as it would appear that at the time, Ed and his films were quite underappreciated by both fans and critics alike. I think this movie asks us to believe that film fans are fickle and that they’ll watch whatever is the ‘next big thing’, like how Bela laments how all of his former fans are now watching crude monster movies instead of the ones he starred in years prior. They’re only motivated to watch the most popular or the hottest things at the time, rather than sticking by tried-and-true favorites. \

Although this film may not have such a clear message about fame as a film like ‘Almost Famous’ or ‘To Die For’, I think it’s try to tell the audience that even if you’re motivated beyond belief and you believe in your work, it doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed success. Young actors and actresses constantly flock to Hollywood, believing wholeheartedly that because they love what they do so much and they’re so confident that they’ll have to succeed, but this movie proves that this is not the case. Both Dolores and Loretta are obviously talented (though they’re aren’t really showing their gifts by acting in Ed’s exploitation flicks), they don’t ever become the big famous actresses that they yearn to be, which is a sad but true fact. This movie proves that fame is fickle and that success is never guaranteed in an industry as image- and money-driven as the movie business.

However, there is one comforting message to be found in an otherwise disheartening film: it’s important to have people you’re close to, because they’ll be there to support you and love you, even if you’re not as successful as you’d like to be. Even though Ed never really gains respect in his lifetime, both of the women fail to set Hollywood alight, and Bela never achieves the same level of success he once had, you can see that they’ve all formed some sort of bond with one another, being forced together as the misfits of the industry. By the end of the film, you can see that they’re become close and support one another, even though they’re constantly struggling. Careers come and go, but close friends are forever, as corny as that may sound.