Malay Ed Wood Blog

After you have watched the Tim Burton Film, read the posted article, and watched the documentary by Jonathan Ross, I want you to discuss three elements in Burton's Biopic that pay homage to what Wood as a director was doing in his films. Some scenes in Tim Bruton's film are actually taken directly from Wood's films.  Why?

Ed Wood

Element #1: Cross-Dressing. Now this might seem kind of obvious, but the fact that it is incorporated states a few things about Burton’s willingness to take risks. Burton could have easily left out the fact that Ed Wood liked to wear women’s clothing and made the biopic solely about how terrible his movies were, but he didn’t do that. Instead Burton focused in on that specific trait and showed how it made Ed Wood feel more comfortable and confident not only in himself as a person, but also as a director/producer/actor.

Element #2: Johnny Depp as Ed Wood. Burton has a knack for reusing actors over and over again in his films, which is what Ed Wood did in his films as well. This element is vital in the biopic because it shows how Burton draws some similarities to what Ed Wood was doing. By reusing the same actors and actresses over and over again in films, it becomes very evident, trademark almost, that “Oh this is an Ed Wood film.” Or “Oh this is a Tim Burton film”.

Element #3: Storybook beginning and ending: A biopic is a story, a film is a story and by having the film start with Criswell and end with Criswell there is a sense of wholeness and completion not only with the film itself, but Ed Wood as a person and his career. Ed Wood wanted to tell stories through motion picture and so it only seems fitting that Burton would tell Ed’s story through a motion picture.

The scenes taken directly from Wood’s films are also a way of paying homage to him because if the scenes were not in the biopic, some people may not have the motivation or want to see any of Ed’s films because of the fact that they are rated some of the worst films ever by one of the worst directors in all of film history. By adding in scenes directly from the movie, the audience gets a better sense of who Ed was and how he went about making his films in Burton’s biopic. Essentially what Burton is trying to get across is that Ed Wood was not a bad person at all, he was just incapable of realizing that what he was putting out was not good.