Word: woode
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...such solidarity. European nations, pressured by powerful green movements of their own, sound quite progressive on environmental issues, but they are still not very good at enforcing their antipollution laws. Japan, stung by its image as an ecological outlaw for its whaling practices and its insatiable appetite for raw wood, seems determined to present itself in these talks as an environmental world leader...
...films of Edward D. Wood Jr. used to be just the old kind of bad. Wood's transvestite tale Glen or Glenda (1953) made a stir with "The Strange Case of a 'Man' Who Changed His Sex!" -- though actually Glen only wanted to change his frocks. But Jail Bait (1954), Bride of the Monster (1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956), Night of the Ghouls (1958) and The Sinister Urge (1961) went right into the commode. "Ed was a loser in my book," says the B-movie mogul Samuel Z. Arkoff. "Fundamentally, there were just too many things deficient...
Deficient? The word does no justice to Wood's work -- to Bela Lugosi's mad monologues in Glen or Glenda ("Bevare of the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep!" he intones between stock shots of atom-bomb blasts and buffalo herds. "He eats little boys! Puppy-dog tails! Big fat snails!"); to Bride of the Monster's rubber octopus with a broken tentacle, which Wood stole from Republic Studios; to Lugosi's double in Plan 9, who is a head taller than the star (who died during the filming) and must cover his face with a cape...
...Wood was, no question, a stupefyingly inept director. But he also had to make his movies in no time (three, maybe six, days) on weeny budgets (Jail Bait cost $22,000). He got Plan 9 financed by some Southern Baptists; he gave leading roles in Bride of the Monster to anyone who would fund the movie. "Eddie paid me off in cash," says actor Lyle Talbot, who was in Plan 9, "and sometimes it was a lot of singles...
...Wood's life, though, as limned in Rudolph Grey's new biography, Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (published by the aptly named Feral House), there is a lot of American tragedy. For Wood carried a triple burden: he was a transvestite, an alcoholic and a dreamer. As a Marine during World War II, he made beach landings wearing bra and panties under his uniform. Demobbed, he played a half man-half woman in a carnival before arriving in Hollywood to satisfy his twin obsessions: filmmaking and angora sweaters. The confessional Glen or Glenda...