Sunday, January 15, 2012

Nightmare of Ecstasy, a good book about a very bad director

There’s a lovely scene in the 1994 film Ed Wood – a romanticised biography of the legendary “bad movie” director Edward Wood Jr – where Wood meets his hero Orson Welles. The sequence is fictional but it has a poetic aptness. Here is a man who made a series of eye-poppingly terrible movies (including the one facilely called the Worst Film of All Time, Plan 9 from Outer Space) and here is one of cinema’s greatest artists, the director of some of the most influential movies ever made – and yet they are kindred spirits in some ways: they share a boyish passion for the form and its possibilities, and their personal visions are constantly being messed with by other people who lack that passion.

The differences are more revealing though. Welles once mused (perhaps in an attempt to cheer himself up) that the absence of limitations was the enemy of art; that good art usually came out of constraints, not from unlimited freedoms. In Wood’s case, the many constraints (though they never produced anything resembling art) are what gave his story a romantic sheen. If he had received big-studio funding for scripts early in his career, his incompetence would quickly have been exposed and he would probably have ended up a tiny footnote in Hollywood’s long list of has-beens and never-weres. Instead, he independently made a number of barely financed, barely written D-grade movies, and some of them developed cult followings. Unwatchable as most of them are, they remain a mighty testament to what can happen when incredible zeal meets an equally incredible lack of talent. (“I am the patron saint of the mediocrities!” cries the composer Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, painfully aware that despite his lifelong love for music he has none of Mozart’s talent. But compared to Ed Wood, even Shaffer’s Salieri was a genius.)

Last week a friend gifted me the book on which Ed Wood was based – Rudolph Grey’s Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D Wood Jr. It’s a remarkable biography, being entirely made up of reminiscences by people who knew Wood, and with no authorial intervention or commentary (apart from a short Introduction). These reminiscences are presented in the style of a book-length conversation – with each quote preceded by the interviewee’s name – and this patchwork structure seems to mimic the disjointedness of Wood’s films, which were full of individual scenes that had seemingly little to do with one another.

Reading the very first page, you dive headlong into his life and career: you’re exposed to a flurry of opinions by various people, some of whose identities are not obvious (an index at the end explains who all the interviewees are). But the chatty tone turns out to be very appropriate for this material. Consider this deadpan, hillbilly quote from Wood’s mother: “Junior was born October 10, 1924, at 115 Franklin Street, off the main highway. Yep.” I love the scrupulous inclusion of that “Yep” at the end.

Wood spent most of his life and career off the main highway too. A man of many fetishes – cinema and angora sweaters being just two of the major ones – he thought up outlandish scenarios involving zombies, alien invaders and cross-dressers and wrote laughably trite scripts for them
(in his universe they might all be found in the same living room or cemetery, looking confusedly at each other). He shot on minuscule budgets, with discarded props and stock footage; little wonder that this book contains several matter-of-fact utterances like “The octopus had to be covered so that the broken tentacle wouldn’t show.”

The stories and perspectives vary wildly (“Ed Wood was a crazy genius, way ahead of his time,” says one interviewee. “Ed had poor taste and was undisciplined. [His movies were] dingy, third-rate, fringe-type films,” says another) and this gives the book the feel of a diabolical jigsaw puzzle that resists completion. As Grey writes in his Introduction: “Conflicting versions of biographical incident are often charged with meaning and moment. Discovering the objective ‘truth’ of an individual’s life may be impossible beyond a schematizing of life events.” I think Wood himself would have smiled approvingly at these words – not least because they might easily be from the promotional material for one of his favourite movies, Welles’ Citizen Kane, the story of a futile attempt to understand a single life.

P.S. An inside-page blurb for the book – by Phantom of the Movies – reads “The literary even of the year” instead of “The literary event of the year”. It was most disappointing to discover that this was merely a typo, not a deliberate attempt at copying the earnest ineptitude of a Wood movie!


[Did a version of this for my Sunday Guardian column]

13 comments:

  1. Jai: Have you seen Plan 9 from Outer Space? I call it a must watch film. Its one of those films that's 'so bad that its good'.

    Also, very interested to know your thoughts on why a book has been published on that director when there is a need for many to realise the genius of Kubrick?

    Is this appreciation of what many term as "trash art"?

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  2. Also, very interested to know your thoughts on why a book has been published on that director when there is a need for many to realise the genius of Kubrick?

    Rantings: I don't understand your question. There have been several books published on Kubrick, as far as I know (I have two of them - the ones by John Baxter and Alexander Walker). This is hardly a zero-sum game where critical analysis or fan analysis on one director takes away books/paragraphs/sentences from another director. And I've expressed my view on this several times before, but again: no subject is ever unworthy - the only thing that matters is the treatment. (Coincidentally I was just reading a VF Perkins essay on Nicholas Ray, where he touches on this - but more on that in a later post.)

    Also, if I had to prepare a list of 100 directors whose genius "needs to be realised", Kubrick wouldn't be on it - he is already hugely acclaimed.

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  3. No, haven't seen Plan 9 in its entirety - just individual scenes. Have seen Glen or Glenda though, and thought that was an intriguing film in its way, and a very personal work (though awfully executed - it's an example of a really terrible auteur-helmed film).

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  4. Jai: Please don't consider this as an attack on your opinion, which I am sure has been formed of years of watching films (different genres), but when you say--"no subject is ever unworthy", in a reductive way, are you saying that some bad films should be made, and then should be subsequently criticised? (If yes, why?)

    Besides, when I say that Kubrick's genius needs to be realised, I mean that the masses are yet to warm up to him. Even the most serious film watchers consider A Clockwork Orange to be a meaningless film, 2001: A Space Odyssey as an arty Armageddon and The Shining to be a regular thriller. This has reduced Kubrick to thing of vanity--meant to be discussed in uppity circles only. For the masses then, you have Brian De Palma.

    Obviously, I understand that our social circles vary and amongst amongst your friends Kubbrick might be the usual good movie maker, but in my (very sad) circle he is too "Kafka-esque". For the same reason, I was hoping that to make many people aware of some good cinema, perhaps dedicated film festivals could be held--Welles, Kubrick and the like. If you remember, I had specifically asked you this question (given a chance would you write about Kubrick?) once when I met you in person.

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  5. when you say--"no subject is ever unworthy", in a reductive way, are you saying that some bad films should be made, and then should be subsequently criticised?

    Rantings: I was responding to your "why has a book been published on that director"? What I essentially meant was that a great/good book can be written on any subject, no matter how unworthy that subject might seem. What matters is the treatment. There can be 10 brilliant and illuminating books about Ed Wood, and there can be an equal number of mediocre books written about Welles (or Kubrick, or whichever high-quality director you want to name). I've written about this and related issues before, especially in my Yahoo column on the importance of storytelling over story.

    About Kubrick: I like many of his films a great deal (and love Dr Strangelove, Clockwork Orange and - on a very different level - Spartacus, which is only partly a Kubrick film), but I still don't see why his genius in particular is so much in danger of being underappreciated. I can think of at least a dozen other directors who are equally good or better, who haven't received the unqualified admiration you seem to demand for Kubrick. (No one in film history has that sort of unqualified admiration anyway, which is as it should be.) I think you may be turning your own personal admiration (and of course you're entitled to think of him as the greatest director ever) into a larger thesis about him being neglected.

    Besides, when I say that Kubrick's genius needs to be realised, I mean that the masses are yet to warm up to him. Even the most serious film watchers consider A Clockwork Orange to be a meaningless film, 2001: A Space Odyssey as an arty Armageddon and The Shining to be a regular thriller. This has reduced Kubrick to thing of vanity--meant to be discussed in uppity circles only. For the masses then, you have Brian De Palma.

    Found this difficult to understand. "The masses" are yet to warm up to Kubrick?! 1) Even if this were true, so what? 2) I wonder what fans of such master directors as Ozu, Dreyer, Bresson and even Godard (and I'm only taking the first 4 names that occur to me - there are dozens of others) would have to say about your assertion that Stanley Kubrick doesn't have enough mass penetration! The last I checked, 2001, Dr Strangelove, Paths of Glory and Clockwork Orange were among the first few films that viewers look to when they start making the transition from relatively "casual" movie-watching to serious engagement with cinema.

    "Even the most serious film watchers consider A Clockwork Orange to be a meaningless film, 2001: A Space Odyssey as an arty Armageddon and The Shining to be a regular thriller."

    Um, straw-man argument. I personally know (and know of) plenty of serious film watchers who love these films.

    Lastly, as a major De Palma fan, I personally object to the snark implicit in that last line. What if I were to turn around now and tell you that you need to realise De Palma's genius? *insert smiley here*

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  6. P.S. just in case it makes you feel better, take a look at the archived top 10s on the Senses of Cinema website - one of the most dedicated and passionate collections of movie-lovers' top 10 lists I know of. Kubrick has regularly been among the top 3 directors by total votes - a good deal higher than he should be, in my view.

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  7. Jai: I guess this is one of the discussions that isn't suitable to be done here--simply because of the back and forth arguments, when both of us would want to interject and say "Hey, but I differ..." (I mean in a real conversation).

    Also, I used Kubrick really as an umbrella term, pardon me for that. When I said Kubrick, I meant many other similar directors(Godard and Ozu included), or movies which are liked/appreciated only by few, and there is a need for people to be educated (for the lack of a better word) to understand that kind of cinema as well.(And may I quote "No Smoking" as as example--which you and Rangan have praised immensely, but again not many people like the film).

    And yes, De Palma--not that I am a big fan but suffice it to say that long long time ago, the MI theme used to be my phone's ringtone, and Al Pacino's Scarface poster used to be on my wall!

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  8. and just to clarify--you're right--Kubrick is my favourite director. (Din't include any smileys after reading an old post of yours in which you stated your abhorrence of them!)

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  9. hate this reposting thing but another point I forgot to add...

    when you say, "The last I checked, 2001, Dr Strangelove, Paths of Glory and Clockwork Orange were among the first few films that viewers look to when they start making the transition from relatively "casual" movie-watching to serious engagement with cinema.", it reminds me of that bought-but-not-read bestseller thing. Hawking's books for example are bestsellers, but readers in surveys have revealed that they couldn't read beyond the hundredth page because the topic was too heavy (like 2001). So these films might be in the top lists, but I am not convinced that people would have enjoyed them as much as they enjoyed, lets say, Scarface (you see the point of bringing De Palma into the comment now?)

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  10. I am not convinced that people would have enjoyed them as much as they enjoyed, lets say, Scarface (you see the point of bringing De Palma into the comment now?)

    Not really. If we're talking about people who really do make that transition to serious engagement with cinema (as opposed to the poseurs - who I think are the ones you're talking about), then I don't think they will have any trouble getting through 2001 as well as several far more "difficult" movies.

    In any case, why define De Palma by Scarface? Some of his most interesting films - take Hi, Mom! - are just as difficult for the casual movie-watcher to get into as 2001 is. Others among his films (such as Raising Cain, Carrie and especially Sisters, which I think is as good as nearly anything Kubrick made) are often condescended to by many "serious" movie watchers because their subject matter is apparently shallow or "lowbrow". (Whereas I know many people who rate 2001 highly because of its sweeping canvas and its "important themes" - which are things that belong much more to Arthur Clarke than to Kubrick.)

    You mentioned "enjoyment", almost as if that's a bad thing (or a symptom of not being able to appreciate better movies). Well, I think most casual viewers would be able to enjoy most of Howard Hawks' films (assuming they can get past a resistance to old black-and-white movies) - but that doesn't take away from the fact that he is one of the greatest directors of all time, and that his best work has layers that are fully revealed only through multiple viewings. Again, this is a complex, multi-sided discussion.

    But you're right, I think we should take this to email at some point...

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  11. hmmmm... wonder if it's time for a Ramsay Bandhuon ki Atmakatha :)

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  12. wonder if it's time for a Ramsay Bandhuon ki Atmakatha :)

    Chaila Bihari: Don't want to say too much here, but I happen to know that there's a good possibility of just such a book being done in the next couple of years. (And no, before you ask, I'm not doing it!)

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  13. I'd read a book about the Ramsay Brothers!

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