In December 1978 a destitute Ed Wood and his wife Kathy were evicted from their hovel of an apartment. The couple were taken in by friends, but three days later Wood died of a heart attack, at age 54. His rediscovery as the maverick auteur of such no-budget 1950s originals as Glen or Glenda, a confessional opus on transvestism and transsexualism, or Plan 9 from Outer Space, in which flying saucers resurrect the dead, was then only a few years away. One of his few personal items that survived the eviction was a script called I Awoke Early The Day I Died. Told entirely without dialogue (although relying on a soundtrack full of effects, music, etc.), it is a bizarre account of an escaped lunatic who robs a loan office and then hunts down the people he suspects have stolen the money from him. It was the dream project of Wood’s last years – Aldo Ray had agreed to play the lead – but its filming would have to wait two decades after his death. As problematic as this posthumous production is, it nevertheless is a further vindication of Edward D. Wood Jr., because whatever else is wrong with I Woke Up Early The Day I Died, you certainly can’t fault its weird and fascinating script.
Screenplays by John Cassavetes and Orson Welles have also been filmed after their deaths, and surely both men were better served than Wood has been by the people responsible for I Woke Up Early The Day I Died. Director Aris Iliopulos, making his feature-film debut, is one more MTV casualty. He relies on the weaving and diving camerawork, harsh anglings, and rapid-fire editing which may make Aerosmith watchable, but which is death to a story that relies on atmosphere – and on an overarching, defining aesthetic conceit such as wordlessness. What gives Wood’s films much of their staying power is the utter conviction of Wood and his players; their degree of earnestness and commitment, wedded to such offbeat and idiosyncratic material, makes the films unforgettable. Nothing could be more lethal to a Wood script than actors who not only think they’re hipper than what they’re trying to do, but who also make sure that the audience knows it. Which, in a nutshell, explains why I Woke Up Early The Day I Died can be so painful to watch.
The film’s worst performance comes from its star: As the thief, Billy Zane’s hyper-mannered, home-movie silliness is so relentlessly wrong-minded and tiresome that only his having been the film’s co-producer could have gotten it onscreen. The other actors are sufficiently alert to play their parts as characters who simply have no dialogue; Zane, however, persists in miming and mugging and flailing his limbs in painful allusions to Chaplin, Lloyd, and Fairbanks. Among the other actors, the only ones who show enough class not to play it hipper-than-thou are Sandra Bernhard and Christina Ricci.
Most of the rest are either walk-ons or time-wasters, eventually piling up into a kind of Gen X Around the World in 80 Days: Karen Black, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Bud Cort, Andrew McCarthy, Rick Schroder, Nicolette Sheridan, Summer Phoenix. There are also cameos by some of the few remaining members of Wood’s stock company: Vampira, Conrad Brooks, and even his widow Kathleen O’Hara Wood. But would that the film had more of Wood himself to it.
(This review first appeared in Film Journal International, September 1999.)
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Film: Reviews: Contents
For more on Edward D. Wood Jr., see:
Film Dreams: Edward D. Wood Jr.
Film Essay: The Case of Ed Wood
Film Essay: Cult Films
Film Essay: Erotic Films
Film Review: Ed Wood
And be sure to read Rudolph Grey’s book Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr.
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 