Who is the Ed Wood of contemporary films?

Cafe Society
21

B as in “Barf out, gag me with a spoon”. Seen about 6 of his films and was not impressed. Michael Bay can at least make good “popcorn” movies like “Armageddon”. But we all have to think alike and genuflect to those whom we are told are genius, don’t we? Except for an occasional malcontent who refuses to praise the emperor’s new clothes.

I first realized Scorsese was full of it 30 years ago when on “Bravo” he told us what a great movie “The 49th Parallel” was. Laurence Olivier, playing a French-Canadian, singing “Alouette” in a wooden bathtub.

22

Ed Wood at least had some passion and enthusiasm for making films. He wanted to make great movies but didn’t have the ability. Uwe Boll just seems like a cynical money grabbing asshole.

Now that’s more like it.

23

This. I came here to say this. But Uwe Boll is good one that I thankfully forgot about.

24

If we’re going by specific genres, I nominate Eli Roth for horror. I just watched The Green Inferno and it was the most hackneyed, one-note acted, cliched atrocity to ever be committed to celluloid. I love scary movies and not a single second lacked punch, panache or passion. He’s deplorable.

25

You certainly don’t have to like Scorcese, but comparing him to Ed wood is just bizarre. Scorcese is objectively good at his career - by which I do not mean he makes good movies. I mean he makes successful, award winning movies. He knows how to make movies that the majority of people will praise and enjoy, and has amassed a substantial personal wealth (and a bookcase full of awards) by making movies. None of which means that you have to like his stuff, but you should at least be able to recognize a huge gap between Scorcese, and Ed Wood, who failed as a filmmaker on every conceivable level. No one liked his films, and he died broke, and broken.

Also, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is a horrible story - like most things penned by Hans Christian “Enormous Asshole” Andersen - and should never be used in an argument about relative quality, unless you’re using it as an object lesson in abominable short fiction.

Also widely regarded as a good film, although not one I’ve personally seen.

26

Nope. You can be the lone voice in the wilderness if you like. But to say he is like Ed Wood just because you don’t think he isn’t as great as everyone thinks is a bit hyperbolic.

27

Yeah. This guy thought he was making a good film, but didn’t have a single clue as to what he was doing. That’s a direct comparison to Ed Wood.

28

Vince McMahon

29

The thing is, with most of the directors mentioned here, there are millions of people who legitimately, unironically enjoy their work. Sure, maybe all those people have shitty taste, but I think you’d be very hard-pressed to find anyone who enjoys watching Wood’s films, or Wiseau’s* The Room*, or Birdemic, Shock and Terror because they’re captivated by the story, or the visuals, or the performances. People watch them specifically because they’re fascinated by the incompetence (or, less charitably, that they like pointing and laughing at the guy who sucks at stuff).

I think Michael Bay makes fairly stupid movies with action sequences that are poorly blocked and edited. He still possesses basic competence as a director. His movies look like actual movies.

30

That’s what I was thinking.

31

Wait. Are we combining Hitchcock, Welles, and Ford into some sort of human centipede, here?

32

For an individual person, I might have to go with Uwe Boll too… though I have to admit to defending some of Uwe’s work on occasion. (For example: In the Name of the King is not bad, though not exactly good either.)

What I’d really like to nominate is a studio: The Asylum. You know, of Sharknado fame. And look, Two Headed Shark Attack has a sequel: Three Headed Shark Attack! It’s just bad on top of worse on top of terrible, especially when they try to steal from mainstream movies with titles like Universal Soldiers and San Andreas Quake. By extension of my complaint, most of these titles are busily stinking up the SyFy channel.

33

Michael Bay is a competent filmmaker, even if his films are just mindless action. But he does mindless action very successfully.

Same with Emmerich. The Day After Tomorrow was stupid at every level (especially the geography, where Manhattan had to be on a turntable to make everything work), but it was a very good adventure film, a throwback to older movies. It’s an object lesson (along with The Core) that you can say, “fuck the science” and make an entertaining film.

Wood was not a competent filmmaker.

34

No, it’s not.

Boll is known to deliberately make bad movies as a tax scheme.

Ed Wood thought he was making good movies. That is a vital part of what makes Ed Wood ‘Ed Wood’. You can’t be the modern Ed Wood by knowingly making crap.

This takes Asylum off the table as well.

35

None of the people mentioned in this thread are in Ed Wood’s league. You want that degree of bad, you need to check out some of the Roku channels where “up and coming” film makers showcase their works. You will come away amazed and saddened by their delusions of competence.

36

The problem with that comparison is that “Sharknado” is supposed to be terrible. The entire movie, shot for shot, is a joke. It’s supposed to be cheap and shitty and silly, and we’re all supposed to laugh at it.

Ed Wood was legitimately trying.

37

But The Asylum is having so much fun being so awful. I can’t stop watching “Z Nation.” Do you suppose they’re holding Ving Rhames’s family hostage?

38

Goodfellas , Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Casino and The Departed alone make him one of the greats.

39

Not to mention Mean Streets, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, The Last Waltz (maybe the best concert film ever next to Woodstock), Gangs of New York and Hugo. Far too many good films to even be considered for the title.

40

If there is a current equivalent to Ed Wood, he is probably working somewhere in the direct to video market (or maybe just posting his movies on YouTube), and I suspect he’s not terribly well-known. It’s not like Ed Wood was especially famous while he was alive and working. It’s only after his death, when books like The Golden Turkey Awards started calling attention to him, that he became something of a household name.

The problem, as others have said, is that Wood really thought that he was making good movies. He wasn’t cynically making crap for tax purposes, or because he thought people were suckers who would buy anything. He was genuinely doing his best to make excellent films. He was simply completely lacking in any sort of film-making talent.

Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, even Uwe Boll, are nowhere near Wood’s level of badness. Their films, silly and predictable and unimaginative as they may be, are at least competently made on some level. They usually feature professional actors that you have heard of. Their special effects are often well done, sometimes excellently done. You can generally make out everything that’s on screen. The editing is done capably. The dialogue is usually audible. In short, while they may be bad movies, they are at least professional movies.

Wood’s work was way below that level. He had no real skill, either in writing, directing, or film editing. His dialogue made no sense, his special effects were abysmal, his sets were wobbly, his scenes didn’t even connect to one another in any sort of logical order, and his only actor that anyone had heard of was Bela Lugosi, who by that point of his life was desperate for any sort of work.

If I had to compare Ed Wood to anyone, it would be those poor saps in the first episodes of each American Idol season. You know, the ones who are sure they’re fantastic singers, even as they screech through an off-key rendition of the latest hit song, only to have Simon Cowell hurl insults at them afterwards. Only there do you see anything approaching the level of self-delusion that Ed Wood embodied.