THE CINEMATIC MISADVENTURES OF ED WOOD

Ed Wood was the irrepressible director of some of the tawdriest Z-grade science-fiction and horror films of the 1950s, a director who never let his tiny budgets get in the way of pursuing his vision. Films such as Bride of the Monster (1955) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) are littered with cardboard spaceships, rubber monster suits, and incongruous stock footage. Here we talk with Ed Wood aficionado Bob Blackburn as he discusses the charismatic, cross-dressing auteur, who donned his beloved angora sweaters and enrapted in a eureka moment of inspiration, eyes bright with enthusiasm above his pencil-thin moustache.

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*How did you come to find out about Ed Wood?

Basically I went to an Ed Wood film festival here in Hollywood in the summer of 1992, attached is the flyer for that event, while watching the BBC doc, I saw an interview with Kathy Wood, and I realized that I thought she was a lady who lived in my apt. building, turns out she did, after I learned that Tim Burton was going to make a film about Ed I approached her and asked her if she knew about it, no she didn't I learned a bit more it, and eventually I helped her find an entertainment lawyer, long story short we became friends, she passed away in 2006 and I am now one of two of her heirs, from meeting and befriending her I became more immersed in the world of Ed as she told me many stories over the course of our friendship, some I relate in the foreword to "Blood Splatters Quickly" a book of some of Ed's short fiction, I collected, edited and helped get published a few years ago, I have another publisher for a second volume called "Angora Fever..." which should come out later this year. I started the Ed Wood FB group, to gather like minded folks who have and share an interest in Ed's works, his personal life, family & friends etc.

*What was your first reaction after watching an Ed Wood film?

I was charmed watching his films, they never fail to fascinate and mystify me

*How do you think Ed influenced modern indie filmmakers?

I am not a filmmaker so I really don't know if he's really had that much of a direct influence on modern day film makers, I know folks who make "bad" movies on purpose, don't understand Ed at all, he never set out to make a bad film, as Kathy said many times, he had to struggle to make the money to follow his passion, and IF he would have had a real film budget who knows how good or "bad" his films might  have been, but in would hazard a guess he would be among a long list of long ago forgotten filmmakers.

*In what ways have you been involved in Ed Wood's legacy?

I have tried to keep Ed's legacy alive by getting his short fiction published, the Estate of Kathy Wood and the complications of Ed's works, copyrights etc. is a tangled mess, would take too long to try & explain, but I do my best to keep his flame alive.

Ed Wood has also been an inspiration on Lo-Fi filmmaker Fabrizio Federico ''I love the way he shot his films in a state of chaos, without any permits, just this total sense of adventure and DIY energy, how he cast non-actors and his friends in his movies. In a way he invented cult cinema.'' 

Fabrizio Federico - Website

THE STORY OF: Teddy Bears Live Forever (2019) - Interview with filmmaker Fabrizio Federico

April is a young faded ''It girl'' suffering in exile from multiple-personality disorder (brought on by a UFO Cult & Hollywood) and she decides that one of her six personalities must lose her virginity. 
As April suffers bizarre flashbacks in a solitary room, sleepwalking, telephoning rent boys, listening to The Carpenters and terrorising her old guardian with her untamed sex appeal. She ultimately set's out to become a modern saint.

''I made the film on intuition and a sensation to focus on some powerful messages (trauma, anti-establishment, false idolatry, existential angst and spirituality) wrapped up in an isolated feline martyr quality. 
The main character April is fighting to regain a state of grace that she lost as an ''It girl''  living in a superficial society obsessed with illusion while working in Hollywood. April is trying to penetrate the essence of her problems by being brave, screaming & articulating her pain through the film. She's trying to release the poisoned fragrance of her trauma. She's deprogramming her self by losing her mind. 

In the beginning of the movie we're shown a glimpse into her former ''It girl'' pop-culture life, at the complete absolute zenith of her fame, which is full of tacky excitement, flashes, games, disciples, vibrations and action. 
But then the film moves to the aftermath of all that, and to her current isolated life in London after rejecting her followers. But now she is battling her six personalities, so in a way she's leading six different realities and levels of consciousness. Each personality is a different level of consciousness, but music is her true prayer. She listens to The Carpenters while in exile, because she identifies with women who suffered, like Karen Carpenter, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe etc... but she also enjoys hanging herself by visualising her suicide. 
The film is also an insight into gurus, and how they deal with their followers problems, whether they are suffering from family or social suffering. The movies about spiritual terms instead of adolescent terms. 

So while she's living out Hollywood, April get's mixed up with this UFO cult, has an outer body experience and is raped by the cult. After this trauma and because she's already mixed-up with this narcissism of her glamour lifestyle, it finally turns her into a stretcher case. In the film we watch her fighting to win back her sanity. 
She constructs this mission to cure the most evil of her multiple-personalities, to lose her virginity and to feel touch, which gives her a fresh enthusiasm and a existential mission; the glorification to start communicating again.

In general terms, she is coming out of a isolated fog and is looking for a universal consciousness. This girls story actually represents the whole elemental goal of humanity. 
Feeling lost and sending signals into outer space, maybe that's why she joined a UFO cult to begin with. But she's still looking for an atomic attraction, or a spiritual push to come and save her. Dealing with six personalities will push anyone's sense's to the limit, but because she's in self-imposed isolation she cant really receive life's true miracle cure: human touch. 
Touch is the sparkling combination of feeling all of your senses all at once. So she decides to recapture her salvation by losing the virginity of the most evil, of all her multiple personalities, called Sam.

Sam is a mythological anti-hero personality, a complete freak who suck's on her bloody tampons, wears wigs and sexually terrorises her old guardian that she's living with. But in many ways April is sacrificing her sanity in order to purify her soul from Sam's sinister presence. In order to become a divine being again and to grow.

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REMEMBERING FABRIZIO FEDERICO - THE SELF DESTRUCTIVE FILMMAKER SABOTEUR WHO DID IT ALL WRONG IN THE RIGHT WAY

The cult filmmaker's newest film Teddy Bears Live Forever is being released in 2019

There’s never been a filmmaker like Fabrizio Federico. Chances are, there won’t be again. Not only is there an argument for this Brit being the 2000's lost movie-maker, there’s also the debate of him being the filmmaker that killed off the idea of 20th century cinema. As he explains it ''There is a new type of filmmaker that has been reborn and has replaced the traditional filmmaker from the 20th century, more bipartisan. I am a DJ Director, my passion is to glue video into a collage of vision, concentrating on personalities, mixing the styles of MTV, the News & Youtube vlog filmmaking together ''. His newest film is about a faded ''It girl'' suffering from schizophrenia due to an alien abduction and decides that one of her personalities must lose her virginity, even though she's already lost it.

Self-sabotage

That Fabrizio Federico is a star-shaped jigsaw piece in a square hole should have been clear from the off ever since surviving a house fire as a child. On the eve of the release of his feature film debut 'Black Biscuit' in 2011 he described making the film as being like ''Russian roulette”. He'd originally planned to make the film in North Korea but was denied a visa. He ended up filming in Nottingham with a Greek pimp and falling out of a tree and breaking his foot. Shooting the movie on toy Fisher-Price camera's and mobile phones, his apartment became a haven for the street superstars that he would meet on the streets and cast in his film, including a ping-pong champion, a dominatrix and Big Issue magazine sellers. Somehow he managed to re-finish the film after his computer exploded on the day of Michael Jackson's death.

Early perfection

This week the filmmaker announced that his next movie will be released in 2019. There’s the odd lollop of early Harmony Korine. The groove of Xavier Dolan. The cut and paste ingenuity of Jean Luc Godard. Arguably it’s stranger than any of his previous releases. He is the bedsit Lars Von Trier. Federico represents the filmmaker that for years chewed off his own limbs, simultaneously while editing footage blindfolded, listening to exorcisms on a diet of weed and yogurt, all on a micro-budget.

Raised on punk, emboldened by hip-hop, dance, free to be whatever he wanted – used to the ‘push the envelope, make magic happen, give it away for free’ ideal. On the eve of an era that saw YouTube filmmakers convert their vision into a world wide audience. But Federico delivered cinema folly in spades.

Doggedness, dadaism & drugs

In the beginning, he only screened his films at week-day film clubs, or left copies of his homemade DVD's on tables at bars and gigs. Then after his film 'Pregnant' screened in Essex and caused a riot his films were blacklisted from theatres, starting with a run at the Genesis cinema being cancelled and. Subsequently he has developed a large following in Mexico. 

Everything Federico did was tangential. When Empire magazine requested him for an interview, he agreed only on the condition if he would be asked the same questions as put to Stanley Kubrick during the making of The Shining. When he was invited at the Raindance Film Festival he arrived on crutches wearing a T-shirt that read, ‘If assholes could fly, this place would be an airport’. He refused to appear on children’s television. He claimed that YouTube is more popular then Jesus.

Such contrariness and blind scepticism felt genuinely exciting in the film industry that had turned dull.

He pulled karate moves and danced like a Native American shaman. It was presumed he liked drugs. Maybe. Maybe not. “LSD isn't a drug” he said confusingly, but he claiming it cured him from sleepwalking. 

Subsequently he went to the Bermuda triangle to get married, and learnt about voodoo and mysticism. Later also recording the soundtrack to his film 'Loon' at Aleister Crowley's abandoned Boleskine House, creating Zodiac Killer art, and introducing his cinema alter ego called Jett Hollywood ''a filmmaker from Mars''. After two films he released a suicide note which resulted in a missing persons investigation when the note went viral. 

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Not that he ever thought he was weird. “filmmakers like me should be the norm” said Federico recently. “I think it’s weird that very average, banal films are the norm, Im looking for cinematic nirvana”.

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