Copyright Buena Vista Pictures
Ed Wood meets Orson Wells -
In January of 2005 we were able to conduct our first Q&A thanks to the help of a friend. We knew how lucky we were and I asked for questions from our members. Here is what Ed Wood screenwriter Larry Karaszewski had to say.
JDR: In writing the screenplay for Ed Wood, Larry, I'm assuming you had to do quite a bit of research. What were the sources you used to be able to create such a character in Ed Wood?
LK: Primarily Rudolph Grey's book "Nightmare of Ecstasy"... it's an oral history of Ed Wood's life told by his friends and drinking buddies. Also Danny Peary's "Cult Movies" books as well as the Cult Movies magazine put out by Buddy Barnett and Mike Copner. The Medved's Worst movie books were also looked at, but we chose to go for a more sympathetic tone. Scott and I knew the story we wanted to tell and used research to fill in the blanks.
JDR: I'm curious about the role of a screenwriter and how much control you have. Did Tim already have the story mapped out and you just filled in the dialog? Or did he give you a sketchy story that you ran with? Or was it somewhere in between?
LK: We came to Tim with the story. We wrote it with very little contact with him. He responded to what we were doing and shot our first draft. We never made any real changes.
JDR: If you had more control over the "look and feel" of the finished film, would you have kept it more in the darker mood that you alluded to on the DVD commentary?
LK: I don't remember that comment. I'm quite happy with the final version. Tim did an amazing job. If I have any regrets... the middle backer party sequences could have been condensed a bit.
JDR: Larry, was there a specific scene cut from the movie that you would have liked to have left in and why?
LK: No. In the shooting script there was a few more times when Ed ventured a little darker... a drunk moment. But Johnny and Tim preferred a happier Ed and I'm fine with that.
JDR: Were you on the set and able to do rewrites as the film was being shot?
LK: Scott and I were on the set almost every day. They shot what we wrote so very little rewriting was being done. Occasionally a production problem would need to be addressed.
JDR: In a nutshell, what process do you go through in adapting books to films?
LK: We don't do books too often. In adapting a real life we look for the reason a person should be remembered. With Ed Wood it was his relationship with Bela and the making of Plan Nine. We structured the film around those incidents.
JDR: Larry, do you always write as a team with Scott, or would you tackle something alone?
LK: Pretty much always as a team. It works.
JDR: What is the main point that you think makes a good movie script?
LK: Does it engage you??? Are you interested in the story??? Do you want to see what happens next???
JDR: How close to the screen play was the finished film? Did Tim alter much? Did Johnny ad-lib much?
LK: The screenplay is published in book form. You can read the book and follow the film at the same time. The finished product is very close to the original first draft.
JDR: What was it like working with Johnny Depp?
LK: Johnny is the nicest most talented man we have ever worked with. A beautiful soul.
JDR: Did you and Scott have any specific Director in mind when you wrote the screen play, and were you happy that it was Tim Burton who took it on?
LK: We started writing it for Mike Lehmann. he was coming off of "Hudson Hawk" and we were coming off of "Problem Child" and we laughed that we knew what it took to make the world's worst movies.
JDR: How much of the screen play was known facts about Ed Wood and how much was speculation?
LK: We tried to stay true to the spirit of the facts, but we knew very little. All the ways Ed meets people in the film are made up... we just didn't have the info.
JDR: What do you think drives Ed's blind optimism?
LK: A passion for movies. Scott and I worked on a lot of no budget films... these people work 18 hour days on crappy material for no money because they love love love being a part of the movie world. Ed was a patron saint of this kind of behavior.
JDR: On the DVD commentary Larry, you and Scott made a fascinating point about how Ed wasn't so much concerned about the actual movie as > much as the fact that he was making a movie with a camera, a megaphone, and all that hoopla. Any more thoughts on that?
LK: I know some friends who love film so much that they can see good points in almost any movie ever made. Ed was that kind of guy.
JDR: Where did you grow up, and what did you want to be?
LK: Very early on I knew i wanted to be a film maker. I grew up in Indiana and knew no one in the industry. But I wanted it bad.
JohnnyDeppReads thanks Larry Karaszewski.
