Following The Nightmare Before Christmas, Burton co-produced, with Denise Di Novi, Cabin Boy for Disney. The film, a camp homage to the Sinbad movies starring Chris Elliott, Ricki Lake and Russ Tamblyn, was a massive critical and box-office disaster.
It was sort of a weird comedy, and I didn’t want to direct it because I thought it would be too expensive. But it didn’t meet with too much critical or financial approval. Disney didn’t like it; they didn’t get it, and it just fell by the wayside. It was directed by Adam Resnick, who wrote it with some people who were on The David Letterman Show. I just tried to pass on my expertise on certain things, but I couldn’t be there all the time, and I think I’ve learned a bit of a lesson from that. It’s like on Nightmare, I was working on something else, but that project was different because I loved that one, it was my thing. But with Cabin Boy, I didn’t know what was going on. I think I’ve just got to get involved with something or not do it. I don’t think I would do anything like that again, not unless I felt the same way as I did about Nightmare. People ask me, but I won’t unless I feel very confident about certain things.
Burton was set to direct Mary Reilly, for Columbia Pictures, a version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s οft-filmed tale Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, told this time from the point of view of Jekyll’s housekeeper, with Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands star Winona Ryder in the title role.
I was into that for a while, but what happened was the studio wanted to push it. Whereas before I could take my time to decide about things, in Hollywood you get shoved into this whole commercial thing. They want the movie. I remember them coming up to me and going, ‘Oh, we’ve got five different directors who want to do this movie.’ And I remember being turned off by the process. It’s like, ‘Well, you know, if you’ve got five other people that want to do it, maybe you should have them do it.’ So basically they speeded me out of the project, because they saw it in a certain way. They saw it with Julia Roberts, and now they’re getting what they want. I don’t know what they think. I think they’ve got a weird feeling about me. I don’t follow their way of thinking a lot of the time.
He was replaced on Mary Reilly by Stephen Frears, and Julia Roberts was indeed cast in the title role opposite John Malkovich. Meanwhile Burton had become interested in a project based on the life of Edward D. Wood Jr that had been brought to his attention by Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, the writers of the Problem Child movies. Karaszewski and Alexander had toyed with the idea of writing a film about Wood, often referred to as the world’s worst director, ever since they were students at the University of Southern California film school. Irritated at being thought of solely as writers of kids’ movies, they wrote a ten-page treatment and pitched the idea to Heathers’ director Michael Lehman, with whom they were at USC. He, in turn, took the project to his producer on Heathers, Denise Di Novi. A deal was struck with Lehman as director and Burton and Di Novi producing. When Mary Reilly fell through, Burton became interested in directing Ed Wood himself, on the understanding that it could be done quickly. With this in mind Karaszewski and Alexander delivered a 147-page screenplay in six weeks. Burton read the first draft and immediately agreed to direct it as it stood, without any changes or rewrites.
Wood, the director of such cult classics as Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster and, most infamously, Plan 9 From Outer Space, died in 1978, aged fifty-four, penniless and forgotten. Sadly he achieved near legendary status only posthumously, in the early eighties, thanks to publications such as Michael and Harry Medveds’ The Golden Turkey Awards, which voted Plan 9 the worst film of all time. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1924, Wood lived his entire life on the cusp of Hollywood, aspiring to be the next Orson Welles, but never even coming remotely close. A famed transvestite with a fondness for angora sweaters and an engaging personality, Wood surrounded himself with a bizarre coterie of admirers and wannabes, including Criswell, a showman/psychic, Tor Johnson, a Swedish wrestler, and Vampira, a TV horror show host, many of whom believed Ed was going to make them stars. In 1953, Wood met his idol Bela Lugosi, a Hungarian immigrant and the celebrated star of Universal’s 1930 version of Dracula. In the two decades since the release of Dracula, Lugosi had slipped into virtual anonymity and become addicted to morphine, which he had been prescribed to relieve the pain from a war wound. Wood vowed to revitalize his career by putting him in his movies, giving him roles in both Glen or Glenda, Wood’s autobiographical tale of a transvestite (played by Wood under the name of Daniel Davis) and Bride of the Monster, and using the last remaining footage he shot of Lugosi as the basis for Plan 9. Karaszewski and Alexander’s script follows Wood’s life through these three movies, and focuses on the Wood/Lugosi relationship, one that both they and Burton acknowledge is not unlike the friendship between Burton and his idol, Vincent Price.
Denise had talked about producing this movie that Larry and Scott wanted to write. I Was in Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York at the time. It was after Batman Returns when I was working on the Nightmare book, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I started thinking about the idea of Ed Wood, and I started making notes and stuff because I was going to produce it. And then I thought, ‘You know what, I like these people, and I want to direct it.’ What was odd was that Ed Wood was from Poughkeepsie, which is where I was hanging around, and I had thought, ‘This is cool, this is a weird place.’ I got a kind of karmic rush when I decided to do it, and then I read this book Nightmare of Ecstasy and realized Ed Wood was from Poughkeepsie. So there was this weird connection and I just started to get into it. I talked to Scott and Larry and they wrote a script really quickly, within a month. I’ve never seen a script get written so fast and it was really long too, like 150 pages. They certainly had it in them, those guys. They were fans. They were into it. I just started doing what I usually do, which is to look for the emotional connections.
There were aspects of the character and his thing with Bela Lugosi that I immediately responded to. What’s great about Ed Wood is that it’s rough, it’s not like a completely hardcore realistic biopic. In doing a biopic you can’t help but get inside the person’s spirit a little bit, so for me, some of the film is trying to be through Ed a little bit. So it’s got an overly optimistic quality to it.
I grew up loving Plan 9, which is a movie you see when you’re a kid and it remains with you. And then later on, Wood gets acknowledged as the worst director in the world, and then starts to get a little bit more known, and then there are festivals, and they show his movies and everybody laughs at them. But the thing is, when you watch his movies, yeah, they are bad, but they’re special. There’s some reason why these movies remain there, and are acknowledged, beyond the fact that they’re purely bad. There’s a certain consistency to them, and a certain kind of weird artistry. I mean, they are unlike any other thing. He didn’t let technicalities like visible wires and bad sets distract him from his story-telling. There’s a twisted form of integrity to that.
Ed Wood is very much the classic Burton character: a misfit, a misunderstood, misperceived individual.
He fits that theme, yes, but I think the difference with Ed, unlike the other characters, is that there are some different elements to him. What I liked about Ed Wood is that he is so optimistic. The thing I was taken by back when I’d read interviews with Ed Wood, especially since I knew the movies and the other aspects of his life, was his extreme optimism, to the point where there was an incredible amount of denial. And there’s something charming to me about that. It’s like with the Catwoman or the Sally characters – the idea of pulling themselves together, the stitching. Being passionate and optimistic is great to a certain point, and then you’re just in complete denial, it becomes delusional. That’s what I liked about the Ed Wood character. I could relate to him that way. I think everybody is in some form of denial. Denial is an incredible thing. Most people don’t go through life with an extreme awareness of every aspect of themselves.
People think it’s funny that I did this movie. Because I’ve been so successful, why would I want to make a movie about somebody who’s not successful? But the way I feel about that, and him and me, is that any of my movies could go either way, they really could, and so the line between success and failure is a very thin one. That’s why I responded so much to him. I believe that and, who knows, I could become Ed Wood tomorrow.Believe me, if you asked the studio before any of the movies that I’ve worked on have come out, they wouldn’t have predicted their success. If it’s a movie like Lethal Weapon, then they feel more comfortable. They know it’s probably going to be okay. But the films that I’ve worked on, there’s never been that certainty or feeling of confidence. And so I respond to Ed. I love him because he’s got enthusiasm, and he’s flawed, and there’s that delusional sort of feeling.
And there was an aspect of his relationship with Bela Lugosi that I liked. He befriended him at the end of his life, and without really knowing what that was like, I connected with it on the level that I did with Vincent Price, in terms of how I felt about him. Meeting Vincent had an incredible impact on me, the same impact Ed must have felt meeting and working with his idol. And then there was this weird group of people that hung around with Ed. I liked the people. I just liked the idea of them. I liked that they were all completely out of it and everybody thought they were doing the greatest things, but they weren’t. There’s something that’s very appealing about people who go out on a limb, who are perceived by society to be something else. In some ways, that loosens them up just to be themselves.
Tim Burton directing Ed Wood
‘I love Ed because he’s got enthusiasm.’ (Johnny Depp as Ed Wood)
Bela (Martin Landau) and Ed (Johnny Depp): ‘There was an aspect of Ed’s relationship with Bela Lugosi that I liked.’
‘There’s something very appealing about people that go out on a limb.’ (Jeffrey Jones, Sarah Jessica Parker, Martin Landau, Johnny Depp, George ‘The Animal’ Steele, Max Casella and Brent Hinkley)
There are similarities between myself and Ed. Whether or not people sense it, I always try to relate to all those characters. There are aspects of Ed Wood that I can identify with because I think you have to, because, as I said, I’m not proficient enough to wing it. It’s like, even if nobody else understands it, even if the movie comes out and everybody goes, ‘What the hell is this?’, for me to do it I have to relate to him. I have to be on his journey with him.
One of the things I liked about Ed, and I could relate to, was being passionate about what you do to the point of it becoming like a weird drug. It’s like with any movie I’ve ever made, you get caught up in it; you’re there and you think you are doing the greatest thing in the world. You have to think that. But you thinking you’re doing the greatest thing in the world maybe doesn’t have anything to do with how the rest of the population perceives it. So yes, I definitely felt and feel that way. Again, that’s why I admire Ed so much, and those people – he was doing something.
If I see something, a piece of work, a painting, a film, anything, and somebody’s going out on a limb and doing it, I admire them. I don’t even care if I like it, I just admire them, because they’re doing something that a lot of people won’t do. You meet these people who build weird sculptures out of cars in the desert. I mean, you have to admire those people more than anybody.
I remember around the time I did Hansel and Gretel having this feeling that there were a lot of people judging it, and saying this doesn’t work, this is bad. And I’m saying to myself, ‘Fuck you! You do something. You may be right, but just do something for God’s sake!’ I like it when people do things. But now there’s a lot of people waiting in the wings, there just seems to be more media around, therefore there’s more judgement, and more people not doing things. The world seems to be getting a lot more judgers and a lot less doers. I’ve always hated that. That’s why Ed Wood has a weird tone, because Ed just goes through the movie and remains optimistic.
The film ends with him very optimistic, driving off thinking that he’s made, with Plan 9, the greatest movie ever. In reality, his story only gets more tragic as it goes along. His life is so bad, it’s so redundant, it just gets more and more negative; but we just let him be him, and it ends at that point.
All Burton’s characters have a duality to them and Ed’s is ostensibly his transvestism.
It’s brought out. I try to be matter-of-fact about it. I don’t make judgements about people, especially people who I like and don’t really know. So it’s there, and it’s just a part of his life. The thing about transvestism in movies that I’ve never liked is that it’s an easy joke, and I don’t know why. I don’t like that, so I didn’t want to make it a big joke. It’s just a part of his life. Some of it’s funny, I think. He was a heterosexual who liked to do that. I understand it too, women’s clothes are more comfortable. If you walk into a clothing shop the women’s clothes are the best. Guys’ clothes have been the same for years. But they always use the best fabrics for women’s clothes. So it’s not hard to understand transvestism. But that was a part of his life, and the great thing was that the people around him, for the most part, just accepted it.
There’s a moment in the movie which I love, and it’s not a big deal, it’s something I always liked from the script. It’s where he tells his wife, Kathy, and she just accepts it, without any big fanfare. It’s just a simple little moment, but that’s kind of a fantasy to me. I think why it chokes me up is that it’s simple acceptance, which is something you rarely get in life. People rarely accept you for who you are, and when that happens, even on a simple level, it’s kind of great.
One can look at Burton’s films as being essentially live-action animated movies. Ed Wood, on the other hand, is a first in that it’s a film about people who really existed.
It is a bit of a departure in that respect, yes. It’s real people, but I always treat everybody like real people, it’s part of the process for me. I have to believe everybody. These are real people, but the great thing about these real people is that they’re real people in my sense of real people – which is that they’re not. If you read Nightmare of Ecstasy, the great thing about these people’s story is that there is no story. The book is a series of recollections from these people who have a vague remembrance of this time. Somebody will say this, somebody will say that, some of it’s even contradictory, which I felt is very much in the spirit of this character, but these people, these slightly delusional kind of achievers, have a kind of upbeat ‘Let’s put on a show’ attitude. I always saw it as a weird Andy Hardy movie in a way, because that’s what my take on these people was like.
These people were never perceived as real people, they weren’t treated seriously. And I guess they were all so out of it that their memories are worse than mine, if you can believe that. So that allowed me the opportunity to take off. You’re not dealing with the well-documented life of Orson Welles here. When Ed Wood died he didn’t even have an obituary in the paper. He died in this little building on Yucca watching a football game, having a heart attack, and nobody knew who he was.
Initially Ed Wood was in development with Columbia Pictures, but when Burton decided he wanted to shoot the film in black and white, studio head Mark Canton wouldn’t agree to it unless the studio was given a first-look deal. Burton insisted on total control, and so in April 1993, a month before shooting was scheduled to start, Canton put the movie into turnaround. The decision sparked a studio frenzy, with Warners, Paramount and Fox all interested in picking up the option, but Burton decided to accept an offer from Disney, who had previously produced The Nightmare Before Christmas. With a budget of $18 million, low by today’s standards, Disney didn’t feel the movie was that much of a risk, and granted Burton total creative autonomy. He began shooting in August 1993.
Ed Wood is the hardest movie I’ve ever had to get off the ground. I thought it would be the easiest movie because I didn’t take a fee. I did it for scale, and the fact is it’s not that outlandish a movie, either. I mean, believe me, when I read the script I found it to be very good, certainly no weirder than anything else I’ve done. It’s certainly the cheapest movie, cheaper than anything since Pee-Wee, and I got most of the actors to do it for not a lot.
The decision to do it in black and white was pretty much the same thought process as with anything you do. We were at make-up artist Rick Baker’s with Martin Landau, who plays Bela Lugosi, and we were doing some make-up tests, and we were saying, ‘What colour were Bela’s eyes?’ And then I started thinking, this is bullshit, I don’t want to get into this. This should be in black and white because you don’t want to be sitting there going, ‘What colour were Bela’s eyes?’ You want to do what’s right for the material and the movie, and this was a movie that had to be in black and white. Everybody should have the opportunity to say this movie would be better in colour, and then you think about colour. But if it shouldn’t be in colour, well then don’t make it in colour. It’s the same way Frankenweenie should be in black and white, Vincent should be in black and white, Beetlejuice should be in colour, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure colour, Batman colour. It really should be whatever’s best for the movie.
So at some point I had a meeting with Columbia and they just didn’t want to go for it. My argument was it doesn’t matter if a movie is in black and white or in colour, the movie has to work. I said I can’t predict if this movie is going to be successful. I can’t predict if any movie is going to be successful. Either it will click with people or it won’t, and I’m trying to get it to a place where it has the most potential to click with people, and I feel that this material is black and white. It’s not a pretentious thing. In fact, I resist doing things in black and white because I don’t want to be perceived as being pretentious. I find that I don’t necessarily agree with a lot of things that are done in black and white, but it shouldn’t be a big deal. You just make whatever you think is right for the movie. End of story.
Columbia didn’t buy it, which is fine, I don’t want to be involved with people who don’t understand. Who needs it?
I’m in this meeting and they’re crowing about their big hit Last Action Hero, you know, all egotistical and stuff, and I’m thinking, I’m glad you people know so much. Egotism, that’s something I can’t tolerate in a field where you don’t know shit, nobody knows shit. All you can do is believe in something, care about it and try to make the best movie. I’ve grown less and less tolerant of all that other bullshit. I’ll tolerate a conversation where somebody will say, ‘Do you think this is a good idea?’ That’s legitimate. But it’s like living in this complete fantasy world – that’s why I’m here in New York, that’s why I’ve gotten out of Hollywood lately, because I don’t want to fall into the fantasy world these people create for themselves. The only fantasy world I want to create is in a movie. The fact that people can sit there and spout their philosophy and be egotistical about their big summer hit and think they know what they’re talking about is a joke. I was glad that I left.
My leaving opened it up, actually. I did have the relationship with Disney because of Nightmare, but I talked to a few people and every other studio besides Columbia was nice about it. They all seemed to get it and want to do it. Certainly it wasn’t as big a risk as people thought. Everybody was a little leery about the black and white, but in the end, and I firmly believe my own philosophy in this case, when I decided to do it in black and white I felt it was the best idea to help the movie be what it should be. Therefore, with that one goal in mind, which is that the movie needs to work, it doesn’t matter what colour it is. Disney were the most go-ahead. They’re into this thing of changing their image, which I don’t think they need to work so hard at.
Ed Wood: Sketch for the Spook House
As with every Burton movie, Ed Wood’s casting is suitably eclectic, with Edward Scissorhands star Johnny Depp as Ed, Martin Landau as Lugosi, Bill Murray as Bunny Breckinridge, Ed’s transvestite friend, Beetlejuice’s Jeffrey Jones as Criswell, Lisa Marie, a former model and now Burton’s girlfriend, as Vampira, wrestler George ‘The Animal’ Steele as Tor Johnson, Sarah Jessica Parker as Ed’s girlfriend Deloris and Patricia Arquette as Wood’s wife Kathy.
I tried to get a weird mix of people. Johnny liked the material, he responded to it. I feel close to Johnny because I think somewhere inside we respond to similar things, and this was a chance after working on Edward Scissorhands to be more open. Edward was interior, this symbol come to life; Ed is more outgoing. It was interesting for me, after working with Johnny before, to explore a more open kind of thing. He did a really great job and he found a tone which I like.
Ed Wood: Skeleton sketch
I wanted to go with some knowns and some unknowns, Lisa Marie and George ‘The Animal’ Steele hadn’t acted before; it was like trying to get a mix of people, just like in Ed Wood’s movies. I wanted it to have its own kind of weird energy. With Bill Murray I didn’t want to get into a situation where it’s like a bunch of cameos. But the great thing about Bill in the movie is that he is a character. It’s not like: ‘Here’s Bill Murray.’ He plays this weird character that floats in and out. It was important to me to temper it with people who hadn’t acted, or maybe hadn’t acted as much, just to create an odd mix.
There’s something about Martin Landau. I had a feeling about him. He’s a man who’s been in showbusiness a long time. I don’t know what there was about him that made me connect him with the Beta thing, perhaps just talking to him made me feel he was perfect for the part. He’s seen a lot, probably like Bela, and been through lots of things. He’s certainly not tragic like Bela, but I think he has been in Hollywood long enough to understand those aspects of it. I think he could just relate to it, and had been through enough ups and downs to understand Bela Lugosi. He’s got his own presence in his own right. He’s done the road tour of Dracula. He’s been in horror movies. It was a case of ‘That guy looks weird, let’s put him in a horror movie.’ He’s been through it. He’s worked with Alfred Hitchcock. He’s been in cheesy horror movies. It was something he could bring, that knowledge.
‘We re-created a few scenes …’ (George ‘The Animal’ Steele and Lisa Marie)
As Ed Wood’s wife, Kathy, I wanted somebody with presence, because it’s not a big role; she comes into it late. Patricia Arquette’s got a gravity that I like, and that’s what Kathy needed. Those things are the hardest to pull off: simply being there. You just have to have it; it’s not something you can create from an outside source, so I was very happy that she did it, because this movie is a hotchpotch of things. It needs the gravity that certain people bring to it.
The funny thing about these people is that none of their lives were really documented. And I know how that feels. These people were a little out of it, they just weren’t there. So, now that Ed Wood has come out of the closet, so to speak, and more has been talked about the movies and they have more festivals on him, there’s all of this revisionist history. I’ve seen it happen in my lifetime. It’s scary. I got the worst reviews on Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and then, as the years went by, I would read things from critics saying what a great movie it is. That’s why this movie does not pretend that in 1952 Ed Wood actually did this. It’s not that. In some ways it’s a little subjective, it’s an acknowledgement that there is no hard core. I’m only taking what I think some of this stuff is, and trying to project a certain kind of spirit. The movie is dramatic, and I think there are some funny things in it, but it’s treading a fine line because I never wanted it to be jokey. Never. I’m with them. I’m not laughing at them. I don’t quite know how people will perceive the perspective and the energy that that creates because they may go, ‘This isn’t real.’ But you know what, I hate most biopics. I find that most biopics are stodgy and really boring, because people, in my opinion, take too much of a reverential approach and it’s fake.
‘… but it was more about the shooting of them.’ (Johnny Depp and Norman Alden)
Everytime I’ve seen a biopic, it just doesn’t feel real. There’s something about it, the sheer fact that it’s a movie and that an actor is portraying someone, means there’s a level of façade and fakery to it. I decided to go along with that a little bit more and not to treat these people so reverentially or in a documentary style. In some ways I’m a purist. I wasn’t there with these people, I don’t know them, but I have a feeling about them. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m doing my feeling. I’m sure these people were more horrible than the way I’m portraying them. But these people should feel good, because they’ve been made fun of their whole lives and I’m certainly not doing that to them. I like them. I did as much research as I could in terms of learning what I wanted to learn about them, but again, the film is just more my idea about these people.
Kathy is still alive. She’s very sweet. She loved Ed. That’s the other thing, it’s nice when people love each other. That’s what I loved about her. She loved him, it seems.
Again Burton refrained from going back and reviewing Wood’s movies, preferring mainly to go with his memory and his feelings.
We had them around. People watched them. I didn’t too much. There might have been certain instances, but again I kind of watched from around a corner. I didn’t want to get into too many weird re-creations. I thought, I don’t want to sit here and make judgements. I treated it matter-of-factly, so we re-create some stuff, some stuff we don’t. We re-created a few scenes from three of the films, but it was more about the shooting of them, the process. It has a fragmented, kind of slightly out of it tone I felt the book had. I had the art department and the people on the movie who hadn’t heard of Ed Wood look at the films. I gave them copies of the movies and that Jonathan Ross documentary about Ed. I liked that documentary most because I felt it captured the true spirit of these people.
There’s a sparseness to the movie. Again, I don’t know how it will come across because it’s an amalgam of feelings, and I don’t know how they will all finally connect. But the thing I always loved about those Ed Wood movies was that they were relatively timeless. They seemed like they were ahead of their time and behind their time. There was a kind of ponderous sparseness to them that I remember. So a lot of the time I would just try to keep it sparse because that’s just the way I felt about them. They were living in their own world.
Surprisingly, given his six-film relationship with Danny Elfman, Burton chose composer Howard Shore to provide the music for Ed Wood.
The situation with Danny right now, I don’t know if it will stay that way or not. I don’t know what to say about it because I don’t know where it’s going. We’re taking a little vacation from each other.
Ed Wood opened in America on 7 October 1994 to rave reviews. Burton produced the third Batman movie, Batman Forever, directed by Joel Schumacher.
I don’t think Warners wanted me to direct a third Batman. I even said that to them. I think what happened was I went through a lot on the last one; a lot of it was personal, a lot of it had to do with the movie, a lot of it was a desire to make the movie something different. I’ve always been a little at odds with them. Any time people start saying things are too dark to me I just don’t get it, because I have a different perception of what dark is. To me something like Lethal Weapon is really dark, whereas to them it’s not. They see people walking around in regular clothes shooting guns, and it makes them feel more comfortable than when people are dressed up in weird costumes. I’m disturbed by the reality of that; I find it darker when there’s a light-hearted attitude to violence and it’s more identifiable than when something is completely removed from reality. I’ve always had trouble understanding that, and I think at the end of the day, when the movie came out, it was a no-win situation. If the movie doesn’t make the same amount of money or more, it’s a disappointment. And they got a lot of flak from parents thinking it was too scary for their kids. So I think at the end of it all, I put them through the ringer too much.
But I feel close to that material. I certainly don’t feel like dissociating myself from the material completely because I feel I gave it something.
Ed Wood won several major US Critics awards, for Martin Landau and for Stefan Czaspsky’s marvellously evocative black-and-white cinematography. Yet despite the almost unanimous critical acclaim the film received, it failed to ignite the public’s attention and was Burton’s first box-office failure.
I guess if I was left to my own devices I wouldn’t think about how much money they make – except for the fact that you are in a business, so you’re forced to think that way. I felt great about Ed Wood – you always feel like it’s your child, you feel positive about it. We had shown it at the New York Film Festival and it got a very good response. So when it didn’t make any money, I felt a little like, ‘Well, it just goes to show that you never really know.’ I love the movie, I’m proud of it. It’s just that no one came. I guess if I was like everybody else, I would just blame a bad marketing campaign. But that’s too easy.
However, the film was nominated for two Oscars at the 1995 Academy Awards, and won both: Best Make-up for Rick Baker and Best Supporting Actor for Martin Landau, who also picked up a Golden Globe.
That was great. They deserved it. I never think about that stuff, but I was happy for Martin. He’s had such a long and varied career, he did such a great job, and he seemed really into it. It was just nice that somebody who I think really wanted that, got it, you know?