Edwood D. Wood Jr

Edwood D. Wood Jr, sounds like his name first name repeats itself without the E, is considered the all time worst filmmaker ever, but I think he is an auteur. Call it the influence of Tim Burton & Johnny Depp for bringing alive the character of Edwood in the movie Edwood with their brilliant direction and acting that I have started to grow a fascination for him. If it were not from Burton & Depp I doubt the movie would have any influence on anybody.

I feel there is a "Edwood" in every filmmaker because of the fact that every filmmaker believes in his story whether it makes sense to others or not. Now there is a thin line between an eccentric genius and an inane filmmaker. If the movie works he is called a genius and if it doesn't go down well the audience he is considered a moron. Again the biggest cult film have been delivered by the great directors and the biggest dud are also been delivered by the great directors. For eg Saawariya by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Alexander by Oliver Stone or the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the crystal skull by Spielber & George Lucas.
Apart from lacking aesthetics & technicalities, Edwood's movies also lacked logic and sensibility but inside him there was a story teller with immense passion for films. He seem to have got involved in the story so much that he didn't or forgot to take care about the other aspects. He was a writer, director, producer, editor and music arranger and never got anything right. A sci-fi writer perhaps had no clue about science & technology.

Somehow after watching Tim Burton's "Edwood" I seem to be respecting every filmmaker and their work whether its good, bad or worse. In India, each state had its own industry and have their own style and perspective. I guess there is no good movie and bad movie concept, its all subjective. I saw a documentary about a filmmaker in Malegaon who remakes the old hindi classics with a handycam casting his local friends as actors, edits it on a home PC, screens it in a local video parlour and releases a CD. Almost every person in that place has his seen at least one of his movies. He may not be a great filmmaker but for few thousands of people in Malegaon he is the Ramesh Shippy or Mani Ratnam.