Why have you done this?
I was battling with my own Catholicism, trying to escape my own Christianity pit. I made the website as a joke, to say fuck you to all of my friends from Catholic school. I realise the majority of people who go to my website think it's a joke, but for every 20 people who think that, there's one or two who take it seriously and get something positive out of it. I just started to hear from more and more of those people, looking for some sort of alternative to boring suit-and-tie hate-yourself religions out there, so I turned it into a serious religion.
What do converts get out of it?
The major tenets of the religion are to have pride in who you are, to accept others, to do what you want to do without sadness or guilt, and to not let other people tell you what to do. Most religions seem to be based on the idea that you are bad and through religion you can better yourself. Ours is more libertarian and independent. Go and do what you want, smoke and drink and fight and fuck, and don't let anyone else tell you what you can and can't do. Just like Ed Wood.
Is Ed Wood a god?
He's not the saviour, he's a saviour. He's not someone you can get on your knees and worship, but he is someone you can look up to. In our society you're expected to look good for other people, but Ed Wood had the strength to be an alcoholic transvestite filmmaker in the 1950s, to walk down the street dressed in drag smoking a cigar and not care what people said.
Was Hollywood the Judas to Wood's Jesus?
Yes, Hollywood definitely killed Ed Wood. He was a martyr for his films. His films were his entire life. All he wanted to do was make films, and he died for them. It's very sad.
How do you work that out?
Well, he had to die in order to succeed, for people to call him the worst director of all time. And now in America almost every video store carries an Ed Wood film. So he is a success. His films are his message.
What role does music play in your religion?
The music part of the site is really for myself. I always wanted to be a singer, but I can't really sing. Through the Church Of Ed Wood I realised I shouldn't let that fact stop me. For a while I would only record music when I was drunk. But I've grown up, there are songs with my daughter on there, and we get songs from people who have written stuff about Ed Wood and his films.
Tell us about Edwoodstock.
Since Iwas a teenager, I'd had the idea of having a film-and-music festival and calling it Edwoodstock. A lot of members of the church are in movies and TV, so we put a couple of thousand of dollars together and it was incredible. I was trying not to cry. The first band, called Flip The Switch, a ska band, did a song called 'Plan 9'. It was a song about Plan 9 From Outer Space from the alien's point of view. The chorus went: 'If the first eight plans don't work then the ninth one will.' It's an incredible song.
For more see Music.edwood.org
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