"This is it. This is the one I'll be remembered for."

Edward D. Wood Jr. spoke these words as he sat in the audience at the premiere of his film, Plan 9 from Outer Space. Or at least Johnny Depp spoke them while playing Ed Wood in the film of the same name. But whether or not the real Ed Wood said it out loud doesn't matter, because we all know he believed it.

How very sad it is that after his fairly early death, he was named the "Worst Director of All Time."

I personally don't believe he is deserving of this title. First of all, I've seen films that were a lot worse than those of our friend Eddie. I'm not saying that his pictures aren't worthy of Mystery Science Theater 3000, because they certainly are. But to call him the worst director of all time?

I've seen bad movies where it's painfully obvious that the director has no investment whatsoever in the picture. With some films, there doesn't even seem to be a director.

But as hokey as Ed Wood's movies are, one can just tell that they're being directed by a passionate (albeit clueless) person. Plan 9 was actually trying to say something important. The aliens weren't coming down to invade our planet for some selfish gain. They were trying to stop us before we created a weapon even more destructive than the atomic bomb - a weapon so powerful that unleashing it could actually harm the rest of the galaxy. There was a commentary on humans as a species in this film, not unlike the one in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

All right, so Plan 9 also contained Tor Johnson and Vampira stumbling around as zombies, embarrassingly fake flying saucer shots, and cringe-inducing dialogue...but is the commentary any less important? At least Ed Wood was trying to create something he was passionate about. When there are so many directors who don't care, I'd label them as far worse.

I think what pains me so much about Ed Wood's reputation for making horrible films is that he wanted so desperately to be good. He idolized Orson Welles and wanted to accomplish something like Citizen Kane. Money was nowhere near as important to him as making a name for himself, as being remembered long after his death. Well, Eddie is in fact remembered. But not exactly the way he hoped to be. In Ed Wood, Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi claimed there was no such thing as bad publicity. I'm not sure if Bela ever said this in real life, but it seems probable that he might have believed it since he allowed himself to be extensively interviewed about his drug addiction and rehabilitation experience.

Is it better then, that Ed Wood is remembered for being the "worst director of all time" rather than not being remembered at all? Would he be pleased that he actually has a cult following, even if his films are all associated with schlock?

And how would he feel about a certain episode of The X-Files, in which Scully walks into Mulder's apartment to find him watching Plan 9 from Outer Space for the forty-second time, and Mulder says, "This movie is so profoundly bad in such a childlike way that it hypnotizes my conscious critical mind and frees up my right brain to make associo-poetic leaps" ?

Moments later, Scully, thinking of their current case, says, "Maybe true faith really is a form of insanity." Mulder wonders if she's directing this at him, to which she responds, "No. I'm directing it at myself...and at Ed Wood."

Maybe all this is better than not being remembered at all. Because there must be other people like me, people who recognize that although Ed Wood's films were pretty awful, there was a real soul behind them trying to create something fantastic...something that could be shared with the world. And if that can be recognized, Eddie's efforts weren't in vain.