The most recent film to stem from an unproduced Ed Wood script, Aris Iliopulos's 1998 film I WOKE UP EARLY THE DAY I DIED is an amalgam of Wood's favorite themes with carnival and graveyard set pieces, not to mention obligatory transvestitism. The project was close to Wood's heart--the script was one of the few items Wood took with him when rudely evicted from a Los Angeles flat shortly before his death in 1978.
Wood's inspiration for I WOKE UP EARLY was Russell Rouse's THE THIEF, a 1952 noir thriller remarkable for its lack of dialogue. Wood hoped to cast Aldo Ray as his protagonist, a homicidal maniac on the run from the law and on a quest to recover a misplaced briefcase of stolen cash. Forty years later, Billy Zane realized this role.
Populated with a cadre of character actors, everyone in I WOKE UP EARLY is "someone." There's Carel Struycken as the mortician! There's Ann Magnuson as the loan office teller! There's Christina Ricci as the buxom hooker! And, could that be John Ritter as the circus sharpshooter? Indeed it is. Luckily, no one excessively mugs for the camera with the exception of Zane who, with his bizarre faux coiffure and ever-arched eyebrow, wonderfully overplays this ham-handed role.
Without dialogue, the soundtrack of the film comes to the forefront. Luckily, the score delivers the goods with its jarring punk rock tunes and Bernard Herrmann-inspired strings. There's even a good deal of bagpipe to be heard--a noise the drives Zane into a frenzy. Along with the music and melodramatic acting, Iliopulos cleverly inserts a few on-screen snippets of screenplay along with effectively used stock footage--another nod to Wood's reliance on stock shots.
Unfortunately, the fate of the film is a tale that smacks of the tragicomedy of Wood's life. After a successful showing at a few film festivals, the production company for I WOKE UP EARLY, Cinequanon, found itself in financial trouble. This has halted a legitimate video release of the film in the United States. Currently, I WOKE UP EARLY is available in Germany and in the U.S. via a few private video dealers.
