W. Paul Apel on The Valley Obscured by Smog
1.) Where did your obsession with Ed Wood begin?
Even though I'd heard of Ed Wood in passing before, my obsession really began with the Tim Burton film. Roger Ebert said that if you go to the movies enough, eventually you'll see yourself on screen. That's how I felt watching it. I'm not a cross-dressing B-movie filmmaker, but I identified with someone who had the drive to make movies with his gang of misfits while also having the weakness of saying "good enough" and moving on. I'd never seen that combination portrayed before, and it spoke to me enough that I've been thinking about it ever since.
2.) The Tim Burton film is usually categorized as a comedy. Would you categorize your novel the same way?
I'd primarily call it a coming-of-age story, but I hope it's funny. It's tragic, too. I'm not sure it fits neatly into one category. While the Burton film is funny, it's also a little odd to think of it as a straight comedy. Someone expecting a happy-go-lucky time might be surprised by the scenes with Martin Landau as Lugosi, for example. So it’s kind of like life: funny and sad at the same time.
3.) The Burton film is beloved. Did you worry about redundancy?
While the film is certainly beloved by its fans, it isn't actually all that widely seen. Even among Ed Wood fans it's divisive. Some don't like the liberties it takes. Others prefer Burton's version of Ed Wood to the real thing. I never worried about redundancy because my take was on material the Burton film never explored.
4.) How do you balance historical accuracy with fictional invention?
Someone once said the first rule of adaptation is to be as untrue to the source material as possible, which is probably a more popular rule among writers than readers. If something is historically accurate, it's usually because reality was already more interesting than anything I could have invented. The biggest liberty I took was moving Necromania's production from 1971 to 1977 to get it closer to both Star Wars and the end of Ed's life. To a casual reader this might not be a big deal, but it's probably the single biggest stretch most Ed Wood fans would balk at. In a weird way, though, it might be more forgiving to blatantly and deliberately get something major wrong than to mess something up by accident.
5.) This book freely intermingles real people and situations with fictional ones. Were there any particular inspirations for doing that?
The most obvious inspirations were the films of Quentin Tarantino, specifically Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. When I first saw Basterds, the notion that you could do something as insane as assassinate Hitler really freed my mind when it came to what I thought of as the rules of storytelling. Once Upon a Time... is much closer to my novel in subject matter, though really, I don't think my novel does much more with fictionalizing real people than many traditional historical fictions have done in the past.
6.) Did you feel a sense of responsibility portraying real people, all of them deceased?
I tried to stay close to what I knew to be documented about these people, and when I didn't I was comfortable I hadn't done anything outside the bounds of good taste. I do sometimes worry about Shannon, whose characterization is almost entirely fictional. But that might be less offensive than trying to get it exactly right and missing the mark.
7.) There are some unsavory elements of Ed Wood's later life. How did you decide what to include?
It would have been impossible and pointless to tell the story of Ed's later life without being detailed about how bad it was, but I drew the line at physical domestic abuse. I have scenes of Ed and Kathy verbally abusing each other, but I stayed away from physical abuse because I didn't want the novel to become primarily about that aspect of Ed's life. I think it would have overwhelmed the entire narrative. I don’t mean to deny it happened, so I had Shannon reference it in dialogue. But I thought it was okay for Alan not to witness it firsthand.
8.) Is Alan Starkwell based on you?
Yes and no. Like Alan, I graduated from the University of Redlands with an English degree and wanted to become a writer, but that was in the early 2000s, not the late 70s. I did spend some time sleeping on couches in the Valley, in the homes of aspiring actors, writers, filmmakers and dancers, but mostly just a weekend or week here and there. Although portrayed as unsure of himself and awkward, Alan still has more guts than me. For example, he went and tried to make it in Hollywood when I never did. I tried not to make him look like me to throw people who know me off the scent, so that’s why he’s a scrawny guy with big, black-rimmed glasses. There are lots of little details from my own experience in Alan, but fiction gives me the luxury of also just totally changing something up whenever I feel like it.
9.) Did you ever lose sympathy for Eddie while writing him?
Honestly, no. The novel is a bit of wish fulfillment. What would it be like to actually meet Ed Wood? The truth is I probably would have had a hard time being around him. His neediness would have turned me off and I'd have worried about getting into trouble. Knowing me, though, years later I'd have wished I'd lightened up and given the guy a chance. So I actually tried to make Alan more sympathetic to him than I suspect I would have been, which in turn made me feel more sympathetic towards him, too.
10.) What compelled you to make Shannon Dolder such a major character?
I wanted a potential love interest who was a counterpoint to Alan's ex-girlfriend from back home. Someone who was edgier, more experienced and a more thoughtful influence on him. It was an interesting coincidence that a real person who shared some of those qualities lived in Eddie's apartment building. I couldn't pass up using the real-world connection in creating this character.
11.) Is the novel geographically accurate to 1970s Los Angeles?
One of the things that inspired me to start writing in earnest was visiting Ed's Yucca Street apartment building. I'd been to Hollywood before but never hunted the building down, and I was struck by how close it was to the Walk of Fame, how you could see the Hollywood sign from the street, how it was a short stroll to Musso's and the Chinese Theatre. That’s what got me thinking about Star Wars, how Eddie would have seen the crowds and the billboards. I'd look up maps and pictures every now and then to make sure I didn't make any glaring mistakes but the biggest thing was actually being there.
12.) A major motif in the novel is the opening of Star Wars. Can you remember your own first viewing?
I was too young to remember the first time I saw Star Wars. My earliest memories are watching it on VHS. Still, it was a huge part of my childhood. I read the novelization and the making-of books, played with the action figures, colored in the coloring books, listened to the soundtrack. Like Alan, George Lucas was one of my early heroes.
13.) Why Necromania specifically, out of all of Ed's adult films?
I have a soft spot for Necromania because I think it's the closest, narratively speaking, to a classic Ed Wood movie of all the adult films he directed. It has the occult elements, the coffin and even references Lugosi, so it dovetails nicely with Ed’s previous life as a sci-fi and horror filmmaker. It also helps that there seems to be more making-of stories about Necromania than his other 70s movies.
14.) The novel began as a screenplay. How did the transition affect the finished book?
The ending was always there from the original screenplay. I could picture it as a final shot set to the perfect song. When I adapted it into a novel, I got stuck trying to figure out how to translate that shot into prose. Eventually I realized the novel already had screenplay elements woven into it, so I could end it that way too. I got the shot I wanted without having to transform it into something it wasn't.
15.) Do you think Ed Wood would have liked this novel?
I think he'd appreciate that the book takes him seriously as a person. At first. But then after a few drinks he would decide he should have written it and form a grudge against me.