{"id":7142,"date":"2016-01-10T23:16:33","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T06:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=7142"},"modified":"2016-01-10T17:21:40","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T00:21:40","slug":"coleman-francis-v-ed-wood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2016\/01\/10\/coleman-francis-v-ed-wood\/","title":{"rendered":"Coleman Francis v. Ed Wood"},"content":{"rendered":"

from PASTE Magazine<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Coleman Francis: The\u00a0Real<\/i>\u00a0Worst Director in Film History<\/h1>\n

BY\u00a0JIM VOREL<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Coleman<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a safe wager that if you gathered up, say, 100 film fans and surveyed them on the identity of \u201cthe worst director of all time,\u201d the answer would probably come back as Edward D. Wood Jr. And they would be wrong.<\/p>\n

Ed Wood, for all his ineptitude and naivete, is simply the most\u00a0infamous<\/i>\u00a0bad director of all time. That\u2019s what happens when you have a film like\u00a0Plan 9 From Outer Space<\/i>\u00a0on your resume, which was first enshrined with the \u201cworst movie ever\u201d title in semi-official fashion when it appeared prominently in Michael and Harry Medved\u2019s\u00a0Golden Turkey Awards<\/i>\u00a0in 1980. It actually helps that despite all their flaws, Wood\u2019s movies are, by and large, amusing viewing experiences that lend themselves to cult screenings because watching them really doesn\u2019t hurt\u00a0that<\/i>\u00a0much. They\u2019re the sort of classic, z-grade, no-budget shlock that is saved by their harmlessly earnest and generally sincere attitudes\u2014just try listening to the alien dialog of\u00a0Plan 9<\/i>\u00a0without cracking a smile.<\/p>\n

The films of Coleman Francis, on the other hand, do not provoke smiles. They don\u2019t provoke laughs, either. Coleman Francis is the\u00a0real<\/i>\u00a0owner of the \u201cworst director of all time\u201d distinction, but it\u2019s not surprising that his work isn\u2019t as well known, because once you\u2019ve seen a Coleman Francis movie, the last thing you\u2019ll want to do is see the others. What you\u2019ll want is a time machine, so you can step inside and warn your past self not to engage in a terrible mistake.<\/p>\n

With that said, the career of Francis is a fascinating one, with a surprising number of parallels to that of Ed Wood. I\u2019m not sure if the two icons of bad cinema ever managed to meet each other in \u201850s\/\u201960s L.A., but if they had, the resulting collaboration and combination of their acting stables would have been a momentous event in bad movie history, akin to the Yalta Conference between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. Likewise, I feel we should note that to really be \u201cworst director\u201d material, you need to have a multi-film career that received some kind of professional distribution. Thousands of would-be auteurs have shot handicam \u201cfeatures\u201d from the comfort of their garages before disappearing off the face of the earth. \u201cWorst\u201d implies a greater determination\u2014the ability to fail miserably, learn nothing from the experience, and then promptly fail again.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, the reason that\u00a0any<\/i>\u00a0of us still remember the works of Francis today is thanks to\u00a0Mystery Science Theater 3000<\/i>. As it did for\u00a0Manos: The Hands of Fate<\/i>,\u00a0MST3k<\/i>\u00a0also injected fresh perspective into the filmography of Francis. The classic movie-riffing show featured all three of Francis\u2019 feature films:\u00a0The Beast of Yucca Flats<\/i>,\u00a0The Skydivers<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Red Zone Cuba<\/i>. It\u2019s telling that they chose Francis\u2014rather than the better-known Wood,\u00a0MST3k<\/i>\u00a0tormented its captive satellite crew with films that were much, much worse.<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at PASTE<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from PASTE Magazine Coleman Francis: The\u00a0Real\u00a0Worst Director in Film History BY\u00a0JIM VOREL It\u2019s a safe wager that if you gathered up, say, 100 film fans and surveyed them on the identity of \u201cthe worst director of all time,\u201d the answer would probably come back as Edward D. Wood Jr. And they would be wrong. Ed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}