GLEN OR GLENDA
David Lynch admired it so much he used its wind noises for Eraserhead. Tim Burton made his best film about its maker. Even if Glen Or Glenda might not be on nodding terms with coherence, Ed Wood Jr.'s 1953 film is the kind of mess only one man could have made.
Under the pseudonym Daniel Davis, Wood plays Glen, a man suspected of infidelity by his wife, Barbara (Dolores Fuller). But it turns out this other woman is in fact Glenda, or Glen in women's clothes. A crossdresser himself, Wood drew on the story of Christine Jorgensen, an American trans woman who had sex reassignment surgery in the early 50s. Along the way, the film became a barely veiled self-portrait: notably, co-star Fuller was also Wood's partner.
Some audiences see as a film buckled by a prevalent transphobia, others
