Crispin Glover's new film is a 'reaction of outrage'2005-05-05
Jessica Suarez
Crispin Glover is one of the few modern actors who have become better known for their lives outside the Hollywood movie-making system rather than their place within it. He’s a lot like Vincent Gallo that way. After all, besides playing the odd and endearing George McFly, father to Michael J. Fox’s character in Back to the Future, can you really remember that many of Glover’s movie roles?
Okay, so maybe you remember him playing Willard in the film remake by the same name, or maybe you remember him as the Thin Man in the last two Charlie’s Angels films. But if you are the kind of film or pop culture buff that keeps up with cult and underground films, you probably know Glover from his appearances in David Lynch films and his infamous appearance on David Letterman playing himself (plus or minus a few hits of acid).
I talked to Glover last Monday, after seeing his bizarre and disarming new film, What Is It?, a movie he wrote and directed himself. He’s currently on a cross-country tour of art house theaters to both show his film and perform a slide show and reading of his books. He was dressed in a black suit with lace-up boots, and, despite it being nearly 20 years since he played McFly, he didn’t really look much different from how he did in his most well known role.
In fact, one of the first things I wanted to talk about with Glover was why he still does, occasionally, dip into mainstream filmmaking, and if this could be considered ‘selling out’ for someone so passionate about independent films.
“The word ‘selling out,’ he said. “That’s a phrase that’s always confused me, because when you’re in a theater, to ‘sell out’ is a good thing. So it’s always been a confusing term for me. The implication, of selling something for money that isn’t what one agrees with intellectually certainly have worked in the film industry on projects that I did not and do not necessarily think are the greatest projects, intellectually. But I have good reason, especially now, to do that.”
The reason is Glover’s current project. It’s a film trilogy that, besides Glover, stars actors who have either Down syndrome or cerebral palsy. Part one, What Is It?, was Glover’s way of introducing the idea of working with actors with Down syndrome. The film is told in classic ‘hero’s journey’ form, where the protagonist is forced to leave the place where he is most comfortable to go on an adventure, then returns some time later a different person. Think Lord of the Rings, if all the cast members were mentally retarded, and if Frodo believed in random violence and racism.
If you think this sounds bizarre, confusing, and just fucked up, you’re right. But you won’t know how fucked up until you see a sexual act performed on one of the disabled cast members, while he is laying in a giant clamshell. Also bizarre are the frequent references to Nazism, Shirley Temple, and masochism, which sometimes occur all at once. It was Glover’s intention, he says, to go as far out as he could with the film, as a reaction to even his more Hollywood-friendly films going unfunded.
“Making this movie was kind of a reaction of outrage. It was like, might as well go completely in that direction – as long as even these things that don’t go in that direction have difficultly with corporate funding anyhow,” he said. “I might as well go completely in that direction.”
Film buffs who recognize Glover may also recognize some of the parallels What is It? shares with Bunuel’s L’Âge doré, or The Golden Age. Bunuel was a Spanish born director, who, like Glover, worked on the outer edges of the Hollywood system, but found vindication in projects that were entirely his own.
Bunuel is one of Glover’s favorite directors, and “What Is It?” contains a few nods to the director, whose films used to cause riots when they premiered. Glover also slyly included a tribute to another director, Stanley Kubrick, when he wrote the tag line to his film.
Glover’s tagline for What Is It? says, “Being the adventures of a young man whose principle interests are snails, salt, a pipe, and how to get home. As tormented by an hubristic, racist inner psyche.” Kubrick’s film, A Clockwork Orange was tagged with the line, “Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven.”
“In the film, there are small kind of, I suppose, nods to various filmmakers,” said Glover. “That’s one of them, to Kubrick. There’s a piece of music from the Bunuel film, L’Âge doré. And there are some other things. It’s like, I like tag lines, if they’re well thought out. And I thought that was a well thought out one. I thought I could utilize it in a certain way.”
Glover’s film, it seems, is all about using things: Using mentally retarded cast members to show that they can make great actors; using music and phrases to pay tribute to directors he admires; and using violence and jarring images to jolt viewers out of the passivity they’ve been lulled into by typical Hollywood fare. Like Kubrick and Bunuel, who ended their careers both commercially and critically successful, Glover hopes this is something he can do, in the end.
“I do think it’s important what one does at the end of one’s life. But you never know.”
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