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Release of his new film comes with presentation
Published on Friday, Apr 25, 2008
With movies dropped onto DVDs and Web sites like so many newspapers tossed haphazardly toward customers' porches, Crispin Glover comes across as a rare caretaker of his work and his vision.
The actor and filmmaker, known for his roles in commercial films from Back to the Future (where he played George McFly, the father of Michael J. Fox's character) to Beowulf, personally shepherds his films from place to place.
He will be at the Cleveland Cinematheque tonight and Saturday for an evening that will include his narrating a slide show drawn from eight books he has assembled and a showing of What Is It?, the first film in a planned trilogy. A question-and-answer session and a book signing will follow.
In a recent telephone interview from Denver, where he was also doing a presentation, Glover says he has financial reasons for his movie distribution system. Besides a share of the movie- ticket price, he gets paid for his appearance and collects more money from the sale of his books. The money
can then go into making more movies.
But he also wants to put his work in context.
''I feel a certain obligation, particularly with What Is It?'' he said. Being on hand, he can show that the images in his film are ''not just arbitrary. There is a thought process behind it. . . . My way of releasing the film is not the easiest way, but I genuinely feel a certain kind of social responsibility to release it in this way.''
He also wants to deal with the discomfort audiences may experience, especially when Glover gets into what he considers taboo subjects.
''Corporate filmmaking the last 20 and 30 years has gotten to the point where anything that could make an audience discomforted is necessarily excised,'' he said. ''That's a very negative thing because [at] the moment when an audience member sits back and asks, 'Is this right what I'm watching?' . . . people are having a genuinely educational experience.''
And how exactly is he provoking people?
''One of the things I am careful not to do is to list the taboo subjects because when I get criticism on the film, what people will do is list all these elements in it and call it exploitative,'' he said. ''I really don't consider this film an exploitative film. If I were to start listing the things that people consider taboo, it would almost be spelling out the film as exploitative.''
But he is quick to say that the film is not for children. And the Cinematheque's description of What Is It? gives a hint of what is to come: ''a blackly comic fever dream in which a young man wrests with his psyche — and a mostly Down-syndrome cast interacts with porno actresses in animal masks, a demigod played by Glover, and lots of snails.''
And once you've gotten through that, Glover has a second film, It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine, that he wants to bring to Cleveland — after people have seen What Is It?
''One could see [Everything Is Fine] completely on its own,'' he said. Glover did not write the second film, although he is a great admirer of Steven C. Stewart's screenplay. But What Is It? lays the groundwork with its provocative material for what is to come in Everything Is Fine.
''By the time one gets to seeing Everything Is Fine, those [taboo] things are not important,'' he said. ''These things have been addressed in a certain way, and there should not be a problem of going into these areas.''
But go into them Glover does. He said he has bought property in the Czech Republic for a small studio where he hopes to make more films, including eventually the third one in the ''it'' trilogy. And the films are just part of Glover's restless intellect, an outpouring of ideas that finds him pausing in conversation to say ''I usually explain this in a different way'' and ''I'm not explaining this perfectly well.''
At times, it has made him seem publicly nutty. An appearance on David Letterman's show more than 20 years ago is still a YouTube staple. And it would be easy to make fun when Glover explains, say, his dislike for the song Happy Birthday. (We talked the day before he turned 44.)
Glover is aware that his words could be misused; he was insistent that I record our interview instead of just taking notes. But he makes sense in conversation. He may have a singular vision for his books and his movies, but so do many filmmakers. And where some of those will just shovel out product and promotional sound bites, Glover is right there, onstage, ready to explain and defend.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in a blog at http://www.ohio.com. You can find more columns, questions and answers at http://www.ohio.com/entertainment/heldenfels.
With movies dropped onto DVDs and Web sites like so many newspapers tossed haphazardly toward customers' porches, Crispin Glover comes across as a rare caretaker of his work and his vision.
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