Crispin Hellion Glover (d.o.b – 20/4/1964) is one of those actors that I quietly judge others by. If they know of him and like his work (even if they do only know him once I say the name “George McFly”) then a relationship can begin and be maintained. If they have no idea of who the man is or, worse, express a dismissive attitude about his acting then that’s that. We’re done.
I have seen Mr. Glover in movies as diverse as Back To The Future (of course), Simon Says, Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter, Wild At Heart, The Wizard Of Gore, Charlie’s Angels and it’s sequel, Alice In Wonderland, the awful Epic Movie, The Doors, Incident At Loch Ness (a fleeting but fun cameo), Hot Tub Time Machine and Willard (one of my personal favourites and quite a gem that needs a bigger audience). Yes, I KNOW that I need to see River’s Edge ASAP. So I was VERY excited to find out that he was coming to The Filmhouse here in Edinburgh with his Big Slide Show and a showing of It Is Fine. Everything Is Fine!
Tickets were £16.00 but this was an evening that would turn out to be worth every penny. Let me start here by explaining the set-up of the whole evening and then providing reviews for both the film viewed at this time and the movie preceding it that I had viewed on a previous occasion, entitled What Is It?
The set-up: The show is due to start at 2000 but, for some reason, things are running slightly late. I’m barely containing my enthusiasm and sheer joy and I, like many others present, know that this man is visiting us all the way from the big U.S. of A. and so deserves a slight window in his schedule to compose himself. Considering how the night unfolded, I can’t believe he didn’t give himself even MORE free time. When Crispin Glover appeared from the wings the audience responded enthusiastically and the man was both humble and eager to get through a packed show. His packed slideshow can be described but, undeniably, needs to be experienced for the full effect. At the beginning of the show the star tells us of the books he has written and how he will be talking us through them. He then does so, rattling through about 8 books while a red beam of light keeps him illuminated at the corner of the screen. Having used books so old that they entered the public doman, and his own extremely fertile imagination, Crispin Glover has created a rambling, rambunctious, often hilarious series of stories and texts and when onstage his verbosity astounds as he gets through almost every page breathlessly, wringing extra laughs out of the material with expert timing and great use of emphasis on words that would do nothing to tickle the funny bone if replicated here in black and white. It’s, and I genuinely am not going for hyperbole here, a performance akin to something Shakespearean in its delivery and intelligence and would have almost been worth the admission price on its own. I am a happier man for having seen this actor perform such a great piece of work live.
Then, over an hour or so later, we moved on to the movie and I’ll place the review here. For the sake of an overview of the work so personal and dear to the man who rewards his fans with such great live shows I feel that it’s my duty to include here a review of the natural predecessor to the movie viewed on this evening and to point others in the direction of an exciting, developing cinematic trilogy. So, I hereby present my reviews of both What Is It? (viewed on an earlier occasion) and It Is Fine. Everything Is Fine!
What Is It? – The directorial debut of Crispin Hellion Glover was initially intended as a short piece to show that the concept of a story acted out by people with handicaps could be sold, despite the content of the movie not necessarily focusing on those handicaps. Well, that short piece turned into this full feature and has also led to an extremely interesting (though at this time uncompleted) “It” trilogy, with the final instalment being the movie that Glover always wanted to make from the start until the path became more twisted and intriguing, and featured a large injection of material and vision from Steven C. Stewart (a man who suffered from cerebral palsy all his life and who endured years of frustration as his sharp mind was trapped in his institutionalised body during the prime years of his life). Is this all sounding quite convoluted and confusing yet? Well, it should. Because it is. So reward yourself by seeing any one of Mr. Glover’s self-financed films with accompanying chat from the man himself and all will become crystal clear.
It’s kind of pointless to cover the plot and major points of What Is It? as it’s very much an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink kind of affair (the director himself admitting to influences as diverse as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick and Luis Bunuel) and I had the feeling that Mr. Glover was perhaps worried beneath the surface that he may never get another chance to make something so personally important to him onscreen if no audience was ever out there. This is an audience tester, no doubt about that, with its taboo-breaking scenes, its strange humour and its moments of awkwardness and tension. The cast is largely made up of people with Down’s Syndrome but Crispin Glover himself appears in a blackly comic role, thus setting the film up as a slightly easier sell than the movie that would come along next in this series.
There are snails, salt, masturbation, arguments, a duel between two demi-god auteurs, a raving minstrel and numerous exchanges between the id, alter egos and characters representing extremes. I can happily say that there was so much going on within each overloaded scene that I sometimes found it difficult to keep track but I did stay attuned to the general, black comedy throughout and felt that there were many moments there just designed to see how many buttons the director could push with his audience. It’s a brave and intelligent film obviously hampered, at times, by the financial limitations and the lack of any clear agenda, and may not hold up quite as well on its own two feet as it does when viewed in the context of Glover’s grand plan.
Film Rating: 
It Is Fine. Everything Is Fine! (pictured) – The second movie in Crispin Hellion Glover’s still-to-be-completed “It” trilogy is both a massive step up from the surreal madness of his first film and yet, ultimately, also a massive step up in the level of discomfort it can put upon it’s audience members. Which, for me, is a good thing.
Glover co-directs this time with David Brothers and it’s all based on the writing of Steven C. Stewart, a man who has suffered from cerebral palsy all his life but who has a mind as sharp and witty and rebellious as any other candidate you could consider perfect for Glover to work alongside. I’ll just note now that Steven died not long after the completion of the movie and that adds a poignancy and even an added justification for the sense of urgency and anger that the film contains.
The content of the film is like a blend of David Lynch, Dennis Potter and even a little Dario Argento as Stewart provides a hard-boiled tale of sex and death with himself cast as the villain of the piece. Stewart plays Paul Baker, a man afflicted with cerebral palsy (unsurprisingly) who is also afflicted with a major attraction to females with long-hair, an attraction almost fetishistic in the way it almost always leads to physical closeness and then danger and/or death. There are numerous scenes of graphic sexual content, many moments of barely intelligible conversation and relationships that often seem unbelievable and artificial in many ways because, well, they are but all of these things actually end up being plus points for the movie and the ending brings about its own reward for those who have sat through the entire thing. Which just makes me feel sorry for the few people who walked out of the screening I attended even before the film had fully found its feet and really got itself comfortable in its own offbeat, twisted and humorous vibe.
As well as Steven C. Stewart in the title role we have a couple of familiar faces in the cast such as Margit Carstensen, Lauren German and Bruce Glover (the father of co-director Crispin) but it’s hard to comment on their performances in a way that may convince detractors that everyone is doing a good job. The performances are false, the characters seem to be nothing more than symbols or recurring motifs in the life of the dangerous Paul Baker, and the actors reflect that with a layer of artifice most often removed from onscreen roles.
What we have onscreen, and what many may have failed to grasp when struggling with the content and the fanciful aspects of it all, is the fantasy concocted by a man who was institutionalised in the prime years of his life. Steven C. Stewart was, essentially, left in a care facility as people awaited his death. That death didn’t come, at least not until MANY years later, and that time must have felt like an unbelievably frustrating and painful experience to a mind imprisoned within a fragile body afflicted with cerebral palsy. So it’s no surprise that the fiction created from this mind is one allowing for freedoms that he never had in real life, one allowing for relations with women that may also have been all too lacking during his state of confinement, one full of thoughts of retribution and of being able to attack a world he was stifled by (perhaps both physically and by carers) and, of course, one in which everyone can understand his intelligence and wit when he speaks, despite the obvious communication problems caused by his condition.
A very difficult movie to dissect and review in the normal way, I would just encourage everyone to see this movie whenever possible (and that’s usually by seeing it when Crispin Hellion Glover comes to your town with his big slideshow) and I assure you that it’s ultimately worth the investment that you give to it, standing out as one of the strangest and yet most interesting outings of independent cinema in recent years. I can’t wait to see Mr. Glover complete his trilogy and I hope that, by that point, many others end up giving their time, thoughts and patience to an actor-director who at least has the utmost courtesy to return the favour to audiences whenever the opportunity arises.
Film Rating:
And, with the movie over, it was time for the Q & A. Some people missed out on this because they just couldn’t stick with the movie until the end and I felt glad that they’d missed out because Crispin Glover isn’t a stupid man and doesn’t treat his audiences as if they’re stupid either. In fact, once he reappeared to talk to an audience still trying to process what they had just seen, he was even smarter and sharper than I’d ever imagined him to be. I think that many, like myself, have an image of the man as eccentric and perhaps slightly scatty. He did, throughout the evening, forget what had started him on such a lengthy dialogue with the audience but that was simply because he was giving SO much thought, insight and information in his answers that it was easy for us all to get a bit lost in what was being said and not even care, the man is one of the greatest orators I have heard outside of the diabolical world of politics.
When unsure of how others would feel, Crispin Glover is hesitant to speak on behalf of anyone else (whether that’s people he has worked with as an actor or Steven C. Stewart, who he worked so closely with on both the written material and the screen) so I don’t want to reprint the whole Q & A session here, lest I misquote the man and do him some unjustice.
Suffice to say, Crispin Glover would seem to be most displeased, over the past 20 years or so, with the ubiquitous sterilisation of free-thinking and individuality. There’s nothing now that confronts audiences, it often tends more towards pampering them and making them feel secure. Nothing is all that interesting in the world of film since those groundbreaking 70s-era flicks reflecting what America had gone through. This would appear to be why he wanted to use people with handicaps in his movies, despite the movies not focusing on those handicaps as some part of the plot (well . . . . not in the way you’d think anyway). He also now seems to be a man happy with working at his craft while gaining himself some time for his art. In fact, someone was indeed brave enough to ask a question about dealing with the likes of Charlie’s Angels while being known to fans for other, more artistic endeavours and Mr. Glover was polite, amusing and informative in his reply (as he was throughout the whole evening). He laughed at the irony that his character in that blockbuster, McG-helmed, action flick was one of the characters that he’d ever had the most input on, because he was able to change it from a speaking part to a non-speaking part. And the cash from those kinds of movies allowed him to fund what we’d seen onscreen that evening though he would hope to recoup more costs from book sales and some share of the box office throughout his tour.
Overrunning by a good while, one question to Mr. Glover can prompt an answer that covers a number of years in descriptive terms and a good 10-15 minutes in real-time terms, topics covered included the approach to the content of the movies, the complicated story behind the eventual creation of the “It” trilogy, why working with the handicapped provides something more interesting than working with standard actors or even non-actors and an exploration of some of the more outstanding aspects of the movie. It was an avalanche of information and opinion, it was never dull and it wasn’t anywhere near enough despite being more than plenty. THIS is my new ideal dinner guest!
And then it was over. The desk was set up and we had to queue with any items brought/books purchased if we wanted an autograph or picture with the man. Damn my lack of a digital camera or i-phone (Dear Santa . . . . *ahem*). The queue was long and it didn’t move fast. I was near the front and even I waited ages. But when I got there? A warm handshake, the acceptance of my newly-purchased book to sign and more talk from the man that I went to the show a fan of and came away an ABSOLUTE fan of. I spoke of the site, of this write-up and of my admiration for his work (of course) and he, in turn, praised people who supported independent film endeavours such as his movie/show that evening. I left the building at about quarter to twelve, a little tired but very, very happy and knew that every single person in the long queue behind me would still be given just as much time and attention from someone who really goes that extra yards for fans who come out in support of his projects. Crispin Glover needs independent cinema fans but, make no bones about it, independent cinema fans need Crispin Glover a hell of a lot more than they might realise. An absolute star.
For all of your Crispin Hellion Glover information do go to the official site: http://www.crispinglover.com/ – tour dates and places are there, a selection of his books are available to buy and there’s even a clip of a book reading before it became the slick slideshow that it is today.
It goes without saying, and I often forget to do just that, that I’d also like to give a huge thank you to The Filmhouse in Edinburgh for their ongoing support and genuine love for cinema, both independent and simply joyous. To all the staff and people who make it happen – film fans thank you.
