Crispin Glover's What is it?

[MacGuffin]

FEATURE - Crispin Glover, Unplugged
Weary of media conglomerates and their faux independent labels, multimedia artist Crispin Glover takes to the road with a slide show and his feature length directorial debut. Source: FilmStew.com

In the world of screen actors, perhaps being a hero is measured not by how many Oscar nominations you’ve racked up, or by how many younger thespians you’ve influenced, but by how fiercely you maintain your creative integrity over the years.

Ever since first commanding attention twenty years ago as the neurotic, likeably nerdy George McFly in Robert Zemeckis’ sci-fi hit Back to the Future, Crispin Glover has worked at honing his singular, idiosyncratic persona in small, arty films (Wild at Heart, Bartleby), as well as in bigger studio projects (Willard, the Charlie’s Angels movies). Describing that persona is next to impossible, but here goes: proudly eccentric and mannered, with an air of gothic melodrama, possessing funny, sad, and scary facets.

That unique mixture of high acting style and intense emotional engagement has won Glover a rabid cult following, and more recently, helped nab him the Maverick Award from Method Fest, a film festival dedicated to the craft of acting that runs through this Friday in Calabasas, CA. The career-recognition award was presented to Glover by another iconoclast, filmmaker Werner Herzog (Aguirre: The Wrath of God).

But of course, iconoclasm is what the Maverick Award is all about, or as Glover himself puts it during a recent phone interview with FilmStew, “I looked up ‘maverick’ in the etymological dictionary, and it basically was a kind of cattle that had been owned by somebody named Maverick that had not been branded. And so I believe the poetry of it is somebody that’s unbranded.”

During an enjoyably digressive discussion that lasts over an hour, Glover proves to be someone who delights in the poetry and intellectual complexity of words and concepts, as when he uses the term ‘pro-cultural’ to describe mainstream studio filmmaking, only to arrive at an even more satisfying description.

“I’ve noticed that what corporations have been funding are very narrow elements,” he analyzes. “Perhaps a better way to describe it than ‘counter-cultural’ and ‘pro-cultural’ is that there’s a title of a book called Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche.”

“And basically, anything that fits within that idea of good and evil is what’s allowed to be produced right now,” Glover continues, “within what I’ve been calling the ‘pro-cultural’ film state that exists. Although Werner Herzog almost argued that that was really - I don’t want to put words in his mouth - but from that point-of-view, it could also be looked at [that] what studios are doing is ultimately counter-cultural, because that definition of counterculture on some level is the concept of destroying culture.”

“I feel that the corporate entities, by and large right now, are only funding things that fit within this very narrow point of thought.”

When asked to elaborate on what kind of morality exists in that space ‘beyond good and evil,’ Glover introduces the laws of nature in the animal world as an analogy. “If a lion kills another lion, that’s not really considered evil, or good,” he observes. “It’s just considered something that happens, versus a man kills another man. That’s considered evil.”

“But to go beyond that concept,” he suggests, “beyond the concept of good and evil, is really just looking at a man killing a man as just that. This is something that happens.”

Another illustration of Nietzsche’s vision, and one that’s just as bizarre, is Glover’s debut film as writer-director, What Is It?, the story of a young, snail-killing man’s (Michael Blevis) dual with his psyche. Filled with images of blackface minstrels, nude women in creature masks, and Shirley Temple (!), the surreal film understandably divided audiences when it premiered at January’s Sundance Film Festival. Variety panned it, while the more renegade Film Threat gave it five stars, praising it as nothing less than ‘an apocalyptic symphony of the auteur’s unconscious.’

Openly critical of contemporary indie-distribution practices, Glover has chosen to get What Is It? to audiences by distributing it himself. Pairing the 72-minute film with a slide show he narrates, the actor-filmmaker has toured through several American cities to personally show his work. Later this month, for example, he will be in Michigan and Arizona.

Unconventional as it sounds, this distribution plan has already yielded positive results, including a Best Narrative Film award for What Is It? from the Ann Arbor Film Festival. “I haven’t found on the whole that audiences disagree with the film,” Glover insists. “I’ve found that people in the media will report that audiences disagree with the film, and it really isn’t the case.”

“If I show the film to between 300-500 people at a time, I watch and see how many people get up and leave from the film. And there will be between five and seven people that will get up and leave…but that’s out of 300-500 people, so really that’s a very low amount. There’s probably more people that get up and walk out of an average film that just isn’t engaging.”

Not only is Glover not skittish about exposing middle America to his brand of surrealism; he claims that What Is It? was in fact made for middle America, and that the most negative experience he’s had showing it so far came not from there but rather via the allegedly sophisticated realm of the New York Underground Film Festival.

“Wherever it was that I was intellectually coming from with the film, I feel that somehow it was not fitting into what their particular intellectual circle was, and I feel like I offended them on some level,” he relates.

To fund his incendiary personal projects, Glover has no qualms about taking the occasional Hollywood gig, as long as he can put his own creative stamp on the material. It was his artistic control that helped shape one of his more well-known characters, the deadly, silent Thin Man from Charlie’s Angels.

“A strange experience that surprised me actually was how much influence that I ended up having on one of the larger-budgeted films that I’ve been in, [which] is Charlie’s Angels,” the actor shares. “There were so many things in that character that were not originally written in the script.”

“Originally, the character had dialogue,” Glover explains. “When they first wanted me to come in and read, I did not think that the dialogue was good, and I was not that interested in meeting on the film, but they really said they wanted to hear my ideas and thoughts. And I came in, and I told them I thought the character shouldn’t have any dialogue, and [director] McG immediately said, ‘That’s it! That’s exactly what we want to do!’”

Altering a mega-budgeted action-comedy around his character ideas is yet another accomplishment that solidifies Glover’s status as a genuine maverick, as does the fact that the next sequel he’s working on isn’t Charlie’s Angels 3, but a second installment of What Is It?

[deathnotronic]

Hey. I'm not too far from Ann Arbor. I should probably go see this. When's it showing there?

[The Perineum Falcon]

April 16, 8:00pm.

[deathnotronic]

Thank you, kind sir.

[B.C. Long]

Has anyone heard Crispin's music albums?

[MacGuffin]

Crispin Glover has long been a hero to many odd people. His books, Rat Catching, Oak-Mot and What it is, and how it is done have long been sought out by collectors because they have given the most honest look into his wild mind. But his directorial debut, What is It? may supplant that notion. I saw What is It? at the Anthology Film Archives and it was a real eye opener. I had heard it was weird, different, frustrating, bizarre and even brilliant; but it’s so far from the mainstream that it almost overlaps and becomes mainstream again. The story is very complex, a young man with Down Syndrome reveals himself to the audience on multiple planes of reality. Crispin himself makes an appearance credited as Dueling Demi-God Auteur and The young man's inner psyche.

I got a chance to talk with Glover in person and found him to be amazingly articulate and very friendly.

Crispin Glover: First off I’ve been using the phrase counterculturalism and I want to clarify the meaning of that. I have meant that countercultural sits in the realm of conceptual thought which is beyond good and evil. In the title of the book by Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond God and Evil, it becomes apparent that good and evil are constructs that have been utilized by society in order to keep restraints. What is considered good for the culture can be called "good", and what is considered "bad" for the culture can be called "evil." Yet, what one culture considers "good" another culture may consider "evil" and vice versa. Conceptual thought sits outside the realm of the Judeo-Christian element of moral constraint of "good" and "evil." Anything that sits in the realm that is beyond good and evil used within media can make an audience uncomfortable and it will necessarily be removed by committee style film making that is inevitable in work created by corporations.

Daniel Robert Epstein: As a director how do you get a snail or any actor to come out of their shell?

CG: I don’t feel great about killing the snails in the movie. This film started out as a short film that was going to promote a screenplay I had co-written where the roles in it had been written for actors with Down Syndrome. There was a corporation that funds movies that I went to and they were interested in it. I talked to them for a long time and they were concerned about using actors with Down Syndrome for a majority of the roles. I started out to make this film to promote that this was a viable idea. As I was editing the film together it came in at 84 something minutes which is longer than this film is now. It was too long for what it original was. I could tell that with a bit more work I could turn it into a feature. I ended up putting myself in the film and I put Steve Stewart into the film as the man with cerebral palsy who chokes me at the end. Steve Stewart wrote the screenplay to what is now the sequel to this, which I have already shot. Steve on some level had been imprisoned in a nursing home for a number of years because since he had a severe case of cerebral palsy he was very difficult to understand. They would call him a retard which he wasn’t, he was of normal intelligence. The reason there is the graphic sexuality is because it is a fantastical psychosexual retelling of his point of view of his life at that point. There is something fascinating about the naïve way he tells the story. People call it folk art or outsider art but he is definitely expressing himself in an interesting fashion.

Once I turned the film into a feature film I realized what the corporation was reacting to. It wasn’t so much just having people with Down Syndrome in it, but the concept. When I look at the face of a person who has Down Syndrome there is a history in that person’s face of someone who has really lived outside the culture their entire lives. When there is an entire film cast with people who have lived outside the culture it automatically gives the feeling of an outside of culture movie. I feel that the corporation was reacting to something counterculturally on some level. They didn’t want to promote counterculturalism. I started to think about it and there is no countercultural movement that corporations are able to point to and say “This is who we will be able to sell this movie to.” There have been points in time when corporations have been able to do that. I would say that 99.9 percent of everything that is made is basically coming from a procultural film state. It’s because films are very expensive to make. There are other artforms that aren’t as expensive so you can have interesting points of view. I would argue that counterculturalism is good because when you only have proculturalism it’s very bad. You need to have dissent and discussion. Because it is so expensive to make films everything needs to be made by committees which ultimately will say “They wouldn’t want to say that.” It seems like a relatively benign thing. But at a certain time when everything is made by a committee everything becomes an insincere statement which is very much what’s happening.

When I was casting, every single person that I met with that had Down Syndrome was extremely enthusiastic and wanted to be in the movie. The guardians are the ones I really had to deal with. Basically almost all people with Down Syndrome have guardians. I’ve had press write that I had kids with Down Syndrome in the movie. There are no children in the movie, they are all adults. It is a pro-cultural consensus that people with Down Syndrome are thought of as children on some level. They are not children; well they are when they are children. Many of the guardians were concerned with the violence and sexuality but those that were enthusiastic about it stayed enthusiastic and their charges ended up in this film. They were all excellent to work with and I was very careful working with them. I wanted to put people with Down Syndrome kissing in the film because I hadn’t really seen it before. When I edited it together I showed it to the guardians because I knew there could be issues over that. The sister of the woman was her guardian and the parents of the man were his guardians. The sister was more concerned so there were some things I did do to adjust and it worked out well. The sister felt it ended up being beautiful. It’s not the standard idea of what is beautiful but there is definitely a beauty to it. I shot the whole film in 12 days over two and half years. None of the problems I encountered had anything to do with the fact that my actors had Down Syndrome and everything to do with technical difficulties which I had a lot of.

DRE: It was my understanding that Shirley Temple is god in the film. If I’m right, why is she god?

CG: One of the things I don’t like about many films that are part of the pro-cultural film state is that there is a dictatorial of what people are supposed to be thinking. It bothers me. I will go and watch a film and see that sometimes they thought something through a little bit but it’s very evident that they don’t want you to think about it much. Maybe the audience will think about it a little bit. I think that’s because most films don’t let people think for themselves at all. I don’t like to dictate what the meanings behind something are. I do like to say that this film is reacting to the culture I’ve grown up in. My father is an actor and I started out acting professionally when I was 14. From the time I turned 18 and even before that I always wanted to be part of the countercultural film movement but I realized, especially while I was making this film, the entire time that I have been acting there has not been a countercultural film movement to be a part of. I had to make my career of trying to find interesting things within a procultural film state. It’s been very frustrating and I felt a certain amount of aggression and dissatisfaction from the people I’ve worked with when I try to find things that are interesting. This film is very much a reaction to that. I do have very specific ideas of what each thing means but I would rather have people interpret it for themselves. When I meet with people one on one I ask them what it meant to them and sometimes people will think exactly what I am thinking and sometimes it is a little different or very different.

DRE: Was there any improvisation in the film?

CG: Everything was scripted except for certain parts that were improvised. Sometimes the actors would come up with things that were much better than what was scripted. There is the one fellow that says, “Don’t interfere with my mind.” I think the original line was, don’t interfere with my mission. A lot of the things in the film may seem constructed from the beginning but it really isn’t so. The reason the Michael Jackson thing is in the film is because Rikky Wittman, an actor with Down Syndrome, did a “Beat it” vogueing thing. He was kind of a jokester and just doing those moves on set so I had him do it on camera. The things that had to do with the minstrel character with Michael Jackson came in much later.

The scene with the two women with Down Syndrome sitting on either side of me was something that happened during the filming of the short. The girl on the left of me was named Kelly Swiderski and the woman on the right was named Robin Adams. They were having something of a feud. I came out on the set and Robin was crying so I had to ask her what was going on. She told me that Kelly had told her that she wouldn’t have me as her boyfriend because Kelly was going out with me. I wanted to utilize that within the film.

Another thing with the element of the people with Down Syndrome is that when I first went and spoke with the guardians I always made it clear that the film isn’t about Down Syndrome.

DRE: What made you decide to use the song Some Niggers Never Die by Johnny Rebel which many would consider bigoted and racist?

CG: First I think it’s important to differentiate the use of two words, one is bigotry and the other is racism. There is something in this culture that is peculiar. Bigotry means to hate somebody for how they were born with no concept of what their mindset is. Racism means to classify by race which is a very different than hating someone for their race. On some level just to classify by race, such as homo sapien is racist. So racism shouldn’t be considered a bad thing. Bigotry can be considered a bad thing. But in terms of Johnny Rebel and the use of that song in particular, this was a movie where I didn’t want to say “Well we wouldn’t want to say that.” With how bigotry is dealt with in procultural film is that it ends up feeling insincere because it dictates what you are and are not able to say. I think there have been some very good films about bigotry like Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul where the older woman falls in love with the Arabic man is just a great film about bigotry. You like those people, feel bad for them and you really feel the hate of the people that surround them. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Luis Buñuel, Werner Herzog and Stanley Kubrick I would consistently say are my four favorite filmmakers because they tend to be very thoughtful with their storylines and points. Again I wanted to work in areas with counterculturalism which go beyond good and evil. There is a self censorship that goes on which is bad for the culture. It’s better to put things out and let there be a discussion like this. Then people are able to comment on it with their own point of view. Film is very expensive but I am in a relatively privileged position where I am able to travel around the country and advertise to get people into the film. Most first time filmmakers can’t do that so I do question how easy it’s going to be to have genuine counterculturalism.

DRE: Would you consider this to be an experimental film?

CG: I think of my film as a narrative drama but I understand why there are people who would watch the film, who are used to watching films from the procultural film state, and would consider it experimental. But What is It? has a stronger narrative than many films that are considered mainstream films.

DRE: Very few filmmakers that work on the films you’ve made, even some of the more out there ones, don’t want to label themselves countercultural because people may call them hypocrites because they made them under the auspices of a Hollywood movie studio.

CG: Yes it’s something I have a very clear definition on. For this film there is no one that corporations are able to point and say, that is who we are trying to sell the film too. I’ve never been against corporations or corporate filmmaking if they are making something interesting. There have been times and places when there have been countercultural movements that corporations are able to point to and sell the film. 2001 [A Space Odyssey] is a very interesting and intelligent film that was made by MGM. I wouldn’t have made my film if there wasn’t an audience for it.

DRE: I thought your film was not dissimilar to certain films from the 1960’s except in your case it was made by someone who starred in a movie produced by Steven Spielberg.

CG: I don’t feel like I am doing anything particularly new in terms of the style of expression. But I do think that what I am expressing right now is that not many people that have corporate distribution are reacting to the same things in the culture that I am reacting to. I think there have been some people that have done that but it’s very small and far away in film. There are other artforms that are less expensive where people can have more individualized thought process. Particularly in painting there is interesting things being done. I don’t feel that way about music. I feel that any music that has stanzas or refrains is procultural because it comes from a proletariat working class history that started at least from the serfs in the Middle Ages when they would sing in that fashion. It represents a middle class point of view and it makes people feel emotionally feel good about being a working class person. I feel that rock music is all procultural and people tend to get really mad about it.

DRE: There is always someone trying to sell you something with rock music on the radio.

CG: That’s something I don’t agree with. Commercialism is not necessarily procultural. I think commercialism is a very healthy thing. There are examples of people like Stanley Kubrick who are extremely commercially successful but yet have absolutely intelligent matter in their films. This concept of something being commercial automatically makes it procultural is something I don’t agree with. What does make something countercultural is when it literally counters what is considered good, right or supportive of the culture.

The ruling class’ music was a nonlingual educated point of view which is now called classical or post-Beethoven romantic era music. That music has gone away because the middle class overthrew the ruling class. When this culture is listening to rock music it is listening to the anthem that is proculturalism. Even though there are these subcategories of stanza and refrain music like rap, alternative or whatever words they use to categorize, they really are all ultimately harkening back to the working class anthems.

DRE: So your idea of what counterculturalism is not against the idea of people selling things?

CG: No, because selling is fine. There is nothing wrong with selling ideas. If one wants to counter the idea of sales and capitalism then one has to look at the various models of monetary political systems. Communism versus capitalism versus fascism versus monarchy versus anarchy versus the surrealist movement. Apparently the surrealist movement was originally a political movement. I don’t have a problem with capitalism necessarily. It’s very easy for this culture to point out the corruption of communism and fascism but it’s difficult for it to point out the corruption of itself. But that corruption does exist and it is in the element of corporate entities taking the element of individualized thinking away. That’s really where bad corruption comes into play in all of these areas. It’s the most evident in film because it’s an expensive artform and they need to be able to feel confident in salesmanship. They need a group they can point to and sell it so since there isn’t a countercultural movement that they can point to, they won’t bother. If anything makes anyone feel uncomfortable at all, which good art can do, they won’t support it. Now that’s being taken out of stories in the media because it's considered something that could drive audiences or sponsorship away. Now all films and media are being approved by committees, which is an absolute corruption.

DRE: Your movie doesn’t have a lot of references to anything in it. If you look at this room we’re in, there is music playing, there is lamp that was specifically designed to fit into this room and many others. Your movie doesn’t reference other films.

CG: I don’t know if I agree. The music playing in this room does reference that working class element. I like design and I like when something is well manufactured and well designed. I believe my film does reference things.

DRE: Yes but it references the things you’ve been talking about which puts it into this whole other realm and it’s populated by people we don’t see everywhere. It makes it feel like another dimension and also like a clean feeling. Like I’m seeing something very fresh. Is that how you saw the film?

CG: I do like the idea of the universe of the film being its own removed world. People ask me why I wanted to work with people with Down Syndrome and there are several reasons. One of them has to do with looking at the face of someone with Down Syndrome. When I do that there is a history there of someone who has lived outside of culture their entire life. When a film is almost entirely populated by people who have been removed from the culture, it makes the film automatically have another culture’s point of view or countercultural. The other reason I worked with people with Down Syndrome is that they don’t have this social masking that most people have. When you go to acting class you are taught things that will help you remove those sorts of things.

DRE: Is it about being real?

CG: It can be. People with Down Syndrome think about different things than what most actors think about.

DRE: You can really see that in them. It doesn’t feel like you are watching regular actors.

CG: Yes and that’s something I appreciate very much.

DRE: I asked you last night at the book signing if you were totally satisfied with the film and you said it was a very organic process. Just as an example I’ll pick a movie like Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, it’s such an expensive film and it’s made by someone with a clear vision. Since it is Scorsese, I would imagine his vision doesn’t change much from the beginning to the end of the film.

CG: Hitchcock said something to the effect, I’ve already made the movie in my head and now we’re just putting it through the machine. I respect Alfred Hitchcock and I think he’s made some really beautiful films. But I feel like that was a self promotional thing to make him sound like this super intelligent filmmaker but I don’t believe that is possible. Just in the nature of editing things, they have to fall together in certain ways.

DRE: Since you said your film was organic, you started with the way you thought it would be and it became something different at the end. That’s not a bad thing, was the film still as personal once it got to its final form?

CG: Yes and I’m satisfied with the outcome. I wouldn’t have completed it if I was dissatisfied. That isn’t the only reason it took so long to be finished. It was mostly technical problems. The worst of them was mainly the optical house in New York City that had my negative for five years.

DRE: Was it shot entirely on film?

CG: Yes it was shot entirely on 16mm then blown up to 35mm through a digital intermediate.

DRE: There are certain things that reminded me of Andy Warhol such as the statue of the girl with the eggs. At one point someone is holding the statue and pouring liquid out of her head and you aren’t trying to hide the hand. Your film has a very handmade feel to it, certain edits aren’t completely smooth.

CG: The film cuts properly. There are not technically inappropriate cuts. I watched Stanley Kubrick’s first film, Fear and Desire, have you ever seen it?

DRE: I saw a really crap bootleg years ago.

CG: That’s the only way to see it because he tried to get it pulled from distribution. You can see that there are technical problems with the editing such as when someone is walking and then in the next shot they are standing still. There were ways, that if he wanted to, go back and re-edit it to make it more technically proficient. But he obviously just wanted to get rid of it and learn from it. It’s really a great film to see for any filmmaker because Kubrick is one of the most technically proficient filmmakers ever, so to see him learning how to make film is fascinating.

As for seeing the hand pouring that’s the kind of thing that’s different than an editing mistake I would see in my film or Fear and Desire. I probably shouldn’t go into detail for something like that because I don’t like to dictate what things mean, but I will. I put meanings behind everything. You can also see the ropes that pull me down Deus ex Machina style and there are other things that are being manipulated by outside sources which harkens back to Greek tragedies. You don’t know who is manipulating these things or how or why but there is a feeling in the movie that there are hierarchies and levels which are indicated by various levels.

DRE: Why did it take you so long to make this?

CG: My worst problem was that I had a negative at an optical house in New York for five years. I was originally going to do it photochemically and they gave me a low estimate but never did the job. I had paid them a certain amount of money and I was concerned about getting my negative away from them. Finally last year I finished the sound edit which I did slowly because I didn’t have the negative. When I got the negative I brought it back to Los Angeles and put it through the digital intermediate and had it blown up to 35mm. I won’t say the name of this optical house but I think they should be out of business.

DRE: Did you raise any money to get the budget of What is It?

CG: No I funded it myself. It was made as a short film and some people donated some film and very small amounts of cash. Once it became a feature film I funded the entire movie. I personally financed the whole thing, about $125,000 to $150,000 dollars. At the end when I did some rerecording I did pay a little bit to some of the actors. While shooting I wasn’t able to pay anyone at all. Everyone was a volunteer. The only people I couldn’t do that to were the ones that were doing the final sound. Even when I am making a film as inexpensively as I can and getting everyone to volunteer it’s still an extremely expensive process. If the film goes into profit I will definitely give money to all the people who volunteered.

DRE: Did you do studio movies in order to finish the film?

CG: Yes! But for most of the time I was making What is It? I wasn’t making very much money. The last film that I did that was during the shooting of What is It? and that I made money on was The People vs. Larry Flynt. None of the recent films I have made had to do with the shooting of What is It? It’s hard to say which money goes where but the entire amount of money I made from the first Charlie’s Angels film went into shooting the sequel to What is It? Then some money from other things went into the finishing of the film. Then monies I made from doing Willard and the second Charlie’s Angels film went into me buying property in the Czech Republic to shoot the third film. It’s an old château that was built in the 1600’s with horse stables next to it that I want to turn into a soundstage.

DRE: Would you take studio movies in order to specifically do the trilogy?

CG: One of Steve Stewart’s lungs had collapsed and it became apparent that if we didn’t do the film soon we may never do it. I already put him in the first film and he wrote the second film so I knew I had to do it. I knew if I shot the Charlie’s Angels film I could take the money directly from that and put it into Steve Stewart’s film. It took about six months with three small productions to take the sets down and start anew.

DRE: Do you remember when you first saw someone with Down Syndrome?

CG: I went to a small private school called The Mirman School for Gifted Children, which I went to from first to ninth grade. It was an unusual upbringing and the further I get away from it the more I realize that it was an odd way to be brought up. We would go on field trips to play wheelchair basketball with people who had various disabilities. I don’t know if I ever played but the whole school would go and intermingle. I could tell that the people had interesting personalities and even then I think I felt that these people could be interesting performers.

DRE: You’re a second generation actor, what does your family think of What is It?

CG: They haven’t seen the final version of it yet. The last version they saw was about seven years ago. When my mother first saw it she was not happy [laughs]. She thought it was bad that I was spending a lot of time on this film and not concentrating on acting. Since then I think she’s seen that there is a lot of work being done and now it’s very different from what I first showed them. My father reacted well to it. He didn’t have the same kind of immediate negative response that my mother had but you can see that it’s not a mother type of movie. I don’t think it’s something that most people would want to go home and show to their mother.

DRE: A mother might think that she caused one to make the film [laughs].

CG: [laughs] Possibly so. But I think when my parents see the completed version they will be quite impressed.

DRE: Are you going to be showing the film in any museums?

CG: I’m certainly not opposed to showing it in museums. Right now I have to be careful about showing it at festivals because you don’t make money at festivals. I have money invested in the film and I need to recoup the money so I can continue to make the second film and hopefully shoot the third one.

DRE: I read that you don’t want to release it on DVD and you have things set up to protect yourself against bootlegging.

CG: Absolutely. I like to publicize the extreme legal repercussions that would ensue if anyone even attempted any kind of piracy at all with this. A lot of companies are big enough to look the other way but I wouldn’t be that way. I’ve worked much too hard and I have too much money and time invested in it. Even if it was my biggest fan in the world and only got it because they love me so much, I would go to the fullest penalty of the law with them. I hope somebody isn’t dumb enough to make that mistake because it would genuinely harm me and it’s a very easy thing to trace.

DRE: Have you met many people from the cult of people that worship you?

CG: Sometimes I meet some of the hardcore people. There was one girl at the signing who has done a website about me that I had seen. I’m very appreciative of that and that kind of thing is very good for business. I’m glad to meet those people and I’m very encouraging of them to continue. I have no qualms about people saying good things about me. I don’t think of myself as a sex symbol and I don’t think I get called that. But I certainly know that there are women that are interested and that’s good.

DRE: What kind of scripts gets sent to you?

CG: It really depends. My career has always been unpredictable as far as when things come. It seems like most people’s careers start out in something kind of small then they will do something bigger then if it’s successful they will stay in the mainstream. There has never been a particular way or reason things have come along. When Back to the Future came out there were only a certain type of films coming out like these Brat Pack movies and science fiction type stuff. There weren’t many dramas of content that were interesting. So I did turn down a lot of what was coming to me. I noticed that after being in successful A-list films by and large I usually don’t get a lot more offers to do them. I will get a whole bunch of film offers in a row for no reason and then I will do those then there will be a period of independent films. Then I will have times where there is nothing for a year or more.

DRE: Are your books and the CD still relevant to who you are right now?

CG: I very much relate to myself at different ages. There are certain things which have advanced and become more intellectually defined. But my reactions to things have been pretty innate since I was quite young. My books in particular still are. I’m proud of the CD but I only wrote the words to it and I didn’t write the music. Even more the books are very much a part of my thought process. I would say the aesthetic behind my books and my film are very consistent.

DRE: All of your fans would love to believe that everything you do is one part of a great big whole.

CG: The elements of letting audiences think for themselves has been consistent. This film has that, the record has that and I think all of my books do as well. I even think my first appearance on David Letterman has that. I would put my appearance on David Letterman in the category with books and my film.

[stitchmark.]

Whoa.



Whoa....Um..



I have to see this. Definitely.

[stitchmark.]

Has anyone heard Crispin's music albums?

Yeah, that song "Clowny Clown Clown" its one of the weridest song i've ever heard.

[Pubrick]

I have to see this. Definitely.

are u gonna be doing this for every movie u plan to see? basically bumping old threads just to say "oh i want to see this./. and this too. oh crap i totally must see this."

cos we already hav sumone who does that, we call him Sillyass, and we got him to stop doing that.

[stitchmark.]

I have to see this. Definitely.

are u gonna be doing this for every movie u plan to see? basically bumping old threads just to say "oh i want to see this./. and this too. oh crap i totally must see this."

cos we already hav sumone who does that, we call him Sillyass, and we got him to stop doing that.

I'm not doing it to annoy anyone. I'm new and I want to hit threads that interest me. Sorry.

[Myxo]

I'm not doing it to annoy anyone. I'm new and I want to hit threads that interest me. Sorry.

Maybe add something about the film personally which inspires you to see it.

[GoneSavage]

Or just ignoring them.

[MacGuffin]

Glover to tour What?
Source: JoBlo.com

If any of you have been looking to get your eyes on Crispin Glover's directorial debut (which premiered at Sundance a year and a half ago), now might be your chance to see it. The film is called WHAT IS IT?, which is a pretty apt title because, when I saw the a while back, that's what I screamed in a blood-curdling pitch over and over again while going into the fetal position with a knife protectively clenched to my chest. Actually, it looks awesomely fascinating. I mean, this is Crispin Hellion Glover we're talking about here. Have you seen the man dance in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 4? Well, he's set to tour his new movie through New York, LA, Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco (see specific schedule below). And when I say he will be touring, I mean him specifically; he'll be at each screening for book signing and a live "dramatic performance" of his "Big Slide Show." Glover describes WHAT in a very Alex Delargian way: "Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home as tormented by an hubristic racist inner psyche." The movie, which features a cast largely comprised of actors with Down's Syndrome, is actually the first in a trilogy. Part two, IT IS FINE EVERYTHING IS FINE...! is currently in post-production.

The tour schedule is as follows:

October 20, 21, 22: Castro Theater, San Francisco
November 3, 4, 5: Northwest, Film Forum, Seattle
November 10, 11,12: Anthology Film Archives, New York
November 17, 18 ,19: Music Box Theater, Chicago
December 8, 9, 10: Egyptian Theatre at the American Cinematheque, Hollywood

[MacGuffin]

indieWIRE Interview: Crispin Hellion Glover, director of "What Is It?"

Winner of the best narrative film prize at last year's Ann Arbor Film Festival, Crispin Hellion Glover's "What Is It?" debuted at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. A film that essentially began as a short, the project took a decade to create (overcoming many obstacles) and is not so simply described here. As Sundance senior programmer Trevor Groth explained in the festival's catalog last year, Glover's movie is, "an aptly titled film that defies easy summarization but is a triumph of cinematic irreverance and uncompromising creativity." Continuing he added, "'What Is It?' is a Dadaist deconstruction of the hero's journey as well as a hallucinogenic trip deep into the mind of its bizarre creator" and concluded, "Truly on of the most original films ever created, 'What Is It?' will shock, intrigue, confound, disturb, and amaze even the most jaded viewers."

Through his company Volcanic Eruptions, Glover is distributing his film in a few cities around the country, including New York City, Chicago, Portland, OR and Los Angeles. The special events will include showings of the film, a Q & A session, a slide show of Glover's work and booksignings.

Crispin Hellion Glover recently participated in indieWIRE's email interview series and his answers to our standard set of questions are published below. He adapted parts of his answer to our first question from a director's statement that he had previously written.

Please tell us about how the initial idea for this film came about?

I was approached by two young first time filmmaker writers to act in a film they had written. I had promised myself that the next first time filmmaker I worked with would be me. The script they sent me had some interesting things in it, but I felt like a major change was needed to to make it work. I told them I would be interested in being in it if I could direct it and do some re-writing. They said they wanted to hear what my ideas were. When I met with them I told them that if I directed it I would like to have a large majority of the characters be played by actors with Down's Syndrome. There were other things as well but, that was a big part of it. They felt that was OK and I went about re-writing it.

David Lynch got hold of the script and agreed to executive produce the film. I had some good actors that I knew would be right for some of the parts, that agreed to be in the film. Then I went to one of the larger corporate entities to see if I could get funding for the project. They initially seemed quite interested, but as time went on they finally said that they were concerned about the concept of having a majority of the characters be played by actors with Down's Syndrome.

It was decided that the best thing for me to do was to make a short film that would promote having a majority of the cast played by actors with Down's Syndrome to show it was a viable and doable idea. I wrote the script for "What Is It?" It was to be a short film of approximately ten minutes. I decided it would be best to comprise the entire cast of actors with Down's Syndrome.

Casting

I started out going to art therapy groups that worked with people with Down's Syndrome. But it was very difficult in terms of scope and I ended up working with a casting person I knew named Kim Davis. She brought in many great people and we met with more groups and I finished casting what was to be the short film that way. When it turned into a feature length film I added myself and Steven C. Stewart so to make his film later in to a sequel. At the very end I went to another group entity called the applied behavioral analysis center and cast a lot of people from there. I believe two of the actors with Down's Syndrome had worked before. One of those two had worked a lot. Most of the actors had not worked in front of cameras before. Many people ask if it was difficult working with people with Down's Syndrome, but it was not. One of the most important things about working with actors whether they have Down's Syndrome or not is that they are enthusiastic. Every cast member was extremely enthusiastic and great to work with.

I put myself into the film as a different antagonistic character than was in the original film. I also put Steven C. Stewart, a man with a severe case of cerebral palsy, in the film. He had written a screenplay many years before, based on certain psychologies he had dealt with as a result his condition, throughout his life. It was a very different kind of film on many levels from "What is it?" But there were certain themes that somehow correlated, and I realized it would be good to make his film into a sequel and make the original screenplay that I had been approached with, into part three. In many ways all three screenplays are very different form one another, yet they all deal with certain themes that complement each other.

Directing

My technique in directing them sometimes depended on if the actor was particularly high functioning or not. Most of the actors I worked with were very high functioning and were able to memorize lines. Some of the actors were lower functioning and that was a bit different. But I always knew who I would be working with and they were always cast for a specific purpose so everyone always did exactly what was needed. I have used some of the same techniques I learned working with the actors with Down's Syndrome with actors that do not have Down's Syndrome, and it was helpful with the actors without Down's Syndrome, so ultimately I would say it is not too different.

I truly do look back upon it with fondness. They are genuinely interesting people to work with. I will often be asked why I chose to work with people with Down's Syndrome. I would say there are quite a few reasons but the one of the most important is that when I look in to the face of someone that has Down's Syndrome I see the history of someone who has genuinely lived outside of the culture. When peopling an entire film with actors that innately have that quality it affects the world of the film. As far as interpersonal experiences the most interesting element that people who do not work with or know people that have Down's Syndrome may not realize how perceptive they are about certain things. People with Down's Syndrome often do not develop a certain social mask that most people develop. This can be both interesting as actors on film and in real life it can often take one in to a certain emotional sensibility that can be ultra perceptive. It really is an interesting thing to be around.

Who were your influences?

Four film directors I was specifically thinking of while working this film are Luis Bunuel, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. I am sure there were others that had influence as well.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in either developing the project or making and securing distribution for (the movie?)

It became apparent that because of delving into taboo subject matter and themes that I would ultimately have to finance the project myself and distribute as well. I am currently touring with the film and a live dramatic narration of eight different books that have made over the years. The books are heavily illustrated and so they are projected as slides. The performance lasts an hour, then the film is shown (which is 72 minutes). Then I have a question and answer session with the audience which generally is about 45 minutes. Then I have a book signing which usually lasts for hours depending on the size of the audience. I have published four books. Some of these are part of the slide show.

How did the financing and/or casting for the film come together?

There were small donations of film and even small amounts of money and large donations of time for the original short film. Again, ultimately I financed the film myself and the cost of getting it to be a 35 mm print is somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 US dollars.

What is your next project?

The sequel to the film has already been shot and is in the advanced to late stages of editing. It was written by one of the cast members of "What is it?" His name was Steven C. Stewart. He had a sever case of cerebral palsy and had been put in a nursing home after his parents died. He had a difficult time getting out of the nursing home and his screenplay is a fantastical psychosexual retelling of a certain point of view of his life. It has a naive quality to it and will probably be the best film I will have ever had anything to do with in my career. When we shot the film he was 65. He died within a month of the completion of filming. This is why his film was shot before "What is it?" was completed. He was having health problems and we know if we did not shoot the film soon that we may never get to shoot it at all.

What is your definition of "independent film," and has that changed at all since you first started working?

The term independent film does not make a lot of sense. What are generally called "Independents" are made by smaller corporations than studio corporations, but all film financing corporations at this point are fearful of making films that could possibly make audiences uncomfortable in any way. Corporately financed films must necessarily have content that sits within the bounds of that which is considered good and evil. If there is any content that goes beyond the realm of good and evil that content will either be excised, or the film will not get made. This ultimate homogenization that is happening in this culture's most important form of communication is stupefying the culture.

What general advice would you impart to emerging filmmakers?

I implore people to make films that are inexpensive and do not rely on corporate financing. Corporate financing is unfortunately hurting true thought and expression at this point in time.

Will you please share with us an achievement from your career so far that you are most proud of?

Right now I am most proud of these films that I have been working on for so many years. Part one is "What is it?" Part two will be "It is fine!" EVERYTHING IS FINE! There will be a part three, but I will wait to get to that for a bit.

[bonanzataz]

my friend just got this picture back to me. from the new york showing of "what is it?" two months ago.



he signed my platform shoes.