Everything Is Fine

Not since John Cassavetes subsidized his intensely personal, idiosyncratic films by acting in drive-in schlock like Incubus has an actor-filmmaker played both ends against the middle like Crispin Hellion Glover. After his film-stealing role as Michael J. Fox's endearingly nerdy dad in 1985's Back to the Future, Glover could easily have ridden the role to a cushy mainstream career (and a lucrative payday in Parts II and III). Instead, he opted out of the sequels—wisely, as history shows—and defied the movie's studio when it tried to use his likeness without him, preferring to stretch his abilities in offbeat films like River's Edge, Wild at Heart and Rubin and Ed.

Today Glover surfaces in the mainstream typically as a specialty act—either in showy supporting roles that call for a soupçon of crazy, as with his memorable mute villain in the Charlie's Angels movies or his chilling, pathetic turn as a CGI Grendel in Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf, or in horror remakes like Willard and The Wizard of Gore. On his own, though, he has made two defiantly strange, obsessive and taboo-shattering features, installments in a planned trilogy. Now touring the country with each film in a combination slide show, staged reading, Q&A and book signing, Glover will be at the Belcourt this Friday and Saturday night to show his first feature, What is it?—immortally synopsized by Slant critic Ed Gonzales as "the story of a community of people with Down's syndrome whose bipolar relationship to snails is linked to an underworld where Glover reigns supreme as a Caligula-esque 'auteur' with castration anxiety and one of many naked monkey women (!) sits on a watermelon (!!) while slowly stroking the cock (!!!) of a man with cerebral palsy (!!!!) who lies in the fetal position inside a big oyster (!!!!!)."

Glover courteously agreed to answer some questions about his films via email in advance of his Nashville appearance.

SCENE: You've said that you made What is it? to open a dialogue with the audience about taboos, and to confront their rejection of material that makes them uncomfortable. Has any of the taboo material become more or less provocative as time has gone by? Do different areas of the country react differently?

CG: I have not noticed a great shift in the audience reaction between 2005 and now in 2008. I have noticed that the way that I talk about the film shifts in certain ways. I have noticed that the response shifts from audience to audience really depending more on the mood of the audience than on the city that the audience is in. If I get more aggressive questioning...then the Q&A session will tend toward having more of that tone, and if the first questions are more what I call easy questions then that tends to be the mood of the questioning session. I have noticed outside of the U.S. I get easier questions and inside the U.S. I get more aggressive questioning.

I should let people know what happens before the Q&A session and after the film. I perform a one-hour dramatic narration of eight different books I have made over the years. The books are taken from old books from the 1800s that have been changed into different books from what they originally were. They are heavily illustrated with original drawings and reworked images and photographs. When I first started publishing the books in 1987 people said I should have book readings. But the books are so heavily illustrated and the way the illustrations are used within the books they help to tell the story, so the only way for the books to make sense was to have visual representations of the images. This is why I knew a slide show was necessary. It took a while but in 1993 I started performing what I used to call Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Side Show. People get confused as to what that is so now I always let it be known that it is a one-hour dramatic narration of eight different books I have made over the years.

After the dramatic narration of the eight different books I will present the film What is it? which is 72 minutes. After the film I will have a Q&A. This generally lasts 45 minutes to an hour. After that I have a book signing in the lobby. My books are available and I stay until everyone has had their books signed or additional questions answered.

On the subsequent night the pattern of the show is the same but I will perform a new slide show with different books that I have started performing before the sequel. I will show the preview for the sequel to What is it? titled It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. so on the second night I will show the sequel and then have a Q&A and a book signing. So it is a completely different evening of entertainment.

I will be touring with the films for many years to come so if people want to know where I will be with what films they should sign up at CrispinGlover.com and it will email them when I play anywhere.