A talented actor best known for his portrayal of eccentric characters in films such as River’s Edge, Wild At Heart and Back To The Future, Crispin Glover has in recent years used his roles in big-budget movies to subsidise his own experimental art films. He recently arrived in Dublin to attend the Darklight Film Festival, where he presented a couple of screenings of his directorial debut, What Is It?
Glover’s introduction of the film – a surreal performance/monologue accompanied by a slideshow of material from his self-published books – was a suitably off-kilter curtain-raiser for What Is It?, as radically strange a piece of cinema as you are likely to see. The actor/director describes it as a reaction to the stifling conservatism of mainstream movies, and the film certainly touches on many taboo subjects.
The fractured narrative is primarily acted out by a cast of amateur actors with Down’s syndrome, and there are also porn stars, swastikas, Charles Manson songs and a nude portrait of a prepubescent Shirley Temple. As you might have guessed, it’s not exactly Mamma Mia! However, despite the provocative content, Glover is at pains to emphasise that he’s not looking to attract attention through sensationalism.
“The way that I sell the film, I specifically don’t utilise lists of the taboo elements,” says the engaging and sharply attired filmmaker, sitting in a meeting room at the Irish Film Institute. “When I get critical reviews, that’s the technique that is usually used, and there’s a list of things in the film that people can get upset about. That’s given as a reason why people shouldn’t go see this film. But it usually has the converse effect; those kind of reviews actually intrigue a lot of people into coming to see the movie.
“If I actually talked up the taboo elements, it might be easier to sell, but I’m sincere in the way I pitch it. I always sell the film as being about a reaction to corporate controls, which is a very negative thing. When people look at this film, they might find themselves thinking, ‘Is what I’m watching right or wrong? Should I be here? Should the filmmaker have done this? What is it?’ And that, of course, is the title.
“What is it that’s taboo in the culture, and what does it mean when the taboo is ubiquitously excised? What tends to happen is that people stop asking questions, which is a negative development.”
The first part in a planned trilogy (the second installment, It Is Fine. Everything is Fine!, has already been made; the final film, It Is Mine, has yet to be released), What Is It? has been a labour of love for Glover, who first started working on the project in the mid-’90s. He plans to painstakingly recoup the production costs by touring the movie around film festivals, and has stated there will not be a DVD release, in order to maintain the exclusivity of the theatrical experience.
What Is It? initially evolved out of a separate film, which was to be executive produced by David Lynch, for whom Glover had acted in Hotel Room and Wild At Heart. The actor says he was first exposed to Lynch’s work when, during a school field trip to see a classic movie, he saw a trailer for Eraserhead. When he subsequently obtained his driver’s licence, he regularly drove to midnight screenings of the film in his home city of Los Angeles, and still describes it as his favourite Lynch movie.
How did he find the experience of working with Lynch when he was eventually cast in one of his films?
“It was great,” enthuses Crispin. “I saw Eraserhead shortly after I started in acting class, and because I very much liked that film, I’m sure it had a certain psychological influence on my acting. So when I worked with David Lynch, it was great to see the depth of the psychology. In Wild At Heart, the scene with the sandwiches where I say ‘I’m making my lunch’; that is probably the most specifically directed scene I’ve ever had.
“If it was anyone else other than David Lynch who was that specific, because their psychology mightn’t be as good as his, it would be horrible. But because it was him, it was great. I get a lot of compliments about it, and I like it very much as well, but this was not something I improvised or came up with. It was very specifically David Lynch’s directing.”
Another noted filmmaker Crispin has worked with is Oliver Stone, who cast him in the part of Andy Warhol in The Doors. Was the actor a fan of Warhol’s work before taking on the role?
“I was, and I had met him at Madonna and Sean Penn’s wedding,” he recalls. “It was right after Back To The Future had come out, and I was there with a girl I was seeing at the time. She’d gone up and talked to him before I talked to him, and then she said that he’d recognised me, and liked me. I guess he’d seen Back To The Future. So I went up and talked to him a little bit, and he was interesting to speak with. And then I stood back and watched him, and observed how he held himself and how he moved.
“I thought that he would be an interesting person to play at some point. When the part came along in The Doors, it was just a small role. I had met once with Oliver Stone before for Platoon, and although I wasn’t in the film, we had a good chat. So I got my agents to get an audition for me, and I got the part. I was a little nervous to do it, because for one thing I was the first person to play him in a corporately funded and distributed film. Although I think that when he was touring colleges, on the occasions he didn’t want to go, he actually hired someone to play himself!”
Interestingly, when I ask Crispin if his encounter with Warhol was mentioned in the latter’s published Diaries, he replies that the artist may have confused him with Emilio Estevez, who apparently is described in the book as wearing a ’40s suit at the wedding (Glover points out that he himself was attired in a vintage suit for the occasion, and that – more pointedly – Estevez wasn’t actually present). At the time, of course, Crispin was a hot young actor courtesy of the huge success of Back To The Future, in which he gave a superb performance as the nervy George McFly.
Ultimately, there would be a clash between Glover and the film’s producers. When the actor failed to sign on for the sequels, numerous optical tricks were used to simulate his appearance. Glover launched a lawsuit, which would later prompt the Screen Actors Guild to alter collective bargaining agreements in order to take such cases into account. What does Crispin think of Back To The Future these days?
“I understand that Back To The Future is a very beloved film to a lot of people, so I’m glad that I’m in that movie,” he replies. “I’ll probably at some point in my life really go into a lot of detail about it. I wasn’t in the sequel and then there was a lawsuit and so on. But I worked with Robert Zemeckis again recently on Beowulf and had a great experience. There’s a lot to say about Back To The Future, and at some point it will make sense for me to go into great detail, because I’m sure there are a lot of people who would be interested.
“But, basically, I like to let it be known that I’m glad I was in the movie. It was an excellent role to play and it was very good for my career. I read that script very carefully, and I had a lot very planned out. Zemeckis was a strong director, and I’m very proud of the performance.”
Finally, I mention the fact that Crispin’s father, Bruce Glover, was also an actor, and indeed had a role in Roman Polanski’s noir classic Chinatown. Did Crispin ever talk to his father about the shooting of the movie?
“I was actually on the set of Chinatown,” he responds. “My father was friendly with Roman Polanski and they used to play chess. I went on the set the day they filmed the scene where Faye Dunaway gets her eye shot out. It was in Chinatown in downtown LA and I remember them putting the period signs up. I went into Roman Polanski’s trailer with my father, where they had a chess game going, and my father introduced me to him.
“I went onto a number of sets; I was at Pinewood Studios when my father acted in Diamonds Are Forever. I think I met Sean Connery on that particular shoot. I was always very interested in the sets, actually. I also remember on the set of Gunsmoke, I found a blank round that turned out to be live. It had a little red ‘x’ on it and I gave it to someone. I had a lot of interesting experiences, definitely.”

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Photos by Rocky Schenck