One can say many things about Crispin Hellion Glover. But oddly enough, you’ll never be able to say enough about the man and his work. Allow me to explain. I went with friends (one a big fan of his work) to see Mr. Glover perform and watch his feature film “What is It?” last Friday at the Casto Theatre (which, is a rather nice place once inside).
I admit, I quite enjoyed “Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slide Show” where he displayed no less than eight of his short “story” books all while reading aloud up on stage with a wonderful excitement about him. It really gets you geared up to enjoy the next presentation of his feature film. Now, before I go on, I admit, I did see the trailer on his site and was confused but sorta knew what I was getting in to. . .complete madness and a bunch of head-scratching (let alone, Glover himself was in the credits as “Dueling Demi-God Auteur and The young man’s inner psyche”, you gotta wonder, right?).
As I understood it (from Glover’s own Q&A after the movie), he set out to create a short piece profiling taboos and primarily using actors with down-syndrome (I suppose taboo within itself). Without going too far into what I thought about the Lynch inspired production (and, my there was much to think about), I’ll say that if you’re into watching a guy with down-syndrome get locked outside of his house, kill bunches of snails, fight his inner racists demons, see other “MRs” (as put by Glover) hit each other on the head with various blunt objects, and see a crippled man in a oyster shell get his junk knocked around by a woman with rather enormous breasts wearing a monkey mask, it’s gonna be your kind of movie!
All in all, it was an experience to behold. It wasn’t great but at least it was a movie we couldn’t stop talking about (for better or worse). Interesting point I realized later is that even if the movie was re-edited and the scenes were reordered, I don’t think you’d lose any clarity in the plot development.
GAH! Why didn’t I ask Glover about his role in the upcoming Beowulf movie?!