[via Movie City News Indie]:
Crispin Hellion Glover, who’s best known for playing George McFly in the Back
to the Future films, has spent the last two decades getting weirder. My housemate,
“Brother Pete” Onlock, the weirdo in our six-man house in my second and
thrid years at Crazy Go Nuts University, considered Glover to be a sort
of personal hero, especially after that meltdown he had on Late
Night With David Letterman.
In the late 1980’s, Glover published his home phone number in a number
of offbeat publications, promising callers some interesting taped
messages. In 1989, having a morbid curiosity and the phone number from
Keyboard World magazine, I called the number and was treated a rant
about rats that was both creepy and hilarious.
There have been rumours about a magnum opus film project on which he’s
been working for years. It looks like we’ll finally get our chance to
see it: the film, titled What Is It? will be premiering at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 29 and 30.
According to Movie City News’ Indie section: “Most of the actors in the
film have Down’s Syndrome, but the
film is not about Down’s Syndrome. Mr. Glover explains the plot thus:
‘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.'”
Oh, my.
Here’s the poster for What Is It?
Oh, my again.
That’s nothing, however. For the full “Oh, my!” experience, you’re going to have to watch the trailer [NOT SAFE FOR WORK:
some nudity, and completely whacked out]. It reminds me of Pavlov Video Chicken I, the piece reviewed in the “Bad Conceptual Art”
skit from the 1978 Saturday Night Live.
I am eagerly awaiting the DVD release so I can host a “Bad Art Night” party.
As an added bonus, here’s the video of Crispin Glover’s infamous appearance on Late Night with David Letterman.
[6.5 MB AVI file, enclosure]. I remember watching this when it was
broadcast and wondering “Is he acting, or is he really flipping out?”
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Egad, Joey, I must attend; name your price!
The letterman file is broken.
-Steve Mallett
5 or 6 years ago, I saw Crispin on "tour", reading from his books and showing this film. It was an experience I'll never be able to erase from my memory (no matter how I try).
It works on my machine. I've got a few non-standard codecs, so perhaps you might need one of those. Have you got the DivX codec?
Another incredibly strange Crispin Glover-related work is The Beaver Trilogy where the same strange, mundane story with a crazy guy called "Groovin' Larry" is told three different times at three different points in time. More about it can be found in the This American Life episode found here: http://207.70.82.73/pages/descriptions/02/226.html
(Linking in comments seems to be broken?)
I also can't get it to work. I tried looking at in NetNewsWire (from where I normally read your blog), in Firefox, and then by downloading it and opening it in Quicktime. I do have the Divx codec. Quicktime said it could not open it because of an error in the file.
Perhaps it's something that only Windows Media can play. This weekend, I've been programming on the PowerBook and using my desktop PC as the "look things up on the web" machine. I've only viewed the file on Windows.
That clip reminds me of an appearance Jim Carey made on Arsenio in the early 90s. Jim Carey came out and did an entire interview pretending to be *SMASHED* and it wasn't apparent whether he really was or not. And Arsenio didn't look like he knew anything about it. He looked worried, a little mortified, but he solidered on with the interview. Jim Carey is falling off the chair "drunk".
Come back from a commercial and Arsenio is smiling and looking relieved and Jim Carey is lucid. I'd like to see THAT again.