Crispin Hellion Glover at The Oriental Theater (Part 2)

It is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE

The second installment in Glover's "It" trilogy is It is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE - a cautionary tale involving the dangers of fucking men with severe cerebral palsy. Actually, it is more of a creepy interpretation of how sexuality and its perversions are universal to us all. The film was written by and stars Steven C. Stewart, a cerebral palsy sufferer who got his original script in the hands of Glover back in the late '80s. Glover was moved by the naiveté of the screenplay as well as the unique voice that Stewart, as an industry outsider, gave to his vision. With the money Glover made from Charlie's Angels, he financed the completion of this film. Curiously, it was finished before filming ended on the first installment of the trilogy, What is it?, a surreal meditation on good and evil which also starred Stewart, a host of Down-syndrome actors and Crispin himself. Stewart's failing health was the primary reason for this chronological switch. He died soon after shooting wrapped, never having seen the completed films.

It is Fine!... treads that tricky border between respect and admiration for the abilities of the afflicted and the obvious pitfalls of rank exploitation. It is a difficult and brave film on many levels but it also cannot hide from its amateurishness and overt willingness to crack a smile in being weird for weird sake. While I believe Stewart was likely playing the whole thing straight, the people behind the camera, revealed by the many undisguised attempts at pretentious humor in the film's editing and music, were using that earnestness in manipulative ways. Perhaps Stewart wouldn't have minded. We'll never know. But it often comes across like a Helen Keller nightmare directed by Fellini.

The story concerns a man with cerebral palsy (Stewart) who has a very active sex drive and imagination. The conceit of the tale is that a variety of women find him engaging and attractive despite the limitations his disease places on his speech and physical mobility. We as audience must too guess what his lines and motivations are as subtitles were specifically not provided for his mostly unintelligible dialogue. His intentions become clearer than his words as we discover his penchant for long haired broads trumps his ability to resist fucking and strangling them to death when they hint at a haircut. And yes, we see all of this - the intercourse and the asphyxiations - in lengthy detail. Two interesting points to note: 1) Stewart has a hog on him like Ron Jeremy and 2) his misshapen hands cannot really grasp a throat to throttle, so the death scenes of the women have an unfortunately staged "Bela Lugosi wrestling with the giant octopus" feel from Robot Monster. The victims squirm into the crook of his elbow and sort of expire from emoting. And what would over-the-top art house cinema be without Margit Carstensen, one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's stable of '70s masochistic females, showing up to give the proceedings a decidedly Teutonic and hammy European flair. "I am not sure if I can be with a crippled man", she laments to her daughter, who already has designs on fucking our wheelchair ridden, serial-killing protagonist herself.

I do give credit to the film for its lofty absurdity meter while trying to maintain a straight cinematic face. I have not tittered so violently - trying to hold the floodgates of hysterical laughter from bursting forth onto my unsuspecting audience mates - since a scene from the insufferable Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books in which the interminable crescendo of a Phillip Glass-type score was paired with the image of Sir John Gielgud dressed in an overly cumbersome four-foot-in-diameter neck ruff and priest's cap. So delusional did I become in containing my muted cachinnations at that evilly vainglorious film that I'm not sure to this day whether any of it really happened. I am aware, however, that Peter Greenaway must be stopped from making any further pictures.

But not Crispin Glover. I am eagerly anticipating the final yet unfinished piece in the triad, It is Mine.

THE Q&A

It all began innocently enough. A few concerned questions regarding what it was like to work on the film with Stewart and how the project arose. Then I suddenly became aware that Crispin Glover is physically or mentally unable to answer a question directly or in any timely manner whatsoever. He doesn't hem or haw or stall for time. Nor is he evasive or dishonest in his responses. He simply shovels some coals into the engine of the answer train and proceeds to drive the locomotive off the bridge of relevancy and coherence. Queries about acting end up in ontological discourses on existence. Direct inquiries about Hollywood take you on meandering journeys to the outskirts of Prague and malfunctioning audio equipment he has purchased. Only questions regarding the slide show and projects related to the trilogy seem to focus (and shorten) his answers. And even then, not so much. It feels like you're trapped with a nervous, unprepared pitchman continuously careening off topic at a motivational seminar gone horribly, disastrously wrong.

I expected nothing less.

It is that exact unease and obliviousness to appearing unhinged (a form of innocence?) that fuels Glover's intellectual curiosity and makes him a fascinating artist. Many established actors and filmmakers give lip service to working outside the confines of mainstream Hollywood and its narrow rules of distribution and marketability, occasionally dabbling in movies regarded as "quirky" or "offbeat". The Guy Ritchies, Quentin Tarantinos and Wes Andersons of this world, considered by many to be mavericks, simply pass off rehashed homage as modern film movements. It's why we still have kung fu flicks and everybody trying to replicate the funky energy of Harold and Maude some forty years later.

Glover's work makes Charlie Kaufmann look like Frank Capra. Todd Solondz shoots nursery rhymes compared to this guy. Gregg Araki is straight in this world. Crispin prefers tip-toeing on THE EDGE. Subverting the cynicism of the surfeited into new realms of aberrancy. Letting depravity, for once, speak for itself.

This is one weird, weird man. May his muse, whoever that fucked up bitch is, continue to provide him vision. We are all the richer for it.