The Discomforter

From playing the weird bad guy in Charlie's Angels, to making a surrealist, fantasy film cast by actors with Down's Syndrome, Crispin Glover is not afraid to make audiences uncomfortable.

For him, that means people are asking questions. And if they are asking questions, they are thinking. And at a time where he says anything uncomfortable is cut from films, we need thought more than ever.

You might know him as the creepy thin man from Charlie's Angels, or as George "You are my density" McFly from Back to the Future or even the platform-boot-wearing guy who almost kicked David Letterman in the head and was gone as soon as they went to commercial. In reality, Crispin Hellion Glover is more than just a cult figure known for his persona as an eccentric and weird character.

He has spent the better half of the last decade writing, producing and directing his own art films -– partly funded by his roles in Charlie's Angels and Willard -- who uses collage and has written over a half dozen beautifully crafted books, and who now tours the world presenting a slide show and screening his films in a form of performance art meets book signing experience.

This time around he is touring with the first installment of his "It" trilogy, presenting What is It?, a surreal, fantasy film cast largely by actors with Down's Syndrome.

Written and directed by Glover himself, What Is It?, he explains, is "not about Down's Syndrome." Instead, he describes it as "being the adventures of a young man whose principle interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home as tormented by a hubristic racist inner psyche."

On the phone from Los Angeles, as he prepares for the North American leg of his presentation and after having just come back from the Czech Republic, he offers some contemplations on his art. What follows are excerpts from our conversation.

On casting people with Down's Syndrome:

"I had written a number of screenplays before I got to writing What Is It? that had used the concept of having actors with Down's Syndrome in various ways.

"But, in 1996 there were two young writers who approached my agent with the offer to act in a film they had written and wanted to direct. It was around that time that I felt that the next corporately funded filmmaker I would work with would be myself.

"So I talked to them about it and told them I would be interested in acting in it if I could rework it and direct it. They came and met with me, and the main thing that I wanted was for the majority of the characters to be played by actors with Down's Syndrome. And they were ok with that concept. So I reworked the original screenplay and David Lynch said he would executive produce it for me to direct. Which was a very helpful thing."

On what to do when things don't work:

"I went to one of the larger corporate film funding agencies in Los Angeles, but after a number of meetings they decided that they were uncomfortable with the idea that the majority of the characters were played by actors with Down's Syndrome.

"It was then that decided to write a short film to promote this as a viable concept. And that is when I wrote What Is It?, which was supposed to be a short film. But it turned out to be 84 minutes, and it was a film that didn't really work.

"So I shot more footage and worked on it for another two and a half years to get it to the point where I had a locked film.

"I also decided that the original screenplay that I had reworked would make a nice sequel to it, and then I realized that there was another screenplay that I had read years before by a man named Steven C. Stewart who had a severe case of cerebral palsy, and that if I put him into the film What Is It? that I could then make his film, It Is Fine. Everything Is Fine, and have a trilogy of sorts.

On why taboos are good:

"The corporate entity was concerned about funding a film in which a majority of the actors were playing characters who did not have Down's Syndrome [because] this was a taboo.

"You can have a corporately funded film wherein the characters have Down's Syndrome and are played by actors with Down's Syndrome, even that isn't commonly dealt with, but to have actors with Down's Syndrome playing characters without Down's Syndrome, well that has many grey areas.

"Then I realized that anything that would make an audience member truly uncomfortable would be something corporately they would have trouble with.

"If you look at the last 30 years, anything that makes the audience uncomfortable has been excised. And I think that is a very damaging thing because there are moments when an audience looks up at the screen and wonders, 'Is this right what I'm watching? Is this wrong? Should I be here? Should the filmmaker have done this? What is it?' which is the title of the film.

"If there is a taboo in the culture, what does it mean when the taboo has been ubiquitously excised? This is very damaging because when people are asking those questions, they are actually thinking about things and that's a positive thing."

On surrealism:

"I generally avoid any kind of groups at all. And I did not make the film as part of the surrealist group. But strangely, the surrealists are actually a group I do like.

"I read Bunuel's autobiography [Luis Bunuel, the father of surrealism], and according to his description [the surrealists] were a political group... and a very serious group. And he said at the time that if they had known they were going to be known as artists they would have considered themselves to be a failed group.

"Bunuel has definitely been a huge influence, especially on What Is It? And I was reading his autobiography as I edited the film.

"The most important thing that the surrealists defined was free association: how to use this free association, this Freudian association to bring about deeper psychological elements for art. I very much think that is a worthwhile idea to explore.

On bossing the audience around:

"I certainly like the notion that Bunuel doesn't dictate to people what they should be thinking about concerning the work. That, I think, is the most important part.

"I do tend toward constructing what the meanings behind particular things are and utilizing certain structures with foreknowledge of what structure does. That is something that I don't call free association, it's more of a narrative. I would just call it drama."

What is it? and the Big Slide Show screens at Vancouver's Pacific Cinematheque on July 18, 19 and 20.

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