Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Crispin Glover and "It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine."
I went with Elliott to see Crispin Glover at IFC last night and it was terrif. He looked good (although I don't like his hair, it's too 90s; also, if he turns to the side he looks completely different in profile) but I was really impressed with his ability to give an hourlong performance without water, then screen the second film of the IT Trilogyand then field questions before sitting down to sign books and posters, lavishing several minutes on each person. It was at least four or five hours of work and he didn't look the least bit fagged out.
The performance consisted of him reading excerpts from several of his strange little books, which had nothing in the way of linearity or a through-line but for the vague thematic resemblances: quasi-scientific nineteenth century scientific discourse, animal dissections and paranoia. You know, same old, same old. There is a certain way of approximating insanity that Glover writes towards which is really excellent. He observes the logorrhea that accompanied the imperial mania for classifying everything and uses it as a jumping-off point for brushing against terror and insanity. There have been different ways of understanding the insane--none of them very good--and medical science from the late 1800s juts out like an escarpment. Glover doesn't "go crazy onstage" so much as make use of text. He performs most of the same words that appeared on the accompanying slide show of pages from the books, so the words were right there in front of the audience. The text (as text) contains typographically set words like you'd find in any book, but drawn-in words that slip between dialogue, excess narration and marginalia superimposed over the "story." Also, it was really fucking rad to watch his control. The occasional discrepancy between the words on the slide and the words Glover uttered indicates that at times he's ad-libbing because he hasn't got the entire thing memorized verbatim, but that might be a sort of deliberate Spaulding Gray-like tic. You read along and Glover intones things in a far better way than you read them. I guess, simply put, that's what makes good acting good, but the sudden discontinuities in pitch or emotional tenor were really rad.
The film itself was also fantastic. It's a somewhat comic horror movie about a man (Stephen C. Stewart) with cerebral palsy and a hair fetish who winds up strangling a series of attractive women, except for one disabled woman who refuses his romantic overtures out of prejudice. Stewart's words are essentially incomprehensible all of the time. His first victim is played by Margit Karstensen, who, in addition to looking slightly MTFish, is incredible at playing a generous but put-upon divorcee with a slightly crazy ex-husband.
The interiors are all brightly colored and harshly lit, with sparse furnishings and open walls that suggest a stage production, the omniscience of the viewer and a total lack of privacy for lives that exist entirely within a single room. In contrast, the nursing home/institution from which Stewart emerges for his spate of murderous dates is populated by goggly gargoyles and grotesques. It's amazing, and will never be released on DVD because Crispin Glover has yet to and in fact may never recoup the production costs and earns what he can by touring in perpetuity.
There's something about Glover that seems vaguely autistic. He reminds me of my landlord, a 70-year old sculptor named Tom Clancy, from the brief period I lived in Clinton Hill. He who was incredibly intrusive and regarded our house as his personal art project (which, to an extent, it was). He would calmly sort of try to regulate our daily lives without realizing how shockingly inappropriate and irritating it was, but you could say increasingly rude and pointed things to him without the least emotional reaction passing across his beatific face. He was either truly imperturbable or else considered us to be such lowly peons that no matter what mud we threw at him, it wouldn't matter. Crispin Glover gives me that vibe. He's Buddha-like, but I bet when negotiating something pertaining to his artistic vision, he's inflexible and stubborn and oddly effective. Being born into privilege probably helps, but it's not an aristocratic air as much as a singularly focused confidence. Then he signed books for at least half an hour, chatting with everyone. One might not expect such a degree of earnestness from him, but there it is. I wanted him to write "Dear Pete, You're my density...I mean, my destiny," but chickened out. He had that weird falling-out with Robert Zemeckis over the sequel.
The performance consisted of him reading excerpts from several of his strange little books, which had nothing in the way of linearity or a through-line but for the vague thematic resemblances: quasi-scientific nineteenth century scientific discourse, animal dissections and paranoia. You know, same old, same old. There is a certain way of approximating insanity that Glover writes towards which is really excellent. He observes the logorrhea that accompanied the imperial mania for classifying everything and uses it as a jumping-off point for brushing against terror and insanity. There have been different ways of understanding the insane--none of them very good--and medical science from the late 1800s juts out like an escarpment. Glover doesn't "go crazy onstage" so much as make use of text. He performs most of the same words that appeared on the accompanying slide show of pages from the books, so the words were right there in front of the audience. The text (as text) contains typographically set words like you'd find in any book, but drawn-in words that slip between dialogue, excess narration and marginalia superimposed over the "story." Also, it was really fucking rad to watch his control. The occasional discrepancy between the words on the slide and the words Glover uttered indicates that at times he's ad-libbing because he hasn't got the entire thing memorized verbatim, but that might be a sort of deliberate Spaulding Gray-like tic. You read along and Glover intones things in a far better way than you read them. I guess, simply put, that's what makes good acting good, but the sudden discontinuities in pitch or emotional tenor were really rad.
The film itself was also fantastic. It's a somewhat comic horror movie about a man (Stephen C. Stewart) with cerebral palsy and a hair fetish who winds up strangling a series of attractive women, except for one disabled woman who refuses his romantic overtures out of prejudice. Stewart's words are essentially incomprehensible all of the time. His first victim is played by Margit Karstensen, who, in addition to looking slightly MTFish, is incredible at playing a generous but put-upon divorcee with a slightly crazy ex-husband.
The interiors are all brightly colored and harshly lit, with sparse furnishings and open walls that suggest a stage production, the omniscience of the viewer and a total lack of privacy for lives that exist entirely within a single room. In contrast, the nursing home/institution from which Stewart emerges for his spate of murderous dates is populated by goggly gargoyles and grotesques. It's amazing, and will never be released on DVD because Crispin Glover has yet to and in fact may never recoup the production costs and earns what he can by touring in perpetuity.
There's something about Glover that seems vaguely autistic. He reminds me of my landlord, a 70-year old sculptor named Tom Clancy, from the brief period I lived in Clinton Hill. He who was incredibly intrusive and regarded our house as his personal art project (which, to an extent, it was). He would calmly sort of try to regulate our daily lives without realizing how shockingly inappropriate and irritating it was, but you could say increasingly rude and pointed things to him without the least emotional reaction passing across his beatific face. He was either truly imperturbable or else considered us to be such lowly peons that no matter what mud we threw at him, it wouldn't matter. Crispin Glover gives me that vibe. He's Buddha-like, but I bet when negotiating something pertaining to his artistic vision, he's inflexible and stubborn and oddly effective. Being born into privilege probably helps, but it's not an aristocratic air as much as a singularly focused confidence. Then he signed books for at least half an hour, chatting with everyone. One might not expect such a degree of earnestness from him, but there it is. I wanted him to write "Dear Pete, You're my density...I mean, my destiny," but chickened out. He had that weird falling-out with Robert Zemeckis over the sequel.
