Multimedia man of mystery

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/09/2015 (4029 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Why, yes, his middle name really is “Hellion.”

But the really important thing to know about Crispin Hellion Glover, 51, is that the actor known for irresistibly eccentric performances in mainstream movies — not to mention his bizarre interview and memorable karate kick on Late Night With David Letterman in 1987 — is a real multimedia artist, more at home on the cultural fringes than in the Hollywood limelight.

That makes Glover an especially good fit to anchor the 10th edition of the WNDX Festival of Moving Image (part of the province’s annual Culture Days festival, which runs Sept. 25-27) in a program devoted to the more unorthodox aspects of culture — as long as you’re willing to forget the Glover you know as George McFly in Back to the Future, the Knave of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland and the “Thin Man” in Charlie’s Angels, and embrace Crispin Hellion Glover, filmmaker, author, artist and publisher.

In a way, Glover already has a Winnipeg connection through Guy Maddin. Glover was one of the celebrity guest narrators (who also included Lou Reed and Isabella Rossellini) of the filmmaker’s Brand Upon the Brain!

“I had known of Guy Maddin’s work before I was approached to perform live narration for Brand Upon the Brain! and was then glad to get the opportunity to work with him,” Glover says in an email interview. “I would love to act in one of his films someday.”

But Glover has a multimedia oeuvre of his own to keep him busy. True to its title, each instalment of the “Big Slide Show” is an audio-visual presentation, consisting of Glover reading from one of his own self-published books while images from the book are projected behind him.

Each show is a “one-hour dramatic narration of eight different books I have made over the years,” he says. “The books are taken from old books from the 1800s that have been changed into different books from what they originally were. They are heavily illustrated with original drawings and reworked images and photographs.”

After each presentation will be a screening of a film Glover directed. It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE! (screening Friday, Sept. 25) is a collaboration with the late screenwriter Steven C. Stewart, who also stars as a man with severe cerebral palsy and a fetish for girls with long hair. Glover describes it as “part horror film, part exploitation picture and part documentary of a man who cannot express his sexuality in the way he desires.”

What Is It? (screening Sunday, Sept. 27) is Glover’s 2005 feature directorial debut, featuring a cast largely composed of actors with Down Syndrome, with the proviso that “the film is not about Down Syndrome.” Its tagline: “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.”

What Is It?, Glover says, embodied “my psychological reaction to the corporate restraints that have happened in the last 30 or more years in filmmaking.

“Specifically, anything that can possibly make an audience uncomfortable is necessarily excised or the film will not be corporately funded or distributed,” he says. “This is damaging to the culture.”

Watching his films, Glover hopes, would inspire audience members to ask questions about their own participation in the film.

“Is this right what I am watching? Is this wrong what I am watching? Should I be here? Should the filmmaker have made this? What is it? These kinds of questions are when people are having a truly educational experience,” Glover says.

“For the culture to not be able to ask questions leads towards a non-educational experience and that is what is happening in this culture…

“The content (of) my personal filmmaking is extremely important to me and the propagandistic content of corporate interest and corporate distributing is disturbing to me,” he says. “I would not feel good about myself if I did not react to this artistically with my own projects.”

 

Advance tickets to both shows are sold out, but some tickets will be available at each show 30 minutes before their start times.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca