Exclusive Interview: Crispin Glover Still Doing 'Fine,' Loves Playing Creepy in 'Bag Man'

Though he's a actor of many genres, veteran performer Crispin Glover doesn't like to be defined by any single one of them. 

 

He's known worldwide, of course, for playing George McFly in Back to the Future, the villainous Thin Man in Charlie's Angels and more recently the Knave of Hearts in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. But whenever he has the opportunity, Glover, who turns 50 next month, marches to the beat of his own drummer.

 

In fact, the film that Glover has declared as his greatest piece of work is a film that probably most people will never get a chance to see because it was shot independently and has never been distributed on video. Co-directed by Glover and David Brothers, the 2007 psychological horror thriller It is Fine! Everything is Fine. has to date only been seen at its Sundance Film Festival premiere, and after that, at Glover's touring shows that consist of his films, slideshows and book signings.

 

 

It is Fine is the second of Glover's It film trilogy. The film was written and told through the point of view of Steven C. Stewart, a wheelchair-bound man severely afflicted in real life by cerebral palsy. Stewart, who plays a version of himself in the guise of a man named Paul Baker, died a month after filming was complete in 2001. 

 

So what exactly is It is Fine? Glover's website describes the film as a “psycho-sexual tale about a man with severe cerebral palsy and a fetish for girls with long hair. Part horror film, part exploitation picture, and part documentary of a man who cannot express his sexuality in the way he desires (due to his physical condition), this fantastical and often humorous tale is told completely from Stewart’s actual point of view – that of someone who has lived for years watching people do things he will never be able to do."

 

Taking time out from the recent tour – where the actor-director brought his touring production to such venues as the Music Box Theater in Chicago and the Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers, N.Y. – Glover told me by phone that he's most passionate about It is Fine because it tells a story about a person with a disability no film has done before.

 

"The film is a human study. Steve had been locked into a nursing home in his early 20s when his mother died," Glover said. "It was difficult to understand what he was saying, and the people who were taking care of him would derisively call him a 'M.R.' or 'mental retard.' It's not a nice thing to say to anybody, but Steve was of normal intelligence and the emotional turmoil he went through in the decade he was in that nursing home is something I can't even begin to imagine."

 

But instead of channeling his experiences into an uplifting tale, Stewart went with the opposite, Glover said, and the result became It is Fine.

 

"He wrote this screenplay in the style of a 1970s TV 'Murder Mystery Movie of the Week,' but where he's the bad guy. This is what was really important to Steve," Glover said. "If you think about it, when there's a corporately funded and distributed film, if there's a character with a disability in it, that character will be a benefactor to society. There's nothing wrong with that, since there are plenty of people with disabilities who are benefactors to society, but Steve was very keen that he could play person with a disability – emphasis on person– could have dark thoughts."

 

 

Dark is probably the best way to describe Glover's character, Ned, in The Bag Man, which was released simultaneously in theaters and On Demand earlier this month. The gritty crime thriller tells the story of a low-rent thug (John Cusack) instructed by a crime boss (Robert De Niro) to pick up and deliver a  mysterious satchel. But if he looks inside it, the bag man will lose all the money that's promised to him for doing the job – and possibly his life.

 

Glover plays Ned, a sleazy motel manager with a creep factor of 10.

 

"The  character has twists – he's a shape-shifter, that's for sure. It's a fun archetype to play," Glover says. "The role has ambiguity in the lines. As soon as I started reading them. You can interpret those lines in a lot of different ways."

 

You can track Glover's future in-person appearances – known as Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slideshow – on his website CrispinGlover.com.

Tim Lammers is the author of the new ebook Direct Conversations: The Animated Films of Tim Burton, which includes a foreword by Burton.