Visiting artist Crispin Hellion Glover presents What Is It? and Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show, followed by a post-screening Q&A and book signing, Friday, March 2, and Saturday, March 3, at the George Eastman House's Dryden Theatre, 7 p.m. Tickets are $20. Visit www.eastmanhouse.org or www.crispinglover.com for more info.

He's worked with visionaries like Jarmusch, Lynch, and Van Sant, but actor Crispin Hellion Glover may have found his most challenging collaborator yet merely by looking in the mirror. Glover makes his feature-filmmaking debut with What Is It?, a project nearly a decade in the making and described by the notoriously distinctive Glover as "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." Oh, don't act so surprised.

What Is It? has generated plenty of buzz thanks to its cast, comprised mainly of actors with Down's syndrome (as well as a troika of porn starlets), and fever-dream imagery that doesn't shy away from blackface or swastikas (check out the eye-popping trailer at www.crispinglover.com). His journey around the country to present his film, along with a staging of Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show, makes a stop at the George Eastman House's Dryden Theatre on March 2 and 3.

But if you're fretting that gifted performer Glover is through venturing in front of the camera, don't be. He appears in What Is It? in the role of "Dueling Demi-God Auteur and the Young Man's Inner Psyche," and will hit the multiplex this fall when he reteams with Back To The Future director Robert Zemeckis to play the villain Grendel in the big-screen adaptation of Beowulf.

So what is it? Glover was kind enough to take the time to explain, despite being in the throes of a nasty-sounding cold...

City Newspaper: Tell me about the inspiration for What Is It?

Crispin Glover: There was a screenplay I had co-written called It Is Mine, and I had the concept of having the majority of the characters played by actors with Down Syndrome. David Lynch had agreed to executive-produce the film for me to direct, so I went to one of the corporate entities in Los Angeles to get financing. They were interested, but ultimately they were concerned about the majority of characters being played by actors with Down Syndrome. So I set out to make a short film to promote that this was viable, and What Is It? was originally a short I wrote and shot in four days, and all of the actors in it had Down Syndrome. But when I cut that together it came in at 84 minutes, which is longer than what the film is now. But I could tell with additional work I could turn it into a feature film.

Do you think the potential backers were concerned about the controversy it might generate or its ability to make money or a combination of the two?

What I thought at first was that it was a liability, and that's why I started to make this short movie. When I turned it into a feature, what I realized was they were concerned that it was a taboo subject; not really having people with Down Syndrome in a film, but having people with Down Syndrome playing characters that did not. That's taboo. And I realized it isn't just that particular taboo; it's anything that's taboo that at this point in time might be corporately financed and distributed. I think that's very damaging to the culture.

Can that change?

I don't know. But it is apparent right now that that will not happen. It's that very moment when an audience member can sit back and look up at the screen and think to themselves, "Is this right? Is this wrong? Is it right that I'm sitting here? Is it right what the filmmaker is doing? What is it?" These are important questions because this is true education happening; somebody's actually asking these things. And to have true education ubiquitously cut out of anything that is corporately financed or distributed in this culture is truly damaging.

It's basically censorship, because people are deciding what you get to see and what you don't.

It's not like a board, or a committee; it's more like a self-censorship that happens by people being afraid that they're going to lose their jobs because somebody might say to them, "Look, we're getting all these letters, and the sponsor pulled out, and since you decided to do this, we're going to fire you." That's really how it kind of works.

What was the idea behind casting the film predominantly with actors with Down Syndrome?

When I look into the face of somebody that has Down Syndrome, I see somebody really that has lived outside of the culture. So when the majority of characters are played by people who have this quality, the film itself has a feeling of existing outside of the culture.

People have been asking me about What Is It? for a while.

Yeah, from the first day of shooting to the day I got a 35mm print of the film it took nine and a half years.

Even though you've been in Hollywood a long time, this is your first foray into filmmaking. Was there anything that surprised you about the process?

The technical aspects are what cause troubles. There are people that helped me technically that were incredibly helpful, and then there were people that I paid money to that didn't do the job properly. That can happen anywhere, and you've got to be careful about that. That was my major stumbling block.

I understand What Is It? is the first part of a trilogy.

I've premiered Part 2, which was written by Steven C. Stewart, who plays one of the characters in What Is It?, and that film is called It Is Fine. Everything Is Fine. I'm proud of both of these films, but there's something about the Steven C. Stewart film... I'm really excited to start showing that to people in November.

And you're going to make your way around the country with that one, too?

Yes, I'll do exactly the same thing that I've been doing with this film.

What can people expect from "Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show"?

I made many books, mostly in the ‘80s, where I took old books from the 1800s and reworked them. When I first started publishing the books, people wanted me to do book readings to promote it. But the books are heavily illustrated, so it didn't really make sense to read from it because the story starts to become clearer on some level with the illustrations. I needed to have some kind of illustrations along with the books, so slides of these illustrations made sense of the books themselves. I first presented it in 1992, and it became apparent that it would be a good way to tour with the film as well. It's an hour long, eight different books, and really over the years it's become a dramatic presentation; it's not just like a reading, but there's a feeling of theatricality to it.

Besides touring with the film and working on its sequels, you continue to act in other people's movies. It's that art vs. commerce debate, where people work different jobs so they can afford their passion.

It's a good thing to do; I'm glad I'm able to do it. There's no question that the films that I'm acting in are helping me to be able to recoup on the film as I distribute it like this. Otherwise, typically a corporately funded and distributed film has to go out on a very large level, quickly, in order to make the money back quickly. By really making my living acting in other people's films, I can recoup slowly.

What do you hope people take away from the presentation as a whole?

If somebody can start formulating thoughts about something that comes from the show, or from the film, then the work has been accomplished. I feel like that has been happening. Sometimes there are things that people can get upset about in the film, and I've found that the question-and-answer afterwards is also a very big part of the show. People like that part of it. I don't really talk about the symbolism of the film, or what things necessarily mean, but I do put the film within a context as to what it's reacting to, and I think people can understand truly what it is after they've seen the whole show. When there are negative reviews or thoughts about the film, I'll get accused of shock cinema, which I really have zero interest in, or nonlinear/non-narrative randomness. I would argue that this is a strong narrative film; in fact, it won Best Narrative Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2005, which is something I'm very proud of. It is a dramatic narrative film, but the vocabulary with which it's told is less familiar to a lot of American audiences. I think that the whole evening together can help people see that there's a specific point and a specific element that's being reacted to with the film, and that's an important thing at this point in time in the culture.

I was watching the trailer for What Is It? last night; it's gorgeous.

Yeah; I'm very proud of the production value of the film and I'm looking forward to showing it at the George Eastman House. I've never been there. It looks like it's a neat place.

Are you planning to check out the archives?

I'll have to talk to them about that. I really love antiquity in film. Do they have old stuff from the early 1900s?

I think so. I believe that the George Eastman House houses one of the top film archives in the world. This is a hugely hardcore movie town.

Great. That's good to know. I particularly love watching images from the pre-1900s, and it sounds like maybe this would have that. It makes sense that they would. I love early sound, and I find it very interesting because of culture, and this film is reacting to culture. When you see that which is taboo within a culture, you really understand the psychology of a culture. But by taking that taboo out, it becomes much more gauzed. Looking at the pre-Code films, looking at silent films, racism, sexism, and classism were dealt with in a very different way, really a much more frank way, and it's easier to see a reflection of the culture. And it's evident that this is a very different culture in the 1920s than it is now. And yet you can see what this culture's grown out of and that there are still echoes that linger deep within the psyche of this culture, but they've been excised because the taboo has been excised. It's still within the culture but it doesn't like to admit it. I love looking at these old films because you can really learn a lot. I've been influenced by some of the qualities of these earlier films. I tend toward liking to watch those, really more than current films.

Well, there were no rules at that point, until the Hays Code.

Yeah, not until 1933, 1934. But what was happening is that each state had their own rules. In the silent era the studios would have to recut the film for each state and their rules, which was fairly costly, but when sound film came in, it became an impossible cost. That's why they invented the Hays Commission, is because they needed to cut their costs and have a conforming element that the states would accept. It is interesting. And it really does make a gigantic difference; you can see from films prior to 1934 just a huge leap in differentiation of the way sex, violence, racism, and drugs and everything were dealt with.

Yeah, it is interesting to think how film might have evolved if it hadn't been kind of stifled until... I think the Hays Code went away in the late ‘60s when the MPAA showed up.

It stopped a little before G, PG, and R, which came in... well, G, PG, R and X came in in the... I believe the Hays Code stopped in the late ‘50s or early ‘60s, but I could be a little bit wrong about that.

Did you happen to see the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated? It addresses that whole thing.

I have it in my mailbox right now, actually. I'm looking forward to seeing that. Yeah, I don't know what would have happened. Something different.

**

Visiting artist Crispin Hellion Glover presents What Is It? and Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show, followed by a post-screening Q&A and book signing, Friday, March 2, and Saturday, March 3, at the George Eastman House's Dryden Theatre, 7 p.m. Tickets are $20. Visit www.eastmanhouse.org or www.crispinglover.com for more info.