If you’re in the mood for something really different this weekend (and you’re not faint of heart) head to the IFC Center (323 Sixth Avenue at W. 3rd Street, NYC) and spend the evening with Crispin Glover (Back to the Future, Wild at Heart, River’s Edge). The show starts with a live performance of Crispin Glover’s Big Slide Show, followed by a screening of What is it?, the first film in Glover’s It trilogy, a Q&A with Mr. Glover, and a book signing. Tickets are twenty bucks, and the whole thing begins at 7:30 pm, Friday through Sunday (Feb. 9th – 11th).
I have not had a chance to see What is it? (hoping to this weekend), but I have seen It is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE!, the second installment of Glover’s trilogy, which premiered at Sundance last month. Funded mostly from Glover’s paycheck from Charlie’s Angel’s 2, It is Fine! is written by and stars Steven C. Stewart. The film opens with Steven on the floor of the institution he has been confined to because of the cerebral palsy he has suffered from since birth. Limited in which the ways he can express himself (especially towards women, and especially women with long hair), he introverts into a psychotic-sexual fantasy world where he seduces women with ease, then kills them. Glover and co-director David Brothers give the film an aesthetic value that is somewhere between David Lynch and Michael Findlay in terms of camera, art direction and style, but the film is really a one man show for Stewart, who lived with the same handicap his on-screen alter-ego lives with. Stewart loathed the harmless, infantile image often associated with the handicapped, and sought to show that although unable to express himself to the capacity he wanted to, his mind and soul could harbor the same dark fantasies and desires (for sex and violence) as anyone else’s could; a person wasn’t automatically ‘good’ or ‘safe’ because they are physically unable hurt you. To Stewart, the idea that a handicap can be overcome includes not only the ability to compete in the Special Olympics, but also the ability to seduce and strangle a woman (and though a semi-autobiographical film, in reality Stewart did share his character's affinity for killing, he just understood that the coolest movie characters are the villins).
Unfortunately Stewart never saw the film completed – he died shortly after shooting wrapped. He has left behind a brilliant piece of cinematic self-expression, an unsettling, explicit film about longing, desire, and violence.
