Crispin Glover To Visit For MUFF, Be Weird

Crispin Glover - an old-fashioned kind of filmmaker. Image: Wendy Lynch.

Glover – famed for his role in Back To The Future, his unsettling art films, and trying to kick David Letterman in the face with enormous platform boots in 1987 – will appear at the lucky 13^th Melbourne Underground Film Festival.

Let’s not skim over that Letterman appearance. It was a Kaufman-esque performance where he was in character as Rubin from the at-the-time forthcoming buddy-comedy Rubin & Ed (the cover art has him in the exact outfit he wore during his appearance). The antics no doubt precipitated Joaquin Phoenix’s oddball turn on the Late Night show as part of his ‘Nutty Period’ and the I’m Still Here film.

While Glover still dips into Hollywood (he acted in 9, Beowulf, Alice In Wonderland and Hot Tub Time Machine), as a filmmaker he’s certainly… provocative. Just the NSFW trailer for his What Is It? film features Down’s Syndrome actors, nudity, pagan rituals and swastikas. He explained in this interview with Vice, “People say that it’s just shock value. I don’t think there’s anything shocking in it. I understand there’s a lot of taboo in it that audiences aren’t used to seeing, but that’s different to just shock”.

He’ll present it and his second film It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE at this year’s MUFF. “I like to be there,” he said during an oddly-conceptual interview with Tom Green (the phone-in questions do sound a lot like they were pre-recorded by Glover himself), “I feel like it would be cowardly on some level to go and put the movie out and not attend. I want to be there so there’s genuinely a discussion.”

Glover will appear with the first two parts of his ‘It’ Trilogy at the Westgarth Cinema on Friday 13 July and Saturday 14 July with his patented slideshows and Q&As each night. Get your pass into the strange world of Crispin Glover at palacefilms.com.au.

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