On the morning after the world premiere of Crispin Hellion Glover’s third film—long awaited by those of us who have traced the cult stalwart’s wholehearted and wholly self-funded directorial turn—I find myself strolling purposively through Central Park and into Times Square with the auteur himself, weaving our way past joggers, tourists and buskers, and drifting at one point into a bike lane (“I usually bicycle,” explains Glover, “so I didn’t even think about using the sidewalk.”). Our course is set for the IFC Center, where he has business to conduct in advance of the film’s run there.
No! You’re Wrong or: Spooky Action at a Distance is an atmosphere-sodden, multi-generational saga about an American industrialist family wrapped in a meta-fictional, and at times almost sitcom-adjacent, making-of. In both of the film’s narrative tracks, Glover stars opposite his father, Bruce Glover—himself a character actor, who died earlier this year. Flanked by a bevy of paramours, gorgeously pouting and mostly doomed, as well as a squadron of silicone-masked henchmen, Glover and Glover incarnate a series of father-son duos whose fraught relationship oscillates—with little respect for linear time—between twisted Oedipal tragedy and deadpan comedy.
This ouroboric film was shot on 35mm at Glover’s château outside Prague, which he purchased over two decades ago with the intention of harnessing it as a kind of private film studio. No! You’re Wrong marks his first production there, and it is the most elaborate of his films to date: What Is It? (2005), his debut, was followed in 2007 by It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine; taken together, they form two thirds of a trilogy on the theme of taboo. Though No! You’re Wrong is his third feature, Glover is at pains to clarify that it is not the final film in the trilogy, but a standalone work.
Nevertheless, it’s being distributed in the singular fashion originally conceived for the trilogy: Glover is presenting his latest film in-person at theaters across the country, as presaged by a performative reading—“The Big Slideshow”—from the series of artist’s books he made in his twenties—delightfully macabre and elliptical tales fashioned from out-of-copyright instructional texts and children’s stories, transmuted through collage and spindly, india-inked insertions.
All this to say: no one is doing it like Crispin Glover. In our perambulation on that sunny day, he proved a generous, unfailingly polite, and, at times, predictably cryptic interlocutor.
Keva York: How are you feeling about the premiere?
Crispin Hellion Glover: Good, good. I was interested to see how people reacted, and it was positive. It was a different kind of reaction from my previous two films, which it should be: it's a different kind of film.
KY: But it must have felt momentous. This film has been in the works for more than 15 years, right?
CHG: I started developing it in 2007, the year I premiered It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine—and you can see that in the movie, the dates are written [on screen]. Of course, we shot those scenes later, but—
KY: The first “behind the scenes” bit with the meta-fictional Father and Son characters?
CHG: Yeah. I mean, not everything is factual in the movie, of course. There are certain things that are influenced by reality, but it is fictionalized.
KY: The film has a baroque structure, but the original idea was quite simple: you hadn't acted with your father and you wanted to.
CHG: I wouldn't say that was necessarily the exact reasoning. There's also just the element of, what does one have at hand; what is feasible? There was another screenplay I had developed for an actress and I to play multiple characters, but for various reasons, I never did that film. I'd still like to make that film. This film almost came out of the concept of that film, which was supposed to be a two-character movie. So in my first conceptualization, the only characters were to be myself and my father, and the idea was that there'd be these shadow characters, people talking on the phone in silhouettes. But I was interested in an epic hero's journey structure. I read a story structure book that made something clear about A-line story/B-line story, “old world” romantic interest/ “new world” romantic interest, which was very valuable. So when I started writing the female characters, I realized they had to be flesh and blood. They could not be silhouettes. And then, when it came to the actual shooting, the technical reality of making all the characters in silhouettes—it would have been very difficult. So you saw the silicone-masked characters—those would have originally been silhouettes.
KY: So, silhouettes to silicone. I did love those masks.
CHG: [Chuckles] It has an uncanny quality, which is effective.
KY: I noticed that there were two separate screenplay credits: No! You’re Wrong, which is the multi-generational storyline, attributed to you, and then Spooky Action at a Distance, attributed to you, your dad, and Mike Pallagi.
CHG: I'll put it this way: No! You're Wrong is the story within the story of Spooky Action at a Distance, although Spooky Action at a Distance came afterwards. I’d edited No! You're Wrong, and then I realized I needed this other layer.
KY: What Is It? and also It is Fine! to a degree have these stratified story layers, too. This layering is partly a product of the incredible amount of time you’ve spent making these films; the stories start to refract, but it seems like it’s also just something you’re drawn to.
CHG: I really hadn't thought about it that way. I mean, the fastest shoot of any of them was Everything Is Fine, and that was shot in three different production segments, in 2000-2001. Each of those segments was maybe a week? I think I was there for more than a week at different times—
KY: In Salt Lake?
CHG: In Salt Lake. I think Margit Carstensen was there for about five days or a week.
KY: This is a bit off-topic, but since you brought her up, did you show Margit Carstensen around? I imagine she hadn’t been to Utah.
CHG: No, no, we didn’t go out. But I talked to her on set, and I asked her about working with Fassbinder. She was great. I asked her what her favorite film was that she did—I'm not sure if I asked with Fassbinder or in general—but I'm pretty sure she said it was Martha [1974]. That's the one where the husband gives her a sunburn?
KY: Yeah, that scene is brutal. A colleague of mine showed his film studies class Martha, and students complained about it being a film that condoned violence against women.
CHG: There is definitely a generational thing where things like violence and… I mean, that's generalized obviously, individuals are different, but it does seem like there's a tendency towards zero tolerance of certain kinds of, I don't know what the right word for it is, uncomfortable things… But what is light without dark? Or dark without light? You have to have the contrast.
KY: And like Fassbinder said, the film should not contain the answer to the problem.
CHG: Right, that's a very good statement.
KY: But, back to the film at hand.
CHG: The original No! You're Wrong script was 50 pages, and then we had 50 days of shooting, which is really slow—that's a page a day. And the additional Spooky Action at a Distance parts—those were short. That was probably an additional six days of shooting. So, 56 days of shooting altogether.
KY: That’s a big scaling up. Watching the film, I actually thought about Back to the Future—people think of that as a film about a kid who like, fixes his family, but then you watch the sequels and you realize these quote-unquote defects continue to occur in the future, and in fact go back to at least the 1800s. So to me, those films are also kind of about tragic predestination along the father-son line.
CHG: I'm truly not familiar. I only saw that second film once. I never saw the third film. I can't even concentrate on what the content is because of the serious issues… No, much of it was just practical: what could I accomplish with my father, and what sets could I build having the particular space that I could work in? But as I mentioned last night, the silhouette of the train that I saw, that definitely sparked something.
KY: At the Magic Lantern exhibition at MoMA?
CHG: Yeah. And then there's, I guess they call it a “visual gag,” in a David Lean film called Brief Encounter [1945] that's set at a train station. So that made me think about two different ways of illustrating the passages of trains.
KY: Given the importance of trains in the film, MoMA felt like an appropriate choice of venue for the premiere.
CHG: You can hear the subway. I knew that, because I've seen a lot of movies in that theater. You could critique it, but I thought, well, it's thematic. It adds an interesting sonic quality.
KY: And why set the film in that era—post-Civil War until just after World War II?
CHG: Again, when I was doing the structural elements, it sounds funny, but there's a five-act structure that is not used in most films. Most films go to a three-act structure, but you can point to the remnants of a five-act structure, which are usually about the generation before and the generation after. So there's a pre-generational setup, and then the standard act one, two and three is in the middle, and then there's a post-generational resolution—that's an epic hero's journey structure. And 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968], I mean, the fact that Kubrick called it a space odyssey, Odysseus, it's not a coincidence. That's a five-act structure, essentially—so the “Dawn of Man” would be first generation, and “Beyond the Infinite,” basically the last shots of the infant, that's the last generation. But then there's the standard hero’s journey in-between, mostly the Jupiter mission. I mean, it's a bit more abstract, but I was thinking about that, in that there are these multiple generations—and that was for just the initial screenplay, No! You're Wrong. So there's 1868, with Athena and Apollo Muldoon; then 1888, Brutus and Belladonna Muldoon; 1918 with Chronos Muldoon, and Eve and Belladonna; and then Damocles and Demeter Muldoon [in 1948].
KY: I only just noticed that it’s A, B, C, D! [Laughing] That’s gonna be helpful for me on rewatch.
CHG: Yes, that was the easiest way for me to delineate in writing it. There were different names attributed that had those initials, and then better names were come up with, these kind of Greek karma names.
KY: They're all very loaded. I mean, naming your son Damocles—
CHG: Probably not a great idea. [Laughing]
KY: Yes, it bodes ill—not to mention Chronos. But speaking about parentage, this film is dedicated to your parents, both of whom have passed. Both were performers, so I was curious, to what extent were they people you sought advice from entering that same field?
CHG: My mother retired when I was born. That was here in New York. I know that she'd made more money in her selected career at the time my parents first met. She was a professionally trained dancer, ballet and what have you. She'd understudied Gwen Verdon in Damn Yankees, and then she’d played Lola in a touring company. She made her living doing various shows, big musicals—on Broadway, off-Broadway… She worked a lot.
I had gotten an agent when I was 13, and I'd gotten one Coca Cola commercial, which I wasn't able to do, because I got stomach flu on the day of the commercial. I'm still mad I couldn't do that Coca Cola commercial. But my mother came to me not too long thereafter, with, I believe, it was Variety—Variety at the time had open calls—and there was a cattle call for Sound of Music in downtown Los Angeles; it said, "for children who can dance and sing." I said to my mother, “I'm not a dancer or singer.” And she said, “Oh, you can do it.” I knew she knew what she was talking about, it wasn't just like, a pep talk. So I went.
There were hundreds of people, and I just kept going back in the room—Michael Kidd was the name of the director, who was a well-known choreographer; he was a nice man. I got it, which was a confidence-building thing. But in a lot of ways, [going into acting] was more about practicality, even when I started.
At the time I got the agent, I had seen how things worked, because I saw my father working. I had thought about maybe being a geologist before that, but my concept of geologist was pith helmet, chisel, hammer, break open geodes—which I realized was not the reality, probably, of what I would do making a living as a geologist. The acting profession felt like it was something I could make function. But again, this is primitive, I wasn't thinking about the art, really. I was just thinking, “Well, maybe I can be in a commercial or on television, maybe a movie.” It wasn't until I was 16, I'd already started professional acting class, and I started going to movies at the revival houses in LA—movies from the ’70s, the ’60s, the ’20s, all over. That was 1980. That got me very excited about the whole thing: I had been interested in art, Surrealism and all that, from a young age, but I had not necessarily equated art with film.
KY: It's interesting that in the course of your career, you’ve circled back to something like the position on acting that you began with—since you started directing, you speak about that as your art, and acting as your craft.
CHG: Right, in a certain way that’s why I was able to compartmentalize it. I was excited that I would be stepping into this industry that would question things and have artistic merit—that was my high expectation. And then, in the early ’80s, I was wondering, “Where are all these kinds of [films]?” It was starting to become more corporate—but I look back to the ’80s and it seems better than it is now! But I don't know if that's right to say, because, in a certain way—it's not easy—but there are more avenues for people to have access to something that is not standard corporate output.
KY: We should talk about the look of this film, because it's very special. I remember seeing clips back in 2016, but I don't recall it having this Guy Maddin-esque texture.
CHG: No, it did not. I've seen people say things about Guy Maddin and I'm aware of his work, but I wasn't thinking about Guy Maddin at all. It wasn't what I was initially planning to do. It was only once I was in the midst of editing that I recognized that I needed to have the color differentiations, to help identification, essentially—not that it would definitively let an audience know, but depending on their cinematic education and sensitivity, people may identify it more quickly, and for other people, it might be just a feeling, but I do think it helps, because the film jumps back and forth in time. Then it was a matter of figuring out what to do technically. I never talked to Guy Maddin about it; him having done that didn't register in my mind. What had registered for many years was what Woody Allen had done in Zelig [1983], and what Martin Scorsese had done in Raging Bull [1980].
KY: I was curious about Adam Parfrey’s contribution to this film—he’s thanked in the credits. I know your relationship goes back some ways: he was in What Is It? and you wrote that essay for Apocalypse Culture II.
CHG: Well, Adam died in 2018. I was able to show Adam an early cut of No! You're Wrong—this was before Spooky Action at a Distance. That was the last time I saw him in person. And Adam did not like the movie—he was very straightforward about it.
KY: I couldn't imagine he'd be any other way.
CHG: He was actually pretty brutal. [Chuckles] What Adam had said was, basically, “Just throw the movie away, and you should make a documentary about you and your father”—which, I obviously didn't do, but it started making me think, there is an interesting dynamic between myself and my father, and instead of making a documentary, what if I made a docudrama, so to speak, inclusive in what I already had done, and there could be thematic elements that would intertwine? So Adam’s brutal critique helped me think of an alternative. I know it helped the film to add this other layer to it.
It's also why I fund my own filmmaking, because I'm open to repairing mistakes. My second film, Everything Is Fine, is the only film where I've not shot beyond the initial shooting stages. Both What Is It? and this film had many, many days of recontextualization of elements. If I was working in a corporate sense, nobody would let me do that—and understandably so. The way it is, investors put money into a project, and it's never a good gamble to invest in a movie, really, monetarily, but they should have a plausible possibility of getting their investment back. That's why I don't get investors, because I don't want anybody to feel that I've taken advantage of them.
KY: Those “docudrama” scenes with you and your dad kind of made me wish that you had a reality TV show, or like, a vaudeville act. They were very funny.
CHG: That was something I was glad to see last night. Like I said at the premiere, I didn't know how that would play out in terms of an audience. I mean, I said to my father, “This will come off as funny.” Even though we were serious about our argument, I felt it would be amusing. So I'm glad it was.
KY: It was—but I was also kind of surprised by how harsh your parody of yourself got at times.
CHG: I purposefully made myself a bit of a villain.
KY: Which you also did in What Is It?
CHG: I sort of have a theory of people that really want to prove themselves as being a hero in a movie or something—it makes me question them. Why are you working so hard to prove you're a hero?
I mean, at the same time, there are dangers to [portraying non-heroic characters]. People can take characters I play, or anything in my films, and if they want to villainize me, they'll say, “Oh, this person is this”—you know, exaggerate. I can tell people will want to do that with me. Online vigilante justice social movements—that stuff isn't harmless. People say it's just words, but words turn into real-world actions, and that is concerning. But at the same time, I feel like it's better, and just more interesting, to see flawed characters. If I portray myself as this perfect thing, that's not interesting.
KY: Right, we're back to a “light without darkness” situation. But in the context of a film that feels very personal, you get into a pretty dark zone with this quantum physics concept—“spooky action at a distance”—and this idea that, as the meta-fictional “director,” you’re entangling the lives of the real-life actors with their characters.
CHG: I'm not sure that's exactly what I was trying to state, but… Well, I don't want to say too much, so go ahead.
KY: I mean, to me, it felt like at least one permutation of this quantum metaphor was you reckoning explicitly with the fact that several people who are in the film died in the course of making it: your meta-fictional character expresses these paranoid thoughts around, “Well, I wrote a patricide, and then my dad died,” and so forth.
CHG: I mean, granted, it was a long time, and people can die over a period of more than 10 years. It's coincidental, but these thoughts go in your head. After that concept had come into play in the film, it kept… meeting itself—which was not fun, but it was happening. My father only died this March, and that concept was already there. I was trying to get this film out before my father died. I really, really tried. It's also strange that now, within months after he died, then I was able to finally present the film.
KY: I also want to talk a bit about “The Big Slideshow.” You've been doing some variation on it for half your life now. The last time I saw you perform was nine years ago, but seeing it again, it's almost eerie how consistent your performance is. I wondered how your relationship to it has changed over the decades.
CHG: Last night, personally, I was noticing that I was a little rusty. It was a long time since I performed. But the show that I do with What Is It? is the very first show ever did—that one always worked perfectly, because I chose the books that would be right the first time. Then I made a variation, and it took me a little bit of doing to make the second one work. For last night, I almost brought in a book that I haven't had in the show before, but this was within a few days of the show, so I felt like I better not—but probably at the IFC, I'm going to start experimenting, because I want each show to be unique. The other thing though is my energy changes, just as a person—you're older, your energy shifts. But there are these basic elements.
KY: It’s been 20 years since you first started touring with your films, and the distribution landscape has changed so much in that time—potentially not for the better.
CHG: That I don't really know. I'll often have people say, “Will your films ever be distributed?” I’ll say, “I am distributing them. Right now, this is a distribution of my film”—but people are so used to seeing big posters and LED screens.
KY: Well, I think they’re used to being able to possess a film in a way—at home, you can pause and replay; you can dissect it. You can’t do that with your films. The distribution model you’ve constructed was already an anomaly in 2005, but even more so now.
CHG: It's true, the culture is becoming less and less a cinema culture, meaning places. But there still are cinemas, and there still are people that like to go out and do it. I mean, I was sincere about MoMA: I go there regularly to view movies, because, for me, they have the best programming in the world.
KY: We’re in an era where the idea of “independent film” has really been winnowed away. Of course, there are still people making films on their own terms, but I feel like you’re doing something uniquely ambitious. You have a sort of Megalopolis-scale, totalizing vision, but you don't have a wine empire.
CHG: There's a few filmmakers that have been on my mind for a long time. John Cassavetes was somebody who I specifically noticed was utilizing his acting income to help fund his films. Orson Welles was earlier—he obviously had certain struggles, but he’s somebody I’d noted too. Francis Coppola—it's admirable that he puts huge amounts of money into his films, and of course, with Apocalypse Now, it worked very well, but he's also put huge amounts of money into films that he did not recoup on. I don't have the same kind of resources as him, so I have to be very conscientious about how I'm doing things—which is why I bought the property in the Czech Republic all those years ago, which was a lifetime decision. The sets that are in No! You're Wrong or: Spooky Action at a Distance, I will be able to reutilize for other productions—that will bring my costs down substantially while still being able to have high-quality production value.
KY: If I recall right, with Everything Is Fine, the lease on the studio in Salt Lake finished more or less the day you finished shooting.
CHG: That’s right. Those sets, they were essentially thrown away. So I realized, no, I need to own the place—which is what I have in the Czech Republic.
KY: You've seized the means of production.
CHG: Yeah, I’ve seized the means of production.
No! You’re Wrong or: Spooky Action at a Distance screens October 10-16 at IFC Center. Director Crispin Hellion Glover will be in attendance for a series of Q&As and book signings until October 14.
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