Crispin Glover Brings the Crazy to Broadway Performance Hall

Last night, a besuited Crispin Hellion Glover took the stage at Broadway Performance Hall with the perfunctory greeting: "Good evening. Presently, I will read to you from eight books." And he did.

Now, we were kinda expecting something along those lines, as the Northwest Film Forum's blurb on his film events this weekend announced:

All performances preceded by Glover’s one-hour slide show, which consists of ten eight different stories dramatically narrated by Glover himself. The slides are from pages of books that he has reworked with original and transformed art.

But by "slide show," we didn't quite imagine that meant Crispin would go through eight of his books (with titles like Concrete Inspection, Rat Catching, and A Son of Mother) page by page, reading all the text projected onscreen in a rushed, often breathless manner. He provided this narration in the dark, occasionally stepping into the light to just point at his books' images. Throw in Glover's over-enunciated, inconsistently inflected speech and you've got the makings of a great demented, nonsensical monologue. (Meanwhile, his elongated, erratic handwriting just begs for intensive analysis.)

After the completion of all eight books, Glover introduced his latest film It is Fine! Everything is Fine., part two of his "It" trilogy. Unlike the first one (What is It?), It is Fine is relatively taboo-free, in that while there is plenty of graphic handicapped sex, there's no blackface or swastikas. Phew.

The film's only a little over an hour long, which leaves plenty of time for post-film discussion and subsequent book signing with Glover. If last night's session is any guide, expect the Q&A to involve lots of convoluted answers to simple questions, as well as Crispin answering questions not even asked. Though he describes himself as "pretty analytical," there were a whole bunch of seemingly random statements, in which Glover expressed his concerns about everything from the falling dollar to the lingering prejudice in Hollywood against Germans post-WWII. Given the source, we suppose nothing's surprising.

It is Fine! Everything is Fine. runs tonight and Sunday at 7pm. What is It? shows Saturday at 7pm. Tix available online and at Broadway Performance Hall (cash only): $17 NWFF members; $20 general admission.