Crispin Glover Wants His Movie To Never Be Digitally Available
Crispin Glover does not want any movie he has directed to become available digitally.
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Crispin Glover is best known as George McFly, the father of time traveler Marty from the Back to the Future trilogy. He is a creator and artist in his own right, with albums and a couple of movies under his belt as well. However, MovieWeb reports that Crispin Glover does not want the movies he’s directed to ever be shown digitally.
While he is primarily known as an actor, Crispin Glover has stepped behind the camera to make his own films a number of times. His proposed It trilogy already has two movies, What Is It? and It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine, with a third untitled project on the way. These movies are not available on home media or digitally, and Crispin Glover says they never will be.
The artist actually tours with the movies, and they are a real show, as there is a slideshow and an hour-long question-and-answer session for audiences to participate in. For Crispin Glover, this is the only way these films, the first in particular, can be shown. He explained that this is because What Is It? deals with a lot of disturbing and controversial material, and might not have been made in today’s Hollywood climate.
What Is It? was made in 2005, and the majority of its cast features actors with Down syndrome. The movie also makes social commentary about topics like censorship, and Crispin Glover believes that without the added context in the communal showings, the film’s message could be weaponized and warped. In the interview, he spoke about the film’s themes about the censorship of thoughts and ideas, which he says is a disturbing trend in our culture.
Crispin Glover explained in the interview:
But people can take that film, and they can just say, ‘this is a bad person who made the film, which was part of the point, and why there are things in the film that can be very disturbing. It was purposeful, but I was aware of this starting in 2005. I could have put it out on digital back in 2005, but I knew it was not a good idea to do that.
In today’s atmosphere, an artist and their art often suffer together if one or the other is too controversial, and this was a trend Crispin Glover noticed way back in 1996 when he started working on What Is It? Rather than have the surreal journey depicted in the movie be misinterpreted in bad faith, its director has chosen to make an event of its showings.
What Is It? is currently not showing, but the actor made known his intent to resume his tour of the film, as well as finish work on the third part of the trilogy.
Once he graduated from television appearances to Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter in 1984, Crispin Glover rose to steady work on prestige projects, such as playing Andy Warhol in The Doors and Arlo in The People vs. Larry Flint. Aside from being known for playing George McFly, the actor also won acclaim for the crime drama River’s Edge and as Grendel in 2007’s Beowulf. Also on his movie CV are What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, Willard, and Hot Tub Time Machine, showing him in a wide variety of roles, from dramatic to frightening to just plain silly.
More recently, Crispin Glover has played Mr. World in American Gods and appeared in an episode of the eight-part anthology Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix. When not in front of the camera, he writes books and records music, and has built up a reputation for a wide array of artistic pursuits.
