Twitch

What is it?.. well.. it appears to be crap.

what the hell? people still make films like that? it looks like an exploitation film from the 70s...

Does anyone else smell a strong whiff of self-indulgence?

No, Dave, that's the smell, as noted by Fannyslacks, of crap. It happens, apparently, when Marty's dad tries to make an art film and you watch the trailer. Imagine the treacherous odour if you had to watch it in its entirety...

bart

That looks horrible. He was better off starring in Charlie's Angels 3: Thinman's Revenge.

I think at least part of what you're smelling is the acid ...

Self-indulgent? Yes. But that doesn't necessarily mean bad. It looks bizarre and interesting, potentially horrible too, but it takes balls to make a film like this, and Crispin's balls probably aren't like ours.

Not like ours...
..what do ya mean, like "dropped"?

hehe couldn't resist...

If you are looking weird colour palette/filters, grained film stock, and surreal weirdness, the best place to go would be to the collection of Guy Maddin films...I prefer my pretense with a substance :)

KuRt.

That's whacked and a half.

I think it looks cool. The shots of Adam Parfrey (the guy in blackface) and ladybirds are genius. Don't judge the book by it's cover. It's only the first movie out of the trilogy, so we can't know what to expect.

Predictable responses here to a categorically different kind of film. Glover isn't interested in the front part of his audience's brain. Literal thinking and film making by committee wherein audience response is narrowly controlled are exactly what Glover is frustrated by. I find his aesthetic fascinating because it speaks to a time when confusion and expressionist aesthetic were taken as raw materials for differentiated audience response. What's depressing is that comments posted about his film are so predictably about expectations for narrative film logic not being met. There is a whole backend to your brain, where unformed or visceral response matters more than your literal linear thought processes. After all, there is much in our experience that we fail to make sense of and refuse to focus on. Impressions, associations and nausea are uniquely human. Computer scientists have no idea how to simulate genuine subjectivity.

Confining ourselves to "What does it mean?" "How do I get it right?" are not the only question humans are capable of asking. Glover's fascination in The Big Slide Show with artifacts that reveal 19th c predilections for the inscrutable, grotesque, and boundles are aesthetically consistent with his film "What Is It?" There is a clear, consistent, and integral artistic voice at work here.

In a society less trained by marketing messages and culture-by-committee, this board would be sharing ideas about how the film's credits describe an inner and outer sanctum, how the interior world of hardness, hatred, purity, and control serve as foil to the outer sanctum's world of soft boundaries, confused love, melting flesh, and preformed thought. We'd be comparing Shirely Temple's pure burning whiteness in the inner sanctum to the Salt burning snail flesh against soft human cheeks. We'd connect the lusty lovers sailing between outer and inner sanctum on cottony clouds with the naked man born from the scalloped shell who eventually topples hatred from its throne.

There's is something there, "what is it?" just doesn't decide it for you. It's not comfortable, or responsible, or ok art, it's scarey and disturbing and fascinating like grotesque and beautiful ideas have always been.

Anyone who would not be into this based on the trailer should be blotted out from the book of life.

BLLLEEEEHHHHHHHHHH

I saw a screening of this a few years ago when Crispin Glover was doing his Crispin Hellion Glover Sideshow, and I really enjoyed it. It was brilliant. Nothing wrong with a bit of surrealism. Reminded me stylistically of movies like El Topo and Holy Mountain. I'm glad to see he has been getting some Hollywood roles like in Charlie's Angels because that means he may finally have the money to finish this project. His books also seem fascinating.

People need to stop being afraid to expand their mind...