Crispin Glover: The Mr. Skin Interview

First, I'd like to present you with a copy of Mr. Skin's Skintastic Video Guide.

Oh, fantastic! Thank you! I must be in some films that are in this book!

Oh, yes. Wild at Heart. (Picture: 1) And My Tutor! (Picture: 1)

My Tutor! That was my very first film actually!

Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey offered a lot of helpful advice when we were putting this book together.

That's great. Adam is a very dear friend and he's in What Is It? and contributed a lot to that movie.

I'm familiar with Adam from when I used to work as an editor at Hustler magazine. And you, of course, are very important to all of us who ever held that position—

That makes sense, because I was in The People vs. Larry Flynt. (Picture: 1)

Yes. And that's in the book too. Now let's talk about It Is Fine. Everything Is Fine!

Well, first, for fans of Mr. Skin, I'd like to stress that they'd be very interested in this movie because it could serve a lot of prurient interests. It contains a lot of nudity and graphic sexuality. What Is It? also contained nudity and sexuality, but it's much more prominent in It Is Fine.

I am not going to be releasing these movies on DVD or in digital form for a very long time, so if people want to indulge in their prurient interests, they should come to the theater, and they'll have a good experience.

There are actresses in the film that are well known, but some of them are not as revealed as others. There's both male and female nudity. The male, of course, is someone with a severe case of cerebral palsy. But there are a lot of women in it that are good looking and naked.

How long will this remain a theatrical experience?

I want to tour personally with these movies for years. So there won't be DVDs. And I have to say that if I find out that there are bootlegged or pirated videos going around, I will be very litigious. And I don't want to be. But I will be very litigious and pursue each case to the end.

I'm actually thinking of putting up a reward sign on my website with big, bold letters, like "REWARD!" written in the Old West style. Mainly that would be as a deterrent, so that if people see that I'm actually paying to find pirates, they might be reluctant to do it.

It seemed like it took forever for us to see What Is It? That movie was like this specter that was out there for years. Then It Is Fine. Everything Is Fine! seemed to appear out of nowhere. Why was this?

There was a technical problem with What Is It? that took years to correct. It wasn't really about me dilly-dallying or that I was this artiste that was finessing it endlessly. To a certain extent, I did work on it for a while, but there was a really bad technical issue that kept me from releasing it.

Then at 2005, What Is It? premiered at Sundance, and then the editing of Everything Is Fine started in earnest. So then two years later, the second movie premiered at Sundance.

And these films are part of a trilogy?

Yes. Steven C. Stewart's screenplay for Everything Is Fine was not written as a sequel to What Is It? Then I realized that there were certain thematic elements that his screenplay had in common with what was going on in What Is It?, and if I incorporated him into a character in What Is It? that I could make his film as a sequel. And it would be helpful when it comes to marketing it, which it has proven to be. Because really it's a difficult film to sell in a way.

And we get you as part of the package.

Yeah. And it helps that Steven and I acted in the first film. And I do a dramatic reading from eight books, then take questions after the film. It helps to get people in, and I really enjoy talking to the audience.

How has reaction been to Everything Is Fine versus What Is It?

What Is It? was really my reaction to the corporate restraints that have happened within the last thirty years in films, wherein anything that could possibly make an audience member genuinely uncomfortable—not just like I'm uncomfortable with violence, but something that is truly upsetting or taboo—is necessarily excised or the film is not distributed or funded.

And that's a very bad thing, because that's really the moment when an audience member sits back and thinks to himself: "Is this the right thing I'm watching, is this the wrong thing I'm watching, should I be here, should the filmmaker have done this? What is it?"

And that's the title of the first film, What Is It? What is it that's taboo in the culture? What does it mean that this taboo element has been ubiquitously excised from all corporately funded and distributed films?

These are good, genuine questions and they're part of an educational experience. And for everything to be ubiquitously excised that can possibly prompt people to ask genuine questions within the culture ends up stupefying the culture. And I think that really has happened to this culture. It's been stupefied.

Does anyone provoke these reactions?

Now, I'm not saying that the only kind of film that is educational is one that contains taboo. That isn't the case. But what I do find that has happened is that there's a domino effect, and that in the conveyor-belt way that films are made and corporately funded and distributed, at every stage of that conveyor belt, somebody will say, "Well, we really wouldn't want to say that."

This can happen in the writing of the project, in the casting, the directing, the editing, the promotion, the marketing. I shouldn't even say "can"—it does happen. It's to the point that anything that can be said is taken out. So then what's being said? Nothing. And that's very bad. What Is It? is a direct reaction to that.

Everything Is Fine is a different situation. This is the story of a man written by Steven C. Stewart; I funded it, co-directed it, co-edited it, and I'm distributing it. So I contributed a lot of aesthetic elements to it but ultimately this one is Steven C. Stewart's film.

And I feel that when the trilogy is done, Everything Is Fine will be the best film of the trilogy. I also think it will be the best film I'll have anything to do with in my whole career. It's not that I don't want or I don't hope to do better, but this is very special.

There's something about the emotional cathartic element that happens with the Steven C. Stewart character that I'm very proud of in Everything Is Fine. He had to get it out.

How did you come to meet Steven?

Steven was born in 1956 with a very severe case of cerebral palsy. And it's not a degenerative disease. It can be very minor, or it can be very major. You don't get worse and you don't get better.

Steven had written the movie after he'd been virtually locked in a nursing home for about ten years after his mother died in his twenties.

While he was there, the people on the staff would derisively call him an M.R.—a mental retard—which of course is not a nice thing to say to him, or anybody. Steven was of normal intelligence and this was, of course, a very difficult situation. But he did get out, and he wrote the screenplay in the late '70s.

I read the screenplay in 1986, and I knew it was a project that I just had to produce.

How did you come to direct this screenplay?

Initially Steven C. Stewart's film was going to be part three but in 2000 one of his lungs collapsed. Cerebral palsy is not degenerative but he was choking on his own saliva. And so it became apparent that if we didn't shoot something soon we might never get to shoot anything at all.

Steven was suffering with this very terrible health problem concerning his lung, which was separate and not a part of his cerebral palsy. And then, when Steve was on his deathbed, he asked us if we had enough footage, so that he could take himself off life support.

That, of course, was a very sad day, and a very great responsibility. We told Steve that, yes, we did have enough footage, and within a month after we finished shooting the film Steve died.

So he had been keeping himself alive to make sure the movie could be finished?

Yes. I know that if I had said, "No, Steve, you can't die right now, we need to shoot more stuff," he would have gone and gotten an operation and done what he needed to do.

Now one could argue that he was just doing it out of politeness. He knew that I had put a lot of money into it, and maybe he just wanted to make sure I didn't waste a lot of money on him. But I also think this was something in him that he needed to get out.

If Steve had died and this film had not been made I would have genuinely felt I had done something wrong—not only would I have felt, "Oh I should have done that," but I would have felt I had done something really bad, something really wrong, by not getting it made. I would not have felt right about myself for the rest of my life.

Can we talk about the sexual content of Everything Is Fine?

I had no moral problem with the graphic sexuality in the movie. But I was concerned about getting the caliber of actress that I wanted to play these relatively complex women, but something that Steve was getting out was the graphicness of the sexuality. That was important.

So I did feel confident that I'd be able to find one actress that would be comfortable with the graphic sexuality, and there would be others that would be able to simulate or what have you. And it worked out very well in that way. But again, the most important thing was the cathartic element.

Let's talk about taboos again. Clearly everything from the corporate filmmaking system is boiled into mush. Yet at the same time, people spend all day on the Internet looking at incredibly hardcore pornographic imagery, and horrifically violent images, and really exploring taboo topics. And people do this now from the age of five onward. Can you comment on that? How will that affect the culture?

I don't know, because sexuality is complicated. My father talks about when Playboy came around, that it was a healthy thing. Sexuality was being discussed. Playboy really did help, as far as bringing certain elements out into the culture.

As far as children being exposed—that is a sticky issue. My films are unrated. If they were rated, they'd be NC-17. And I believe in that. I don't want a six-year-old coming into the films that I've made and being traumatized by them. I have no interest in that. And I think that's a good rule. Children shouldn't be able to see things that are going to quite possibly disturb them greatly. And quite possibly the exposure to graphic sexuality especially could be disturbing.

I wasn't exposed to any graphic sexuality when I was little, so it's hard for me to relate. I mean, I didn't really know how sex worked until I was thirteen or so, and then it was from reading a book that was designed to explain such things to young people. So that was a good thing.

But as far as the effect of unrestrained taboos in new technology affecting the future and the culture, I don't know. I can't say. What is it?