What Is It?

Both onscreen and off, Crispin Glover earned notoriety as one of the most infamous oddballs in Hollywood, garnering vast critical acclaim for his bizarre character turns and intense performances. Crispin Hellion Glover was born September 20, 1964, in New York City. After his family’s late-‘60s relocation to Los Angeles, he began acting while still in elementary school, and by the age of 13 had already secured professional representation.

After winning a lead role in an L.A. production of The Sound of Music starring Florence Henderson, Glover graduated high school and began working regularly in television, appearing in guest roles on series like Happy Days, Hill Street Blues, and Family Ties. In 1981, he made his feature debut in the teen sex romp Private Lessons, and in 1983 appeared in My Tutor as well as a pair of TV movies, High School U.S.A. and The Kid With the 200 I.Q.

Supporting roles in projects like 1984’s Teachers, Racing With the Moon, and the American Film Institute-produced The Orkley Kid followed, but a highly idiosyncratic performance as Michael J. Fox’s father in the 1985 blockbuster Back to the Future was Glover’s ticket to stardom. In 1986, he delivered a brilliant performance in the disturbing teen drama River’s Edge, but in the wake of its release he began to earn a notorious reputation for eccentric behavior: A July 1987 appearance on NBC’s Late Night With David Letterman in which Glover — clad in a ratty wig and platform shoes — attempted to kick the program host in the head was the stuff of tabloid headlines, and the concurrent publication of Rat Catching, an antique Victorian children’s book updated with gruesome cut-up text and new drawings distributed through his mother’s Volcanic Eruptions press imprint, did little to dispel questions about his sanity.

In 1989, Glover issued an LP, The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution. The Solution Equals Let It Be, containing a bizarro-world cover of the Nancy Sinatra hit “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” A follow-up, The Big Love Album, remains unreleased. That same year, he shocked onlookers by refusing to return for the inevitable Back to the Future sequel. When another actor was outfitted with prosthetics as a substitute, Glover successfully sued 20th Century Fox, a legal victory which forced the Screen Actor’s Guild to create new rules on the issue of performance “sampling.” He then turned his back on the Hollywood mainstream, accepting supporting roles in off-kilter films like David Lynch’s Wild at Heart and Lasse Hallstrom’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? In 1991, he even appeared as Andy Warhol in Oliver Stone’s The Doors.

By the mid-‘90s, Glover had settled rather comfortably into his role as Hollywood’s eccentric-at-large, appearing with some of the American independent community’s most notable filmmakers. In 1993, he appeared in Gus Van Sant’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and in 1996 he delivered a memorable cameo in the opening scenes of Jim Jarmusch’s masterful Dead Man. In 1995, Glover began directing his own film, What Is It? starring a cast made up entirely of victims of Down’s Syndrome. He also mounted The Big Slide Show, a traveling one-man performance-art piece incorporating footage from What Is It? music from his records, and images from his books, which additionally included 1990’s Oak Mot and 1992’s Concrete Inspection.

Though still a mainstay of smaller-minded independent films in the year 2000, Glover made a dramatic return to the Hollywood cotton candy blockbuster that year by gleefully sinking his teeth into his role as the creepy Thin Man in Charlie’s Angels. Boiling over with a silent psychotic glee and displaying remarkable heretofore unseen dexterity (save for the aforementioned Letterman fiasco), Glover’s Thin Man was a highlight of the film’s action sequences and took his patented dementia to new heights. The following year found Glover in a rare starring role in Bartleby, a surreal adaptation of Herman Melleville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. The same year also found the wide release of Glover’s little-seen pre-Rubin and Ed collaboration with director Trent Harris, The Orkley Kid, a short that was included in Harris’ The Beaver Kid. When a remake of the 1971 horror classic Willard was announced in 2002 and Glover was tipped to star, few could deny that his casting in the role was a stroke of genius. —allmovie guide