If someone would’ve told me when I was watching Back to the Future on cable television for the twenty-second time when I was young that one day I’d interview George McFly, I probably wouldn’t have listened. Not because I wouldn’t believe the person, but because I would have probably ignored whoever was talking while I was watching one of my all-time favorite movies. But after seeing Crispin Glover‘s latest film, The Bag Man (you can read my review here), in which he stars as a creepy motel desk clerk alongside John Cusack, Rebecca Da Costa and Robert De Niro. Though Back to the Future remains Glover’s most well-known performance, he’s made a habit out of stealing scenes in everything from big-budget blockbusters like Alice in Wonderland and Charlie’s Angels and independent features like Willard and Dead Man.
I had the opportunity to talk to Glover about his role in The Bag Man and some more about his own directorial efforts. If you’d like to get a chance to talk to Glover too you’re in luck — between filming he goes on tour with the two movies he has directed What Is It? and It Is Fine! Everything is Fine and performs a Q&A session with the audience. But until then here is my interview with the man himself.
Q: You’re famous for taking on a variety of different roles throughout your career. What made you decide to take the role in The Bag Man?
With this particular screenplay I read the dialogue and liked it. It’s well-written dialogue. I think the offer was worked out within the next day, or two or three. It went very quickly. I was in the Czech Republic – I own property there where I’m continuing to shoot my own films. By the way, I tour with my own films with two different live shows before each and then I show my two different feature films. I’ve just begun shooting my third film and I have ten minutes of contiguous edited material that I’ll also be showing at my shows. People can find out about where I’ll be at CrispinGlover.com. This weekend I’ll be in Ottawa at the Mayfair Theatre, and next weekend I’ll be near San Diego at the La Paloma Theatre, so I look forward to seeing people at those shows.
But I was in Czech probably overseeing the sets of the film I was just describing and I got the offer. I only had like two weeks before the production. I remember that because I actually wanted a little bit more time because as soon as I read it I knew how the character should look and sound. I wanted to grow facial hair out for it and I only had the two weeks. But it all worked out. They had a specific schedule, I was there, and the facial hair worked out well in the two weeks that I had.
Q: Your character in the film probably has the fourth-most screentime, which leaves a lot of his intriguing backstory unrevealed. Did the hints at his disturbed past come from you?
It was all in the script. Actually, I think the only thing that was improvised in the whole movie was in that sequence when the sheriff and the deputy are there I think I address them and say “Sheriff, Deputy.” That was the only improvisation [Laughs].
The rest was delivered as scripted. I liked the dialogue, so I wanted to stick to the script. In fact, at one point when I first agreed to it I had talked to the director, who is one of the writers as well, on the phone and he said to me that he wanted to expand my character. And I said I liked the way that it was written, but he said, “Well, let me just try it.” He made it more verbose in a way and I liked the sparsity of the original dialogue. He said, “Well that’s fine, we’ll stick with it,” so that is what we shot. I also could tell that he did something similar with Robert De Niro’s character, but with De Niro they did shoot more stuff. It made sense for De Niro’s character because as you can see Robert De Niro is quite funny in the movie and incredible to watch [Laughs]. A lot of that is that verbose language that he is using and Robert De Niro speaking that way is quite appealing [Laughs]. So it worked for that character whereas for mine the concision of the original writing of it was quite nice and there’s a mystery within the dialogue that I like and I’m glad we stuck with it.
Q: Including this film you’ve worked a lot with directors who are directing their first feature films – for example, Terrence Martin on The Donner Party, Shane Acker on 9, Glen Morgan on Willard, and even McG on Charlie’s Angels. Does anything in particular draw you to working with rookie directors?
Actually I just thought of two others that were in the 80s so yeah, that’s seven first time directors at least. I don’t seek that out, I mean, ideally I would love to be working with the most experienced, biggest-name directors with the largest budgets, you know [Laughs]. I’m all for all of that though, but that isn’t really what’s important. Ultimately, what’s more important than anything is the material. But your director of course could take good material and not make it good, so the director is critical.
I’ve had all kinds of experiences, and there’s a very specific kind of director which is a first time writer/director. Glen Morgan was a very good example of a first time writer/director that I’ve worked with and actually so is David [Grovic, The Bag Man director]. But I’ve had experience with first time writer/directors in the 80s that makes it something I watch out for now. It’s something that can happen with a first time writer/director that because they’ve not been on a set and have been very much in their heads with the words they can get into a micromanaging way of thinking about something that can really kill the life or expression that’s happening. And that’s not fun.
In fact, in 2010 I didn’t work all that year – it was right after Hot Tub Time Machine came out – I expected to get good offers, and I did get a fair amount of offers. But it was very difficult because something was happening that I didn’t like, a trend of what I was being offered. I won’t even say what it was because it wasn’t something I had been offered before and I don’t want it happening again. I don’t know what happened there, but I didn’t like it. I was offered a part by a first time writer/director who had written a lot of very successful screenplays. It was the first-billed character and it was good money too, and I could fund my films with the money from corporately funded and distributed movies, so I do not like to turn down work. But I could tell that he would have that quality of a director that was going to micromanage and would not be fun to work with and I did turn it down. But it was very obvious when talking with David that it would be very easy. Like I said, he was fine when I said, “Let’s stick with what the original dialogue was,” and he was very happy with that. And when we were shooting we would do different interpretations. Not on every scene, but there was one scene in particular where we were doing multiple takes one right after the other and we started to go into a different interpretive direction kind of accidentally and organically and then we stopped, talked about it, and then we purposely went into that different direction and I like that. That was unusual and fun to do.
Q: Speaking of Hot Tub Time Machine, this is the second time recently that you’ve done a movie with John Cusack. How did your paths end up crossing again?
What’s funny about it is that I think I did maybe one other movie in between the two but they were not that far from each other. It was within a year and a half or so, I think. What’s funny about it is it was a coincidence because the director had no idea that we had been in Hot Tub Time Machine together, and then if you analyze the roles even though the genre of the films are different and the characters themselves are very different, the stations in life so to speak that the characters exist in are similar. I play a guy in Hot Tub Time Machine who is a bellman at a kind of low-cost hotel that John Cusack’s character is a guest at, and similarly in this film I play an employee of a motel behind the desk that checks in John Cusack’s character who’s a guest at this particularly low-cost motel. The original title of this film even was Motel – now it’s The Bag Man. There’s something kind of funny about that reflection and being just a complete coincidence.
What Is It? & It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine., both directed by Glover.
Q: It’s been seven years since you last released a film that you directed. You mentioned before that you are working on a new film. What can you tell us about that?
It’s been nine years that I’ve been touring with What Is It? and seven years that I’ve been touring with It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine, which premiered at Sundance 2007, so a long time. There will be a part three to that trilogy, but the movie I am working on now I have been developing for myself and my father for many years. My father and I have never acted together before. My father is Bruce Glover, who you have seen in films like Diamonds are Forever, Chinatown, and Ghost World, but he and I have never once acted in a scene together in a movie. Just this last October we shot a scene in which we acted together, and that’s in the ten minutes of edited contiguous material I am showing at my shows. So I’m very excited about this new movie.
Q: Are you shooting it piece by piece?
Yes, from the first year of shooting What Is It? to having the 35mm print it was nine and a half years. I started making What Is It? in 1996, so a long time ago. I do not think this movie will take that long because there was a major technical problem with What Is It? that took a lot of time to fix. It does take time when you’re financing the films on your own. I shot ten pages of what is a forty-eight page screenplay, which sounds short but those ten pages edited together are twenty minutes, which tends to happen the way I write and shoot films. So if anything I actually have to cut things down from the forty-eight pages, which I have a hard time doing. But it’s a much less expensive way to make films. A corporately funded and distributed film will have a 90 to 120 page screenplay and the first cut will be four hours and they’ll edit that down. For me, that would be an incredible waste of money [Laughs]. So I have to be very careful about what I’m shooting and how I’m shooting because I pay for everything I’m very, very aware of those things.
The Bag Man is now playing in select theaters. For more information about Crispin Glover’s tour and his own films, visit CrispinGlover.com.
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