My blog: Some thoughts on films

Thought I would share this awesome book with you. This week I recieved my copy of Rat Catching by Crispin Hellion Glover, one of my favourite actors.

The book is quite strange but stunning to look at, Glover has taken a book that has fallen in to the public domain and added text, illustrations and blanked out words to create his own. The original text is 1896 book called Studies in the ‘Art of Rat Catching’. I was delighted to find that when I opened it, it was signed.

If you are not familiar with Crispin Glover you’ll probably have seen many of his films but may not have realised it. He’s biggest role is George McFly in Back to the Future or The Thin Man in Charlies Angels. He’s also popped up in Alice In Wonderland and Hot Tub Time Machine, but these are certainly not his greatest films. For me his roles in Rubin and Ed, Willard and Bartleby are his greatest acting achievements. Along with acting though he has written around 30 books, Rat Catching is the only one I own but the collection will grow. 

For me, my favourite thing about Crispin is he does big budget features like Alice and Charlies Angels* to fund his own independent films. At the moment he has directed two films of a trilogy he is working on. The first, called “What Is It?”, has a cast of  people with Downs Syndrome, it deals with a man’s inner and outer struggles and is notoriously surreal and hard to watch. His second, “It Is Fine.  Everything Is Fine!” is written by Steven C Stewart a man who  suffers from cerebral palsy. Stewart was confined to a nursing  home  for ten years but after leaving he wrote “Everything Is Fine!” and  Crispin  spent the money from Charlie’s Angels funding the  production.  These are all distributed by his own company  (along with his  books) Volcanic Eruptions. They are not  available to watch  unless you go to one of his screenings as he  often tours with  them, during the screenings he also does a  reading of his books  (Rat Catching and What It Is And How It Is Done) then does a Q&A. These evenings have been known to go on for hours, but he stays to the end to meet everyone and chat.

His passion for film, art and his fans is really amazing and refreshing, it makes me love an actor more when they show genuine love for what they do and it’s not purely for money to line their own pockets.

Check out Crispin’s eccentric style in a clip of one of his readings here:

*When interviewed by Mark Kermode, Dr K quipped “You mean you didn’t work with Mc G for artistic reasons?” God love him.