Most people know Crispin Glover as Marty McFly's father, the Thin Man in Charlie's Angels or Willard, the rat loving psychopath. What he isn't known for is performance art. Until now. Glover has been touring the world with his wildly weird two-night, one-man show, Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show, and this past weekend he brought the show to the beautiful Texas Theatre in Dallas, TX. It's very fitting Glover performed here, as this is the same theater Lee Harvey Oswald snuck into and was caught at the day JFK was shot.
Glover has written 15 to 20 books but brought eight bizarre, hilarious, and darkly illustrated ones for his performance on Friday night. After the slideshow and readings, Glover screened part one in his It trilogy, What Is It?, followed by an awkward* Q&A and book signing. Of the 8 books, my favorites were Rat Catching, The Land of Sunshine (which Glover performed loudly in German), and Egg Farm.
Some of these books were taken from old novels and instruction manuals, which Glover made his own by blacking out certain words and phrases, adding illustration, and writing in his own words to give them new direction.
While presenting Rat Catching, Glover discussed an obsession for, you guessed it, catching rats. There were images of vicious gashes in a hunter's stomach from bite marks (who know rats could be so brutal?) and a narration of the hunt. Egg Farm was only four pages containing this repeated sentence: "I'm at an egg farm."
For more on Glover's tour, head over to crispinglover.com.
*In the audience was a drunk guy that got angry because he didn't understand Glover's honest appreciation for human disease and deformation. Drunk guy felt it necessary to share his anger with the rest of us at Texas Theatre. I didn't go to Saturday's show, so I'm not sure if there were any highlights like this.
