12th Annual New York Underground Film Festival March 9-15, 2005 (Crispin Glover)

What Is It?
DIRECTOR: CRISPIN HELLION GLOVER
FEATURE	35MM	72 MIN NEW YORK PREMIERE
Sponsored by The Onion and Index Magazine The New York Underground Film Festival is proud to present the long-awaited What Is It? by Crispin Hellion Glover, a unique, mythic, visionary work described by its creator as "the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe, and how to get home, as tormented by an hubristic racist inner psyche." "Ten years and numerous incarnations in the making, Crispin Hellion Glover's What Is It? is an aptly titled film that defies easy summarization but is a triumph of cinematic irreverence and uncompromising creativity. The film (which contains graphic sexuality) flows between controversial imagery and story lines: a minstrel in blackface who aspires to be an invertebrate by injecting snail enzymes into his cheek; a Shirley Temple dictator in Nazi garb; a naked man with cerebral palsy lying on a giant seashell, being fondled by a naked woman wearing a monkey mask; talking snails getting repeatedly salted; and watching over all, an enthroned Glover in a full-length fur coat…It is a horoughly challenging visual experience as well as a compelling allegory for society and its outcasts. As the visual absurdity of the film rides along at a fever pitch, Glover's innate humanism injects the seemingly inhuman scenario with a deep pathos that captures the viewers' attention and consideration. Truly one of the most original films ever created, What Is It? will shock, intrigue, confound, disturb, and amaze even the most jaded viewers." — Trevor Groth, Sundance Film Festival "Scenes with naked women in elephant masks, Shirley Temple, Glover being lowered deus-ex-machina style into a Maxfield Parrish scene...It's like Fellini on psychedelics — wildly creative but completely twisted." — Jane Ganahl, San Francisco Examiner "An outre, bewildering, unnerving, surreal, blackly comic film. It is brilliant in its sensitivity and humanity and infantile in its excess." — Darius James, Spin Good old Crispin Glover. He's crazy.