Crispin Glover
Sydney Australia 2008
What Is It?
It Is Fine, Everything Is Fine
Hi Crispin. Now that I've got your attention (you mentioned that you Google for reactions whenever you show your movies), I wanna thank you for your recent visit to Australia and for showing us your films. I saw both your movies, and your session at the Mu Meson archives.
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Thanks to the Salient one.
11 And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, 12 cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, 13 cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls.
14 The fruit for which your soul longed
has gone from you,
and all your delicacies and your splendors
are lost to you,
never to be found again!
15 The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud,
16 Alas, alas, for the great city
that was clothed in fine linen,
in purple and scarlet,
adorned with gold,
with jewels, and with pearls!
17 For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.
I was a bit dissapointed. Not to detract from his good work, spending the income from his popular roles in Hollywood movies to make bizarre art, music, books and movies, and the fact that he will, if he likes the script, act in highly experimental works. But, he sure drifts around and takes a long time to answer a simple question.
He did tell us the incredible facts about his movies, What Is It and It Is Fine, which he is showing next month at the Chauvel. They were written by and star one Steven Stewart, who had cerebral palsy and was incarcerated in a mental institution for 10 years because he was declared to be an "MR" or mental retard. He was treated like a vegetable throughout this time, by people who should have been able to tell the difference. Incredibly, some of the film was shot in the same instituation where he was imprisoned, quite by accident, but according to Crispin adding greatly to the raw anger of Stewarts performance. Stewart died about a month after they finished shooting, from pneumonia.
On Saturday Michelle went to Glebe markets and I walked from there through Chippendale and took a lot of photos of the destruction of the old Carlton brewery site. They've almost finished demolishing the buildings, preparing for a new housing development. I'm glad they're keeping the stack, and at least one of the old buildings. I hope they keep the gate and the Clare hotel. It's a pity they knocked down the nameless hotel with the bicycle sticking out of the wall.
Caught the train from central to Bondi Junction, and dropped in briefly on my brother Martin, before heading down to the Paddington markets. They never change. There are stalls there that have been going for at least 20 years, that were there when I first tried a stall there, around 1988. The girl selling brown paper journals, and a couple of the record stalls, are that old. Also the slightly creepy guy selling entheogenic herbs from a small table near the gate.
My main errand was to try and score tickets for Crispin Glovers films, which he will be showing at the Chauvel in October. But, they weren't selling them at the theatre, sorry to say. Moshtix will be carrying them soon.
It was so hot, but luckily Michelle came and picked me up, and we relaxed at home for the rest of the day. I would have liked a restful night, but Michelle had tickets for another event, the Gangsters ball. It's not something I knew anything about, or that I would normally attend, but she really wanted to see it. She actually made a black dress with red skull and crossbones pattern, to wear, because she had heard it was rockabilly themed and costume was important.
Well, what we didn't know was the theme was really prohibition-era slease, with lots of corsets and flapper dresses with tassels, and the men all in zoot suits and drapes, with hats. I didn't even wear my own hat which I wear every day! Still, it was fun to watch. They had some excellent acts; fan dancers and professional high-energy swing partners and the bands were good too. Next year we'll go in proper style!
Yesterday we bought our veges at Marrickville, as usual. The peach tree is doing well, blossoming and sprouting leaves, so the transplant was a success. We talked to a couple dropping off buckets of fruit peels for the communal compost heap, they had a cat in their car! Their cat likes to ride curled up on the dashboard.
In the afternoon we had knitting in the Archives. Not many people there. Aspa showed us some episodes of Strangers With Candy, which is totally awesome.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/p
I think this is a good thing. Let customer demand drive the sales rather than availability.
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Then, near the convention centre, it passed a hobo jungle! There were a bunch of deros just waking up and peeling off their sleeping bags. No bindlestiffs or mulligan stews that I could see, but still.
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prof_null at the Lucky Coq in Prahran. Melbourne is a fantastic city, we are totally moving there as soon as we can arrange. Trams rule. Took lots of photos of the amazing grafitti all through the city laneways. The Art Deco exhibition was incredible, my head is still buzzing with the ideas it gave me. Did you know that the term Art Deco wasn't coined until the 60s? Makes one wonder what the current style will be called, if there is one, after 30 years. And will Deco-punk displace steampunk? It will if I have anything to do with it!
I realised this the day he brought home the bamboo pole. He rode home on a too-small fixed gear bike with a 20 foot bamboo pole balanced over the handlebars, and strung it up with rope near the kitchen. It was customary to hang from this pole like a sloth while waiting for your dinner to cook.
Peter was an astrologer. He had large books of ephemeris, tables of times of the motions and conjunctions of the planets and stars, and also the larger asteroids and moons. In fact he had a huge library, most of which he stored in a giant array of milk crates. Lets see, they were stacked 5 high, there were at least 5 rows, and each row was at least ten crates long. 250 crates. Around his huge block of milk crates he hung the walls of his studio with greasy bike frames, chains and gears, and every now and then he could be persuaded to piece together a functioning bike from these materials all of which he had salvaged from the side of the road.
His ancient dog Grendal would stagger out of this studio every morning and make the long slow journey to the front door, where she would slump in the dust just outside and soak up the sunlight. At the end of the day she would return, like the changing of the guard. On each trip she would rub up against the walls of the corridoor, over time building up a long greasy smear at knee height.
He had an ex wife would come to the warehouse sometimes to fight with him, mostly over the fact that he didn't provide her any money to look after their daughter. He fought with many people. Sam, when he couldn't pay the rent. Dave Marlow, when he couldn't pay for pot. Through all these troubles he maintained his cheerful hippy disposition, doing charts for the girls and rescuing stereo parts and cooking weird foods like trepang and seaweed. He was responsible for putting trepang, dried sea cucumber, in the vending machine at the end of the main corridoor, in case we felt like some ourselves. he sold quite a bit of it, as a novelty. They looked like dried penises.
Many years later, when I was living with Michelle in the Rose street warehouse in Annandale, he visited. He asked us what signs we were. I am Leo, Michelle is Scorpio. That's a very bad combination, he told us, very prone to conflict. But, he said with a smile, Leo-Scorpio relationships could be very exciting, because of the tension between our personalities. Truer words were never spoken.
- 17:18 My bus home had a system crash. A robot voice told the driver that the hand brake was not applied and then the engine died. #
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