Episode 673 - Crispin Glover

Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fuck in here is?

What the fucksters? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is WTF.

This is my podcast. Welcome to it. New people. Don't hesitate to go to WTFPod.com slash guide to see who's been on the show.

And then you can move from there. You can see the entire list of however many 600 and something episodes and then you can act accordingly and go find them. You can listen to the most recent 50 anywhere you need to for free. Or you can go to Howl.fm to get the archive going all the way back.

All 600 and some odd ones. But if you just need to know who's been on, go to WTFPod.com slash guide. Check it out. A lot of people.

A lot of people have been in here. In this garage. And that wasn't even really an ad. It just came to my mind thinking about it.

Today we have Crispin Glover on. Crispin Glover. I don't know how it happened, but man, he came over and he's like a brilliant freight train of compulsive ideas and philosophy and psychology. I didn't know what was going to happen going in, but I knew I wanted to talk to him.

He's an interesting guy. He rolls in an interesting world. I think sometimes it's mostly in his head, but that's fine. I can certainly relate to that.

So that's happening in a few minutes. I have a nice lengthy conversation with Crispin Glover. He showed me a trailer of his film he's working on. His dad is in it and he's in it.

And he was just all lit up. And he came in and he's like, you want to see this? He pulled his computer out. He showed me this new trailer he just edited.

He's also in a movie, which I think is how he got him, or how he came up on the radar. He's currently in a movie called Amy in a Cage, which is available now, streaming and on demand. But he does a lot of things. He wears a lot of hats.

And many of them are gothic styled. He's into the old-timey darkness. And it was good. So that's happening today.

Me and Crispin Glover. But the reason I bring up, you know, like the past, maybe, is it the past? Looking back on how many people have been on the show and how many people have been in this garage, it's sort of fascinating. But between you and me, I don't always clean in here.

I just, I don't, you know, I stack things. Things come in. A lot of things come in. But I don't always, you know, I tidy up.

Occasionally, I'll do the vacuum. I'll wipe the floors down. But I'm about to start shooting the fourth season of Marin for IFC. And I'm spinning out a little bit.

So what do I do when I get stressed or anxious or frightened? Well, one of the things that I do, if I'm so driven, which is not all that often, is to fucking clean up. Like, I've gotten into this situation here at the house where so many wonderful things are sent to me. A lot of artwork, a lot of records, books.

Some of them are sent personally. Some by publishers. Stuff gets stacked up, you know, and I've got a lot of stuff in here. And what I neglected to realize, I kind of realized it, but maybe I was in denial about it, is the amount of fucking dust, dude.

And dude, that's the amount of dust. I mean, I had, if most, if most dust is human skin, if that's a truism, I have the skin of about 670 relatively some very famous people covering my garage. My garage is covered with a, probably about, or was, about a millimeter of many different skins. That sounds a little weird and gross, but it's got to be true.

Now, the thing is, is out here, I'm in a garage and I've got it, you know, capped up the best I can. It's not great. You know, I put a floor in here. I didn't really do it right.

You use a platform for it. It's definitely holes in it. So, also, there's all these little spidey webs up in the corners and around in the bookshelves. There were spidey webs everywhere.

I don't see that many spideys, but there's spidey webs. And they're not attractive. You know, they're just not attractive. And I just kept putting it off, man.

I kept putting it off. And finally, you know, consumed by stress and a need for distraction, I got in it out here. I got in it on my knees with a deep clean. I moved the shit out, not all the bolts and stuff, but anything that wasn't sort of really heavy, I moved it outside to assess.

So, it's been an intense few days of stress cleaning. But the dust, man, the dust was fucking insane. So, I'm like meticulously cleaning. And, you know, by the time I finish, new dust will start piling up.

But it got to the point in here where I was like, is word out? Is word out that there's spidey webs in the garage? Because what started to happen is that, you know, six years ago, whenever the hell I started this thing and started amassing stuff and started moving my operation out here into the garage, it had sort of a, you know, kind of a pseudo-intellectual man cave vibe to it. It was a collection and still is of everything for my entire life.

So, that was kind of cool at first. And it still is kind of cool to me. I'm still comforted by it. But if you don't clean it, what happens is if people look closely, it's like going into one of those, it's like going into a sad museum, like a roadside museum that isn't really kept up well.

And the exhibits are kind of gross and they're a little dusty and some of the dust has, you know, kind of been humidified a bit, so there's grime. So, I would walk into my garage saying, this is pretty cool. And then, like, I'd look around and I'm like, oh, no, no, it looks sad. It looks like it's sort of dying, like it's becoming a relic, like it's becoming just a, like some sort of tomb or mausoleum of what I thought was important or what represented me and was not being kept up that well.

So, I kind of got paranoid. I'm like, you know, I'd like people to walk in here and be like, oh, this is kind of cool. Not like, ugh, I don't know what you got going over there, but it's a little sad. So, needless to say, I cleaned it up and now it's alive again.

I've been watching some of my screener movies and here's what I know. Is that I've watched The Revenant once and then, like, I went back and went through it to watch certain scenes again and again. That DiCaprio is impressing me. Not that that's anything, you know, like, you know, it's hard.

You kind of want to judge people, but, like, I've seen him in public and talking. He's definitely got shit together, that guy. And he did a great job in that fucking movie and he should come over and talk to me. Also, I don't know what you guys are thinking, but that movie Joy, David O.

Russell's movie, is a sweet movie. You know, I had a hard time with American Hustle, but I had to watch it three or four times to understand that he's working within a tone that I've never quite seen before. And it took me a while to get the handle on and enjoy. It's, again, there's a tone to it.

There's sort of like, there's something beautifully human muting the pain in this movie. It's certainly an entertaining movie, as was American Hustle. And that there's some weird thing he's doing where he's meeting his own artistic needs and creativity, but also, you know, kind of appealing to a mainstream audience. And he was doing this with The Fighter and also with Silver Linings Playbook.

And I just didn't understand the trailer for Joy. It made it look like, I don't know what it made it look like, but it was not the movie that I saw. And I enjoyed the movie. Hateful Eight, I liked it.

And, you know, people should fucking relax. Tarantino's a fucking wizard, and it's a comedy. If you don't think that those characters are fucking clowns, you're out of your mind. And all that blood and all that gore and just the beautiful lyricism of the talking, it's pretty hilarious and pretty exciting.

I think now we should talk to Crispin Glover. And, you know, strap in. You know, he operates at a level of intensity. That is not your day-to-day level of intensity.

But I think through the conversation, you know, I think a lot of people judge Crispin, and they've decided he's nuts or whatever. But what I found is that he's a guy with a specific vision about what he wants to put in the world creatively. And we get there, I think. So enjoy this conversation, if you want, with Crispin Glover.

Your father had a profound impact on me when I was young. Oh, yeah? I'm sure he had a profound impact on me as well. I would think so.

He was in, what's his full name? Bruce. He was given the name Bruce Herbert Glover. Yes.

And my whole name is Crispin Hellion Glover. And he didn't like his middle name, Herbert. He was a struggling actor. In New York, he would say to himself, I'm Bruce H.

Glover and Bruce Hellion Glover, my troublemaker. And it made him feel good as a struggling actor. They gave him you that. They gave you that.

Yeah, my mother, he told my mother that was his real middle name. And so then when they were married, she saw Bruce Herbert Glover. She thought, who am I marrying? But they gave it to me as my real middle name.

Oh, that was it. You were destined. I guess they gave me a good name. Yeah.

Well, the reason why he haunted me was he was in Diamonds Are Forever, which I saw when I was very young, I imagine. I can't remember when it came out, but it must have been in the early 70s. Right, so I was nine. Before, 74, yeah.

So I was 11. Yeah. And there was just something insidious about those two, about your father and the other guy. Yeah, right.

And I remember, I don't think I've seen that movie in decades. And I remember, one of them, they put a bomb in his pants. Right, that's my father, yeah. And they threw him over to the side of the boat.

Right. But your father, in acting, was so bizarre, and his tone and his demeanor was so fucking bizarre that it haunted me. Good. I'm sure he would be happy to hear that.

And he was also in Chinatown, not in a haunting role. And I was on the set of both of those films briefly, which I'm very happy to say. Do you remember? Yeah, very well.

I'm sure you met Sean Connery. I did, actually. Yeah, briefly, yeah. And Jack Nicholson.

Well, I have met Jack Nicholson, but that was later on. I met Roman Polansky. They were friendly, and they'd play chess together. Really?

I was there on the day that they shot the final scene in Chinatown. But I wasn't there while they were shooting. So your dad only brought you the bloody horrible parts. No, no, no.

I didn't always go on the sets. But yeah, but your father was this bizarre presence. And you were looking exactly like him almost. Well, it's close enough.

So like you said, in this new movie that I'm editing right now, we play the same characters at different ages. It was interesting what you said when I had that reaction to the small amount of what I watched of Amy in the Cage. Yeah. And you said, well, I'm sure you could cite influences, but he's trying to do something that is sort of utterly unique in a way.

It is actually unique. He did something interesting. He'd never made a movie before, and I wasn't exactly certain what it would be like. But I appreciate it.

I want to work with him again. I just got a script today from him, and I really like him. But it seems to me that it's something that you do as well, that at some point, your creativity and your style of living and your imagination seemed to kind of persist against anything that was accepted or understandable. Well, no, no.

I mean, it's an interesting way to think about it. I don't know that I initially have set out to do that, but it might be interpretable that way. Because I remember at some point, I'd like to talk about growing up in this weird, you know, cesspool of a show business town. And I also noticed in the trailer you just showed that there was a recurring symbol of the illuminated eye on the watch.

Right. Which is, I guess it could be attributed to Egyptians, to the Illuminati, to Crowley. You know, where did you pick that eye up? I mean, might as well start there.

Well, I have, this is my third feature that I've, well, I'm in minutes to edit it now, but the first film I made, which I started shooting in 1996, called What Is It? Actually, I should also say I'll be at the Egyptian Theater here in Los Angeles. I think it's March 18th and 19th at American Cinematheque. And I've been touring for the past 11 years now with my shows and films.

I perform a live show. What does that entail? Well, actually, I have two different live shows. I've been interested to talk to you about it because, well, I know that you tour as a comedian.

And I, I've been, I'm not a comedian. Right. But there is something of humor within the shows. Sure.

And I tour. So I relate very much. I've been watching a lot of comedians recently on YouTube. And I'm very interested.

I don't know. There's something I'm very interested in about that. Like who are you watching? Well, I was listening to the Louis CK thing because of your interview with him because I was studying him.

I had, I had like, uh, I had dismissed George Carlin for most of my existence until about, I don't know, three years ago. Oh, yeah. And I, it wasn't that I disliked him. I, I had heard the, when, I don't know, you know, like when I was, I don't know, when it came out, 11, 12, whatever.

Seven words. The seven words. And I liked it. I thought it was intelligent and funny.

And your kids, that's what you're saying. Right, right, right. But somehow I mixed, I mixed him up. It sounds kind of weird with like Gallagher.

And I, I kind of thought he was like a guy who. It's a bad mix-up. It is. It's a very bad mix-up.

Yeah. And I, and I, so, but I thought of him as like a hippie humorist that did puns or something. And I just kind of thought that's not interesting. So what brought you back around?

I was watching on YouTube, uh, an interview. I thought he had just died a few years before. And I thought, well, okay, there's an interview. It was like American greats on television.

And I thought, well, this guy lived his life and I'll see what his interview was. And I was like, I thought this guy is incredibly intelligent and funny. And then I, then I watched everything. Where did the melon thing come from?

Why was he scratching melon? Well, I wasn't that mixed up. Right. But I kind of thought they were similar.

Oh, I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, early on, like, uh, when I was studying actings, I started going through professional acting class when I was, what, uh, 15. After you'd already done some work?

Yes. Yeah. I, I, I got an agent when I was 13 years old. How did that happen?

Were your parents into it? Were your parents together out here? Yes, my parents are still married. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. That's unusual. Do you have siblings?

I was raised as an only child. And, uh, so I, um, I had seen, my mother's retired as a dancer and actress when I was born. So I was, I was, I saw essentially how the business had worked. And, uh, I, I originally, the first thing I was interested in, professional, I knew I had to get a job.

I was raised middle class and I knew I'd have to move out and make money. I was aware of acting. You were raised in the world. Well, I didn't know initially that acting would be, I initially, your father was an actor.

He was an actor. But I was initially thinking I would be a geologist. I thought I liked, but my concept, this was like at age nine or something. So my concept was I'd have a pick and I would break open geodes and find beautiful crystalline interiors.

Mysterious, amazing things in rocks. Right. Yeah. And then I realized they'd probably have to work for a geothermal corporation.

At 11, you realized that there's a geothermal corporation. Yes. And then that it probably wouldn't be that much fun. Yeah.

And so I, I recognized that acting actually was a pretty good business. I was starting around age 11 or so. And then I, it wasn't until I was 13, there was a kid at school who was at the Mary Grady Agency and he had done some commercials and I, I recognized that I could, you know, get some commercials or be on TV or something. You did some sitcoms, didn't you?

You did some cute stuff? I did. Well, I did some commercials. I did my very first job, which I got it from a cattle call.

It was at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown LA for the Sound of Music. And Maria was played by Florence Henderson. So I got that and then, and then I did, I think. As one of the Von Trapp kids?

Yeah, I was with Friedrich Von Trapp. And, and then I, I did that for six months and then I, I got a commercial after that. And then I did, when I was 16, I started studying professionally when I was 15 and when I was 16, I, uh, went on another cattle call for a sitcom, uh, which involved an improvisation and an improvisation for that. And I, I got, uh, essentially the lead part in this, uh, television show called, uh, Pilot for the Best of Times, which is, I, I still can't watch it.

It was, uh, embarrassing. And I, and I, I mean, actually I like the improv that I did, but I, I. But it didn't get made? No, no, no.

And it's out there on YouTube somewhere. But it didn't become a series? No, no. So you lucked out in a way.

Yeah, yeah. And I learned a lot from it. Why can't you watch it now? Oh, it makes me uncomfortable.

I still can't watch. But it was like at that point, I had not figured out how to take that which was written on the page. And I played what was written on the page. The improvisation, they wrote into the script, and that was basically okay.

But there were other things that I just played the page, and it's just uncomfortable. It's weird because doing some television, writing some television, and I know this even in writing it, is that you know where that thought and that idea is going to end. actually present and somewhat believable engaging is quite a task. Absolutely.

That's the task, is to take the thing which is on the page and then to give it... Right, but sitcoms notoriously. A lot of times, the depth you're looking for is not on the page. That's correct.

That's right. And it is the job of an actor. I find that's the most thing that I have to concentrate on when I'm acting in somebody else's screenplay. And who did you study with at that age?

I was at a place called Staircase Studios, which was... It's no longer there. It was on Beverly... It was on Beverly...

No, on Fairfax and Olympic. And it was a great little place. And I studied there straight for three years. Improvisation with technique as opposed to improvisation with comedy.

And then, although it was something that I saw, that good work, whether it was dramatic or whatever, it tended toward having humor within it. And then at 18, I simultaneously started studying at a place which is more well-known called The Lost Studios with Peggy Fury and Bill Traylor, husband and wife. And a lot of well-known actors who studied there. Who was in your crew when you were a kid?

People we know? Well, people that studied at that, there were... Sean Penn studied there before I was there, but while I was there, Nicholas Cage was there, Eric Stoltz was there, Chris Penn was there. Really?

And you were all like under 20? Yes. Yeah, I was 18 when I studied there. And that's really, I guess, your generation and my generation of actors when you think about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I recently worked with Eric Stoltz. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.

He had played my brother in a Bear Aspirin commercial when I was 16. And then he played my... Well, originally started to play my son in Back to the Future. And then he was fired and he was replaced with Michael J.

Fox. That's sort of a big deal. Well, I don't remember who I was talking to about that. I don't know if it was him or what, but that was like he was hired, correct?

He shot for five or six weeks with him. Oh, my God. I had shot most of my role by the time... Michael came in?

Yeah, and then I had to reshoot it. Sort of devastating in a way. It was... I'm writing a book right now.

Oh, yeah? Good. I'm on page 300. And it's not just about that, but I'm writing about things having to do with that and a lot of other things that are very important.

I was in terms of... Sounds like you're writing volume one of a many book series. Anything's possible. I mean, I've been saving interviews that I do my interviews by email usually when I tour with my shows.

And so it's more than 10 years of written interviews. I have, I think, I'm forgetting what it is. It's like 3,000 pages of interviews that I've done. But it's like I'll copy and paste the essential portions.

And so I thought initially I would just start cutting down stuff from those interviews. But there's a very specific subject matter that I'm honing in on. Which is? Well, it has to do with propaganda.

And it's a subject matter that I'm somewhat passionate about. And two, how do you define it? Well, the kind of propaganda that I'm specifically reacting to is corporate interest propaganda, which is really devastating on the culture right now. And I'm very happy.

My first film, What Is It?, is a strong reaction to this. It's brainwashing. Well, yes. Yes.

How does the events of Back to the Future play into this as a foundation? Well, I knew this would happen when I came in here. Which is, I don't mean about Back to the Future. But I mean, what I've recognized and part of why I'm writing this book right now is because I've been very hesitant to talk in great detail about several important things that people always ask me about.

And it's because, on some level, this would be the kind of show that would be right for me to go into those details about. But there's a can of worms that starts to open that. Like I said, I'm on page 300 of this book. And it's like I could talk to you in great detail about it and it would be far beyond the time that would be the constraints of the show.

Well, what I got like right away, like something that popped in my head, having the conversation in the order we had it, that we go from the sidebar, which is the Eric Spill story. And then you say, well, it's part of my book, which is with some urgency. And then you say, which is about that and more important things, is that what immediately popped into my head when you hinted at propaganda and whatnot is I've had this thing in my mind lately about what are our own thoughts, what really constitutes the cultural reality that we live in. And then when you said propaganda, I thought movie companies, I thought the Spielberg vision and also Zemeckis and whoever.

And then I went back to thinking about the original Jewish studio owners who constructed a film life for America and their inability to be accepted into America. They built the illusion of America which became the reality of America, which sort of is the foundation of a film's power over our cultural reality. I've seen, you know, there's that book that came out that they were talking about that stuff a lot. Something of our own.

Yeah. Right. I love that book. I know things about it and I think I saw they made a documentary on it.

I haven't read the book. But there's something that's what I'm writing about is different from that because it's, I just, the thing that I'm very happy that's starting to happen, which when I started touring 10 years ago, my film What Is It is a very specific reaction to this. You get good audiences? Yeah.

I mean, I've recouped on my films. Okay. All over the world? Yeah, yeah.

I've been, I mean, I mostly have toured in the United States and Canada, but I've been in Europe, I've been in Japan, I've been in Australia, I've been in... Okay, so now we come back to where we are and we can build up to where you want to go, which is that, you know, we started, you're studying Carlin for comedic elements and you talk about training and improvisation and this has something to do with your performances. Oh, well, George Carlin, I only looked at more recently, probably more influential to me personally would be Andy Kaufman, which I saw when I was studying improvisation with technique, that, you know, episode on Fridays when it was 1980 and you can tell he goes off script. Do you know the episode I'm talking about?

I think so, yeah. It's on YouTube and Michael Richards is in the skit and, you know, Fridays was very, like, drug-oriented and at that time people would laugh about these things and there was, like, an announcer introducing, saying, we, when people are going into the bathroom they're actually taking some kind of drug and the audience kind of cheers. So, each of the, like, I think one of the, there's two couples in a French restaurant and one of the wives or girlfriends goes out over and she goes into the bathroom and the audience kind of cheers and they're having small talk at the table. Then Andy Kaufman gets up and he goes to the bathroom and comes back and the audience is kind of cheering and he sits down and he obviously has a line and he kind of says, I can't, I can't, I can't and then one of the actors, the actress, it seems like she probably has the reaction line and he hasn't given the key which he starts like, ah, kind of repeating a forced laughter and she doesn't know what to do.

She doesn't start prompting him? She just kind of laughs. And it's live, I think, right? I believe it was, yeah.

I mean, I saw it because I was very interested in watching it at the time and I was studying improvisation at the time. So I could tell, I liked it because I could tell the improvisation, he was actually making it a real improv. He was making it so nobody knew what to do and I found that really funny. And compelling.

And compelling. And then, and then, and then eventually Michael Richards goes off camera and he picks up a stack of cue cards and throws them down on the table and then Andy Kaufman, I think, throws a glass of water in his face and then, you know, they go to commercial. So Richard probably did that out of anger. Yes.

It feels like that. Do your job. Yes, exactly. And what about that was so amazing to you?

Well, I could tell that it wasn't, I could tell that it was, it was something genuine was happening. It was much more fascinating than what the actual scripted or, you know, cue carded skit was and as studying acting, that was fascinating to me. Now, when you did your early film work, you know, was this, you know, something that was sort of gnawing at you? This, you know, this desire to have more freedom as an actor?

Well, I mean, I was taught very clearly, even though I was taught improvisation of technique, I was taught not to go off script and I generally don't as an actor. Actually, the Howard Jackson movie, they're the ones that contacted In the Cage, when I first talked to him, he told me he wanted to have me improvise, which is not, I've done very little of it in my career and yet it's how I initially studied, learned to act. I mean, of course, my father's an actor and he's an acting teacher. I never formally studied with my father.

I'm sure I've heard things up, obviously. But you've always gotten along with him and he's been supportive. Oh yeah, my parents, so when I said that I was interested in it, my father was actually surprised because he wasn't ever super famous or super wealthy or anything so he was pleased that I actually, there was trouble and so he was pleased that I actually thought there was something that seemed okay about it. Oh right, on a respect level, you like what he did.

Well, I think just that he thought that it seemed like a business that was okay. I don't think he put it this way but probably something that he felt, yeah, it was a compliment on some level. And then my mother was helpful and would bring me to so yeah, that was a very good thing that my parents were supportive. And also that they didn't push me into it because I've seen people that were children actors and stuff and it can really mess people up and luckily, 13 is actually an old age for a child actor but it was a very good age to start for a young actor.

Right, and what's amazing to me is just how profoundly memorable you are in almost everything you appear in and that even with scripts or whatever that you seem to find a frequency at which these characters operate at that is very visceral and disconcerting. Good, good. I mean, even in Back to the Future which is this huge mainstream movie, you may be uncomfortable. You know, I have not seen the film since it came out.

I don't know if anything's possible. I suppose, that's interesting. I haven't heard that particular take on it. I haven't seen it in a while either but my recollection is you were an uncomfortable character.

Weren't you? I think the character was for the most part uncomfortable. At the end, there's a change in the character and it becomes comfortable which there was some questions that I had about why the character became comfortable and I had not been given the screenplay before I auditioned with a side. It's just a single scene and it was right around that time, this was 1984 when they were just, they didn't want to give the script out for worries that they would give ideas away and I was 20 years old.

I was glad to get the part in a Steven Spielberg Universal Studios big movie and my agent, I thought, well, I asked my agent, this seems like a good part where there's another character in the scene, should I audition for this part as well? He said, no, no, you don't understand. The character plays like an older version of itself. It goes back and forth at the time.

I said, wow, that sounds amazing. Great, yeah, get the deal done. So I didn't read it until I was already contracted to be in it and being that, I had studied basically the Stanislavscian type of psychological understanding of the character. I had to ask questions to understand why things were or how I was supposed to be and a lot of the questions that I asked, there was an ending that I had, it affected what my character was wearing and how the character was being and it was before Eric Stoltz got fired that I had very, a strong conversation with Robert Zemeckis and I felt that there was a moral in it that was because there was a reward with money that it ended up being that money equaled happiness and I didn't use the word propaganda but I said people are sheep and if our characters get a financial reward in this, a monetary reward, it will mean that money equals happiness and he got to, he did not like that.

And the weird thing is, I've talked about this before. You're reading too much into it, kid. Well, and people will say that but the fact of it is I had to get, I had to figure out what, how I was going to play it and what I was going to mean when I was playing this thing. And I mean, ultimately I had a good relationship with Robert Zemeckis and I ended up working with him later in Beowulf.

I wasn't in the sequels. There was a lawsuit about they put a prosthetics on another actor to make him up to look like me from the original molds that were made of my face from the... Really? Yeah, yeah.

Why'd they cut you out? Well, that's the problem is they didn't. We can come to somebody with your face? They put my face on another actor.

It's funny if it isn't you. I know, I know. It's disturbing but it sounds very sort of relevant and bizarre to the things that you're interested in. I just watched a trailer that you did that involved several very realistic looking masks and I'm wondering how much that reality of that may have informed some of your aggression.

Probably so. There was a lawsuit about it because of my lawsuit with the rules of the screen actors to make it so this kind of thing can't ever happen again. But it puts me in a very rare category to be the only actor to have had this specific crime committed. Your face was stolen.

Yes, quite literally. They had the molds of my face from the original film and they applied my features onto another actor in order to fool audiences into believing I was in the sequel which many people still to this day believe it was me and it was another actor playing me. Do you know that guy? I've never met him in person.

He ended up being a witness in the lawsuit so I had a thought for me and so I had a conversation with him. Did you win the lawsuit? Well, like I said I have to be careful about how I phrase it but because of the lawsuit there are rules of the screen. It was settled with mutual satisfaction.

And there was a precedent set for it? They can't do it anymore. That's correct. I mean technically it was always illegal.

What they did was totally illegal. Wow. So your face. Yeah, I mean it's bizarre.

It's bizarre. bizarre. Do you know why they didn't just cast you? Well, they were mad at me.

Right. Because I'd ask questions. They're like, he's difficult to work with. Yes.

I mean, the weird thing was I wasn't really difficult. I mean, anybody can make that argument. You're an intense fellow. Maybe.

I guess. I don't feel like that, but I suppose. People who are intense and intelligent make people in charge uncomfortable. It can be that.

It shouldn't be that. No, that's right. It shouldn't be that. That's right.

And that's where it comes to the corporate problem. Because if corporate interests were not having influence on the content, which is what is happening in our corporately distributed and funded film and media. Reality. It makes it so that if you're questioning that, then that's a problem.

It shouldn't be that way. And there's political things that I'm very happy that are going on right now. I'm surprised that Bernie Sanders is making the kind of awareness that's going on right now. It's very positive.

And I'm very happy that that's happening. Of course, it has to do with business and specifically with corporate interests. But what I'm writing about is how it affects art. Because I don't I've been talking about these political elements lately, but I hate politics.

It's not my interest. My interest is art. But when I see that it's affected art and it has affected my wife, it gets to me. It's almost, well, you know, there's very limited public funding for art.

And also there's... That's okay. I mean, it sure would be nice. But the problem is that we're not living in a true democracy.

We're not in a functioning democracy. That's true. And what it really comes down to, which I also am happy that there's a movement, is about getting an amendment passed, which would get money out of politics. Because right now we have legalized bribery.

I mean, it's unfortunate. The positive thing is that the propaganda has been that we live in a democracy. But there's more of us than there are corporations. The only reason corporations are able to be enjoying the existence that they're enjoying is because people are letting it be happening.

And the government has made concessions to allow it. That's correct. Well, not even concessions. They've been paid off to make it happen.

So what's positive is because it's called a democracy, all we have to do is align it through a proper amendment, and then it could become a functioning democracy, and then corporations could be put in the proper place, so they're serving the people as they should be serving the people. Yeah, and what that would take is for someone to listen to what you're saying all the way through and not go like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's also why I really think, I mean, I don't know what the ultimate solution is, but I can tell that getting an amendment passed to truly get money out of legalized bribery out of politics, that would have a domino effect of really positive change. Now when you do, when you talk about art and you talk about this crusade in a way, in terms of your agenda against corporate occupation of the government and the arts, when you take your films out, what is the show?

I'm curious. Oh, yeah, since the 80s, I started making the live shows consist of eight, well, I have two different live shows, and they consist of eight different books. These are your self-published books? These are self-published, I started publishing these in the 80s.

They're nice looking. Yeah, I'm very proud of the books. These are heavily illustrated books. The images are projected behind me as I dramatically narrate the books.

These are like things that you've written and cut out and played with? Yes, and like I said, I made most of these in the 80s and the early 90s, and yeah, I'm very proud of the books. And so I... Do you have a company that binds them so beautifully that you work with, or do you do this?

I self-publish them. Who does the binding? Those are classic. Yeah, yeah, they're done in the style of books and they're different.

Well, some of it. I mean, it's... Each book is done in a very different way. Like, the one that you're looking at right now is something I found photographs of in an old thrift shop.

I was like a photographer. Semi-professional, professional photographer. They'd thrown a lot of his work away, and there's this kind of modelly-looking woman by a trash can, and I thought an interesting story could be made. That one, rat-catching, I found the binding on Hollywood Boulevard in probably 1984.

I made that in 1984. I started it before I made Back to the Future and finished it just as I... right after I finished... Was this when you were living there on Hollywood Boulevard?

Yes. I remember reading about your place. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah. Someone had gone over there, and you had a lot of interesting bits of ephemera.

Well, People Magazine was the first article that I ever had. That was when I was promoting River's Edge. That was the first time I ever did publicity. My original plan was never to do any publicity at all.

I would just be an actor that would play different parts, and you wouldn't know anything about me. And then I didn't do any publicity for Back to the Future. But when River's Edge came out... Yes, I bought those.

But the Back to the Future... I mean, when River's Edge came out, at that time, it made sense for me to promote it. And I ended up going on to the Johnny Carson show twice in a row, and then they wanted me to go on to the Letterman show. But I'd never done any publicity.

It was very outside of what my interest was. How about your comfort zone? Well, this is... Again, this is the territory that...

Part of what I'm writing about, it is not what I had planned to do. It's not what I liked. Publicity. Well, I'm a business person as well, particularly as a filmmaker.

I have to publicize my films. And put out books. And I put out books, although that's not something I'm so... Films are very high...

I fund my films myself, so I put a lot of money into them. The books, I fund the books myself, and that is kind of actually how I learned about business, because my parents essentially were actors, which is not a very business... We never know. The artists and the actors are like, you've got two or three people doing that stuff.

And you're like, how does this work? Don't worry about it, kid. Yeah, it's not my background. And so when I...

I had a record out also in 1989. I remember that. That was pretty out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm proud of the record. And in fact, there's some of the book readings on the record as well. But it was around the same time that I published the first book, Rack Hatching, in 88. And around the same time that I published...

I sold the same amount of books that I had sold on my records. And I had made much more money on my books, because I'd published them myself. I never made any money on the record, except for what they... Sure.

What was that record called? It was called, The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution. The Solution Equals Let It Be. And there was a kind of an idea that people would listen to the different elements.

And there was a telephone number on the back, because it was pre-internet. The telephone number let people know how to buy the books. But the idea was that people would call up and they would say what the big problem was. I didn't say...

I didn't give the answers to what the big problem was, but it let people think about it. So these... That in and of itself is an artistic experiment. Yeah.

Almost a performance piece. And the first book, the rat one. Yeah. It wasn't the first book I made, but it was the first book I published.

But these were... Like, you seem to find... And this is something I feel about you, even when you showed up at my door, in the way that you're dressed in a way, that you seem to be interested in these portals to other times. Yeah.

That reveal a certain human darkness that is unexplainable. Yeah. Yeah. I like things that are a bit mysterious.

And I do... I tend... I mean, my first two films are not specifically period films, but there's an aspect of it. The new one is very much a period.

It takes place in four different time periods. It just reminds me of this sort of... Like, there's... Like, I somehow, like, when I talk to you, you know, and what I've seen of your work and what you're interested in, there's something about, like...

I know you covered a Manson song. Yeah. And I know that you sort of... You seem to be somewhat creatively fascinated with the mythologizing of individuals, but also the darkness available in individuals.

Sure. And that, like, you seem to have a respect for Hollywood's tabloid past, in a way. How do you mean? Well, I mean that there's something...

I've always found this place poetically haunting. Yeah, we would. In the history of show business. I think the most interesting thing about it is the underside of it.

Right. That's what I mean. So I call that tabloid my mistake. It has a different definition.

Right, right. But yeah, the havoc it wreaks on the souls of the tribe. My favorite book ever about Los Angeles, which I read when I was 13 or 14, was The Day of the Locust. Have you read that book?

Yes, please. It's great. But it captures... You can tell that Nathaniel West, he was writing screenplays.

Yeah, he knew. And yeah, he... And the very thing... I read it when I was...

You know, I hadn't gone through everything that I've been through. But I liked it initially when I was 13 or 14 years old. And then I kept thinking, it's the only book I've ever re-read. I didn't re-read the whole thing, but I wanted to go back and look at it.

I mean, they made a movie about it, which has... Certain portions are poetically quite perfect and beautiful. Oh, yeah, yeah. I like the movie.

I like the end of it. And I like Donald Sutherland in it. Well, he's great. He's great in it.

And Karen Black is great in it. Who directed that again? It's the guy who directed Midnight Cowboy. Schlesinger?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. But the book...

Yeah, it's a masterpiece. It's a masterpiece. It is. And the thing that still is in Los Angeles is in that book.

That was in the 1930s. So he very much captures the... Because he talks about the surface quality of the architecture. A lot of that's been torn down now, but things that look like owls and the idea that there was a surface value, which is totally true.

And that ends up being the thematic element in the book, which is completely true about the city. And it's a very good thing to be aware of. If I meet somebody that's newly in Los Angeles, I say, read this book. But what is that thing, though, that the surface value is there?

Because it's quantifiable. You can make money out, but it's not of actual value. No, I get that. But what's always there is the strange sort of dark desperation.

Because people, when they come to the city and they don't have that background, they can get confused about what that surface value is. And they start thinking that it's their internal value. And it's a very bad way to think about the city. The city, you have to look at it as a business city.

Right, but they destroy people. Of course, because they believe that they put their internal self as being the external self. So this was sort of the battle you fought all your life as an actor, in a way. I mean, not, okay, maybe battle's the wrong word, but your awareness of this.

Yes, I'm very aware of it. But at the age that you took it, you started to have it. Because if you were sort of investigating this stuff creatively, you know, at the time of Back to the Future, that you knew that, you know, you had to fortify your heart and mind against this business that you were involved in and made a living in. But the thing was, I didn't think that at the time, because I was going to, when I was 16, I learned how to drive, and I started going to all of the revival houses.

When I started as an actor at age 13, it was, I mean, I thought of it abstractly as maybe this is what I could do as a living, but I wasn't, I was relatively artistically sophisticated in terms of like, I liked, you know, Salvador Dali or Heron Maspash's painters, and I had read interesting books, but I did not equate, I'd grown up watching television mostly, and I didn't see Chinatown, for example, even though my father was in it. I didn't see that until I went to the New Beverly Theater when I was like 18 or 19. Oh, really? Yeah, no, my parents didn't take me to see a rated movie.

It's a great movie. Although I didn't realize how great it was until, I'd always liked Polanski's Repulsion very much, which I saw that when I was 16. So the movies I was seeing, you know, this was 1980, so the movies I was watching were, you know, movies from the 70s, 60s, 20s, 30s, which were highly questioning films. There was something that happened in the 1980s, but I was, as a young actor, excited about being part of this great industry that would question things that should be questioned, but in retrospect, I realized there was a strong shift in the control that was happening in the 1980s, the early 80s, and I was thinking, where are these questions that I was expecting to be a part of?

And then I started feeling there was essentially a lie, and that lie is that it's supporting corporate interests, which want people to not be questioning things. Because if people question things, they will have the ability to take the power away from corporate interests. And that's what's important to have happen, which I'm very happy about because people are starting to realize this. It has something to do with the internet, which is a very positive thing.

So in knowing that, in starting to have these realizations as a young actor. It took me a while to really put this stuff together, though. It was when I started making my first film. What are we talking?

1996. Okay, but it still seems to me that, like, even movies like, I can't remember what you played in A Close Range, but that was with, was that with Christopher Walken? Yeah, Sean Penn, Chris Penn, yeah. And River's Edge.