Born and raised in New York, Jeffrey Lewis leads a double-life, as both an illustrator and a singer songwriter. Both his music and comics are permeated by earnest storytelling and often self-depreciating confessions of his many adventures in the world, from heartbreaks to homeless nights on tour. In his self-published comic book series “Fuff” he constantly tries to fall backwards to see if the world will catch him. And so far it did. With a small but devoted audience, he’s been making a profitable career with his music and art by managing most of his business himself, from booking tours to making his own merchandise.

With a shy smile and a shaky voice, he welcomed me to his apartment in the East Village, a little palace of musical and literary treasures where you can glimpse the intriguing puzzle of his creative mind. His work is so self-explanatory that it seemed pointless to ask him about his songs or comics. So we talked about adventures, how art can change the world, the occupy movement and finally dug into some of his personal gems. Meet Jeffrey, the “cult boyfriend” – “lonely or worshipped for a lady in the know”.

Written, filmed. edited and sound by Barbara Anastacio

A portrait of a frenetic Christopher Walken takes over both the psychic and physical space on the second floor of the old Dia Center for the Arts in Chelsea. The actor appears contemplative, his life experience revealed through lines on his face rendered in a volcano of warm reds, yellows and oranges; his facial hair represented through broad brush strokes of greens, browns and blues. His eyes gaze towards what seems to be a far-off place, revealing a range of emotions that ally with the darker end of the spectrum. Simultaneously, however, Walken comes off as endearing, approachable and utterly human in a way that we haven’t seen him before.

This interpretation of the actor is the work of Mexican-born, New York-based artist Alex Hank whose monumental exhibition Roommates is on view through March 25. It finds Walken holding court in the oversized, light-flooded gallery alongside Charlotte Rampling, Agnes Gund, Dree Hemingway and the likeness of about a dozen other notable actors, philanthropists, artists and writers. Together, the portraits represent Hank’s first foray into painting, who is primarily known as a photographer.

“Alex started painting three years ago and locked himself in the studio to explore the medium of painting on canvas. And he did that pretty much on his own,” explains Ana Sokoloff of Sokoloff + Associates, who helped realize the exhibition. She says that Hank learned the craft as a result of the recession when his gallery at the time admitted it was going to be difficult to have exhibitions but that it was a perfect moment to pursue his passion for painting. This was a calling Hank hadn’t even recognized until he was given the blessing to explore it. “Oil is physical and very intimate, just you, the paint and the canvas. There is no technology, no room for mistakes and no cheating. It really is an incredible experience; you almost go into a sort of trance. I did not have this with photography at all and I find this very thrilling.” Hank says about his passion.

He took cues from Soutine, Jenny Saville and others, approaching the medium voraciously and confidently, rendering large-scale ambitious works that fill the room as much as the artist does himself, with his perfectly manicured moustache, towering height and charismatic personality. Uncommon among most painters, Hank uses just one medium-size brush to create brash, skilled and playful compositions, which appear as abstractions if viewed to closely. When the viewer steps back slightly, however, the works become nearly realistic renderings. “They’re not photographic but they end up being very representational. That’s where I find that there’s some magic. It’s from a photograph but it really isn’t,” describes Sokoloff.

Alex Hank Paints Rampling.  Silent from Wet Heat Project, stills from the documentary courtesy of sokoloff + associates, llc

Sokoloff made several visits to her friend’s SoHo studio before committing to facilitating a show. At the time, his studio space also housed a friend who would remark that whenever Hank completed a canvas he would have a new roommate -hence the show’s title.

To further the communal theme , Hank’s subjects are always friends or people who have inspired him. The latter of which he pursued through the website IMDb, which he used to reach out to actors he admired. Hank was surprised at how many said yes. He paints from the waist up Sokoloff says, “because he feels like what he wants to depict is the emotion of the character. And as painterly as they may be, he does manage to capture the inner personality of each of the sitters.” Hank elaborates, “I can’t deny that portraits and people hold a massive fascination for me, a challenge and risk to paint; I absolutely love them. I think no matter what I do in the future, portraiture will always have a place in my work.”

To launch the temporary exhibition, Charlotte Rampling, inspired by her experience with Hank, hosted an intimate dinner, with 11 other sitters in attendance. And while Walken wasn’t able to go, his imposing presence, covering seven feet of canvas, was still very much there in spirit—just the way Hank had intended.

Alex Hank, Roommates, is on view through March 25, every day 11am – 7pm, 548 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011 (former Dia Center for the Arts). 

Photos from the opening event. © Joe Schildhorn Courtesy of Billy Farrell Agency

Each year when The Armory Show comes to town, I feel like more and more things happen surrounding it. This year is particularly interesting as everyone anticipates the Frieze Fair taking over Randall’s Island in May. Will it be bigger, better and more interesting than the Armory? Probably. Will more things happen surrounding it? I’d bet yes, as it is rumored that both NADA and PULSE will coincide with Frieze. How many art fairs do we need? It sure does seems like a lot. Either way, it makes for a fun few days, or literal hell, whichever way you want to look at it.

Obviously, since everything revolves around the big fair, The Armory Show, it seems like that might be a good place to start. Currently the largest art fair in New York, this year there is a special section called, “Armory Focus: The Nordic Countries” curated by Jacob Fabricius, the director of Malmö Konsthal. The exhibit features select galleries from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. If for whatever reason, you can’t make it to the Armory, or just don’t want to brave the crowds, the entire fair is up at Paddle8, the online auction house where you can buy a piece from the fair without getting out of your pajamas. Or like me, you can just look at the price list for everything and dream a little. I was amazed to see some really interesting things for not completely insane prices.

At The Armory Focus: The Nordic Countries: Jeff Olsson, Foam Party. From Galleri Magnus Karlsson.

Just to confuse you, or at least it confuses me every year, The Art Show actually happens at The Armory. This fair is the longest running art fair in America and includes a bunch of prestigious galleries that do not show at the Armory, including Metro Pictures and The Pace Gallery. It also includes galleries that show at both, like David Zwirner, but since it is a much smaller fair, there is a very tightly curated feeling here, so if you want to see the heavy-hitting galleries but don’t want to get lost in a maze of art and walk until your feet hurt, this is probably the move for you. It is $20 admission, but the proceeds benefit The Henry Street Settlement, a non-profit that provides housing, health care, youth programs, job placement and access to the arts to 50,000 vulnerable New Yorkers each year. I particularly love anything that happens at The Armory. It’s fun to get kind of dressed up and go there and walk around Central Park afterwards.

Another goodie, VOLTA is an official partner of The Armory Show that focuses on solo shows by emerging talent. The artists here are specifically not big names, but the work is phenomenal, making this a successful fair that keeps growing because it showcases both great artists and curators. Also, the idea of solo exhibits at an art fair make you feel less schizophrenic, which is a plus. Some highlights include intricate paper drawings by Belgian artist Manor Grunewald and dense collages made by the artist Deborah Grant about obscure African-American folk-artist William Henry Johnson. You can catch a shuttle from the main fair and get free admission with a pass to the Armory.

At VOLTA: Mark Khaisman, Girl with Earring #1, 2011, Packaging tape on plexiglas in translucent resin light box

Another big fair in town is SCOPE, which has some really interesting projects going on this year, including the large site-specific piece across the street by artist Robert Montgomery, which I love, called: “The City is Wilder Than You Think.” For something a little bit weirder and less romantic, try: The Diamond Den where artist and minister Laine Love Dalby (referred to as The Lady Gaga of Spiritually) treats visitors to an experience filled with “suffering, self-examining and forgiveness.” Who says religion and art and sex don’t mix? Also, check out Burn Before Reading, a collection of small edition and handmade books and text based artworks (with coffee and donuts, mmm..) in conjunction with the reading series Oral Tradition with readings on Friday and Saturday night.

Yet another fair, with some of the best and most interesting smaller galleries, such as Jack Hanley, White Columns and Bortolami is The Independent. Taking place in the old Dia Center for The Arts, architect Christian Wassmann has designed a functional installation on the roof that includes a cafe and a library based around the idea of aligning the true North-South axis of the earth. The layout of this fair looks more like a large group show, which gives it a very nice feeling. These galleries are way to cool to be at a trade show.

At The Independent: Sam Falls, Untitled Roll Fade (chartreuse) 2011

In contrast to the Independent, is the Saturday-only show, The Dependent, which debuted last year in Chelsea and this year moves down to the Lower East Side. With a fleeting sense of mystery, this art fair takes place in hotel rooms in the sense that the beds, walls and every available surface is covered with art, giving it an old-school renegade art vibe. (Apparently hotel art shows go in and out of fashion quite frequently. Keep up.) I will say there is something great about a hotel bed covered in art. I mean, why not? Also, I’m loving that they moved downtown from Chelsea, because this fair (if you can really call it a fair) feels miles away from midtown.

Also downtown, the much talked about newcomer this year is Spring/Break, a “curator-driven” fair that is being held in an old four-story Catholic schoolhouse turning classrooms, bathrooms and hallways into gallery space. Tonight, a personal fave, the performance artist William Powhida will be hosting a discussion between artists and Occupy Wall Streeters. Expect some weird shit to go down.

At Spring/Break: Tom Weinrich curates work by Jesse McLean and Joseph Jagos

Maybe the most fun of all though, is The Contemporary Video Art Fair. The most fun, I think, because it takes place in the legendary Tunnel club, now called The Waterfront Tunnel Event Space. (Yup, that’s right. I digress.) With experimental films from the likes of Ken Jacobs, Alex Prager, Mary Lucie and many more, this looks like an awesome way to spend an afternoon checking out some of the best videos in the art world all in one pretty awesome space.

At The Contemporary Video Art Fair: Kate Gilmore, Half-Sick of Shadows, 2012

Last but not least is the Anti-Art Fair, literally called Art Not Fair which is happening all month, if you can’t get to things on time, don’t have a Goyard bag, or haven’t actually left Williamsburg in a year or two. You’re not a joiner- no judgement- I’m all for not leaving Brooklyn. The way things are going with art fairs popping up everywhere pretty soon there will be tons on the other side of the bridge, I’m sure. Until then, this Roebling Street gallery is offering art as well as pastries by The Starving Artist Bakery such as “The Car Bomb Cake,” based off of the Gunniess-Jameson concoction.

At Art Not Fair: Matthew Craven, Calvary Scars

I guess the point is that you should get out there. I thought about putting some info down here for where exactly you should go, but there is so much going on that basically if you leave your house you are apt to run into some art. Everything is up through Sunday, March 11th and the links are including above. I trust you can figure the rest out.

Top Image: Robert Montgomery, The City is Wilder Than You Think, 2012 At Scope.

In person, Mia Hansen-Løve’s face still carries the same waxy alien clarity it held on screen thirteen years ago in Olivier Assayas’ Late August, Early September, the movie the one-time actress credits with launching her directing career. Seventeen in the film, she played the adolescent girlfriend of a middle-aged novelist, her satiny innocence in stark contrast to his craggy disenchantment. At 30, it’s clear the events of that era are still very much on her mind. Each of the three films she has written and directed—one of which won a jury prize at Cannes and another a best first feature nomination for a French Academy Award— features a teenaged girl lingering at the edge of adulthood. Hansen-Løve writes young women with eerie authenticity and has a knack for avoiding the tropes that plague movies about young women in love.

Her most recent feature, Goodbye First Love, follows eight years in the life of a Camille (Lola Créton). Sixteen when we meet her, Camille is the sort of deadly serious teenager who calls her boyfriend, Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky) “l’homme de sa vie” and swallows a bottle of pills after he dumps her. Later we find her in graduate school, an architecture professor named Lorenz (Magne-Håvard Brekke) having replaced Sullivan in her bed, if not her heart. As a character, Camille, manages to be both melodramatic and believable. This is partly because of Creton’s skillful performance, but also because Camille is so deeply personal to the director, she hardly seems fictional at all. “She is me as I was,” Hansen-Løve said over crackers and tea last fall, in town for the New York Film Festival. This is so much the case that, in conversation, the director sometimes echoed the character she created. When she describes a family-owned country house featured in the film, Hansen-Løve told me in her lightly accented, not–quite-idiomatic English: “The places where I spent most of my holidays as a child, it was important for me to film them.” On screen, Camille tells Lorenz she became an architect because “Places affect me and I have to get hold of them.”

All three of Hansen-Løve’s movies feature complicated people plucked directly from her memory. Her first, All is Forgiven, about a girl plagued by her father’s drug addiction, was inspired, Hansen-Løve has said, by events that impacted her family when she was a child. The Father of My Children was modeled after the story of French independent producer Humbert Balsan, who was set to produce Hansen-Løve’s first feature before he died. Her next project takes on the electronic music scene in Paris in the 1990’s, which her brother, a professional DJ, knows well. The gradual and unpredictable pacing of each of these films mirrors real life, too. Her narratives depend on subtle emotional shifts instead of decisive events. Pivotal moments, like a principal character’s death, happen with no foreshadowing. The audience processes these episodes the way the people on screen do, uncertainly and without guidance.

Still taken from Goodbye First Love

This impulse towards authenticity in Hansen-Løve’s filmmaking extends even to the score. In The Father of my Children, music emanates from boom boxes or car radios. Goodbye First Love features jangly folksongs that don’t fit the film’s atmosphere. Rather than drawing the audience deeper into the story, they’re a reminder that sound is another element of art. Many scenes are silent, except for ambient noise. Hansen-Løve doesn’t work with composers. “Music is the most powerful thing for an audience. It’s not honest to use it to have strong effects on people without saying.” The director called the issue an “aesthetic and moral” problem, and slipped into French to repeat a quote: “Les spectateurs sont comme les lapins: Ça s’attrape par les oreilles.” Audiences are like rabbits: one catches them by the ears.

In an early moment in Goodbye First Love the camera lingers on Camille’s body as she tussles naked in bed with Sullivan. The image, hovering as it does in a sort of rosy morning light, is less erotic than it is nostalgic. The matter-of-fact clarity with which Camille’s torso is displayed mostly calls up is the memory of being naked in bed with the first person you loved—not for the first time, but after that, once the strangeness had worn off and left behind a sense of grown-up complicity. In an email exchange, Village Voice film critic and NYFF selection committee member Melissa Anderson called Goodbye First Love “one of the best films about heartbreak I’d ever seen.”

At a Q&A after her NYFF screening, an audience member asked what had inspired Camille’s story. Both of Hansen-Løve’s parents are philosophy instructors. From them the director has inherited the stage presence of a reserved but charismatic academic. “This film is as much about vocation and how you become who you are as it is about first love,” Hansen-Løve responded quietly, referring to the protagonist Camille, “To me there is a deep relationship to her suffering, the fact that she has to overcome this love, and the energy that she has to give to her work.” She went on to insist that architecture wasn’t meant to be a metaphor for her own filmmaking, but this is hard to believe. Hansen-Løve often describes directing as the thing that helped her to understand her place in the world, in the same way Camille discovers herself through design. Earlier, explaining what drove her to direct, she had said, “Film helps me to live better. It helps me to understand life in its complexity, in its paradox. What I hope is to give a feeling of truth.” When I asked her later what advice she might give to a younger version of herself now she paused. “I would tell her not to be afraid. I would tell myself nothing is too difficult to be filmed.”

Negative Pleasure is a band comprised of visual artists who are currently making music in Queens. Its members are Lionel Guzman, Ed Shawn Herrera, and Emily Wroe. The band combines all of their inspirations, and yet don’t always know why they are doing it; the band therefor bears the qualities of smoke and mirrors, as well as a departure from the creation of a physical product. It is common for them to use muted film as a literal reference during practice, recording, and performance. This video, made for Dossier by Barbara Anastacio, is a view of the studio and the process of Negative Pleasure recording their first LP.

The Pass It On Project is a documentary film by Melissa Nicolardi and Kalim Armstrong about education, race, and the relevance of the Civil Rights movement in America today. A three-year labor of love, it is finally being screened this weekend through Filmwax. There will also be a Q&A with the featured students, teachers, and filmmakers.

The Pass It On Project will be screened this Saturday, February 4, from 6 – 8 pm at The Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, 53 Prospect Park West.

Tintin is a god to me.

Surely this imaginary globetrotter seems real to most of us. He is also the most beloved of all comic-book heros worldwide – except in America, where he is inevitably confused with the dog, Rin Tin Tin - as well as the first literary boho “backpacker.”

Too, Tintin’s second book, Tintin Au Congo, proved misaligned with Yankee tastes with its racist-seeming stereotypes of large-lipped “negroes.” I’m afraid they’re much worse than Al Jolson in blackface singing My Little Mammie or Little Black Sambo turning tigers into ghee, although the amusingly obsolete and offensive tome is still wildly popular in Africa.

Indeed, the cowlicked androgynous-looking (but supposedly not gay, even considering the dearth of dames in the series) boy reporter represents wanderlust in the first degree, inhabiting an extreme alt universe grounded in graphic colorized geography, both real and imagined.

Tintin, a native son beloved by the weepy Walloons of Belgium (but known in Germany with typical Teutonic efficiency as “Tim”), has stumbled upon the Incas in Peru, smoked cigars with the Pharoahs in Egypt, played cowboy in America, and even rocketed to the moon. Also, he uncovers a smuggling ring in The Crab with the Golden Claws, goes hunting for “booty” in Red Rackham’s Treasure, and wows us in the imaginary kingdom of Syldavia (loosely based upon any Balkan country).

No doubt, there is nothing that this young millionaire adventurer, once he departs the luxurious safety of his beloved mansion Marlinspike Hall, that is, can’t do — especially with the help of his loyal cronies Snowy (known as “Minou” in France), Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, and the Thom(p)son Twins.

In fact, so big a fan am I, one of my proudest possessions is a carved wooden Tintin statue with a fey smile I acquired in Grand Bassam, Cote d’Ivoire, which I deemed perfect for smuggling diamonds or heroin. Hence, I was keenly interested on getting the skinny on his somewhat sketchy creator, the Belgian artist Georges Remi (a.k.a, Hergé). Despite his success as a cartoonist – the Tintin series comprises twenty-four books and has sold millions of copies in dozens of languages – Hergé was often criticized during World War Two for being a “collaborator” with the Nazis only after Belgium was occupied, though in fact the false accusation is assuredly apocryphal.

Pierre Assouline’s recent biography Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin, though simple, even sketchy (perhaps because the translator Charles Ruas might have rushed it to press to beat the Ruas rushed to beat the clock on the new Spielberg/Jackson Tintin film adaptation) still answered many of my questions. But the elegantly weird Francophone diction, as well as the wealth of extraneous detail, is nevertheless somewhat distracting.

But boring the book is not.

Born in Brussels in 1907, Hergé started his career, like Tintin, as a cub reporter. For all his accolades, Hergé nevertheless maintained meekly, “I was just happy drawing little guys, that’s all.” But Assouline asserts Hergé used his alter ego to champion some of his so-called sociopolitical causes: his love for the Boy Scouts, Catholicism, and the Monarchy, countered by his distrust of Communism and the Soviet Union. Hergé’s first book Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was both a surprising commercial success and a scathing critique of totalitarianism.

Sure, Hergé was also a raging alcoholic who suffered from painful bouts of depression, miserable meals of “moules frites,” and “disappearances” for extended periods of time without explanations, but what artist doesn’t?

Dead as a dodo in 1984, Hergé was self-consciously oblivious to his fame while alive, not only among schoolchildren dreaming of impossible adventures in exotic climes (I initially discovered the series as a youngster in Bermuda), but among adult artistic fantasists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. As we all dust off our collected Tintin oeuvre – with its paternalistic patina of “comic” (funny ha-ha) neo-colonialism and unadulterated intrigue (but hardly any women) – we wonder if the “little guy” in all of us will stand up to wrong and cry out in a cartoon bubble, like Tintin’s uber-“British” seafaring saltydog Captain Haddock, “Bashi Bazouks!”

Here’s hoping that the “surreal” Hollywood film, which Hergé’s wife Fanny helped negotiate, doesn’t negate our subconscious myths and isn’t an egregious flop in DVD sales.

Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin, written by Pierre Assouline and translated by Charles Ruas, is available through Oxford University Press.

Psychologist Erik Erikson once noted, “It is human to have a long childhood; it is civilized to have an even longer childhood. Long childhood makes a technical and mental virtuoso out of man, but it also leaves a life-long residue of emotional immaturity in him.”

In other words: Youth is crucial. It’s fragile and complicated. It surrounds us, and not benignly: youth “preoccupies” and “haunts.” Youth “scars,” and it also “defines.” It’s our past—and yet youth is the future.

Matt Wolf is an independent filmmaker. His first feature, Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, was released in 2008 to significant acclaim. The New York Times’ Nathan Lee called it “a tender, fascinating documentary,” which he predicted would “delight the cult and instantly convert new members.” It was a film that not only reflected but also contributed to the legacy of the enigmatic musician.

But my opening question to Matt is not about Wild Combination and it’s not about what he’s working on, which is what we’re here to talk about. My opening question to Matt is about the first film he ever made—about Matt’s youth and his concurrent roles as a teenager, student and son. (In case you are wondering, Matt’s first film starred his friend, “a butch lesbian with wiry blonde hair,” making out with a piece of Plexiglass in a burnt grass field in California. He can’t remember the name of the film, but it wasn’t Ruby Heat.)

It is exactly this preoccupation with beginnings that Matt will explore in Teenage, his cinematic collaboration with Jon Savage (author of England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond and Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture.) Drawing inspiration from Jon’s seminal writings on the subject, the film will trace what Matt terms the “pre-history” of the teenager, and its timeline will culminate just prior to the identification of the age group as a consumer market after World War II.

“We wanted to make a film that had a feeling of being definitive about youth culture,” Matt says, “the way Dick Hebdige’s book Subculture: The Meaning of Style was. But once you get into youth culture after World War II, it gets incredibly dense. There’s so much activity and such explosive teenager visibility that it almost becomes impossible to get into it in a substantive way. We thought it was just a provocative strategy to focus on the pre-history of youth and to tell a story about how the idea of teenagers as we know it was born. It kind of sets up the model of youth that still exists today.”

“I think that’s the potency of the film: In one way you see how much has changed, and that’s significant, but I think what’s more powerful is to see what never changes. The dynamics between adults and youth, between the state and governments and adolescence… Those dynamics don’t really change. But in this period, before we knew what a teenager was, the stakes were that much greater.”

Where Wild Combination was a portrait in nature as in name, Teenage will address identity from a broader angle. The aim is not to profile the teenager as an entity, but to explore it as an idea—in a way that transcends one face or another (although a handful of individuals will have their stories told). The challenge, Matt says, will be to achieve the acute sense of intimacy that gave Wild Combination its power.

“With Arthur Russell, I felt an incredible draw to all the people in the film and to him, and I could just trust that my interest in and emotional connection to them would translate. With this, it’s always a question of how you make the emotional come across. Being a teenager is the most emotionally intense period of everybody’s life—but how do you make the ideas about youth culture and the role of youth and the birth of teenagers an emotional experience?”

When Matt was 14, he thought he’d grow up to be a “professional gay.” He trained other kids to start activist groups at their schools and lobbied State Representatives to change discrimination laws. It was the older sister of a friend who introduced him to music, another word for The Smiths, and showed him how to make zines. His was called Goat Dreams. Perhaps best not to forget that the man making the film about youth had one himself.

“Every decision I make is something that relates to my interests, my tastes, my point of view,” he says. “But at the same time, the film isn’t about me. Jon Savage has said that I’m 28, he’s in his early 50s, we’re both kind of going through our “Saturn return,” that astrological idea that you go through a period of transition and self-doubt every 28 years of your life. So maybe that’s why we’re making a film about teenagers. At the same time, it’s a process that goes beyond why you’re making the film. I couldn’t tell you why I’m making the film. I just know that I’m completely in it and I live in it, and I made that decision at some point and there’s no turning back.”

All stills from Teenage courtesy of Matt Wolf.

He may wear a suit and speak politely to each fan at length, but make no mistake, the well-mannered actor/director, Crispin Hellion Glover (most widely known for his role as George McFly in 1985‘s highest grossing film, Back to the Future) does not leave much room for social graces in his artistic approach to film.

For the past six years, the pioneer director has been touring with his feature films, What is it? and It is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE., two viciously honest reactions to what American culture has long tried to avoid.  The self-financed, unapologetic masterpieces tap into a wide range of taboo topics long shunned by corporate culture via slug slaughter, blackface, sex lives of the disabled, swastikas and songs of Satan with a cavalier disregard for repercussion. However disturbing and strangely hilarious the scenes may be, Glover’s work is not meant to shock or enrage audiences but instead prompt discussion regarding corporate restrictions foisted onto contemporary filmmakers.

Glover has forever balanced his appetite for the strange and unusual alongside working in the mainstream film industry, successfully profiting off of both. Dressed in full drag playing an unforgettable Olivia Newton John impersonator in Trent Harris’ short film The Orkly Kid, Glover was simultaneously playing father to a spry little actor with softly feathered hair and a puffy, burnt orange vest in the biggest film of the year, if not decade. During his presentations in New York City, I voyeuristically watched as a man, nestled inside the hollows of a giant clam, was “pleasured” by a buxom woman holding a watermelon and wondered how much of this he conjured up while on set rehearsing with the (Charlie’s) Angels. Between scenes of rape, murder and Shirley Temple, my thoughts reflected over the fascinating diversity of his extensive career.

I’ve always adored Glover for his distinctive personal projection onto characters such as Rubin “my cat can eat a whole watermelon” Farr in Trent Harris’ Rubin and Ed, the cousin with cockroach crotch in Wild at Heart, my favorite Andy Warhol portrayal in Oliver Stone’s The Doors and, as I was recently reminded, an epic dancer in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Also, weirdo enthusiasts (like myself) have long garnered Glover with iconic cult status for his roles in River’s Edge, Willard, Dead Man, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and The People vs. Larry Flynt.

After a fifteen year distance from Back to the Future, a favorite of at least two former (Republican) presidents, the new millennium saw Glover’s surprising return to mainstream Hollywood with significant roles in Charlie’s Angels, Beowulf and Alice in Wonderland. Hardly a sellout, the business minded hero of counterculture began taking on big budget roles with the impetus of funding his personal creative endeavors and distributing his feature films. With two in the can, it appears his parallel enterprises have achieved remarkable synergy.

The Hollywood hustle has allowed for some of the most thought provoking, unrestrained cinematic material from the offbeat character actor turned serious entrepreneur. The eccentric director prefaces each feature a la vaudeville style with a quirky live presentation, Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slideshow (a one hour dramatic narration displaying several of his reinterpreted books, available for purchase). Following the slideshow and film, a courteous – but cunning – Glover gives audience members an opportunity to respond to his work during a lengthy Q&A. Viewers have a chance to ask the notable figure anything their heart desires, or, if they wait in line long enough, they can meet one-on-one to have books signed and pose with the enigmatic star.

Photographer Rosalie Knox and I stood for hours to be last in line in hopes of scheduling a full interview and photo shoot. When we finally had the chance to meet Glover, we found an adorably humble, charming and well-mannered man behind the hours of disturbing imagery we had just enjoyed (a sharp contrast to the plethora of spoiled, egotistical, unapproachable artists in the industry). He was warm to our ideas and kindly created space for us in his jam-packed schedule.

While waiting to be interviewed after-hours in the beautiful, spacious Greene Naftali Gallery, one of the oldest and most well-regarded galleries in Chelsea, the debonair auteur curiously wheeled himself around in a soft leather chair, one leg over the next, creeping into the darkened spaces with the gait of a daddy long legs. The cult cinema legend was incredibly patient and allotted us an entire evening, his only free time before leaving New York, to model a few looks worthy of a “perfect gentleman” and speak in straight-forward fashion about the fire that fueled his first two feature length films and the uncompromising conviction it has taken to promote and distribute them.

Jacquelyn Gallo: You look super sharp in that suit, like a real gentleman!  I remember watching this old Johnny Cash prison movie (Johnny Cash in San Quentin, 1969) and all of the inmates in the documentary were so well groomed and extremely well spoken. Even though you make films with very violent and erotic scenes, you come off as very old fashioned and gentlemanly, always in a suit and very polite sort of in that 50s/60s style.  Do you feel a sense of nostalgia for the past?

Crispin Glover: I was born in 1964 at Lenox Hill Hospital. My first memories of life were of the city. There was one memory I have of a Christmas party. I remember how the people looked. I remember what the women were wearing and what the men were wearing, their fashion, the Christmas tree, and I was sitting in a bedroom looking at The Ed Sullivan Show. It was a nice party…the men were wearing dark suits and had short hair with Bryl Cream. It had a very conservative look, kind of like what the 1950s looked like. I remember when I moved to Los Angeles in 1967, or 1968 I guess, it looked, as I recall, what hippies looked like. I didn’t like it, I have to say. I missed New York and I’ve always felt that to a certain extent. I’ve always planned to own property here, but I own property in Los Angeles and the Czech Republic. I’ve made proper business investments in those properties and as much as I love this city, I think there’s a non-cost effective element. If you rent an apartment, even if you buy an apartment, you’re still paying money to a corporation. You kind of have to have enough money to buy a whole building to make it really cost effective.

Jacquelyn: Where did you pick up your well-mannered behavior?  From your parents or your idols?

Crispin: I aspire to be well-mannered and yet I have to admit there have been times where I have gotten angry or lost my temper and I regret those times. That, I think, is just bad business. I read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie…  Much of it has to do with hearing somebody else’s thought process and not proving people wrong. That was maybe the main thing that I learned…You know, it’s still somewhat in my nature but I avoid it all costs.

Jacquelyn: I like that you can make really good work and stand firmly behind your convictions without having to be standoffish to your fans. You allot so much time to answer their questions and meet them after the show. You even signed like a hundred pictures for that one guy!

Crispin: Oh, well that was an unusual situation. I was supposed to do a show in Brooklyn but there was a conflict of interest so I had to cancel. This guy said that a whole group of guys who had been first responders on 911 were planning on going to the show in Brooklyn.  So he had all of these pictures and like two days from now is like the tenth anniversary. I couldn’t really say, “I can’t sign all these things,” so you know that was an extenuating circumstance. You can kind of understand, if somebody comes up and says that, it’s like, okay, I better do this.

Jacquelyn: It does seem like you have a sort of graciousness about you. Where did you learn it?

Crispin: Well, to be fair, I’m actually being a very good business man. I know it sounds bad, but there’s two sides to that. To be rude is terrible business and I’m very passionate about getting these films out. I mean, I was always nice to people when I did signings. It started from 1993 before I started touring [as an actor] with the films, so I’m being a little bit clinical about it. I believe in being polite, in general, but analytically its very bad business to not be polite. Every person that I talk to has had a genuine interaction with me, and maybe not every single one of them will come back for the next show, but it’s far more likely that they will if I’ve had a genuine interaction with them.

Jacquelyn: Ah, I see. Well, you really did make a good impression on everyone. It’s rare to see an artist who also acts like a gentleman.  My friends and I decided you are the type of guy we should be dating. So I’m hoping in reality you really are this person that I’ve created in my head [Glover laughs] that does have these genuine convictions and that you really care about what you do and it’s not at all contrived.

Crispin: Well, I do very much care about my films and going about doing the tours and doing the shows, mainly to get the films out. I have a very strong conviction to the point where it certainly has affected my life. When you talk about it in terms of what that means in relationships with women, it’s not a good lifestyle for that. I’ve been touring for six years. Last year I took a break for three months and stayed in Los Angeles because I think in the previous five years, definitely in the previous two or three years, I hadn’t been in LA, or any city, for more than two or three weeks at a time. And it’s not just the touring, it’s because I own property in the Czech Republic and I act in other people’s films… I started shooting What Is It? in 1996… I never for a second thought I wasn’t going to finish the film. I always knew I was. I felt that I was going to tour the film with my slide show. I didn’t know the specifics of how it would manifest, but I knew I was going to do this. I was willing to do exactly what I’m doing, meaning take the amount of time that I take. If I had a family, if I had a wife and child, I would not be a good father or husband because I just wouldn’t be around enough. It would be bad.

Jacquelyn: Even the fact that you know – and admit – that is important and really admirable.

Crispin: Right, right, and it’s part of the reason I’m not married, and part of the reason I don’t have children, if not the main reason. You know, it’s something to think about but it’s not my main drive. My main drive is to be doing these films that mean something to me and are important to me and I feel like the only way to do that is to be self financing them, self distributing them.

Jacquelyn: Let’s talk about honesty – how important is that for you?

Crispin: It is important, very much to me, for various reasons. I don’t like lies… and it’s interesting you should ask because it’s actually such a central element in my own psychology. Also it has to do with why I do what I do. I do think corporately funded and distributed film essentially is [lies]. Maybe rather than lies you can call it propaganda. There is a different kind of propaganda that exists in the United States. I would heavily argue that the United States is far, far more advanced and accomplished in it’s propagandistic structures than Communist Russia ever was because in Communist Russia the populace knew they were dealing with propaganda and in the United States… barely anybody realizes how heavily propagandized our culture is.

Really, the best thing I’ve been telling people now is to read the book by Edward Bernays titled Propaganda. Edward Bernays is the nephew of Sigmund Freud and he is the literal father of the public relations industry. He came up with the word combination “public relations” to replace the word “propaganda” which had started to have bad connotations after WWI. He wrote the book in 1928, and what’s fascinating about it is it’s not an expose but an instruction manual on how to make propaganda work for various elements in the US government, US academia, meaning education system, and US media. He goes into the specificity of how education needs to be controlled and how media needs to be controlled. It’s such a clear layout of how things work in the United States, once you read that book you cannot see anything else but what it is… As much as 1984 is a nightmarish novel, Propaganda - I don’t know if you call it a nightmare – but it’s a living blueprint of what our culture does. It’s kind of amazing that it’s open to the public and that it’s not as popularly understood. I feel like it should be tenth grade reading, mandatory for every student. Of course, it wouldn’t happen, it wouldn’t happen exactly because of what is outlined in the book. The education system is controlled so people aren’t asking questions and they are being made to not think about things purposefully so control elements are not being questioned. That’s obviously horrible and I do have strong convictions about this.

Jacquelyn: Last night [at IFC] you were talking about dissatisfaction with the overall morality in Back to the Future because at the end of the story, Michael J Fox’s prize or payoff was money and…

Crispin: [interrupts and laughs] Well, it’s a weird crossover right here, because when I go and I do my shows I speak differently than when I do in published media, and maybe I shouldn’t. I’ve been very, very careful about how I talk about Back to the Future since 1984, I almost never talk about the film. Frankly, it’s very difficult for me to talk about it in a fashion that I think is beneficial to myself in the current mood of the culture. I feel that if I say anything, I have to be very careful about it. [hesitates] I’d like to talk about it more openly then I feel like I can. You see, it’s a weird thing, because I should be able to. I should be able to and it does reflect a bit on what we’re talking about because there’s no question that the experience I have with being in that film definitely has a strong impact on what I think about propaganda within this culture. I don’t know that this interview is the best moment for me to go into great detail about it. But [Dossier’s] probably not the kind of publication that is going to have readers that will get angry or upset.

But, that’s the thing that I have to be careful about, [Back to the Future] does have some resonance within this culture, and I’m a part of it, so I have to be careful with my words, because it can have negative impact if I’m not careful. And, to be fair, there are positive aspects about the story structure. Those writers understood story structure well. I have a great fascination for The Hero’s Journey story structure [a basic pattern found globally in narratives]. It is truly powerful and when you’re talking about religion and about government, it is no question one of the most powerful, persuasive forms of communication. If used properly, it’s one of the most beautiful things there can be, and if used improperly, it’s one of the most horrific things there can be.

I’ve had arguments about that kind of thing and I do have strong convictions about that and, like I say, this is probably not the proper place to go into too much detail. But, I feel that Back to the Future definitely had an impact on my thought process about how things should properly or not properly be used in The Hero’s Journey story structure. Now, something that’s very interesting is, I worked with Robert Zemeckis [director and cowriter of Back to the Future] many years later on a film [Beowulf] written by Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman, who are really both very excellent writers who also understand The Hero’s Journey story structure in a very good way. When you were talking about lies and truth it was a very interesting thing to me because the moral of that film did have to do with truth telling and lying. I strangely have a strong affinity for that film, I think it’s a very well written film. The moral actually has to do with truth and lies. Basically, it’s not a good idea to lie which I think is a very good moral.

Jacquelyn: What are your feelings on gentlemanliness and art, can you be both a true gentleman and a true artist?

Crispin: One can be a gentleman in their private life, but sometimes, and perhaps often, there is nothing gentlemanly about good art. In fact, it could be said that good art may seldom be gentlemanly.

Jacquelyn: Spoken like a true gentleman!

More information on Crispin Hellion Glover’s films, books and live performance dates can be found on his website.

Photographer: Rosalie Knox
Stylist: Jenni Hensler 
Stylist’s Assistant: Sheyna Imm
Grooming: Staci Child 

Special thanks to Greene Naftali Gallery 

Anthology Film Archives will be screening two programs of films by Richard Kern this weekend. Shot in the 1980′s on Super-8 and originally distributed on VHS , the films are described by Anthology as as “darkly comedic, shocking, sexy, disturbed, debauched, violent, and really quite wonderful.” They feature the likes of Lydia Lunch, Nick Zedd, David Wojnarowicz, Karen Finley, Lung Leg, Henry Rollins, and Kembra Pfahler, with original soundtracks by musicians such as Foetus and Sonic Youth. The films have been remastered and preserved with funds from The Warhol Foundation and Anthology Film Archives. Screenings are at 7 and 9 pm, Friday, September 23 and Saturday, September 24. Kern will be there to answer questions at tonight’s screenings.