crispin glover is an extremely high-functioning insane person. what distinguishes him from those merely skinning dipping in the cross-contaminated gene pools of bleeding hearts and artists and hollywood eccentrics is a conceptual drive stuck deliberately in neutral. this is not to say his projects don't go anywhere; rather, their momentum and direction are neither guided nor overdetermined. concept is both the means and the ends, and the concepts are - in a word - fucked. we love crispin glover because he's the arch wizard of screwball. everything he produces is perfectly consistent within his own conceptual paradigm, and if nothing else, the worlds he creates make sane people really uncomfortable (we are, after all, speaking of the mind that brought us "clowny clown clown"). so where talent does what it can, genius does what it must, and crispin hellion glover is a rare genius indeed.fortunately for us, madhattery loves company. instead of retreating into the intricacies of his own brains, glover seeks out other screwballs with whom to make movies ... screwballs like steven c stewart. steven c stewart was a man with talent, frustration, and severe cerebral palsy whose rapunzel fetish and deep-seated misogyny came to a head in the original script for it is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. under glover's production, direction, and proceeds from charlie's angels, stewart plays the satanic hero-villain in his own made-for-tv after-school-special pornographic horrorshow.
to say it is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE is difficult to watch misrepresents not only the film, but also notions of both difficulty and watching. wheelchairs, murder, and necrophilia aside, the film challenges the gaze because it forces audiences with even the most indelicate of sensibilities to spend 74 minutes looking at that from which we are socialised to avert our eyes. watching actors engage with and respond normally to someone both physically and verbally inarticulate bothers us. the sexual expression of people with disabilities makes us laugh. and frankly, we don't know what to do with a retarded serial killer with a semi-flaccid penis who flops around atop hot, naked, dead girls. but when he runs over the neck of one with his wheelchair, we know we've got our money's worth.
