From "My Poisoned Wife"-
I could only find the last two pages of the following article. If anyone is able to send me the first page, please do. The article is from People Weekly June 22, 1987, vol. 27 n. 25, p. 74-76.
CRISPIN GLOVER OF RIVER'S EDGE
EMERGES AS
KING OF THE ODDBALLS
What Crispin Glover calls home his friends nervously refer to as the "Black Tower" Perched on he 14th floor of a rundown building in downtown Hollywood, the penthouse apartment affords a panoramic view of that palace of kink, Frederick's of Hollywood. Creepy black theater curtains drape his bedroom window. ("My mom helped me make them," Glover says proudly.) Flecks of white paint crumbles from the vaulted ceiling onto jet-black floors and walls. In a corner sits a gynecological examination chair that the 22-year-old actor found in a thrift shop. "Isn't it interesting?" he asks, flicking aside a stray shock of brown hair. "I want to get cushions to make the chair more comfortable for guests."
The apartment seems a fitting lair for Glover, an actor who is eccentric even by Brat Pack standards. The busy complex of tics that marked his performance as Michael J. Fox's ultra-nerd father in the 1985 smash Back To The Future left some critics cheering and other jeering. Now he is drawing even more heat for his work in the widely praised River's Edge, a low-budget film about disaffected you that is shaping up as a surprising box office winner. As Layne, a speed-freaked high school gang leader, Glover wears eyeliner and uses exaggerated gestures that seem out of sync with the less stylized behavior of the film's other actors. Inspired in part by the true story of a Milpitas, Calif. teenager who in 1981, strangled his girlfriend the proceed-with chilling dispassion to tell his school buddies about it, River's Edge is concerned less with that murder than with the inability of the girl's friends to mourn her.
Glover revels in the gut response to his work. (One reviewer called his character "an extraterrastial transvestite.") "I'm happy to have the critics in an uproar," he says. But the debate over the film's disturbingly view of youthful apathy doesn't really interest Glover. He warms more to discussing the movie's black-comic element. In one scene, for example, he pokes the corpse with a stick, then recoils in horror. "I don't want to sound cold, but I think it's a funny movie in many ways," he says. "There's a lot of stuff in this story that makes me laugh."
To understand that reaction, you must examine the man. Visit his dramatic abode, and tour guide Glover will show off his ancient Anasazi Indian bead, a collection of doll eyes neatly arranged according to size, a fifth of Chinese wine with three mouse embryos bobbing at the bottom and a black ceramic angel. ("The angel was the first thing I ever had a nightmare about. I was three years old, and in my dream it flew toward me. I was terrified.") His proudest possessions rest in an 1890 English display case and consist of a dozen life-size wax replicas of diseased eyeballs. "These are real eye disorders," he explains. "They are beatiful things."
Glover's close friend, undiscovered screenwriter and director Trent Harris, 34, offers some insight into his pal's strange world. "We walk up and down Hollywood Boulevard a lot," he says. "We watch the people out there. It's weird entertainment-theater of the deranged. That's why I like Crispin. He has what I call a benevolent respect for the bizarre."
The one and only child of Betty and Bruce Glover, Crispin Hellion Glover was born in New York City and moved with his parents to L.A. when he was 4. His mother is a former ballet dancer and choreographer; his father is an actor who has been featured in films including Chinatown, Hard Times and Diamonds Are Forever.
Crispin's career, according to his father, got off to an inauspicious start. "Years back," he recalls, "when I did the first "Walking Tall" film, there was a part for a young boy. So I brought Crispin in to meet the director. The two of them went off for an interview. Later the director pulled me aside and said apologetically, 'Oh, Bruce, he's never going to be an actor.'"
As a student at L.A.'s exclusive Mirman School for Gifted Children, Crispin was occasionally directed in school plays by his mother, who did some work at Mirman to help defray her son's tuition costs. At 18, Crispin made his film debut as a young marauder in a sexploitation saga called My Tutor. Next he rolled bowling balls at pal Sean Penn in Racing With the Moon, bit a teacher in Teachers and had his hand pierced with a corkscrew in Friday the 13th--The Final Chapter. ("I'm not unproud of that performance," he says.) Since Back to the Future, Crispin has been pickier about his roles. His father says he admires Crispin's "strength in turning down low rate projects that offer him a tremendous amount of money. His decisions are right, even if it does kill the agents."
His colleagues see limitless potential in Glover. Says River's Edge director Tim Hunter: "He's innocent, but he's also brilliant. Dennis Hopper [who also starred in the movie] and I took one look at this kid and said to each other, 'This is a classical actor. He ought to be doing Shakespeare.' But Crispin's never read the stuff. He doesn't know anything about it." (Glover's ambition, in fact, is to play Micheal Jackson. "There's a part I could get into," he jokes.)
Glover may know even less about women than about Shakespeare. He shyly shows off a number of paintings, bleak renderings of his apartment building as viewed through the branches of dead trees. They bear the signature of artist-actress Michelle (Nice Girls Don't Explode) Meyrink. "Michelle is the girl is the girl I was going with for a long time," says Glover. "I like her a lot." Pondering the breakup, he looks troubled then says, "She got involved with someone else and had some hard times." Another flick fo the hair and his brow clears. "Anyway she's doing fine, now. She's one of my favorite people."
Another woman friend confides, "Crispin is always so alone. I see him a lot at this tacky new club called Bazdo. He just watches people dance. When we talk with him, he always asks the same question: 'So, how do you people know each other?' He's not in touch with everyday life."
Glover begs to differ. "I definitely fit within the United States," he says. "I work, I make money, I'm able to function. I view myself as fairly conventional." In that, he may well be alone.
-Written by Ned Geeslin, reported by Doug Lindeman