Bastard of the Month: Crispin Glover

I've missed the boat by a few months on this one, but Crispin Glover's 70-minute film What is It? premiered at the 2005 Sundance festival. Reviewers are divided. Some say the film is watchable, but don't recommend watching it. The rest just say "unwatchable" and leave it at that. Another common reaction was "No, really, what is it?" I find it deeply disturbing that no one had much to say about the film's poster (which I'll describe below - I will not post a link).

(Glover is best known as George McFly in Back to the Future and Thin Man in the Charlie's Angels movies, but he's had minor roles in at least a dozen other films and got the lead role in the remake of Willard. For some reason, Glover has a small but zealous cult following.)

The film What is It? "follows" (I use the word lightly) the interactions of Glover's mad-priest character with an array of actors who have Down's Syndrome. There are sex acts in the film involving these characters. Since Glover made What is It? in somebody's backyard over a 10-year period, I'm gonna hop out on a limb here and say these actors prob'ly aren't Equity. We're faced with the old Diane Arbus question: Is it acceptable to use mentally impaired people in your art, as they might not fully comprehend what is being done with their images? (read: you are possibly exploiting them)
That question comes into play again in reference to Glover's early poster for What Is It? It features a vintage image of little Shirley Temple with her ringlets and foot-deep dimples... completely naked, save for some Nazi fetish gear. She is pressing the handle of a whip against her undeveloped vulva. I don't have to outline the issues this raises, do I?

What makes the Shirley-Temple-as-Nazi-child-dominatrix image even more repellent is the fact that Crispin Glover sued Steven Spielberg (and won) over the use of his own image after Glover declined to appear in any Back to the Future sequels. Spielberg replaced Glover with an actor who, with a little makeup, passed for the original George McFly, and used some of Glover's footage from the first film to make the new George McFly believable. Glover insisted this was a violation of his rights - his image was being used without his permission, and "I am not a commodity".
I wish Shirley Temple Black could say the same to you, McFly.