Crispin Hellion Glover is bringing his Big Slide Show and 35mm film screening to Cambridge on Wednesday 30 April.

He will be performing a one-hour dramatic narration of his painstakingly customised books, followed by a screening of  “IT IS FINE”, a Q&A session and a book signing.

Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slideshow evolved through necessity, as his popular books contain profuse illustrations and could not be simply read aloud. Each book began as an existing, ex-copyright vintage text and has been annotated with notes and found images. Some words are blackened as though by a censor’s pen – others are obscured by trickling shapes that begin to resemble dainty black rabbits and tar babies. At best, it’s an exhilarating audio-visual marriage of wordplay, poetry and visual curiosity. At its least, it’s a diverting personal scrapbook. At some points, the inexorable density of the performance becomes overwhelming and exhausting, but once one grows accustomed to the rhythm of the slideshow, Glover’s finely honed style of delivery is often found to be quite hypnotic.

[“Oak Mot”] contains snatches of dialogue and exposition that were rife with baffling, even sinister portent – even before they were blackened and riffed by Glover’s hand.

These aren’t just quaint old texts written by people who didn’t realise what “gay” meant. Glover shares stories which are bizarre in their own right; not least the best seller The Rat Catcher which drifts off on Ronnie Corbett style tangents, and the nostalgic tale Oak Mot which contains snatches of dialogue and exposition that were rife with baffling, even sinister portent even before they were blackened and riffed by Glover’s hand. He is an excellent editor of both text and moving image: the original works are pared back or entirely transformed, with an instinctive eye for rhythm and signifier.

IT IS FINE! EVERYTHING IS FINE is a glossy, saturated thriller in the style of The Rockford Files, written by and starring Steven C. Stewart, who pitched the script to Glover having worked with him on his earlier film WHAT IS IT? The protagonist, Paul, is a ladykiller whose character is handicapped but far more coherent and sexually attractive than Stewart himself.  It’s possible to acclimatise to his inarticulate delivery, partially due to his powerful on-screen presence, infused with humour and idiosyncratic charisma.

There are stylistic touches of Hitchcock’s VERTIGO – from the hyper-real backdrops to Fassbinder favourite Margit Carstensen‘s sensual, natural performance, and Paul’s stubborn obsession with long hair. He nuzzles it, brushes it, winds it like wool in his fists. “I like long hair, it makes women look more feminine” he explains to one of his conquests, when the conversation inevitably turns to her plans for a drastic crop. “I hope you’ll like me for other things than my hair,” she returns mildly. Paul’s cry of triumph, once a hapless lover has been throttled, is “Now you won’t ever have a haircut again!”. The denouement of the film includes a wonderfully ridiculous dream sequence in which Paul finds himself the plummeting prince confounded by a scissor wielding Rapunzel.

Crispin’s show usually sells out fast so book now to catch the show at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse.

Read an in-depth Q&A for “It Is Fine! Everything is Fine” on crispinglover.com

Forward (sic) to IT IS FINE by Steven C. Stewart (With original spelling)

This movie is not really about sex or even a cereal killer. No. This movie tends to look deep inside the heart and mind of a severally handicapped young man. (A handicap starts out from birth. A disability happens later on in life). A very intelligent and ambitious 34-Year-old man who had to fight for everything all of his life. After finding the woman of his dreams, a woman he could really love, then to have that woman reject him was more than he could stand. It was enough too drive him over the edge.

This movie is to show that these people can have feelings too. Feelings of good and ill. And when circumstances become more than they can take they too can go over the edge.