I recently saw the new film, No! YOU’RE WRONG. by artist, poet, and outré filmmaker Crispin Hellion Glover at NYC’s MOMA. I knew a little bit about the man; some claim he’s an offbeat, eccentric guy. Glover, known for his unconventional approach and bizarre style of storytelling humor, is a mystery man. His middle name, Hellion, translates to hellraiser. It’s possible that he is, but It’s more than that. The love he shares for old-school cinematic ways and techniques is upfront. Shot on rare 35 mm Fuji stock footage, in color and black and white. Nowadays movies are digitally-engineered. The original celluloid blends seamlessly, reflecting disparate interconnected timelines between various past/present-day (spooky action) sequences, acting out up close and personal. Snippets of live action footage mixed with meticulously handcrafted miniature diorama sets project a sinister, dreamlike atmosphere. This creepy Christmas Garden stylish tableau is visually stunning in effect.
Interrelated scenes cut away, transition, and meld, transforming segments of time-space into various past recurring events, from present-day real-time to the distant past of no return, until it does. Mixing permanent impermanence with the perfect combination of imperfect chance and deliberate interactions. In one funny present-time scenario, the father of Crispin Glover's character, portrayed by his real father, Bruce Glover (who plays Apollo, the Older Brutus, and Chronos Muldoon), tells Crispin, his real-life son, that his script has too many guns.
Too many damn guns! As the hilarious argument intensifies, Crispin (who plays Brutus Muldoon/Damocles Muldoon) declares in angry disagreement that the title of the film’s story will be No! You’re Wrong. I reckon you can never have too many guns. So much for the Second Amendment. A man with conviction and determination. Acts of violence unfold in jumpy tableaus, revealing murder, indiscriminate shootings, film noir-inspired bullseye target practice, suicide, self-mutilation, infanticide, psychosexual desires, sabotage, revenge, and betrayal. Those are my initial observations. Spooky Action, illustrated through subliminal images, fades into foggy dust. Scenes such as George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, the destruction of a miniature Hoover Dam lookalike, and a public notice billboard warning that saving the nation requires millions and millions more dollars. Swindling and jealous power hungry characters evolve. Real life mutates into little toy figurines riding on the back of an antique train caboose. Our dreams betray us. Evil lurks just beneath every dreamy horizon. Prisoners of past lives repeat.
Too many guns! There are endless shootings, occurring simultaneously across decades, ambush shootouts, assassinations, hangings, suicides, and repeated timeless murders and executions. All wrapped up in an absurd surrealist journey of quantum entanglement. The classic song, in this version convincingly sung by Glover, is “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” a sentimental, melancholy tune. Its lyrics: “I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air. They fly so high, nearly reach the sky, then, like my dreams, they fade and die.” Just like the film itself, images appear and dissolve, encapsulating different period events from bubble-like re-enacted perspectives. An intersection where one timeline bumps into another. Tiny bubbles popping into thin air.
Symbolic references, images of the Order of the Oddfellows iconography, pocket watches, and a baby set adrift in a box floating downstream. Mount Rushmore, police officers depicted as historic silent film actors like the comical Keystone Cops, a 1960s vignette of Hollywood swingers, gangster-style lingo, and erotic lust-fueled desires. Bloody revenge-tinged vendettas loop through a frenetic world where events are stuck on repeat. They ricochet off in a distorted bullet way through time. Einstein’s theory defining spooky action isn’t as distant as we think. The subliminal theme that threads the film’s interconnected stories and characters into a complex narrative. Artfully executed in a veiled tribute to the late filmmaker David Lynch, plus a loving homage to Crispin’s father, Bruce, who died this past March at 92. Also, a tip of the hat to Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Cocteau, Dalí, and Luis Buñuel; other Dadaist-tinged, Hollywood gangster-inspired films; including Weimar Republic influences.
I want to watch the film again. There are so many things happening in No! YOU’RE WRONG; you simply cannot absorb it all in one sitting. I’m not big on cute, artsy stuff filled with pretentious fluff with no substance—intellectual stuff that doesn’t let you in on the private inside jokes and hidden meanings. It’s not like that. The message is clear enough to fathom even if you don’t get it the first time around. The visions seep into your subconscious brain, a spongy dream that stays with your recent memory long after the credits roll and life resumes its chaotic pace. Mesmerized, frozen by the distant past and shaky unknown future, we stumble through. Wandering through aimless paths, vaguely aware of the journey or the meaning behind the trip. The arrival and departure destination is now. Here in these worlds of parallel places time stops. Is it real or forever blowing bubbles?
The NYC premiere at MOMA opened with a poetic big slideshow presentation from Glover’s reading book excerpts of his textual works. They combine vintage public domain book pages with added handwritten stories, written and conducted by Glover, addressing the storyline tales. A concrete poetry experiment. The amusing offshoot departure, similar in concept to the Cut-Up methods invented by Bryon Gysin and William S. Burroughs in mutual comparison. Words cut out from paper text, moved around, and rearranged into another version of the same story with a different message and meaning. A poetic bank robbery or ransom note. Lights! Cameras and Spooky Action!