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What the Hell Happened to Crispin Glover?


https://lebeauleblog.com/2020/02/18/what-the-hell-happened-to-crispin-glover/

You know Crispin Glover from Back to the Future. Even if you have never seen his infamous appearance on the David Letterman show, odds are you have heard about it. Glover has cultivated dual reputations as an eccentric genius and an unpredictable pain in the rear. Crispin Glover followed his own path and it lead him to the Czech Republic.

What the hell happened?

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WTF Happened to Crispin Glover?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVzOzR8YuSk

Crispin Glover is one strange dude, but that’s what we love about him. First bursting onto the scene playing Marty McFly’s nerdy father, George, in Back to the Future, Glover could have gone on to a perfectly serviceable career as an inoffensive character actor, but to say he had other ideas is putting things mildly. The very next year, 1986, featured Glover in two memorably eccentric supporting roles: opposite Sean Penn in At Close Range and the other opposite Keanu Reeves in the cult classic River’s Edge. In 1989, Glover did the impossible; he crossed Steven Spielberg when he refused to return for the Back to the Future sequels and even sued when they reused footage of him from the first film.

Around the same time, Glover, in a move that was either brilliant or spectacularly ill-advised, went on Late Night with David Letterman and kicked the host in the head. It might have been performance art - or it might have been something else - but that, coupled with the lawsuit, made people think Glover was nuts. Yet, rather than hurt his career, it turned him into a cult icon, with him stealing scenes in Wild at Heart, The Doors, Dead Man, and many others. In 2000, he had his most prominent role since Back to the Future in Charlie’s Angels and its sequel. He even got to be a leading man in the horror remake of Willard.

Since then, Glover’s somewhat retreated from the spotlight, directing his bizarre cult movies, making music, and typically only showing up in lower-key projects. In this episode of WTF Happened to this Celebrity, which is written (with Mathew Plale), edited, narrated and produced by Taylor James Johnson, we dig into the life of a true Hollywood original.

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Did Crispin Glover’s career ever recover after his ouster from the Back to the Future series?

https://www.quora.com/Did-Crispin-Glover-s-career-ever-recover-after-his-ouster-from-the-Back-to-the-Future-series/answer/Jon-Mixon-1

Nope.

Glover went from character actor roles in major Hollywood features to minor supporting ones with an occasional lead in lower profile features like 2003’s Willard. He was one of the antagonists in Drew Barrymore’s Charlie’s Angels franchise in the early 2000s; but most noticeably he didn’t have much dialogue or screentime in that role.

Glover rather foolishly (given the amounts of money overall that he lost) argued with the Back To The Future’s director and several producers which led to the decision to jettison him from his role in the sequels. Unfortunately for the production, Glover was litigious and after a brief legal battle, he was awarded nearly $800k in damages. Unfortunately for Glover, that seems to have reduced interest in him as a performer by big budget features, as that was nearly 30 years ago and he’s rarely been seen since then.

Another answer proposes that Glover’s vanity film and writing projects are something substantial. However they seem to be him doing something as he cannot obtain mainstream roles in either Hollywood feature films or television. He’s likely lost several million dollars (if not more) as a result of his being labeled as being “difficult”, and at age 60, he’s not as well known as he should be given his four decades in the business. Even his Wikipedia page reads like Glover himself wrote it, as it emphasizes rather minor achievements and avoids the lack of substantial roles.

It’s clear that if Glover had “played the game”, and taken his earnings for a brief role in a popular franchise (Back To The Future) he would be much wealthier now, and he would be a higher level in Hollywood than he is now.

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I spent an evening with Crispin Glover when he was promoting "It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine" a POS film he directed , funded and edited. Crispin Glover is a nice guy, a tad unhinged , but passable. This was in 2008 or 09.

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I remember watching the "I can kick!" moment the night it aired.

One of my best friends used to live in an apartment above a dive bar/club in downtown L.A. where he'd work as a barback around 1990, give or take a few years, and every (Thursday?) night, for a while they'd feature a guy who would sing with a guitar, who my friend, being a fantastic jazz pianist and had great taste in music described as "horrible." Anyway, this guy was so bad, rarely did he attract any listeners, and the bar's patrons didn't pay him much notice, except every time he played, Crispin Glover would show up by himself, pull a chair up right in front of the stage in the middle of a usually empty dance floor and appear to be rapt with this guy's music. If any fan approached him while the guy was playing, Glover would, often without taking his eyes off the guy politely gesture that they would have to wait until the guy was done with his set, sometimes putting a finger to his lips as if to "shush" them, again, not aggressively, but clearly he was this guy's biggest and only fan in the room.

I always got a chuckle out of that story.

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