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You always hear about how strange Crispin Glover is. In whatever everyday conversation warrants a reference to the long-haired, spastic character actor, the general discussion leans more towards his eccentric behavior than from his terrific work in films like Back to the Future, Dead Man, Wild at Heart, The People vs. Larry Flynt, or even the recent Charlie’s Angels revival.

Thing is, I didn’t actually know anything weird Crispin Glover had done. Murmurs of a bizarre stunt on "Late Night with David Letterman" fifteen years ago came up, but when I discovered what he had done-nearly kick Letterman in the face-it seemed like another innocent incident in front of a host who’d seen plenty of peculiar activities (and in most cases, had it coming).

It turns out I was right. As Crispin Glover walks into our interview, he is decked out in a black three-piece suit that looks like it was last worn in 1978, but that has been gently pressed and folded for all those years. His hair drips down in his face, and he brushes it aside not with a flip of the head or with the tips of his fingers, but rather his entire palm, which flattens itself against his gelled black locks and leads them back across his temple and over his ear.

Having been prepared to interview just Glover, I was beyond surprised when I saw a second interviewee march into the room-none other than R. Lee Ermey, the immortal drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. A husky, enormous man, Ermey wore lumberjack plaid and chewed on a cigar the size of a cucumber throughout the interview.

And despite his significant presence, it was still hard not to notice what Crispin Glover was doing.

We now have, sitting next to each other, one of the most radical artists working in Hollywood and an old conservative, both discussing their new movie Willard. And these guys can talk. The first question, a rather innocuous one at that, leads to over fifteen minutes of banter between the two about humor, bullying, acting styles, and post-production editing.

"I didn’t see Crispin, I saw Willard," says Ermey. Glover shys away with a blush, channeling George McFly with startling precision.

Glover is an artist; having released an album and a handful of "very different" novels. He is cutting edge, for sure, but that shouldn’t translate to weirdness. And it doesn’t. I ask him about whether he had any sort of impact on the visual style of Willard, intending it as a question of composition-the sort of thing most actors would love to ramble on for fortnights. Misunderstanding my question, Glover thinks I’m asking about technical aspects of shooting a film-i.e., cinematography, lighting, timing.

"I leave all of that up to the director of photography," he says. "I just do what they tell me to do."

He is all business, and understands the individual responsibilities of the production-and, despite his creative streak, he wouldn’t dream of altering someone else’s vision.

In an earlier interview with Willard director Glen Morgan, Morgan told how New Line wanted a different ending then was originally planned. Obviously bummed by such a demand, Morgan relates how Glover approached the change with the utmost optimism. Despite the reversal of fortunes the ending undergoes (which affects the entire arc of the film), Glover wasn’t going to let something out of his control get him down. And it doesn’t.

Later, the question of future projects comes up. Both Glover and Ermey reiterate what most artistically conscious actors are aware of these days-one must pay the mortgage, and that’s where Charlie’s Angels sequels come along. Yet Glover’s reasoning for starring in mainstream films for money is as honorable as they come, as he’s used the money he’s made from such gigs to make some disarmingly unique films. The first one, What Is It?," is described by Glover in the production notes as "being the adventures of a young man whose principle interests are salt, snails, a pipe, and how to get home, as tormented by a hubristic racist inner psyche. Most of the cast has Down's syndrome, but it is not about that."

I try to elicit more information on the project from him during our interview. He gives me the spiel above, word for word, comma for comma. His other film is written by a man with cerebral palsy who died shortly after completion of filming, giving the film an added urgency and importance.

Glover believes very much in his work, as evidenced by an extensive metaphysical discourse on culture, pro-culture, and the counter-culture. He name-drops some of the finest surrealists and most imaginative filmmakers ever-Fassbinder, Buñuel, Kubrick (Ermey nods), and Herzog-all fearless men who approached their projects with the same reckless abandon Glover approaches, well, everything. They all possess the same appetite for expression, for perfection.

To Glover, the counter-culture isn’t something easily defined. He expresses the pro-cultural as the result of "propaganda that stupefies the culture;" that statement clears up any question about Glover’s refusal (and subsequent successful lawsuit against his unauthorized appearance) in the corporate conglomerate that was the Back to the Future sequels.

When I ask about Lars von Trier’s Dogme 95 movement, Glover offers perhaps his most precise and telling opinion of our hour together. The Dogme films are counter-cultural to the standards of conventional filmmaking, he says; but by creating a new technique and rules the Dogme filmmakers limit themselves.

I mention the inherent truths and realities of the Dogme movies, and Glover politely closes the door on my thinking. To him, what films today need to do is reveal something new; something against the norm, something unique, different, and moving. Working with a digital camera and without a script doesn’t necessarily promise this.

When Glover touched on Werner Herzog, he also mentioned the notorious Klaus Kinski, as close a figurative relative as Glover has. Yet unlike Kinski, there is no mean streak to Glover; nor a vicious need to weird people out with ridiculous demands and outrageous stunts.

I can think of no other actor who can star in a movie with five hundred rats, and still give me a down-to-earth, coherent, rational argument about film theory. Willard falls somewhere between a commercial bankroller and an independent feature, and Glover is the catalyst for whatever success it may have.

Theory, expression, socio-cultural patterns, and the rotten smell of rat feces-all equal in importance to Crispin Glover. Whatever makes people thing Glover is strange only makes me think he’s all that more fascinating.

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