A few months ago I was a bit startled to emerge from a movie at the world famous Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Austin to find Crispin Glover chatting in seemingly amiable fashion with a few folks in the lobby. It took me a second to remember that the Alamo was hosting a screening of Glover’s latest opus, What Is It? It occurred to me that it must sometimes be a little awkward for whoever is assigned to tend to the needs of a, shall we say, unusual guest like Mr. Glover, but for at least that passing moment, he didn’t seem particularly inclined to kick anyone in the face.
I was reminded of that night when reading about Glover’s recent appearance at Chandler Cinemas in Phoenix. "For $18, it's a very long night," midnight movie hostess Andrea Beesley-Brown told Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times. "You get your money's worth of Crispin. You get to meet him and get your freaky photo with him. He'll sign stuff. It's a good value for the patron." That’s swell for Glover fans, but not so swell for Beesley-Brown and the theater. “The lion's share of the take went to Glover — $14 out of the $18 ticket price, and Glover's food, in-town travel, and sundry expenses were covered by the event's promoters. Glover required a regular diet of sushi, and had the promoters man his merchandise booth and police the crowd for possible bootleggers filming his surreal, Luis Buñuel-esque film with smuggled-in camcorders. There is but one 35mm print of the film, as Glover has opted not to release it on DVD. So piracy issues are a constant concern to the bizarre star.”
That doesn’t sound so unusual considering the outrageous demands we’ve seen in contract riders posted on the Smoking Gun over the years, but it gets worse. Glover demanded to be paid in cash, despite the fact “that many of the tickets had been sold online through a service that paid the promoters only after the fact… ‘He wanted it in all the nice, new bills because he takes his money to the Czech Republic, where he has land or a castle or something,’ Beesley-Brown claimed he told her. ‘Apparently, he has to take all the nice bills over there because the Czechs won't take ripped bills.’”
Glover also claimed the theater damaged his print and demanded restitution. When contacted, the actor responded with his own version of the story. A series of emails documenting the whole chain of events from both sides can be found here, for those with an in-depth interest in peculiar quasi-celebrity behavior.
Related:
Portrait of the Artist as a McFly
What It Is: The Mind of Crispin Glover