What Is It Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This story came to my attention this evening via Variety's Mike Jones, who just wrote it up for Variety's fest blog, The Circuit. The Ann Arbor Film Fest, which has been around for 46 years, is facing the threat of extinction. The background: In 2006, the fest was targeted by legislators opposed to state funding of the arts and special interest groups who, claiming some of the films the fest showed in 2005 (including Crispin Glover's What is it?) were pornographic. The fest was asked by the state to follow certain guidelines in its programming in order to receive its past-due funding, and refused. In March 2007 the fest allowed the ACLU to sue the state on its behalf, citing the laws used by the state in censoring the arts as unconstitutionally harming the First Amendment rights of artists.

In order to keep the fest operating, the fest's organizers have come up with a unique grassroots plan to support it: The Endangered Campaign. They've created the handy informational video you see above to help explain why they need your help and how you can give it. To encourage your support, they've have promised to perform "Acts of Audacity" which those who donate will be able to vote on. The acts are all in fun, but promise to be at least mildly embarrassing to the fest folks performing them, and will be filmed and uploaded to YouTube for all to see. Here are the acts you get to choose from:

Option 1: Glam Rock karaoke through the streets of Ann Arbor in a yellow classic pick-up truck.

Option 2: Urban tobogganing in Detroit and Ann Arbor while dressed as giant animals.

Option 3: Recreations of famous scenes from classic movies with finger puppets.


Personally, much as I'd like to see Rope or The Seven Samurai enacted with finger puppets, the Glam Rock option seems like a winning choice, especially if they chose relevant, film-related songs for their karaoke extravaganza. "Girls on Film" might be a good choice, or Def Leppard's "Photograph," or perhaps something from the Flashdance or Footloose soundtracks. And we most definitely will want to see some serious parachute pants and mullet action going on.

Michigan's economy has been taking a beating lately, and now more than ever, they need to keep the arts alive in Ann Arbor. You can read more about the Endangered Campaign on the fest's official website.

[Note: If the video plays slowly for you, feel free to download it straight from Netscape. Also, the running time is just over 10 minutes.]

Cinematical recently attended a screening of What Is It?, which was written and directed by Crispin Glover. He also plays a small role in the film, and has been touring (it also screened at Sundance last year) with a print and his "Big Slide Show", where he reads and shows images from several of the books he has published. He's an extremely interesting guy, very well-spoken, highly intelligent, and couldn't have been nicer. It presents a real conundrum, because on one hand you have a really strange film, but on the other you have an intelligent person telling you why they made the choices they did in making the film. With Crispin Glover, it was like yin and yang / night and day.

Now having said that, What Is It? is without a doubt one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen. There is a lot of stuff in here that will make you queasy, uncomfortable, and possibly even offended. A word of warning to the wise: if you're offended by people killing live snails in pretty graphic ways, you're going to want to avoid this one. Also, if you're disturbed by scenes of graphic sexuality, you'll want to skip this. Additionally, the use of a cast made up almost entirely of actors with Down's syndrome feels exploitative at times, and that could be bothersome to some people. If you can get through all of that, there's also a fair amount of swastikas on display, nude women wearing animal masks, a character in blackface, a mom forcing her disabled son to inhale smoke from a pipe through a tube, and Shirley Temple as you've never seen her before.