The first entry in actor/filmmaker/writer/overall eccentric Glover’s as yet unfinished magnum opus, the ‘It’ film trilogy, it played on the second night (with the second entry playing on the first night) and is even more aggressively transgressive (and more the fun because of it) than the second film It is Fine! Everything is Fine was and that’s seriously saying something (though I’m pretty sure Glover would disagree with calling it that — similar to his approach with the word ‘subversive’ that came up on the first night’s post-screening Q&A, Glover absolutely refused to have anything to do with the term ‘transgressive’ on the second night).

With a cast consisting mostly of folks afflicted with Down Syndrome (well, there’s also the fantastically executed, tripped out scenes in hell with a long haired Crispin and Steven Stewart, the star of the previous entry and bearer of severe Cerebral Palsy, who spends most of his time getting his dick jerked off by a naked submissive female hellion — man, between these two films and all the graphically explicit sex he gets to have in them, Stewart must have been deeply thankful to Glover!), a story that seems to be about — from what I could make heads or tails out of anyway, which wasn’t a lot — one of the character’s interests in snails (and salting them, leading to some fairly harrowing imaginary snail ‘shrieks’), as well as his desire to get home (taking a break to mutually sexually fondle and make out with his fellow Down Syndrome girlfriend) and his struggles with visions of the aforementioned hell that haunt him apparently because of his overt racism and hubris, What is It? is one bizarre experience.

Continuing his stated agenda (though I’m paraphrasing and he was very particular on describing what he was doing with his films, so — again — Glover might entirely disagree with my word choices) to challenge and break down audience expectations that have been carefully constructed by corporate forces to maximize consumer potential (which perhaps starts to give some context to the fascist swastika imagery he likes to play with in his work), the Q&A afterwards provided a glimpse into how pervasive that status quo view is; as a 20-something accused Glover of fetishizing the characters to the point of asking if he felt he exploited them. Glover’s response of challenging the young woman to exactly define her terms unfortunately led her to throw out that now familiar go-to regressive term of the day, as she further accused him of on-the-spot ‘mansplaining’ to her, which then led almost immediately to another youngster — too upset at the injustice before her to take the time to raise her hand like everyone else — yelling out that if ‘he wanted to educate, he shouldn’t belittle people’ (if I knew that the filmmaker’s responsibility today in a Q&A is to boost the audience’s egos, man, I’m so glad I don’t do them anymore); fortunately, Glover impressively brushed off any ruffled feathers — in fact, it seemed to energize him — and he continued along with his Q&A, equally challenging other questioners, making it by far the best Q&A he put on over the two nights.

Buck A Review