Glover Gives New Meaning To `Dysfunctional'

Since he hit the big time playing Michael J. Fox's father in "Back to the Future," 27-year-old actor Crispin Glover has brought a unique, off-kilter intensity to a procession of evermore eccentric screen roles.

In low-budget goodies like "Twister" and "River's Edge," he gives new meaning to the word "dysfunctional," playing doomed characters who are as scary as they are hilarious. More recently, he's turned in memorable cameos in David Lynch's "Wild at Heart" (as Laura Dern's addled Cousin Dell) and in Oliver Stone's "The Doors" (as Andy Warhol).

His new movie, "Rubin and Ed," finds him clad in a ratty wig, thick glasses, hideous bell-bottoms and killer platform heels. As Rubin, he spends all his time indoors with the curtains drawn, squeaking his toy rubber mouse in time with Mahler's First Symphony. When his mother challenges him to prove he has a friend, he latches onto Ed (Howard Hesseman) with manipulative desperation.

Ed wants to talk to Rubin about the Power of Positive Real Estate. First, however, they have to wander the broiling Utah desert looking for a place to bury Rubin's dead cat. What follows is a demented odyssey, complete with thirst-induced hallucinations.

"Rubin and Ed" plays in the Seattle International Film Festival at the Egyptian Theatre 7 o'clock tonight and 2:15 p.m. Sunday. Glover arrived in Seattle last night with the film's writer-director Trent Harris. Both will attend its screening tonight.

Far from being the (literally) wigged-out character that he is on screen, Glover is cheerful and dapper in person - a little shy, perhaps, but hardly the psychopath his fans expect him to be.

He seems genuinely surprised when it's suggested that there's a connecting thread in his on-the-edge performances, and he insists he plays his roles strictly according to the script: "I don't like to improvise on screen."

Glover's first interest in acting came when he visited the set of "Gunsmoke" as a child. (His father, Bruce Glover, appeared on the show several times.) He started making commercials when he was 13. A Los Angeles stage performance in "The Sound of Music" - "which I'm really all the time getting more and more proud of" - soon followed.

Harris and Glover's relationship goes back eight years to their collaboration on a short film, "The Orkly Kid," about an Idaho teenager who wants to be Olivia Newton-John (it shows with "Rubin and Ed" tonight and Sunday).

The inspiration for Rubin came when Harris visited Glover one night and was greeted by the actor dressed in the get-up mentioned above. "I push the elevator button, the doors open and this creature steps out," Harris recalls.

Glover suggested basing a script on the "creature." Harris took it from there, incorporating odd personality traits of other friends (including one who kept his dead pet cat in the freezer until he could decide where to bury it).

The film was made on location in Utah. Glover doesn't complain about clambering up buttes in platform heels, but remembers that the weather was too cold for his liking: "It was a struggle to make it look as if it was hot."

Festival Notes: A new film by John McNaughton ("Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer") is the midnighter at the Egyptian Theatre tomorrow night. "The Borrower" is a horror movie about an outer-space monster that needs a new body to inhabit every day or so. It isn't the seamless piece of work that "Henry" was, but it has a punchy sense of humor and Rae Dawn Chong - as the policewoman pursuing the monster - gives a spirited performance.

At the Harvard Exit, 7 p.m. Sunday, Australian director Brian McKenzie serves up an oddly compelling blend of Kafka and homespun Australian zaniness with "Stan and George's New Life," about two eccentrics who work for a bizarre weather bureau.