Upsetting Day: It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine!

When I was but a lad, my father sat me down and served me the future on a silver platter. Little did I know it was a future borne less of The Jetsons and more of Eraserhead. My Dad likes real weird movies, see, and he made us watch them way too young. That’s the premise, anyway. The premise of what? Why, my sweet summer child…

Last time on LDs in the R, we unpacked Crispin Glover’s What Is It?, a process similar to unpacking the body of a vagrant for autopsy purposes. Hey, let’s glove up and see what kinda nightmares are in there! And we did, we did that. We survived it too, just barely. If you’ll recall, at the end of that column I promised to review the final two films in his planned It trilogy - It Is Fine! and It Is Mine. This realization washed over the entire Hotdog community like a funerary caul, and when I instead followed up with a column about baby shirts aimed at pedophiles and parents who want to attract pedophiles, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Well, at the risk of un-sighing us, I’ve decided to yank the throttle and nosedive us all once more into the abyss for a fresh tour of Hell!

It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine.

I’m really sorry, guys. I’m just so, so fucking sorry. Okay, let’s get into it!

AUTHOR’S NOTE: It was at this point in the column-writing process that the author learned that It Is Fine! has only ever been screened live, with Crispin present, and is not available to stream or for purchase in any form. Further, the third planned film in the trilogy was never made. This isn’t proof that there’s a God, but it is compelling evidence.

Fuck. I mean hooray, but also fuck? Okay, changing tack.

Today, we’re going to learn how to piece a lost movie together using the Seven Essential Steps of Forensic Investigation! So get out those globes gumshoes…mystery beckons.

Special Thanks to Campbellsville University for their handy breakdown, which really makes it seem like anyone could learn to be a cop in about forty-five minutes and cops are secretly just unskilled thugs hired to protect the wealth of the ruling classes.

Oh, “see you online,” I get it. That’s pretty awful.

When considering the crime that is It Is Fine! Everything is Fine., the focal point of the scene is evident: Crispin Glover, our pubic enemy number one. He’s a snail-choppin’, down syndrome-exploitin’, Letterman-kickin’ ne’er-do-well, and It Is Fine! seems to be localized solely around him, swirling like the eye of a storm if it could rain pretentiousness. Glover himself calls it “probably the best film [he'll] ever work on in [his] entire career,” even though he was in both Back to the Future and Dead Man. Take that, Hot Tub Time Machine! Suck it, Willard! Your psychic rats are no match for Crispin’s blind faith in the idea that centering your films on people with severe mental and physical disabilities really makes ya think. As for establishing a perimeter, the movie premiered at Sundance in 2007 as an unofficial selection, so it’s simply a matter of bombing Park City, Utah off the face of the Earth, as I’ve been calling for for almost a decade at this point. I forget why.

Considering we are forensicsing a tape (in the symbolic sense, all Laserdiscs, DVDs and Blurays are “tapes,” in the same way all soda pop is “coke” and all cops are secretly just unskilled thugs hired to protect the wealth of the ruling classes), surrounding it in tape will likely only increase its power. The public safety will be much better served relying heavily on armed guards trained to subdue Crispin Glover on sight and stationed at the entrance of every independent theater still operating in this great nation. The good news is that will still be pretty cheap, because we’re down to like four at this point.

As near as I can tell, this movie is about the man who wrote it getting jerked off by a beautiful woman he then kills. That man, Steven C. Stewart, passed from his Cerebral Palsy only months after completing the film, which is of course very sad because now he can’t be further punished. If you thought that joke was too mean and edgy, please recall that the first film in this series featured a Swastika throne, an all-disabled cemetery brawl, and Shirley Temple fucking herself with the handle of a bullwhip. Which reminds me, as we really start to wade into It Is Fine! Everything is Fine. we should consider additional necessary resources, like maybe a football stadium full of psychiatrists on standby.

Clearly evidence is going to be hard to come by in this case, so jealously does Mr. Glover clutch his shameful sins to himself to keep them from our sight. In fact, all the vast resources of the internet could only provide me with four stills, which I will dutifully take note of now.

Noted. I hope that woman’s doing okay, she seems to be exhibiting obvious outward signs of medical distress. Should she be that blurry? Is she getting microwaved from space? Help her, you lazy girl in the blue gown!

The creepiest thing about this image is the doll face staring secretly at you from over the woman’s shoulder. So, all in all, a very restrained showing from Crispin.

Speaking of restraint, I’m pretty sure that person on the right is in a straitjacket with some random belts cinched around their thigh…possible evidence of “crazy legs?” This is compared to the restraint experienced by Steven as he contemplates a mostly nude woman on the far left, trapped in a body that so often fails to enact his will. The scene is displayed as a moody and multicolored grid in what is clearly a set, presumably because everywhere the crew tried to shoot, people assembled a mob and chased them out with torches and pitchforks lest they desecrate the village and turn the surrounding fields fallow.

I have to admit, this movie makes the last movie look like shit in terms of sets, costumes and lighting. What Is It? already objectively looked like shit, but this shit makes that shit look like the shit a shit took after it ate shit. Remember, the game this time is that we are detectives now, so some salty talk goes with the job.

Our guards are in place, our psychs are on standby, and our initial survey of the scene is complete. Now it’s time to take some reports from firsthand witnesses and document the results. In our case, we’ll be using some Rotten Tomatoes reviews written by people who woke up one day, put on their clothes, went outside, got in their car, drove to a place, proved to someone at the door that they paid to be there, and then sat in a chair and watched this movie. “Accomplices,” I think we’ll call them.

Incisive and revealing, Laura’s report makes it clear that she resents standing out here in the cold being interviewed and thinks cops are secretly just unskilled thugs hired to protect the wealth of the ruling classes. The review is tagged as “fresh” because RT rounds neutrality up and is for that reason deeply broken, but that’s a case for another broken heart.

Hm, getting some conflicting reports. I guess we’ll cancel those out, so basically the movie’s place in culture is exactly neutral, impacting no one and nothing except for inspiring my new onstage alter-ego Snuff Porn and backup band The Special Olympics.

The other key pieces of evidence in this case being the film’s Wikipedia synopsis and poster, I think both deserve a second glance.

You know what, gumshoes? On second glance, I still hate it. In fact, I didn’t even clock the symbolism of the poster at first, which seems to be that Steven wishes he was physically able to kill himself and/or rape and/or murder women. As John Anderson of Variety put it:

For the record, Brothers is the name of the person who co-directed the movie. Mr. Glover does have a half-brother who was involved in the early stages of production, but ultimately decided he was too old for this shit. Which is understandable, considering the final data point we need to add to our report.

Oh yeah man, all dudes wish they could get an “(unsimulated)” handjob to completion from their wheelchair while swaddled in fog on a film set so Crispin Glover can make some kind of point about society’s casual cruelty, then die shortly thereafter like a horny bee.

What, you don’t want that? What are you, gay? Because if you are I’m glad you embraced that facet of yourself and wish you well on your journey.

I’m pretty sure we already did this in Step Four, but I want to be a real good detective, so here are those four still again with thorough descriptions and without the added commentary. Hopefully by maintaining a professional distance and eliminating biased language, we can ensure the images remain viable as evidence when the case goes to court. Think “impartial.”

Obscene. Perverse. If humanity takes a thousand years to die of climate change, it still won’t redeem the thinking mind for having made this. Higher consciousness was a mistake. Visible no parking sign, storefront reads “continental.”

Yep, doll’s still there. Also note the visible sliver of a wedding cake on the right side, seeming to symbolize the small fraction of the full experience of a loving relationship Steven is able to engage in as a severely disabled person. Wait, that’s actually kind of thoughtful and poignant. Is this movie good? We better move on before I consider that thought for too long.

Dollhouse cutaway, three caucasian subjects. From left to right: blonde female wearing white panties and heeled sandals. Mustached man in wheelchair and dark brown suit, spectacles. Woman in turtleneck sweater that looks like a straitjacket but isn’t, meaning our generous reading of the potential symbolism behind this shot from before was bullshit. Painting of cute dog. Green hallway. Heterogeneous architecture. Carpet. Wall. Wall. Wall. Column. Thicker column. Light bulb. Light bulb. Light bulb. Light bulb. Light bulb. Light bulb.

Final image, the police database identifies it as a 100% DNA match to the word “LOOMING” in the dictionary. Presence of shampoo and conditioner above a sink indicate a hair salon. Presence of green potion in a triangular flask indicates a stamina system.

And there you have it, gumshoes, another case closed! I mean, not really, but the actual rate of violent crimes in the U.S. that get solved each year is like thirty percent, so I still think we all qualify as honorary movie detectives now. With Carmen San Diego safely behind bars and the Louvre returned to its rightful place, we’re free to get back to what we do best: shooting peoples’ dogs because we are scared. Cops!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: toasty god, who proves that while a loving god wouldn’t do this to us, a toasty god absolutely would.

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