While Crispin Glover is primarily known for his acting skills, where he really soars is in filmmaking. His third feature, No! YOU’RE WRONG. or: Spooky Action at a Distance, is currently touring the country, and it marks his final collaboration with his father, who passed away earlier this year. While he isn’t offering a synopsis for the film, he does want people to come experience this epic journey through time.
We spoke with Glover about finally making his third feature, hoping audiences understand what he’s going for, and building massive sets.
DC: Congratulations on your new film. This is your third feature that you have directed, correct?
Crispin Glover: That’s correct, yes.
DC: So your first two were from 2005 and 2007, and now you have this. What inspired you to make your third feature?
CG: I started developing it the year that I premiered my second film, It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine. Yeah. I am not happy with how long it’s taken me. It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine premiered at Sundance in 2005, but I started developing that in 1995. My average time of filmmaking is approximately 10 years per film. It’s the thing that occupies my mind more than anything. So it’s just all these other things happen, and I work in the corporate field as an actor, so it feels like that’s what I’m kind of doing. But all the time, what I’m really functioning on is my filmmaking.
Yeah, the script for No! YOU’RE WRONG. or: Spooky Action at a Distance started being developed in 2007. Sets started being built in 2010. Then we started shooting it in 2013, and then I was shooting every year. What was I shot first was No! YOU’RE WRONG, which was intended to be a feature film. And then I think that was shot for three years, so 2013, 2014, 20 5. Then by 2016 then I’d started what I call the Spooky Action at a Distance part of it. It changed the film significantly enough to have a title and a subtitle.
DC: Oh, that’s so cool. What was the kernel of inspiration for this film for you?
CG: Well, it’s sort of long and involved. There was another screenplay that I had developed for an actress and I to work on together. She was very good at character work, but that film didn’t happen. And at a certain point, I realized, well, I liked the concept. It was a two-person screenplay, just two people, but it had interesting dynamics.
I thought, “Well, maybe I can make something like that with my father.” He and I had never acted in a film together. So I started developing that. Like I say, in 2007, I developed this other idea prior to that, but then it ended up being a very different kind of screenplay, of course, than what that other one had been.
But also, I had 18,000 square feet of former horse stables or farm built next to this property that I own in the Czech Republic, which I purchased specifically for building sets.
DC: Oh, cool.
CG: But they’re not traditionally shaped in terms of what a shooting stage often is. They’re more squareish, and these are longer, rectangular shapes. So I had to kind of devise what would be able to be built where, and a friend of mine, David Brothers, who I co-directed the second film with, is really great with set building. I had him help sketch out some initial concepts utilizing the blueprints of the atelier. It took two and a half years to build the sets. It’s been quite a lot of work.
DC: Oh my God, what a process. But it must feel incredible, then, for people to finally be seeing it.
CG: Yeah, last night was the first time I showed it to an audience, and I was pleased with the response. I really did not know what people would be thinking about or making of it. I didn’t know what level of comprehension there would be. And there were things that I felt had humor to them—I wouldn’t call this a comedy. I don’t think many people would. But there is humor in it. But to me, I was thinking maybe people would find it amusing if they were comprehending what was going on, but I wasn’t really looking to get a laugh-out-loud response. That wasn’t what was in my mind.
So I was pleased, though, in places that I had felt were amusing, that people were laughing out loud and a fair amount. I mean, who knows? It was maybe a particularly exuberant opening premiere crowd of people, but it was good. Then, with the Q&A afterwards, people were asking questions, and they were making comments that I could see showed a sophisticated level of comprehension. I didn’t know if that sophisticated comprehension would happen or not. I didn’t know if it was necessarily comprehensible. [Laughs]
DC: That’s got to be so gratifying. Releasing a film that you put so much love into is so scary, especially because you’ve been working on it for so long, and you made it with your dad. It’s just a lot of personal stuff wrapped up in this one, it feels like.
CG: Yeah, there is personal stuff. I wasn’t afraid, but I was curious, and then I was pleased.
DC: That’s amazing. Well, what was the experience like acting with your dad? And I know he passed away this year, and I’m so sorry. What was that experience like, getting to act opposite him finally in a film?
CG: Well, it was interesting. I had directed him before in my second film, and he was very easy to work with in that regard. He was also involved in the writing of No! YOU’RE WRONG. or: Spooky Action at a Distance, and that was more difficult. I anticipated it would be that way. Even before I started working with my father, I knew he was going to want to get involved for various reasons, and I knew that I wanted to have somebody I could talk to. So Mike Pallagi became involved in the screenplay.
I’d known Mike for a long time, and I get along with him. He’s a nice fellow, an intelligent guy, and a good writer. So I had him early on become involved in the screenplay. And then I knew when my father came in, I don’t mean to say my father did anything wrong. I mean, there’s the classic generational differences or what have you. But my father did have very important contributions, so I can’t complain about it.
DC: You’re known as an actor, but you are talking so much about how you love to make films. What about filmmaking keeps drawing you towards it? What do you love so much about filmmaking and creating these strange narratives?
CG: Well, I mean, I was saying about how long it takes me to make these things. Luckily, I’m patient, even though I don’t like how long it’s taken me to make these films. I would rather have made 20 movies in this period of time. But there’s something that you become ultra-aware of finances with self-funding. It would be an easy way to bankrupt yourself. And it’s my third feature that I funded. So I’ve been through it. After the second film, it was actually a little bit scary at one point, and I recognized I need to be very careful how I deal with this.
But the time that it takes does afford me to think about things, and there’s a depth that comes from things that are worked on and thought about for a long time that would not necessarily happen. I mean, there are great, depthful films that are made in a corporate standard way, although it’s rare. No matter how a film’s made, if it’s of genuine entry. But for whatever reason, I like thinking about these things. I enjoy the artful process of it. And I am patient for some reason. I’ve always been patient with art.
And like I say, I would prefer that they’re coming out very quickly. [Laughs]
But things sometimes, with this film in particular, just every step, every step was… There were some things that were quicker than others, but I don’t know. It is partly in the second title, Spooky Action at a Distance. It’s sort of poetically referred to in the film. And it’s hard to describe. It’s best to see the film to let it sort of describe it in the way that it is. Something I’ve been hesitant about with the film is giving too much description.
DC: You don’t even have a synopsis. I love that, though. You’re like, “Just experience it.”
CG: Well, I mean, I understand why a synopsis can be helpful, too. So I’ve debated, but on my first film, I gave a synopsis, and it worked well enough for that. But I don’t think I did it for the second film. I tried a number of combinations of things for this one, and they started sounding trite. It sounded, even if I said that there are peripheral things that the film’s about, that if I condense it to one or two sentences, it makes it sound like this is what you’re supposed to be thinking about.
DC: Ooooh, OK.
CG: Yeah. And I mean, maybe I’ll come up with something, but I feel like it’s better to just let it, because already the title is a pretty baroque title: No! YOU’RE WRONG. or: Spooky Action at a Distance. Not that necessarily lets you know what it’s about. So if I have that and then I have two sentences, I don’t know. I wasn’t able to come up with something I felt completely satisfied by.
I also am trying not to give too much information. It’s almost as if I just talk about the making of it, how things came to be that, because the film within the film deals with some aspects of the concepts of making a film. So if I actually talk about the making of the film, I’m almost dealing with some of the thematic aspects that are within.
DC: This is unrelated to that. I noticed Caitin Stickels is cast in this film, and I’ve followed her for a long time. I think she’s a gorgeous model. And I wanted to hear more about casting her because I haven’t seen her in a lot of films.
CG: Caitin is from the Northwest, and so is Mika Mae Jones, who’s also in the film. Mika was already going to be playing a character in the film named Eve, and there were a lot of female characters in the film.
There are different time periods: 18 68, 18 88, 19 18, 19 48. And ultimately, contemporary that has more to do with the Spooky Action at a Distance. So I was describing to Mika different characters, and I don’t think she was necessarily showing me a picture of her friend for that reason. But when I saw Caitin, I wanted people who were recognizable and memorable. And Caitin has a very unique, memorable face and essence, and she’s a very confident and intelligent, she’s artistically sensitive.
I didn’t know that when I first saw pictures of her, but she was friends with Mika, who is artistically sensitive, and they were very close friends. And so I said, “Wow, she really has a great face. Maybe she would be right for one of these characters.” Mika was immediately enthusiastic and put me in contact with Caitin. And I know that Caitin had done modeling at that point. I don’t know how much she had done at that point.
Then Charlotte Kemp Mull, who did the orchestration of the music, directs music videos. And I had shown Charlotte an early cut of the film that had Caitin in it. Since then, Charlotte has used Caitin in some of her music videos and things. And I think around that time, Caitin started getting a lot of visibility. But she was great.
DC: I mean, you have an incredible cast of female characters, and like you said. This is a film, obviously, with you and your dad, but also some incredible women. So it’s cool to see that stacked cast of women.
CG: The women characters are very important. When I was initially thinking of it, the conception was it was just going to be myself and my father. We were going to be the only two characters. The other characters were going to be shadow characters, where you saw a silhouette, or they were on the phone. But then once I started writing the female characters, I was interested in a certain structuralism of the old world romantic interest and the new World romantic interest.
But it is also a multi-act structure. There’s kind of a three-act structure that we’re used to and a five-act structure that we’re not quite as used to. And some of the elements that are in an epic sort of story that can have a five-act structure get referenced as say, a parent or a descendant. Whereas in the five-act structure, you see that parent or that generation that gives birth, so to speak, to the hero protagonist of the main structure.
And then you see the descendant of the hero becoming the master of the inner and the outer world, and how that affects the following generation. So I was interested in that with this particular story in different ways. So there are different time periods, and each one of those eras has a different generation of both the father and male, and then the mother/female characters. The main story structure component has an old-world romantic interest and a new-world romantic interest. So that particular generation has two, and then the other generations each have one. So there were a fair number of female characters in it.
DC: Is there a reason why you gravitated toward the number eight for all of these?
CG: Oh, just easy to remember.
DC: OK, cool.
CG: But I needed at least 20 or 30 years between each. So it was just 1868, 1888, 1918, 1948. I mean, there were particular things that I was interested in the era of each of them.
There were different drafts of different times, but I was set on those. There were concepts that were not ultimately in the movie, but there was something about certain technology that existed by 1918. I think that the first year that I sat on might’ve been 1918, for the technology of a weapon that became available. It is in the movie, but I think most people would just look at it and say, “OK, there’s a gun or a submachine gun, a Tommy gun.”
But it meant something particular to me when I was writing it. It was an introduction of a new technology, and it meant one person would have it where another person might not. But I mean, there are all kinds of things that you research and you put in and you think it’s going to be really critical and important, and then it’s still there, but other things become more critical and important.
No! YOU’RE WRONG. or: Spooky Action at a Distance is currently touring across North America, with its next screening at the Coolidge Theater in Boston on November 3, 2025. Check Glover’s website for more upcoming screening dates.
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