From the November/December 1989 issue of Film Comment, page 49:
Opposite Sean Penn in At Close Range, one immediately sees the difference
between their Method madnesses. The justly-praised Penn is a normal TV director's son
gifted enough to act abnormally. Statistical norms have no place in Glover's cosmos.
Toned down, he seems quaintly eccentric, as in Back to the Future; in
River's Edge he shows us a truer window to his soul. "Big" and "over the top"
can't encompass his jerks and stutters, his Valley Boy on Valium (and Lithium) performance.
He scared the bejesus out of David Letterman. Dressed in bellbottoms, platform shoes and
wig, he let fly a few roundhouse kicks to the head and wiped Dave's smug and self-satisfied
smirk from his Hoosier, faux-Harvard mug. After a sudden and improvised commercial break,
Glover was gone, written out of Letterman's history like Trotsky out of Stalin's.
Apparently he has a fifties gynecological chair in his living room, and makes dioramas of
farm animals being swallowed by lava. He's the only actor who makes this world without Andy
Kaufman an interesting place in which to watch.
-Trey Ellis
Who cares if he'll never play the hard-nosed cop whose ex-wife now has a boring husband
and whose captain begrudgingly backs him up until the suits upstairs bring down the heat?
Crispin Glover is what he is, which means brilliant. In a lousy 1981 Sylvia Kristel vehicle,
Private Lessons, as the nerdy teen friend, Glover's now trademark twitches and
learning-disabled speech stole the show. His psycho, gun-wielding high schooler in
Teachers was the only performance that didn't feel like one, making Anthony
Perkins' Norman Bates look like wishful thinking; Glover's roles suggest sorely needed
outpatient occupational therapy. If I ever have children and Crispin Glover asks to
babysit for them, I will say no.
