Sheesh. We checked out this DVD the other day, on our last few days of our cheap month of unlimited rentals at Blockbuster. We’re definitely going to cancel the account, as we ran out of movies that we wanted to see that they stocked very quickly. We wound up with ‘Willard’ as both of us are fond of Crispin Glover. I knew that i was going to find something about it that i liked, but not as much as i did.
No, it’s not really the film itself that i loved. It was goofy, over-the-top Crispin Glover goodness. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the team of Wong & Morgan of ‘X-Files’ and ‘Millenium’ created it. I was thrilled to death to find that there is a music video of Glover performing ‘Ben’, directed by Glover, and with commentary delivered at a breakneck pace by Glover. I even swore to buy it because of that damned video.
However, it was the accompanying documentary that was the most important. Like ‘Lost in La Mancha’, it’s the chronicle of what is essentially a failure. Morgan & Wong are left even more naked than Gilliam, and it’s funny to see the contrast in people who try to be commerical and compliant versus the imperious visionary. Morgan is wrong. He shouldn’t regret compromising to have a PG-13 ending, or Willard surviving. The problem was that he shouldn’t have made a remake at all, particularly of such a slight story with so little action. It seems as if they tried to combine ‘Bartleby’ with camp horror. How could they ever expected to suceed like that? The documentary was incredibly insightful, with everyone being as open about their hopes and reservations as possible. The closest thing to the typical studio fluff propaganda winds up being Glover’s insights, but he seems to be of the opinion that if one is working within the machine, do one’s best to make it work within its rules, and not sabotage oneself…. pretty odd from the man who made ‘What Is It?’