"Outtakes" movie column, Crispin Glover, June 1992

Glover in "Rubin and Ed"

For a few years in the early 1990s, I did movie reviews twice a week at Salt Lake City radio station KALL 910, one of the last of the full-service format AM stations. Most of that time I was on the air with midday host Peter Boam ("Peter B" on the air, great guy off the air), but remained after Peter was unable to renew his contract and spent some time with host Hans Petersen.

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner

SALT LAKE CITY -- The news was both exciting and ominous: Crispin Glover would be joining me in the KALL radio studios for a live interview.

Exciting because Glover is one of those rare, genuinely original actors who delivers unexpected performances in films on a consistent basis -- Marty McFly's geeky dad in "Back to the Future," a teen speed freak covering up a murder in "River's Edge," Andy Warhol in "The Doors," a cockroach-obsessed wacko in "Wild at Heart," to name a few.

With Glover, you never know what you're going to get.

Which brings us to ominous: He has an unsettling reputation for giving interviews that turn ugly and stay that way. Glover frightened David Letterman sufficiently enough to get himself ejected from "Late Night with David Letterman" after nearly kicking the host's face (Glover returned, somewhat calmer, a week later). He stuttered and giggled his way through the "Tonight Show" a time or two and has transformed the occasional radio interview, conducted by ignorant and unsuspecting hosts, into Painful Radio Listening.