Crispin Glover's new movie has Nazis, pedophilia, and Down Syndrome sex.... Bored yet?

With race-baiting Kazakhs at the multiplex and hipster-in-hipster penetration at the arthouse, it's difficult in this day and age to be truly transgressive. When the audience has already seen Chris Pontius, in Jackass II, drinking horse semen, how can a director cross the line? Crispin Glover, Hollywood's favorite weirdo, seems to have a few ideas. His new film, What Is It? (in very select theaters through December), features a scene in which two actors with Down Syndrome explicitly grope and French kiss each other. And while the two mentally-challenged lovers embrace, the camera is unrelenting, lingering for several minutes (which feel like hours) on their faces, their tongues, their hands, and their bodies.

"Forrest Gump had come to the fore ... We found it confusing, and were both troubled by it. So I thought, Why can't these people, if they're using retarded people, really use retarded people?"It's just one challenging scene in a collection of images designed to provoke reaction. Add to the spectacle of the Down Syndrome couple a minstrel figure in full blackface, naked women with monkey masks feasting on watermelons, and snails being graphically killed with salt and blunt objects as they scream in pain (Fairuza Balk provided the appropriately throaty bleats). In addition to the minstrel, who insists that he is Michael Jackson, and those well-endowed gorilla women, we hear almost all of Johnny Rebel's race-baiting country ditty, "Some Niggers Never Die (They Just Smell That Way)," while images of swastikas recur throughout (including one set against a drawing of Shirley Temple donning an SS hat and boots, and holding a riding crop in her nether region). And lording above it all is Glover, who makes an appearance as a character called Dueling Demi-God Auteur, seated atop a swastika-bedecked throne.

Down Syndrome! Racism! Nazis! Pedophilia! Snails! Glover aims for gasps ... I found myself yawning.

"It's a reaction to the fear of the taboo," Glover, the real Dueling Demi-God Auteur, explains after a recent screening at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City. "Corporate entities [are] afraid to have taboo elements dealt with within their media, for fear of losing any audience members, which I think is an extremely damaging thing for the culture."

It's a well-practiced monologue. In fact, it's not the first time I've heard it. And as Glover drones on in his signature man-who-fell-to-earth locution about confronting taboos and the whitewashing of our culture, I wonder just what culture Mr. Glover is talking about. Eleven years have elapsed since principal photography began on What Is It?, and in 2006 the sight of snails being squished is a bit tame after several seasons of people washing down stink beetle burritos with moose testicle smoothies on Fear Factor. And when you consider the sell-by date of the film, the slightly stale whiff of yesterday's transgression wafts throughout, making What Is It? feel at times like an omnibus of mid-'90s alt.culture—replete with music by Charles Manson and the Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey. Even the actors with Down Syndrome recall The Kids of Widney High, a musical group comprised entirely of developmentally delayed musicians that enjoyed ironic semi-popularity beneath the shadow of early '90s political correctness. The whole thing feels like the ticket price should include a free 'zine, or at least a really cool sticker for your lunchbox purse.

Since his Andy Kaufman-esque interview on the Late Show with David Letterman in the late '80s, Glover has been Hollywood's go-to wackadooIn fact, as Glover's collaborator on the film, Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey (another pre-Internet underground celebrity), explains, What Is It? was conceived as a reaction to one of the '90s most mainstream cinematic characters. "Forrest Gump had come to the fore and we enjoyed the whole idea of these movie stars playing retarded people and the feel-good message," recalls Parfrey. "We found it confusing, and we were both troubled by it. So I thought, Why can't these people, if they're using retarded people, really use retarded people?"

But perhaps the most interesting '90s artifact from What Is It? is the director himself: Crispin Glover.