![]() I started out by rejecting all the things that the people who rejected me liked. The instant I realized I was an outcast it gave me a kind of freedom. People weren't even aware that I was in the same world. Check out this crumb of wisdom: "As a teenager, there was no place where I fit in at all. Crumb can function in society doesn't qualify him as well-adjusted. ![]() Only Robert "made it" in the outside world (although, in the wake of this film, Maxon's canvases have begun to find buyers). ![]() Somewhere along the line, however, Maxon's and Charles's careers derailed. "We were like three primordial monkeys working it out in the trees," assesses younger brother Maxon.īig brother Charles set the standard, and Robert and Maxon saw no choice but to follow his lead. As children all three Crumb boys (according to the film's postscript, two sisters declined to be interviewed) drew comics together, demonstrating artistic promise and the early stages of a severe case of sibling rivalry. The word dysfunctional doesn't begin to do the brothers Crumb and their scary parents justice. Nothing is spared, from harrowing tales of the artist's father's physical abuse and his mother's amphetamine addiction to the length of Crumb's penis, his offbeat sexual predilections, and even the frequency with which he masturbates. Crumb is basically two hours of intensive analysis of the groundbreaking artist (Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes calls him "the Brueghel of the Twentieth Century") and his wacked-out family as seen through the eyes of colleagues, critics, family members, ex-lovers, and R. Crumb was featured prominently in the 1990 "High & Low" exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and his work is extremely popular among collectors in Europe and Japan (so much so that the documentary ends with the artist packing up and moving to the south of France with his wife and daughter after trading six sketchbooks for a villa).ĭon't expect a plot. Over the years Crumb's work has ignited a firestorm of controversy - championed by some legitimate art critics, viciously attacked by others. Natural, Flakey Foont, and Angelfood McSpade (as well as that horny tabby, Fritz) were born within Zap's pages. In addition, Crumb virtually single-handedly created the underground comics phenomenon of the Sixties with his publication of Zap Comix in 1968. It should come as no surprise that Crumb aficionado and noted weirdo David Lynch had a hand in arranging for the picture's distribution.Ī cult hero for both his graphic, LSD-inspired, hypersexual drawings featuring big-bottomed women and his searing social criticism, Crumb nonetheless is probably best known in the mainstream for 1) his "Keep on Truckin'" drawing, 2) his cover art for the Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin) album Cheap Thrills, and 3) motion picture animator Ralph Bakshi's adaption of Crumb's Fritz the Cat character into the world's first X-rated full-length movie cartoon. Crumb got under my skin when I screened it more than a month ago, and I still can't wait for my friends to see it so I can talk to them about it. Movies that stick with you after you exit the theater are a rare commodity these days. To that list of adjectives I would add (at least) one more: "creepy." "Astonishing." "Haunting." "Riveting." "Darkly funny." "Remarkable." Those are some of the words critics at other newspapers around the country have been using to describe the extraordinary documentary Crumb, director Terry Zwigoff's painfully candid portrait of his friend, legendary underground cartoonist and world-class misanthrope Robert (better known as "R.") Crumb.
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