When they started Gimme Shelter the Maysles brothers thought they were making a conventional backstage concert film. Truly transcendent documentary films often seem the result of sheer serendipity, the choice of just the right subject at the perfect time. Produced by Lynn O'Donnell, Terry Zwigoff With Robert Crumb, Aline Crumb, Charles Crumb, Maxon Crumb. Zwigoff's documentary, which shows all this and more, is truly one of the most extraordinary films of the year.ĬRUMB (R) - Contains graphic comic book illustrations, disturbing sexual confessions and profanity.1995 / Color / 1:33 enhanced widescreen / 120 min.
And no one has transformed that monster more successfully into popular art. But no one is more aware of the beast within than Crumb. A complex mixture of user, egotist, misogynist, pessimist and sex fiend (Bugs Bunny was his first sexual fantasy, then Sheena, Queen of the Jungle), he lives in a constant state of self-irony, disgust at mall-culture America and gleeful inspiration.
#Robert crumb documentary professional
"Crumb," which also features the artist's professional observers (such as Time magazine critic Robert Hughes and Deirdre English of Mother Jones magazine), fellow cartoonists (including "Zippy the Pinhead's" Bill Griffith), latest wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb and 17-year-old daughter, Sophie (a chip off the old block, judging by her drawings), mines Crumb's innermost nature. If he has such a troubled, even depraved history, why does he come across as relatively balanced and sensitive? Why, for instance, did Charles (once the family's artist-bully) evolve into a demure stay-at-home who seldom bathes, is strung out on antidepressants and hangs out with a mother he resents? For all his questionable qualities, Charles is a highly intelligent, witty presence. Character mysteries arise with a profound urgency you seldom get in fictional movies. But he's also reentering the psychic morass that formed this family. Now, as he returns home (a rare thing for him his visit is largely for Zwigoff's purposes), he is something of the conquering hero. His material wealth, the public recognition, the groupies-all these developments have given Robert conventional validation. The difference between Robert, now 51, and his brothers (Crumb's two sisters declined to be interviewed for the film) is the success his bizarre outlook has brought him. But even more influential is Robert Crumb's late father, a former Marine who broke Robert's collarbone one Christmas Day and stopped speaking to him after seeing his first artwork. Hovering in the background during these conversations at the Crumb home in Philadelphia is Robert's mother, Beatrice, clearly ill at ease with Zwigoff's camera crew, but a significant player in the psychic family history. There's Maxon, his younger brother, who sleeps on a bed of nails and (following yogi practice) swallows thin ropes to cleanse his bowels. Are the Crumbs zoned-out loonies or touchingly normal? There's Charles, the reclusive older brother whose inspired, dark doodlings triggered Robert's artistry and success. The more we find out, the more we want to know. By getting to know them, we learn about Robert too.
#Robert crumb documentary movie
A seminal nerd-god in the underground comic movement, starting with his '60s publication, Zap Comix, Crumb has tapped gainfully into the darkest recesses of his own-and America's-id.īeyond this aesthetic recognition, the movie spends more engaging time with members of Crumb's extraordinary family. Perhaps "Crumb," a documentary that took six years to shoot, will put the record straight: that the gangly, porkpie-hatted, gonzo satirist is an American artist of the highest order. * The "Keep on Truckin' " poster, that modern-folkloric panel of three bearded men walking in step and leaning backward as if they are human Harley-Davidsons. * His cover design for the album "Cheap Thrills" by Janis Joplin's Big Brother and the Holding Company. ("An embarrassment to me for the rest of my life," he says.) * Fritz the Cat, his comic book character made famous by Ralph Bakshi's porno-art film of the same name. IN TERRY Zwigoff's superb, revealing "Crumb," cartoonist Robert Crumb makes the misanthropic lament that he will be best remembered for three things: Graphic comic book illustrations, disturbing sexual confessions and profanity
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