MPAA Rating: R
Director: Terry Zwigoff
Starring: R. Crumb, Maxon Crumb, Charles Crumb, Aline Kominsky, Robert Hughes
"Crumb" Video
As the film opens, Crumb, complete with his trademark cheap suit, thick glasses and porkpie hat, sits cross-legged on the floor, listening pensively to a scratchy blues record from his extensive and rare 78-rpm album collection. We soon learn that "bizarre" and "dysfunctional" don't even come close to describing Crumb's family. A bleak childhood led Crumb and his three brothers to escape into a fantasy world of comic books. Crumb admits that he was attracted to Bug Bunny as a child and later became fixated on Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. His first sexual memory is of hanging out in his mother's closet and humping a pair of her cowboy boots, while singing "Jesus loves me, yes I know . . . " Needless to say, he didn't get a single date during high school. It was during the late '60s that Crumb created his most popular work such as Keep on Truckin' (which caused him "nothing but headaches"), Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat, which was made into a cartoon that "embarrassed me for the rest of my life," he reveals. He finally got revenge on Fritz in a later comic by having a female ostrich stab him in the head with an icepick. Crumb's LSD-inspired comics during the '60s truly captured the seamy side of America's subconscious.
For a glimpse of the strange and disturbing world of R. Crumb, nothing beats Terry Zwigoff's brilliant 1994 documentary, which was produced by David Lynch. The most memorable scenes in the film revolve around Crumb's visits to his brothers, both of whom have artistic talent but have been trapped by their insanity, a condition that Crumb has somehow managed to escape. Charles is a recluse who has lived at home with his mother since he graduated from high school. Blankets cover all of the windows and tattered paperbacks line the walls. Charles sits in his pajamas all day in a dark upstairs bedroom, taking antidepressants, contemplating suicide (once he tried to kill himself by downing a bottle of furniture polish) and rereading novels from old Victorian writers "because there's nothing else to do." Maxon, who suffers from epileptic seizures, lives in a cheap apartment in San Francisco. When he is not out begging on the streets, Maxon spends his day painting Picasso-like artwork, sitting on nails and running cloth through his intestines. As the film closes, Crumb and his family prepare to move from their humble bungalow in Winters, California, to a remote village in southern France. Further isolation, yes, but still clinging precariously to his sanity.
For more recommended documentaries, check out Top 10 Offbeat Documentaries.
J Hajeski - 2008-01-27 20:40:29
The reviewer missed the ending credits, Crumb's brother Charles succeeded in his suicide shortly after the film was shot.