Crumb is one of the greatest documentaries ever made. Tragically, it was not even nominated for an academy award. Both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert thought that Crumb was a masterpiece with Siskel naming it the best film of 1995.
In the mid 60's I found some Crumb comic books hidden under my brothers bed. I was fascinated and it trigger the "bohemian" side of my personality. I later lived a block away from where Crumb had lived in a off beat neighborhood. This was at a time of social upheaval with the war in Vietnam, the hippy revolution, and sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It shaped who I am to this day fifty years later. I now have a small but treasured collection of Crumb original art work. And the movie Crumb really added to my interest and understanding of the struggles and craziness that shaped his life. A great artist and a great movie.
Roger Ebert said it all when he said if you see this movie "you'll never forget it". Just an incredible, fascinating film. You think Robert Crumb is strange? Wait till you see his brothers and you realize he's the normal one!
What they don't mention is that Crumb has two sisters who not only refused to appear in the film but said they would sue if he even mentioned their names. Years later, a rich man in France offered to give Crumb his home there in exchange for 25 of Crumb's original sketchbooks, and that is where Crumb lives to this day.
I just saw this film recently. "Crumb" It was one of the saddest, most moving and heartbreaking documentaries I think I've ever seen. All that hidden pain. 😢
I watched this film a few years ago and I remember being absolutely blown away. I was fascinated and disturbed when I heard the story of Robert Crumb and his family. Crumb is simply one of the greatest, most extraordinary documentaries ever made. One of the underappreciated, overlooked masterpieces of the 90's decade.
The now famous Jordan Peterson thinks it is a straight ahead documentary about the manufacture of serial killers and psychopaths. Certainly the Crumb brothers are demented (With Robert being the only one that successfully used art to escape a terrible fate), but it seems that aside from Max's brushes with sexual assault they are mostly harmless. It's a very sad story, and if you take the Robert part out (i.e. remove the insane luck of talent) you'd have a story that mirrors millions of tattered lives all across America. It's no wonder Peterson's message of responsibility and emotional growth is resonant; when this movie came out I was about the same age as all these BLM "protesters" and looking for meaning in all the wrong places for a lot of the same reasons Crumb went to SF to join the summer of love and found comics. I never found my calling and find more in common with Max and Charles to be honest.
@@stopthephilosophicalzombie9017 For Pete's sake, none of those brothers killed anybody. Yes, Max’s confessed of having "molested" women n public places, finally culminating with him pulling a woman's pants down in a supermarket, which led to him being given a say in a mental institution. He said that being there and being put on psych meds scared him out of ever doing that kind of thing again. Later, he said that his past behavior was "bestial," but that resulted from a physical condition that prevents him from having sex. But that is a far cry from killing people. Jordan Peterson is full of shite again, as usual.
As drawing class instructor in a design college, I made all my students watch this film, hoping that they would get the message that you should only draw what is really relevant to you and not what you think others would like to see. I bet they really hated me for that.
I was in the theatre at Tiff when Ebert was reviewing Crumb, and like he says he had an Isle seat at the back of the theatre. i was so blown away by the documentary that after the credits I was up and applauding the film, unfortunately by myself. I was shocked that it didn’t get a standing ovation. Still a great film, thanks for the memories.
AdviceColumn The director, Cinematographer, and Camera guy, who where there for the Q and A appreciated it. It was the original premiere at Tiff not some random cinema.
To explain what Gene meant when he said "Last week I said I don't expect to see a better film that Crumb this year," it was that the last show had highlights from the Sundance Film Festival and they mentioned Crumb (it won the Doc award there) and Gene had seen it and mentioned that comment.
I miss both of these guys they both died tragically. whenever these two would agree on something you would know that it is good. crumb was a really different kind of documentary altogether. they were right about this one.
@@dirkross9517 I very often disagreed with Ebert. More often than not he was a self-serious blowhard. I give him a break bc, well, just look at the guy.
nightly alignment Hell yes, this is one of the most underrated and best documentaries ever made in my opinion. They were usually right on a lot of movies, but when they got it wrong, boy did they get it wrong.
Stop the Philosophical Zombies I disagreed with him on Die Hard, A Clockwork Orange, Blue Velvet, Gladiator, The Usual Suspects, Dead Poets Society, The Thing, Unforgiven, The Godfather Part II, Home Alone, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Jumanji, My Cousin Vinny, and so many other good movies he gave negative reviews as well. The sad thing is that he thought Home Alone 3 was a better movie than all of these I just mentioned. I liked Roger, but boy could he be very wrong about films sometimes.
I just discovered Mr Natural and now I'm obsessed with Crumbs work. Both my parents have passed in the last year and my mom brought up years ago how she met a cartoonist in San Francisco during the 60's and he was very much an introvert 😑. Now that I just discovered him I'll never be able to know if Crumb was the introvert she spoke of
Charles Crumb suffered a horrible life, beat down by the world and broken in by his own mother, he really lived a "post-creativity" life. No drawing, no writing, just taking in novels to pass time.
What happened with Robert was that the success in the art was what saved him. Charles only got it down on paper, which wasn't enough. And it's sad that Charles did kill himself and how his fat ass mother didn't care about his problems.
@@sha11235 exactly, I completely agree. The fact that his mother could be so uninterested in what he was going through and what challenges and problems he was facing all throughout his life, is genuinely sickening. His mother was in large part responsible for his death
Not just his mother. His father broke the boys down too, apparently he was an unbearable authoritarian. His mother, however, forcibly gave him at least one enama..
@@sha11235 He had made two suicide attempts before. He stopped drawing after the first one. But even before that, you can see from his art that his mind was unraveling.
I love this movie. I was lucky enough to find the soundtrack on cd and the movie on DVD. I originally went to see it with a buddy of mine who recommended it. I'm glad he did.
If you are heading South on the 'Sure-Kill' expressway through the oil storage tanks, look to your left and you'll see the Vare Avenue neighborhood where Crumb grew up . . . doesn't get more depressing than that! Crumb humanized and characterized the Philadelphia experience, with all the grit and concrete.
If you read the biography of almost any artist or other prominent individual on Wikipedia, you will find moving details of abuse, unhappiness, or misfortune in their life, especially towards the end. Crumb's history seems to be particularly tragic. Hardly anyone is immune from the vicissitudes of the human condition. There is one person whose luck in life (and death) I envy. That's jazz bass player Ray Brown, who had a happy childhood, became a world-renown artist, perfectly stable psychologically, liked by everyone, working until the very end, and dying in his sleep.
I'll echo what many other people have said here in the comments section: one of the best documentaries I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty of them over several decades. Memorable, highly recommended.
It's too bad documentaries generally don't get shown in mainstream movie houses. I saw Crumb at a small independent movie house in Boston while going to art school.
I saw this on cable a long time ago and I've never forgotten it. Crumb is an interesting guy and perhaps could be called the Hieronymus Bosch of cartooning. His childhood was like an oyster filled with sand. The irritation produced a lot of pearls. My impression was his older brother was more naturally talented, but unfortunately he fell into mental illness. I'll never forget Robert chuckled when his brother described a failed suicide attempt. Crumb's politics were, of course, infantile. And if he hated America so much, he should have stayed and criticized it via editorial cartoons. Instead he hightailed it to France. C'est la vie.
This story seems to repeat itself with artistic families a lot. There are often siblings that have fierce rivalries and often one or more of them, despite being brilliant and talented, don't make it. Take the philosopher Wittgenstein. I believe that several of his brothers killed themselves despite all being brilliant thinkers and musicians. Genius usually comes with a high price tag, and is usually a very lonely state of affairs.
@Ben Garrison: So, you would tell Blacks in 1950s America to "stay and criticize it" . . . rather than "hightailing it to France", where they could lead a decent life (?)
In the 60s and 70s Crumbs work was everywhere. In my case, I thought it was cool but then forgot about it. My roommate was also a tortured artist that was misunderstood. We grew up together so I knew his background and he created his own torture. He even looked like Crumb but better looking. The girls were there for him but he screwed that up too? He was a follower of Crumb and professed understanding of Crumb's art. I often wonder what happened to George, he went off the deep end for the second time in 76 and that was the last time anyone saw him. Artists are very strange people. Creative but a bit beyond my scope?
@outdoorfreedom9778 > > Artists are very strange people. > Creative but a bit beyond my scope? maybe we need them to be - I think you nailed it right there.
You said: "Tragically, it was not even nominated for an academy award." "Crumb" was snubbed last year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences -- after qualifying with a New York Film Festival showing in September 1994 -- and is therefore ineligible for reconsideration by the Academy's documentary selection committee. Ridiculous politics. Robert himself remarked, "Thank God! Can you imagine how hectic our lives would've become?"
He said that the movie was a big reason why they moved to France. He expected it to play in a few art houses and then disappear. Instead, it was a big hit, and it gave him more fame in the USA than he wanted to deal with. Apparently, his wife anticipated that that might happen and pushed for the move first.
@@milascave2 Actually, he packed his stuff, took the family, and went to France for several reasons. He was always kind of disgusted with America, he loved the socialism and the artist-friendly environment and culture France has, he and his wife were huge Francophiles and he and his wife thought it would be a much, MUCH better environment to raise their daughter in. One thing I thought was funny--he's been living there in France for over 30 years... and he's never learned to speak a lick of French. Ah, Robert...
link biff I disagree, and think today’s blockbusters are overrated. I find documentaries to be way more interesting than fiction films for the most part.
@@linkbiff1054 Maybe that's really only saying: "I don't like poorly made documentaries'" (?) My experience: the best of almost anything . . . is usually very good. The question is always: how much of that best . . . is there (?) (Hmmm. This might actually make an interesting research project . . .)
Zwigoff said Crumb was pretty shocked by the final result. He had filmed years of material, with that you can create any mood you want... Zwigoff heavily focused on the dysfunctional side of the family. Must have been very confronting to watch.
It's one of the most affecting and honest movies ever made. The art only serves to accentuate the focus on the human condition and how the American spirit of success at any cost will impact the freaks, sensitives, artists and losers.
I saw an intervieew with Zwigoff. He said the financial backers he talked to all wanted him to do MTV style animation of Crumbs comics, but he wanted to do an art film about Crumb's dysfunctional family. So, it was hard to get funding. I'm glad Zwigoff won out in the end.
2:22 - "It's actually a mockery of Black people." No, it's a mockery of the way white Americans saw Black people in 1969. How does anyone fail to understand what Crumb was doing? Of course, the last five years or so have shown me that Americans don't get satire. At all.
Especially in the context all of Crumb's other work. He was absolutely savage in the way he dealt with mainstream American culture and values. My favorite example of this might have been in "Whiteman Meets Bigfoot." The part where the hunters put a rifle to Yetti's head while she's unconscious, and one of them says, "G'wan, blow its brains out," seems to me like it says pretty much everything about the stupidity and cruelty which Crumb observed and despised in his fellow humans. And then you have examples like "When the N*****s Take Over America," in which Crumb condensed racist and anti-Semitic paranoid beliefs in order to show their absurdity, although there were some people who either took it as an un-ironic statement of Crumb's own beliefs, or took it as a validation of their own beliefs. I mean, if someone can take your beliefs, boil them down, and put them in the form of a comic strip, only for you to read it and say, "Uh-huh, yup, that's actually what I think," then you're probably an idiot, but it rolled off their heads like rain off an umbrella.
@@archerj.maggott1372 Yes. Crumb wrote two strips, "when the n------ take over America" And "when the Jews take over America. Of course, he did not mean it. His wife and daughter are Jewish. He was trying to parody racist propaganda. But the problem was that it was so similar to the propaganda that he was trying to parody that,if that, out of context, you would not know that is was a joke. So, real neo-Nazis republished it without his permission, and that got some folks pretty mad. He later regretted having published those strips. You can draw your own conclusion about his earlier black characters, like Angelfood McSpade.He said that white liberals hated it, but the Black Panthers thought it was hilarious.
What are you blathering on about? There's plenty of offensive shit around. Try looking at Mar-A-Lago... that's fucking horrific. Nobody is stopping anyone from creating art. Are you upset that "offensive" art isn't popular? That's kind of on you, then.
@@alejoparedes2388 As disturbing as the brothers were, I doubt the sisters escaped the insanity of their home unscathed. Hate to think incest was part of the experience but it would seem so.
In an interview set that Roger (RIP) did with Terry Zwigoff after the film opened wider and started getting the acclaim it richly deserved, Zwigoff mentions that Robert not only has no contact or relationship with his sisters, but they each had filed lawsuits against him demanding he pay them reparations for the "crimes against women" that his comics were guilty of (not shockingly, Robert ignored them, and I don't think the lawsuits ever went anywhere). This is a great film about a fundamentally very sad set of human lives.
a couple days ago i was just randomly watching Sikel and Ebert clips on here and i happened upon their review of "The Doors", im not a particularly huge fan of that film which isnt to say i dont like it either. im just saying i wasnt watching that specific review for any particular reason. but Roger started out giving glowing praise to the film and how incredible the live sequences were and how well he captured the time period and how good Kilmer was in the role and on and on, then Gene started praising the film and everything about it. Roger then cut in and says you actually liked it? Genes says yeah didnt you just say you liked it too? and Roger says im not giving it a thumbs up though. and he precedes to go about how miserable it is to watch and how painful it is seeing the later years of Morrisons life and its all just dreary and difficult to watch. then he likes this doc? the Doors was way less dreary and easy to watch than this. not saying Crumb isnt good, but man it is dark and depressing and some of your soul dies seeing it.
As a teen, sure, Bathe got married before he became a well known artist. Then he had another dry spell. But AFTER he became a famous artist, the P-train really started rolling through Crumb town and didn't stop for a long time, if ever. He was married again, and still is, but he had an open marriage, so that didn't stop him.
Excellent documentary. I saw it twenty years ago, and remember being moved by this man's life experiences. He changed the world, or at least a bit of it.
