Robert Crumb by Terry Zwigoff****

Robert Crumb by Terry Zwigoff**** (4 stars for unrelenting honesty thanks to the people in the film for sharing)


A bona fide documentary.  All the human details, from Robert to his mother,his brothers, his art, his family,house, social surroundings, daughter, son, everybody is so human.   Difficulties in living from day to day, the humor, the sex lives of the brothers, the rough and tumble of common middle america.  Tough living and Robert some how came through always w a smile.  The documentary shows the difficult side of living - things that we don't really see in most documentaries - especially when Robert Crumb is so famous now.  He just had a show in the museum of Paris!  And, many visitors, they read comics on the wall!  and some panels are fully translated into french.  Great work and bravo for the stamina and drive and force of maintaining a personal vision.  The film mentions that he sold everything to move to the south of france. ?  Why?  Of course we all know that French people know how to enjoy life and take long holidays etc.  But will there be new works with say, the French conditions?  Lets wait and see.


His brothers, and brothers notebooks, from comics, to text, to scribbles without writing, pages and pages and pages - this is much greater art than the esthetic contemporary art of the 80s... it means his life is spilled here... not due to a conscious "designed" course of action.  He just did it this way because that was his self expression.  Now he goes into begging as a course of self discipline - like a job everyday for a few hours on the street.  Bed of nail, passing a shoestring through his mouth and out the other end to clean and scrub the intestines... it seems like a sort of guru training.  Must be very hard to live in a body with such a soul and wired in the brain in such a way.  Just reminds me, sometimes people are put together in a way that you have to be careful - fragile in handling.