Cheap Crumb (Widescreen Special Edition) (DVD) (Terry Zwigoff) Price

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Customer Reviews of Crumb (Widescreen Special Edition)

What a Talent - What a Strange Man!
Talented but odd, R, Crumb. <
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>I have a theory about artists, their brain is just wired different than the rest of us. Artsy fartsy, eccentric... yup. <
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>This film follows around this man, artist and free thinker - Robert Crumb. There seems to be no order of events here, the camera really does just follow him around. <
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>As kids, Robert, his brothers and sisters, had a somewhat normal childhood. We see photos - the smiling happy kids, who all look "normal." (what went wrong?) The brothers discuss how they used to draw things from school and life, as kids. The had a club, and eventually a comic book. Each had their contributions. <
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>Robert went on to fame and fortune. The two sisters refused to be part of this documentary (humm..) Robert's two brothers, Maxim and Charles, talked casually, with Robert, cameras rolling. They discuss anything and everything. No modesty or worry about embarrassment, not here! They sit in Charles' filthy bedroom, he admits to not showering for a month. (ick) They show tons of early work and photographs, which was fascinating. <
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>Not for young kids. Ooodles of nudity, swearing, vulgar talk, and vulgar art. We watched this for my dear Norman, a huge fan of Mr. Natural. All this time, I thought Mr. Natural was a friend of the Grateful Dead, and now I learned - nope. <
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>One thing I admired about Robert, other than his genius talent, is that he refused to sell out. He got offers to do album covers or shows or books, that he could have got tons of money for, but, if he wasn't interested, he just wasn't interested. And, he doesn't do autographs (so be careful on eBay!) <
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>The brothers talk about how in high school they weren't too popular with girls, and so on. Was funny, and just plain real life. Maybe that was something notable about this film - the total painfully nakedness of being themselves. No pretentiousness here, nope. <
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>I started to get a wee bit board with it by the end. but, it was certainly educational. 4 stars. thanks! <
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A degenerate genius?
Will comic book artist Robert Crumb--best known as "R.Crumb" of "Keep on trucking" fame--someday be recognized as a great American artist of the 20th century? Will future generations speak of him in the same breath as Picasso and Michelangelo? Is he really that good? Is the comic book a legitimate art form? Or is he just an ephemeral phenomenon of the American popular culture, to be placed somewhere between Andy Warhol and Tiny Tim, Thomas Kinkade and Paris Hilton? <
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>Director Terry Zwigoff in this documentary about Crumb's life and work makes a strong affirmative case. He works hard at showing us an iconoclastic genius who, because of his own demons, was able to expose our own. And if genius is, as somebody once said, an infinite capacity for taking pains, then R.Crumb clearly is a candidate. Zwigoff reveals him as a man who draws and observes with an incredibly practiced (left) hand and a most penetrating eye. His big-bottomed women with their legs of knotted muscle that so obsessed him, his black-faced jungle bunnies, like something out of a degenerate southern racist's mind, his demented tales of childish lust for sex and blood--the entire oeuvre of his work seems to cry out to us: Save me. I am sick. Stop me before I draw again. <
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>I am reminded in a sense of the bitter work of George Grosz who so effectively depicted the sleazy, gluttonous degeneration of the German middle class between the world wars. There is the same almost juvenile need to shock and smear the bourgeoisie, to rub our faces in our animal nature, and to test the limits of what the burghers will tolerate. Grosz wisely fled Nazi Germany and Robert Crumb has fled the United States. <
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>I wonder, could it be for similar reasons? There is a point in Zwigoff's film where he shows us a particular comic book created by Crumb in which the story is of pornographic incest involving children. If such a comic book were published today it would be seized by the FBI, and the artist and publishers thrown in jail. Could it be that Crumb was ADVISED to leave the US? I also wonder if Zwigoff is in any danger himself, having produced this documentary which shows part of the verboten action. Will the morality police go after the film maker? What is the statute of limitations on child pornography? <
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>On the other hand, would they dare? The Supreme Court has defined actionable expression as being utterly without redeeming social value. There can be little doubt that the work of Crumb and Zwigoff is of estimable value to us as a society in that it puts a mirror up to our faces so that we can see our darker, seamier side, an animalistic side that we hide with our clothes and our vehicles or sheltered behind our Venetian blinds and closed doors. A function of the artist is to tell us what nobody else in the society will tell us. Art is not propaganda extolling the virtues of the state or a medium to foster social cohesion or to make us feel good about ourselves. On the contrary, art must penetrate the facade of respectability and reveal us as we really are, perversions and all. <
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>Crumb does this. He is compelled to do this. He takes the infinite pains to exaggerate what we look like so that we can see what we really are. Of course society as seen through the lens of the artist is always to some extent a distortion filtered through the psyche of the artist. In Crumb's case we can see, thanks to Zwigoff's fine work, that a dysfunctional family life, combined with a difficult experience as a child and teen, sowed the bitter seeds that would spring up in the sunshine of his accomplished adulthood. This is why Zwigoff needed to set up his camera in the Crumb household, to show us Charles in his messiness at home still living with his mother, taking his meds and staying indoors with his rotting teeth. And that is why we needed to see his talented brother Maxon, pathetically upon his bed of nails prior to his suicide. And that is also why Robert Crumb's sisters declined to participate in the filming. They knew what it would reveal. And that is also why R.Crumb himself is reported to have hated this documentary and why he had to be dragged along to get it finished. He was torn. The artist in his soul wanted to see the truth of his life expressed. The everyday Robert Crumb knew that he would regret the exposure. <
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>One thing though that I think has to be a positive for Crumb is that the film makes it clear that he is anything but a sick soul, that he is not only a wizard with his pen, but he is nobody's fool. He comes across as geeky but intelligent and worldly wise with an ability to laugh good-naturedly at humanity's foibles. <
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>Nonetheless we hear Crumb claim that he never loved anybody--lusted after some babes, his two wives, some girlfriends, but he never loved them--until, that is, he fell in love with his daughter. But Zwigoff gives us a hint of what that relationship is like when his camera catches Crumb bestowing a kiss upon his daughter's cheek, a kiss that she immediately wipes off as something annoying. I think that this scene, perhaps more than any, is what R.Crumb regrets about this all too-telling documentary. <
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>My opinion: R.Crumb will indeed be recognized by future generations as a great artist. They will look back at our times and remark how accurately Crumb captured our hypocrisy, and how he was able to project the crimes and misdemeanors of our hidden hearts onto the comic book page with a skill and originality and a brutal honesty only possible from the mind of an artist.

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"I don't feel anything. One way, or the other." R Crumb.
Robert Crumb writes underground comics. But he's famous. So... they aren't that underground anymore. <
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>This movie is not what I expected. I watched it before American Splendor, but the people who assume just because they both made comics together 'theez movie$ r teh awesome, about undergrnd comix-orz, both da same!!!!1!' and every one had some stupid listmania thing with these two and ghost world. However, this is nothing like either of these movies. <
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>If you liked Capturing the Friedmans, or the dynamic between the family in Royal Tenenbaums, Crumb will fascinate. <
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>You might just become fascinated by all the strange happenings in his life. He isn't normal or sane. His family is disturbing. He cheats on his wife, and when asked how she deals with his fooling around with other women, she says 'I fool around with other men.' No one who knows him is safe from insanity. <
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>This guy has always amazed me. His comics are funny, seemingly harsh, but secretly, in my mind, some of his sick desires are appealing to me. His family dynamic is as twisted as his comics, and though he is an introverted bookish man, his oldest brother is a narcissistic maniac who you can't help but feel sorry for him, His Younger brother is a seemingly slow witted man, but is actually living the life of a monk or yogi, meditating and begging, and living in poverty. <
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>The movie covers Crumbs life and career, and his current situation (at least, current in 99). It explains how he had taken some 'LSD', although he assumes thats not what it was, because it has permantly affected his perceptionary skills. He talks about his love life, his ex-wife, and his own problems and perversions. <
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>There are no special features, just a trailer. <
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>The audio quality was decent, although when the filmographers talk to Rob or Charles, you can hardly hear them. The film is grainy, and obviously shot on super 8, or beta. It does make the movie looks like it was shot in the seventies, but because it wasn't... it makes it hard to take, especially when we are seeing lots of detailed pictures, and artwork. <
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>A weird movie, about a weird guy. <
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>Overall the movie gets 2 1/2 stars, would have gotten another star if they had edited it better, and included maybe a little bit of director interviews, or anything. But, a good movie, just hard to sit thru and little reason to go back to it over time. <
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