Influential ‘CRUMB’ Remains a Marvel With Its Depth of Character

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By Gregory Crofton

“Crumb” arrived in 1994, when I was 22 years old. A lot of cool and influential movies and music were released around then, but it was “Crumb,” about Robert Crumb, a nerdy underground cartoonist, that stuck with me and steered me to a life of studying documentaries. I don’t regret it because I learn so much from them.

Why did “Crumb” have such a big impact on me? Because it’s so full of personal details. It’s about family, art and sexuality. Plus, Crumb is a joy to watch on camera. He’s witty and very anti-corporate, a theme that bolstered me back then as I flailed in my efforts to determine a job I could stomach.

Made over a period of about eight years, director Terry Zwigoff (Louie Bluie, Ghost World, Bad Santa) was and is a friend of Crumb, a legendary underground cartoonist probably best known for the cover he drew in 1968 for Janis Joplin’s band, Big Brother & The Holding Company.

In the same year, Crumb became a founder of Zap Comix, a home for underground cartoon artists like Spain Rodriguez, and ground zero for this new non-mainstream form of comic art.

The director’s friendship with Crumb began in the early 70s in San Francisco when Zwigoff had an idea for a comic book and pitched it to Crumb, who he met through a friend. Their friendship grew through a love of 78 records and from playing in a band together.

So with this trust existing between subject and filmmaker, Zwigoff was able to score interviews with Robert’s mother and brothers, Charles and Maxon, each an artist in their own right. Crumb also opened his meticulously kept work archives to Zwigoff.

I gathered interesting details about the film including the fact that Zwigoff and Crumb were friends after I rewatched the doc on the Criterion Channel and then watched it again with Zwigoff’s commentary track.

But as the film is ending, a title card states that Charles died by suicide a year after the doc’s release. This was shocking, especially the first time I saw the movie. So I hoped Zwigoff’s commentary track would address the question of whether the public release of “Crumb” had had a negative impact on Charles. He had noted that his film helped Maxon sell more of his own art. But the title card comes and goes with nothing said about Charles’ death.

Charles had attempted suicide when he was younger. He drank furniture polish and took sleeping pills but then “chickened out” and went to the hospital to have his stomach pumped. In the doc, he looks haggard and depressed though he engages in an intellectually playful way with Robert.

Later on camera but away from Charles, Robert reveals that Charles was sexually obsessed with a boy from the Treasure Island story, something that could have embarrassed him and led to his suicide.

Charles, who at first refused to be interviewed for “Crumb,” is the heart of the film, Zwigoff says, in the commentary. But does such extremely personal access to Charles come at a cost? Is Charles on camera one of the reasons the film is so powerful? Maybe.

Robert tells on his own sexuality too. He reveals he was sexually attracted to Bugs Bunny when he was a kid. His perverse sex life and how it fuels his art, as well as the perversity of his brothers, is a focus of “Crumb.”

Maxon meditates on a small platform of nails when he’s not ingesting a long strip of fabric to clean his intestines. Charles chain smokes, takes mental health meds and re-reads books while living at his mom’s house. And Robert is honest and forthright about his faultlines.

“I have these hostilities toward women, I admit it. It’s out in the open,” Crumb says, speaking to a journalist. “I have to put it out there, you know? Sometimes I think it’s a mistake, I should never have let it out … but it’s in there and it’s very strong and it ruthlessly forces itself out of me and onto the paper for better or worse.”

Good art sees inside of things, including people, and allows for new perspectives which can inspire others. This is what “Crumb” delivered for me, and it was no easy task.

Three decades after its release, “Crumb” is a core reminder of the power and possibility of its genre. The huge success of the film made way for the “Golden Age” of documentary that followed it.

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