prohexa Posted April 10, 2013 Posted April 10, 2013 Hi all! We recently saw the documentary "Crumb", and it's a most fascinating, tragic and intimate portrait of the controversial cartoonist Robert Crumb (and his dysfunctional family). IMDB link here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109508/ I think we all are familiar with least some of the works and characters of R. Crumb, ranging from the famous "Keep on trucking" phenomenon to the infamous and perverted "Fritz the Cat", "Mr. Natural" and many others. In this documentary we get to meet not only the brilliant but disturbed Robert Crumb himself, but also his incredibly talented and broken brothers, their abusive mother, his wife(s), children and so on. What really made this documentary so interesting is that Crumb begins by explaining how he does not know what is going to come out of his pen when he starts drawing - he basically puts the pen on the paper and lets his unconscious self tell the whole story - and I just loved how clearly it showed the parallells between what was happening in his life and his inner twisted emotions. An interesting question is why Robert (the younger of the three brothers) survived and adapted so seemingly well to society, while his equally talented (but completely unknown) brother Charles never was able to break free from the bonds of their mother and subsequently wasted away in her home until he eventually (shortly after the documentary was finished) committed suicide. What saved Robert? Was it his fame and the success with women it brought him? Stef: Is there any chance that you would make a review of this one? It's just so incredibly rich of symbols and in-your-face-obvious abusive childhood traumas... There is so much to learn from this!
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