Today, the artist remembers his father, who died in 1982, as “a grim guy with a hard-ass attitude about life who thought my mother was mollycoddling all of us-which she was.” Robert mentions in passing that when he was 5, his father broke his collarbone while beating him on Christmas Day and that his father stopped speaking to him after seeing the work in Zap comics that launched his career in 1968. The hostility of their childhood in Philadelphia is largely traceable to their father, whom Charles describes as a “sadistic bully.” On closer examination it seems a fairly simple equation: The Crumb brothers were three extraordinarily sensitive and intelligent people who had the bad luck to be raised in a hostile environment. One watches the closing credits wondering: Gee, what happened to these people? But viewers also come away haunted by Crumb’s family, particularly his older brother Charles, who committed suicide in 1993 at the age of 51, shortly after the film wrapped. Crumb as an artist his body of work, as shown in the film, is inarguably dazzling. Zwigoff achieved his original intention in that people tend to come away from his film with a deepened respect for R. He’s extremely upset that Sony Pictures picked it up and that it looks like it may be successful.” I think the only reason he let me film them was because he was convinced the film would never be finished-and that if it was, it wouldn’t be seen by anybody. I have no idea why they refused, but then, Robert too was reluctant to let me delve into his family. “Robert’s younger sister told me if I so much as mentioned her name in the film she’d sue me for everything I’m worth, and his older sister was a bit more polite but also said no. That couldn’t be helped, though, because (she only) let us shoot for an hour. “When I met Robert’s mother, she was more together than she is now, and unfortunately, she comes across in the film as more spun-out than she is in real life. I’d met his mother (Beatrice) and his brother Charles when I spent a night at their house in Philadelphia in the early ‘70s and thought they were both funny and brilliant. “When I started the film I told Robert I wasn’t interested in doing a straight biography and that I wanted his family to be involved, but I didn’t expect the family to figure as prominently in the film as it does. The film quickly got off that track, however. So, my original intention was to help people gain a deeper understanding of his work. “Whenever I paged through his sketchbook I was always knocked out by the scope of his art, and I thought it was appalling that the only work of his most people know are inconsequential things he did in the ‘60s like ‘Keep on Truckin’ ’ and Fritz the Cat. “We’re happy for Terry and hope he gets to make more films, and for people who don’t know us I’m sure it will be very interesting, but we’d both prefer the film didn’t exist.”īegun in 1985 and completed for less than $200,000, “Crumb” took root “simply because Robert’s a great artist,” says Zwigoff, whose previous films include “Louie Bluie,” a portrait of obscure blues musician Howard Armstrong, and “A Family Named Moe,” a documentary on the history of Hawaiian music. If we were left in peace to reflect on the film it would probably be easier to handle, but there’s a media frenzy descending on us that’s made this a nightmare. “It’s very anxiety-producing to have this kind of information about you and your family out for anyone to see, and having people hounding you to talk about it only adds to the anxiety.
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