Useful as a companion piece to Terry Zwigoff's 1994 feature documentary Crumb, this hour-long portrait tells Robert Crumb's story with more concentration on his art and less on his dysfunctional family history. Hosted by Crumb and his wife, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, The Confessions of Robert Crumb traces Crumb's early first marriage and subsequent estrangement, followed by his trip to San Francisco on a whim, where he dropped acid and generally fell in with hippies (a vintage bit of home movie footage shows Crumb partying with fellow underground comics gods Spain Rodriguez and S. Clay Wilson). After his initial LSD experience, Crumb lived the counterculture life of the ‘60s: commune living, drugs, social and political awakening, and--for Crumb--the addition of strange comics, which seemed to spring from some dark recess in his mind that the LSD tapped. The memorable characters he created in those electrified days, manifested on countless t-shirts, included Mr. Natural, Angelfood McSpade, Mr. Snoid, Flaky Foont and Fritz the Cat (who later starred in the eponymous feature film by Ralph Bakshi, a film which Crumb hated). Offering a picture of Crumb's life the way he and Aline see it, much has changed since this 1987 documentary was made: the Crumb family fled to France, daughter Sophie is a teenager who appears in recent comic strips, and one hardly ever sees that Keep on Truckin' figure anymore. More's the pity. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (M. Tribby)
The Confessions of Robert Crumb
(1987) 55 min. DVD: $19.95. Home Vision Entertainment (avail. from most distributors). Color cover. ISBN: 0-7800-2482-6. Volume 17, Issue 4
The Confessions of Robert Crumb
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