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Oct 26, 2010 Web Exclusive By Hays Davis

Revolution can spring from the least likely places. As detailed in the 1995 documentary Crumb, which covers the life and times of artist Robert Crumb, sometimes it begins at home.

The documentary provides a close study of the multi-faceted influence of Crumb’s childhood as it works through the life of one of the founders of the ‘60s underground comics movement. While he has discussed his personal issues with boundless candor in his comics, Crumb comes across in the doc as undoubtedly the most socially adjusted of the family’s three brothers, the other two of whom have long limited their public contact.

“Girls are just utterly out of my reach. They won’t even let me draw them,” Crumb reads from a formative 1962 comic of his, laughing. “Yeah, all that changed after I got famous.” Fleshing out the picture of his close association with the ‘60s, the artist describes how he used to go to Haight Street regularly and try to fit in, “to get some of that free-love action,” but the hippie scene wasn’t a match for him. He acknowledges, however, that LSD use directly led to an unmistakable change in his art, forever altering his career with what he described as a “revelation of some seamy side of America’s subconscious.”

Director Terry Zwigoff is an old friend of Crumb’s as well as a member of their band The Cheap Suit Serenaders, and it’s likely that this level of familiarity and understanding achieved insight into the subject that wouldn’t have even occurred to another doc-maker. Filmed over the course of six years (and edited over three), Crumb provides an arresting, sometimes unsettling look at a family’s dynamic and one member’s decades-long growth as a cultural influence.

Extras in this edition include over 50 minutes of unused footage and two audio commentaries, one with Zwigoff from 2010 and another from 2006 with Zwigoff and Roger Ebert. (www.criterion.com/films/2104-crumb)

Author rating: 7/10