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Doesn't Bank have a deal presently going similar to what Allan King had before his death/ the eclipse set?

Louie Bluie was entertaining beyond reason-- it's basically an hour spent with those hilarious old guys on the street corner from Do the Right Thing, full of hard-fought life lessons and optimism born from a life fully lived. This is the best kind of documentary, capturing a swath of wholly interesting characters for future posterity

A good bit more than an hour, once you include the segments not used in the film that were included in the extras.

I did not remember Crumb being this soul-crushingly depressing. The post-script about Charles was just a punch in the gut after watching them uncomfortably reminisce about a horrific childhood and menacing father. eesh. At the same time it's a fascinating psychological portrait of an artistic genius, who is otherwise riddled with severe social, sexual, and intimacy issues that are clearly beyond repair. It's amazing how he seems relatively happy, and even more so that he can be so brutally honest about himself and his past despite the fact that he has obviously walled off his basic emotional core. Yet it isn't the trainwreck like Grey Gardens....it's something completely unique, and utterly fascinating.

Seeing him go through his obscure porn mags and the abundantly clear foot/leg fetish he has makes me wonder what the internet has done to the guy. All the "Chunky Asses" he could ever want at his finger tips!

I should have read this thread first though and gone with Louie Bluie first...will have to watch that very soon.

Something tells me Robert isn't much of an internet guy.

Anyone have any info on Zwigoff's elusive Hawaiian music doc A Family Named Moe? There's virtually no information about it anywhere, save small references here and there including a mention by Jonathan Rosenbaum in the essay in the booklet.

Unfinished work from the 80s. It was about the Tau Moe Family, and it was somehow tied in with an album Bob Brozman (who is in the Cheap Suit Serenaders with Zwigoff, and was something like a producer on the film) recorded with the family in 1988. My guess is that if anyone's seen it, it was privately screened by Zwigoff himself.

Man, I would love to see that. Reading up on Tau Moe and he sounds like a very interesting subject. Not that I don't believe you, but where did you glean this information? Hopefully it comes to light someday.

Bits and pieces here and there, like you said. Bob Brozman seems to talk about it more than Zwigoff does (and may have his own copy), so search there if you're interested.

Saw "Crumb" (recorded from TCM Underground a couple of weeks back) for the first time today. If you're a documentary filmmaker with an interesting subject that's cooperative, interesting and honest when talking on-camera (a hat trick few subjects qualify for) your job is practically done. I know it wasn't easy at all, but Zwigoff basically had to point the camera at Robert & family, shoot and then splice the good stuff together. I don't like or care for Robert Crumb, as an artist or as a human being. I don't care for the stuff he draws or his sense of humor, though the fact he has one is what clearly got him through a childhood a hell of a lot worse than many of us had. His brothers and mother though (poster childs all for the ugly underbelly of 50's America normalcy hiding deep, hurtful and ugly truths... no wonder it has a 'David Lynch Presents' credit at the start) and Robert himself are extremely interesting subject matters. Their frankness and openness about who they are along with Zwigoff's excellent use of Crumb's and other artists' artwork (including, in the movie's only heart-warming moment, drawings from his then-little daughter) with talking heads to put Crumb's cartoons into perspective makes for two of the freakiest (to me) but also engaging and human hours of documentary filmmaking I've ever seen. The closing credit about Charles actually packed an unexpected-to-me emotional punch (I can only imagine the stunned silence of audiences when they saw this in theaters in '95), proof that "Crumb" engaged me even though I didn't know or feel it until it was over.

I'm a commentary whore, are the commentaries on the Criterion release worth owning this (for personal anecdotes or candid accounts that enhance the movie)? Also, any other features on the DVD/BD that update us on Crumb's remaining family (mother, Max, the unseen sisters) or how he's doing in France?

dad1153 wrote:I'm a commentary whore...

Don't feel bad - I have good reason to believe that the industry is rife with people who record commentaries only in exchange for money.

Hiring Adrian Martin and to come and live-commentate my DVDs mmmm

Charles was definitely the most fascinating aspect of this movie, which itself is completely filled with fascinating things. I can relate to him in a lot of ways, too. That said, I kind of feel like he really milked the victim thing too much. He was abused and bullied when younger. So is a huge chunk (majority?) of the human race. He never got over his bad childhood, and deemed himself unfit to work and live a real life despite being a gifted, talented, and intelligent person. It kind of seems narcissistic and a spit in the face to people who have experienced truly traumatic stuff (watching a family member (or your entire family) get killed at a young age, being raped, being born into slavery at a shoe factory, having to live in the middle of a warzone, etc) and chose to go on with their lives. His dad physically abused him and he was bullied in high school. Hardly seems like an understandable reason to give up on life and feel sorry for yourself to no end as though you were given the worse hand in life imaginable.

Here's a recent interview with Zwigoff on Indiewire. It's largely focused on Bad Santa but he also discusses an upcoming project that seems promising, as well as Art School Confidential which he calls a near career-ruiner.

An interesting story of a rare record find (Bogus Ben Covington's "Adam and Eve and the Garden" b/w the immortal b-side "I Heard the Voice of the Pork Chop") traded to R. Crumb for an original drawing.
I'd love to see a documentary about collectors who hold archives of 78s, and efforts to preserve and increase availability of recordings like this. A documentary on Pat Conte, curator of the Secret Museum of Mankind would be one of my first ideas. This might even be something Zwigoff might be better at pursuing than anyone.

There is a documentary about a 78 collector called Desparate Man Blues. It's available on DVD from the record label Dust to Digital.

Thanks. A friend told me about that film a couple years ago and then I forgot about it.
The people at Dust to Digital do great work, important work. I recently picked up their CD Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics, 1918-1955. The liner notes contain this astonishing statement: "I paid approximately $125 for all the recordings represented on this disc. I never drove more than 30 minutes from home to find them, and none were bought through the mail."
I went through a phase of buying and listening to 78s, after finding an enormous trove of them, which I thought would surely yield some amazing rare music, but it didn't, or maybe I didn't look through it all carefully enough. One of my few good finds was the 78 of "Lucille" by Little Richard, which I would occasionally play when people came over.
Stories of the hunt usually appeal to me, so I should definitely see Desperate Man Blues.

I just spent an evening with Desperate Man Blues and all the supplements, and it was all I hoped for and more. Without realizing who he was, I'd been listening to music from records Bussard salvaged and collected for many years. The documentary was thoroughly well made, seeming fairly effortless—apparently whether a camera is on him or not he just spills over with history. I don't agree with many of his views about "tradition" and mourning a loss of purity (e.g., jazz ceased to exist after 1933, whaaaat?) but he's still a real kindred spirit, and Dust-to-Digital put together a great release here. Anyone who enjoyed Louie Bluie and the music in it should give this one a spin.

dad1153 wrote:Saw "Crumb" (recorded from TCM Underground a couple of weeks back) for the first time today. If you're a documentary filmmaker with an interesting subject that's cooperative, interesting and honest when talking on-camera (a hat trick few subjects qualify for) your job is practically done. I know it wasn't easy at all, but Zwigoff basically had to point the camera at Robert & family, shoot and then splice the good stuff together. I don't like or care for Robert Crumb, as an artist or as a human being. I don't care for the stuff he draws or his sense of humor, though the fact he has one is what clearly got him through a childhood a hell of a lot worse than many of us had. His brothers and mother though (poster childs all for the ugly underbelly of 50's America normalcy hiding deep, hurtful and ugly truths... no wonder it has a 'David Lynch Presents' credit at the start) and Robert himself are extremely interesting subject matters. Their frankness and openness about who they are along with Zwigoff's excellent use of Crumb's and other artists' artwork (including, in the movie's only heart-warming moment, drawings from his then-little daughter) with talking heads to put Crumb's cartoons into perspective makes for two of the freakiest (to me) but also engaging and human hours of documentary filmmaking I've ever seen. The closing credit about Charles actually packed an unexpected-to-me emotional punch (I can only imagine the stunned silence of audiences when they saw this in theaters in '95), proof that "Crumb" engaged me even though I didn't know or feel it until it was over.

I'm a commentary whore, are the commentaries on the Criterion release worth owning this (for personal anecdotes or candid accounts that enhance the movie)? Also, any other features on the DVD/BD that update us on Crumb's remaining family (mother, Max, the unseen sisters) or how he's doing in France?

Might be a bit late with this, but both commentaries are fantastic in my opinion. They are definitely anecdote-heavy and there are some updates, but not many since Crumb and Zwigoff rarely speak anymore after the relocation to france. Ebert is on one of the commentaries, and it's exciting to listen to him pick Terry's brain. Probably as interesting a feature (if not more) on the Criterion release is the 40-50 minutes of cut footage. There's one or two scene in particular about Charles that peel back a couple more layers and give you even more insight into the guy's life.

gfxtwin wrote:Might be a bit late with this, but both commentaries are fantastic in my opinion. They are definitely anecdote-heavy and there are some updates, but not many since Crumb and Zwigoff rarely speak anymore after the relocation to france. Ebert is on one of the commentaries, and it's exciting to listen to him pick Terry's brain. Probably as interesting a feature (if not more) on the Criterion release is the 40-50 minutes of cut footage. There's one or two scene in particular about Charles that peel back a couple more layers and give you even more insight into the guy's life.

Thanks. This and the now OOP "Le Samourai" have shut to the top of my most-wanted 'old' Criterions for the B&N sale. :)

Not a huge fan of RC's artwork, but I truly enjoyed Crumb the 2-3 times I've seen this over the years. IMHO this is an excellent but extremely disturbing documentary...great stuff here, but not for the squeamish and/or easily offended. It was depressing seeing his brothers, who were individually & definitely collectively much more $%^%$-up than he was - they made him look normal, which is definitely saying something...

Very sad re:

Spoiler

what happened to his brother Charles (his fate was stated in text at the end of the film).

One of the many things I didn't know about Crumb (that I learned from watching the doc.) was that he actually knew Janis Joplin back in the day; IIRC, he did the artwork for her album covers and also ads?! for one (or more) of her shows.

It's worth noting that the deleted scenes (as seen on this Criterion edition) are IMHO just as good (if not better) than the material in the film itself...

Asked to comment on Janis Joplin a few years ago by Alex Wood, here's part of what Crumb had to say:

Sad case, very sad case. She tried to act like she was hard and tough, but she wasn’t at all. She was soft and vulnerable. She drank a lot, and got a lot of bad advice. She was surrounded by vultures and vampires and scoundrels, and they just did her in. She finally ended up face-down in her own vomit alone in some hotel room; too much heroin and alcohol, 27 years old.
Alex: You once said, “Fame is what killed Janis Joplin."
Robert: Yep, it did. Fame killed her. She couldn’t handle it. It was awful. The last time I saw her alive she had just bought this big fancy redwood mansion somewhere in Marin County. She had this big housewarming party and she invited me and [S. Clay] Wilson. So we show up and there are hundreds of people there. And I didn’t even get to talk to her because, guess why? Because she had this circle of people around her that was impenetrable. A circle around her so tight, I could only stand on my toes and wave to her and she waved back and that was it. That was the last time I saw her. Gilbert Shelton knew her when she was completely obscure in Texas, when she was still singing old time music. She was great at that! Gilbert played these tapes for me once of Janis singing with this country band, and it fit perfectly with her style, I thought. Because she’s a real redneck shouter, you know. But much later, after Big Brother and Holding Company, I think she was getting some bad advice in the music industry. They wanted her to sound more like, you know, Aretha Franklin, or I don’t know, somehow more sophisticated and black or something. But she still screamed and hollered because that’s what the audience liked. And she really wrecked her voice doing that.

There's a bit more at CrumbProducts.com,

I hope it doesn't feel too unwarranted to bring it up in this thread, but has anyone read the script for the unproduced Zwigoff and Crumb film, Sassy? I've been looking for it for quite a while and can only find copies going for several hundreds online. I thought I recalled it was suppose to be X-rated and was pitched to porno producers at some point.

FYI there's a new biography by Dan Nadel coming out on Crumb, and there's going to be a virtual talk on April 29 with Crumb and Nadel moderated by Matt Groening.

If you buy a ticket, you'll be able to stream it live or watch by VOD, and you will get a copy of the biography signed by Crumb and Nadel (which is interesting because in the film, he refuses to sign something for a comic shop employee, making his distaste for autographs very clear).

hearthesilence wrote: Wed Mar 05, 2025 2:21 am FYI there's a new biography by Dan Nadel coming out on Crumb, and there's going to be a virtual talk on April 29 with Crumb and Nadel moderated by Matt Groening.

If you buy a ticket, you'll be able to stream it live or watch by VOD, and you will get a copy of the biography signed by Crumb and Nadel (which is interesting because in the film, he refuses to sign something for a comic shop employee, making his distaste for autographs very clear).

Thank you for that. I saw Zwigoff at a screening of Crumb last year, and he’s still working on a streaming show about record collectors with the writers of Bad Santa, which sounds like a perfect subject for him and has so much potential for comedy