Crumb
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Crumb
Crumb, directed by Terry Zwigoff, produced by David Lynch and Lynn Odonnell, focuses around R. Crumb, the very influential and controversial cartoonist from the 1960's beat era. It is probably one of the best, if not the best, documentaries ever made. This film has an uplifting and empowering message about taking control of your life no matter how incredibly screwed up you may be. It does a great job of portraying R. Crumb as a sort of "Diamond in the Rough", by paralleling him to vastly more dysfunctional siblings and mother and the stories of his menacing and domineering father.
Even though Crumb himself is a vastly strange man, his brothers were obviously tremendously more affected by his fathers abuses than he was. Crumb uses a few interesting strategies to dodge his own mental condition and at least appear somewhat more normal than the rest of his family. All three of the brothers are extremely artistic, but it seems that Robert had a better handle on using his art to release the negative emotions that live within his mind. Both Max and Steven had problems that eventually undid them in their later life, but Robert, somehow had a better handle on his negativity and through his art made his problems into his modest prosperity...