Metrograph

Robert Crumb’s work as the breakout star of the underground cartooning scene was plenty well known before the appearance of this intimate, deeply melancholy documentary by his friend and sometimes bandmate Zwigoff, but Crumb revealed the deep well of pain and family dysfunction that his work drew from, giving ample screen time to two of the artist’s siblings—older brother Charles and younger brother Maxon—who had not been so fortunate as to find creative outlets into which they could pour their manic-depressive energies. This 35mm screening commemorates the 30th anniversary of Zwigoff’s portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-middle-aged-crank, a film that, per Roger Ebert, “gives new meaning to the notion of art as therapy.”

35mm Print Courtesy of the Academy Film Archive