Read Comments (2)

Some Monday reading for you. The often enlightening and always at least thought-provoking (even at his most objectionable) Jonathan Rosenbaum has reprinted his 1995 essay on Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb. Here’s a sample:

Every American male knows the sound of that nervous tittering, and Robert Crumb’s comic world is not only suffused with it (his own adult sexual obsession is amazonian, big-assed, thick-legged women) but encircled by it. I can’t think of any other movie that’s dealt with this kind of laughter so directly. Cassavetes’s fictional film Faces probably came the closest, but there it was simply backslapping businessmen dealing with everyday sexual embarrassment. Crumb cuts deeper, letting us see the potential madness lurking beyond the simple nervousness of sexual panic — a madness disquietingly made to seem as American and almost as ordinary as that pie in the sky. This is one creepy movie, and it should come as no surprise that David Lynch, who helped to get it released, is mentioned at the top of the credits.

Rosenbaum has also written a new piece for the new Criterion DVD of the film, available here.