Crumb

Production

Sony Pictures Classics released Crumb in April 1995 after the film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Terry Zwigoff shot the documentary over six years on a small budget. David Lynch served as a presenting producer when the project struggled to attract distribution from the major studios.

Story

The film follows the underground comix artist Robert Crumb in the months before he and his family move from California to the south of France. It contrasts Robert’s work and family life with portraits of his older brother Charles, a recluse, and younger brother Maxon, a Vedantic mendicant in San Francisco.

Reception

Crumb was widely praised on release and won prizes at the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle, and the National Board of Review. Roger Ebert and others called it one of the great documentaries of the 1990s and a study of the American family that it portrays.