Product Details

• Actors: Robert Armstrong, Aline Kominsky Crumb, Robert Crumb, Sophie Crumb, Carol Engberg
• Writers: Robert Crumb
• Producers: Anthony Wall, Mary Dickinson, Nigel Finch
• Format: Animated, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Homevision
• VHS Release Date: September 21, 2001
• Run Time: 55 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0780023382
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #421,230 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Robert Crumb, an underground cartoonist who became famous in the 1960s, created a number of characters, including Fritz the Cat, even making two movies based on this character. While many of his cartoons deal with antiheroes, they are largely confessional, dealing with Crumb's sexual fantasies as well as satirizing elements of American culture. Crumb wrote the script for this BBC production, Confessions of Robert Crumb; just under an hour long, it's filled with satire and irony to the point of self-mockery. Openly admitting to being sexist, Crumb depicts women by focusing on their physical strength and his fascination with what he calls the "bean" effect, which is his depiction of his ideal female body. Some may find a number of his cartoons and filmed footage (which tend to be repetitive) highly offensive. --Anne Barclay Morgan

Product Description

Interviews, monologues, and hilariously insightful vignettes written by Robert Crumb are woven together to portray the life, work, and obsessions of this underground comic book pioneer. Crumb used comic books as a confessional for the perverse fantasies and visions that he formed in reaction to a hostile world. As a child, Crumb avidly read and began to create comic books with his brothers-and ever since-his style has continued to evolve. From the time he emerged among the hippies at Haight and Ashbury streets in San Francisco, right on through the present, Crumb continues as an iconoclast who's loved, hated, feared and misunderstood by an ever growing number of readers. The Confessions of Robert Crumb tells the story of the incredible artistry that shocks and satirizes every strata and dark hole of society.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars R. Crumb's "Confessions" quite revealing, May 27, 2000

By 

r. cook (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Confessions of Robert Crumb [VHS] (VHS Tape)

For those who know much about underground cartoon giant R. Crumb, the "confessions" advertised in this tape's title will be, actually, old news. However, for the many who were completely or only dimly aware of R. Crumb before they may have viewed Terry Zwigoff's great film CRUMB, these CONFESSIONS will provide for a fuller picture of Crumb the family man and sympathetic human being. While Zwigoff's film focused on Crumb as product of a particular (and dysfunctional) family, this one-hour program, written by Crumb himself, is more concerned with Crumb the individual and artist. We also see more of Crumb's wife Aline, a unique and eccentric personality and cartoonist in her own right, and we see the comfortable and cooperative relationship she and her husband share. The film is quite entertaining, with little acted-out scenarios interspersed with the more straightforward interview segments. While both this film and CRUMB are outstanding and gripping as individual viewing experiences, one is advised to see both of them to gain a more three-dimensional view of the enigmatic R.Crumb. Highest recommendation!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you own the Documentary "CRUMB" then you should have this one as well, March 16, 2008

By 

F. A. Schmidt "Fred USA" (Northern California) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Confessions of Robert Crumb (DVD)

True fans of Robert Crumb will get a kick out of this film. If you are an art student or "Comic" buff you will get something out of this film as well. This is a good addition to any Crumb collection.

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars WILD MAN OF UNDERGROUND COMICS STILL TRUCKIN', February 15, 2002

By 

Robin Simmons (Palm Springs area, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Confessions of Robert Crumb (DVD)

Since documentaries are featured as extras on many DVDs, there's a growing appetite for this cinematic art form. Criterion is feeding that craving with a series of fascinating glimpses into extraordinary real lives. Two artists that dabbled on the edge of the acceptable are featured in simultaneous releases.

The artistically apposite worlds of Jackson Pollock, and Robert Crumb are revealed in "JACKSON POLLOCK: LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND" and "THE CONFESSIONS OF ROBERT CRUMB".

"The Confessions of Robert crumb" was actually written by Crumb himself. This pioneer of bawdy, irreverent, underground comics illustrates his own life from childhood, where he began creating comics with his brothers, to his choice to uproot himself and join the counterculture at the infamous intersections of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco during the 60s, to his disillusionment and expatriation to France.

It's a hilarious, wild ride with the most "socially acerbic and recognized artists of the American underground comics landscape."

Don't miss this if you like "Fritz the Cat" and the "Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers." Crumb is disturbing and funny.

Is the compulsion to be an artist a kind of sanity? Maybe. They sure go hand in hand if you look at Pollock and Crumb (and many others, for that matter).