Flick Pick

In the '60s and '70s, underground cartoonist R. Crumb captured the anxieties and neuroses of an entire time and spawned a major cult with his "Keep on Truckin'" panels, his X-rated scoundrel Fritz the Cat and the unbridled lunacy he brought to Zap Comix. But it took the inspired documentarian Terry Zwigoff to expose the childhood traumas and crazy mix of cultural influences that made the cartoonist who he was. Crumb (1994) is a startlingly intimate portrait of an artist who managed to reinvent his nightmarish upbringing on the page and transform his personal demons into archetypes uncomfortably familiar to millions.

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• Terry Zwigoff
• University of Colorado System

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Widely praised and admired at the time of its release, Crumb has -- like the subject himself -- been little seen in the intervening decade, but longtime fans and newcomers alike will get a rare look at this corrosively funny documentary at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 7, in Muenzinger Auditorium on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder. It's part of CU's superb International Film Series, which was established back in 1941. For information, call 303-492-1531 or visit www.internationalfilmseries.com. By the way, for a glimpse of Crumb's latest work, pick up the March 22 issue of the New Yorker, in which the cartoonist and his wife, Aline, collaborate on a hilarious, characteristically bitter three-page strip about their self-imposed exile in rural France.