The Comics Journal: Interviews

Terry Zwigoff
Interviewed by Gary Groth,
excerpted from The Comics Journal #179

Despite the current mainstream acclaim of Terry Zwigoff's documentary Crumb, Zwigoff has legitimate roots in the undergound. He's known and worked with Robert Crumb for 25 years, including a stint in the Cheap Suit Serenaders, a column and photography for Weirdo, and collaboration with Crumb on a movie script (entitled The New Girlfriend) based on one of the artist's most famous stories ("White Man Meets Bigfoot"). Their working relationship on the Zwigoff-edited comic Funny Aminals held much of the same humor that critics and audiences have detected in Crumb. Crumb agreed to contribute to the comic, but, according to Zwigoff, derided the concept by saying, "O, it's that 'be kind to animals' comic you wanna do.'"

Crumb marks Zwigoff's third major foray into documentary filmmaking.

GARY GROTH: Are you sick and tired of talking about Crumb?

TERRY ZWIGOFF: You got that straight! [laughter] I'll never see the guy again after this.

GROTH: Well, you've probably seen too much of him anyway.

ZWIGOFF: Yeah... I've been so immersed in that whole family for so long, boy, it's a relief it's over. At least the filmmaking's over -- but now the talking about it will never end.

GROTH: It will probably end in a month and a half.

ZWIGOFF: I hope. I hope it ends sometime.

GROTH: America will be onto something else.

ZWIGOFF: I hope they go onto the next thing.

GROTH: How successful is the film?

ZWIGOFF: Financially?

GROTH: I mean in terms of the number of people who are seeing it, which I guess is financially.

ZWIGOFF: It's made about a 1.5 million, and it's been out about nine weeks (as of 6/24/95) in a handful of theaters, so it's doing really well for an art film. They think it will make about three million dollars, which is a lot. None of their films usually make over 1.5 million. Sony usually distributes high class art films, Academy Award winning foreign films. Burnt By the Sun is typical of what they distribute. Films which, no matter what kind of reviews they get, which are usually very favorable, just don't make much money. I kept in mind what happened with my first film, Louie Bluie, which was about this obscure blues musician. When it came out in 1985, it got all sorts of rave reviews, but I expected as much because the subject matter was this old black man who was 76 years old. Most film critics (and especially the Academy Awards documentary committee, that decides which documentary films get nominated) generally confuse the subject matter of the film with the filmmaking quality, the filmmaker's ability. So I wasn't that surprised when that film got rave reviews because in a sense people are thinking, "Well I can't criticize this film because if I do I'm criticizing the subject of the film" -- which makes no sense to me. But that's largely how it operates.

I really didn't think Crumb would get such good reviews because a lot of people don't like Robert and don't find him that sympathetic, although I do. So it was a surprise to me that the reviews were that positive. That sort of floored me, but to overcompensate for what I thought would be more negative reviews, I was making commercial concessions all the way along. I had them in mind very much: What I was going to put on the poster, how I was going to cut this trailer, how the ad would look if I had any control over it. For instance, I filmed that whole scene where Robert is getting his photo taken with those "Leg Show" photo shoot girls. The only reason I shot that scene was to have an excuse to put one of these sexy, scantily-clad women in the ad for the film, or the poster for the film. Whenever I can push Sony to do it, which, sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. That's the reason I went to David Lynch to see if he would like the film enough to get involved with it, and luckily he did. So all those things were very important to help market the thing. And, I don't have an aversion to making money like Robert does. But hey, at the same time, I didn't want to compromise the integrity of the film itself. I wouldn't do anything that I thought would do that.

GROTH: Do you feel that those little compromises compromised the film to some degree?

ZWIGOFF: No, actually I thought that that particular scene at "Leg Show" Photo shoot, the reality of that scene was it was one of the more sordid, sleazy affairs I've ever witnessed, and Robert felt the same way. [laughs] It was a generally downbeat, depressing event, where Robert felt very awkward. I'm sure he would have had his share of fun with some of these women had there not been a camera crew there. But in reality, most of the women were lesbians, and there was this camera in his face with hot lights and it was about 95 degrees outside... He just wanted to get the whole thing over with.

GROTH: Why did Robert agree to do it if he thought it was so degrading?

ZWIGOFF: He's rather passive-aggressive, as Kathy Goodell points out. I think it's one of the reasons he got involved in this film to begin with. He goes along, at first he can be sort of easily talked into doing things, but then he sort of regrets it. When we wound up cutting that scene, the rest of the film was so serious and... well, it's not exactly going to be the feel-good film of the summer.It didn't shed any light on his artwork which was, to me what this film was always about -- his art, it wasn't about R. Crumb anyway. In a larger sense. I wasn't that interested in just doing a career biography of R. Crumb. So I asked my editor -- this was one of the few times I gave the editor much freedom -- I said, "Look, here's this upbeat piece of music. Cut this thing and, if you can, make it seem somewhat innocent and happy." He did a great job at that. It totally belies the reality of the situation. But no, I don't think that compromised the integrity of the film. It was a welcome, musical interlude that was rather lightweight between all the talking that was going on. It was a difficult film emotionally, kind of a long, exhausting film to sit through.

GROTH: One scene I thought was uncharacteristically ugly in the film was when he grabbed Kathy Goodell's face.

ZWIGOFF: [laughs] You mean that sadistic, Nazi grin he put on when he grabbed her face?

GROTH: Which he managed to hide throughout most of the film.

ZWIGOFF: Yep. Peeking out there.

GROTH: Were there other moments like that that you filmed but didn't include? Or was that rare?

ZWIGOFF: There were a lot of moments I didn't include because I was trying to protect the privacy of all involved as much as I could. That may seem crazy to hear considering how the film looks but there were many things his family said or Charles said or his mother said or even Robert said that just didn't seem necessary to include in the film in the sense that I could tell the story I wanted to tell without using them. I mean, the story I wanted to tell was the story about these three brothers and how one of them made it and two of them didn't. But in a larger sense I was investigating, I was trying to get as close to the source of talent as I could. That's what interested me. I always feel like this real mediocre talent around a lot of people, Crumb included. But I play music in this band and there's this great trumpet player in this band I play with, and it's almost magical how this guy can play as well as he does. It doesn't seem like something you could learn. I always feel like Salieri [laughter], being so envious and at the same time trying to get closer to that. That's what was interesting to me... I don't know if it was all that conscious. I mean, it was certainly conscious to me when I was making the film that I was more interested in the story of these three brothers and their artwork. But in hindsight, in psychoanalyzing it, it seems like what I was really after was an investigation into the mysteries of art: Where does this talent come from? Why does there seem to be this risk that goes with this? It's like this Crumb family gets this dose of talent or energy, whatever you want to call it, it's in their genes or the DNA, and with that comes this risk. You have to channel that energy in some way or it's going to be very dangerous.