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R crumb american greetings10/21/2023 Then I tried to read Travels with Charlie that he wrote, I think in the '60s, and found it rather dull and uninteresting. Robert: I liked Grapes of Wrath, thought it was really good. But I read those partly because of the artwork. I used to like to read the science fiction comic books, like EC Comics (laughs). People say he is one of the more imaginative science fiction writers. It's always about the future, you know? Whether it's dystopian or whatever, but whenever I tried to read it I lost interest in it very quickly. I always thought it was never quite imaginative enough. I used to know people who were nuts about science fiction. I was never big on science fiction, but he was always more interesting and imaginative than a lot of science fiction writers. I should read his books but I never got around to it. The whole experience… the way he described it, it was great. Robert: Yeah, (laughs) the way he wrote about the mystical experience, to me was very interesting. All I ever read was interviews with him and that account he gave of his religious experience - his mystical experience.Īlex: It's interesting that you never read any books by him, but you were so moved by his mystical experience that you would do a strip about it. Robert: I've actually never read any of his books. But I like his artwork, and I like him personally. I would find that more interesting than having these weird, fantastic things always happening. I always wish he would do just a straight, realistic story about teen life as he remembered it. I'm not crazy about his stories, but I really like the art. Is it still going? I haven't seen it for years and years. You know, the drawing, the artwork is nothing to write home about, but the comedy and social satire is excellent. Met the guy, hung out with him a little bit. And then The Simpsons in its best years it was really good, it was excellent. When he was doing that comic strip Life In Hell I thought that was funny. So with the Marx Brothers, and all of them, the movies become less and less interesting and you can see the corporate sensibility creep in. There's much more interference in their creative process as the '30s went on. As with a lot of hollywood movies, as the '30s ground on, the studios became more and more corporatized, so the comedy really declined badly. But even so, their early movies are really great. So it's too bad we never get to see the Marx Brothers at their very best. This was all in the '20s, before they made any movies. But on stage they could improvise and were really crazy. In the films, they were restricted to following the script. I've read that they were really great on stage because live performance allowed to be spontaneous. Unfortunately, you don't see the Marx Brothers at their best in any of their movies. My brothers and I were all very inspired by them, and went around imitating and acting like them when we were teenagers (laughs). Robert: I was deeply inspired by the Marx Brothers when I was young. Actually there's a scene in it with the family at the dinner table philosophizing about God and justice and what it all means (laughs). It's a very serious movie, and yet it has its comic relief. It's a really excellent movie, very Jewish. Yeah, the respected ophthalmologist, whose brother has the girlfriend murdered, is never detected, and he gets away with it. But, the ophthalmologist gets away with it. It was right around the time that whole scandal with Mia Farrow's daughter happened - maybe right before - because Mia Farrow was in it. And I suspect that movie is kind of - and I don't even know how aware of it he was - a confession. And there's this really arrogant comedy writer/director played by Alan Alda who plays such a jerk, and that's part of Woody Allen also very interesting. The respected ophthalmologist is part of him this nerdy, idealistic documentary film-maker - that's part of him. All the main male characters in the movie, I've come to suspect that they're all parts of Woody Allen's personality - they're all parts of him. So he goes to the brother and the brother has her killed by a professional. He also has a brother who's involved in the crime syndicate. She threatens to come over to his house and make a big scene and ruin his life. He has this mistress, this neurotic woman and she's threatening to expose him and the secret affair he's having. In that movie, there was an esteemed ophthalmologist, very respected in his profession. Robert: One of my favorite movies of his was Crimes and Misdemeanors. It was a great movie.
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