Carl Crew

Carl Crew
Carl Crew in the CIA box office.
Born	Carl Albert Crew (1961-08-02) August 2, 1961 (age 55)
Occupation	Actor, screenwriter, author

Carl Albert Crew (born August 2, 1961) is an American actor, screenwriter, author, artist and co-proprietor of the North Hollywood nightclub California Institute of Abnormalarts.

Raised in a repertory theatre troupe, Crew spent much of his young life acting and traveling the country in numerous stage productions until the age of 18, when he became an apprentice embalmer for a Marin County mortuary, an occupation he held for four years before deciding to further pursue a career in acting. Crew landed his first major role in the 1987 cult horror comedy Blood Diner, where Crew played the co-leading role of homicidal chef and wrestling enthusiast George Tutman, for which he was allegedly only paid $250. In 1990, Crew wrote and starred in a low-budget gross out comedy aptly titled Gross Out, a Pink Flamingos-esque shock film following a group of siblings attempting to make the most disgusting movie possible to win an inheritance. Despite its excess of scatological humor, The Los Angeles Times offered a positive review of Gross Out, describing it as "funny in a scabrous, admittedly juvenile way" and "thunderingly, gleefully tasteless...a natural for midnight venues".

In 1992, Crew wrote the screenplay and starred as the title subject in Jeffrey Dahmer: The Secret Life, a biopic based on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Shot a mere year after Dahmer's arrest, the film received intensely negative press from both the media and the families of Dahmer's victims, who staged open protests against the film. Crew and director David Bowen appeared on several talk shows including The Maury Povich Show and WISN-TV's Milwaukee's Talking with family members of the victims, defending the movie against their claims of glorifying and exploiting Dahmer's actions. Although The Secret Life was dismally received upon release, it has more recently been positively re-appraised by cult and horror publications; similarly, the Los Angeles Times, in reviewing 2002's Dahmer, compared it unfavorably to The Secret Life, praising the latter's depiction of and Crew's performance of Jeffrey Dahmer, while CraveOnline called the film "fascinating" and "truly compelling".