AMERICAN SPLENDOR

I’ve never actually read an American Splendor comic book. I’ve heard of it, but never picked up a copy. After seeing this movie, I just might. That’s probably the main reason American Splendor writer/creator/subject Harvey Pekar decided to do this movie. That, and a fat paycheck.
Just because he had a famous (in certain circles), critically-acclaimed comic series doesn’t mean Harvey Pekar still didn’t keep on working as a file clerk,.. even when he was having guest appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and becoming something of a celebrity. What the hell? He can’t make a living off his stuff? Maybe he could’ve at some point. But the thought of not having a “real” job just scared the shit out of him.
This interesting little movie is a portrait of a file clerk/comic writer, his wife, and their adventures through good-old ordinary life. Or as ordinary a life as you can get when you write comics about it, you’re on Letterman, and Hollywood makes a movie about it. And you get cancer. Fucking cancer. Might be my least favorite disease.
Paul Giamatti plays Harvey in the movie, and, as Harvey points out in one of his many voice-overs throughout the picture, he doesn’t really look much like him. But what’re you gonna do? He does a great job getting the scowling caricature of Harvey--as portrayed in his comics by artists like Robert Crumb-- down. And Hope Davies doesn’t look much like Harvey’s wife Joyce, but it doesn’t matter. When you’re in the movie, she looks more like Joyce than Joyce does.
There’s also this very fun comic book aesthetic to the movie that somehow works better than what Ang Lee tried to do with Hulk. Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini use comic book panels and captions to move the story along. They even have little animated Harveys from time to time. It’s a very artistic movie for the life of some schlub from Cleveland, Ohio.
That was the biggest surprise to me. Like I said, I’d heard of American Splendor, but having never read one, I just assumed it was an artsy-fartsy, high-minded underground comic by some nebbish literature professor-type or pseudo-hipster comic dork. I was surprised to find that it is instead created by a grumpy, yet loveable beast of a man from Cleveland who draws each issue out with stick figures, that are then drawn by more capable artists. This working class, blue-collar examination of life makes for a very entertaining narrative pseudo-documentary with bits of animation. American Splendor is a personal, thought-provoking movie about a personal, thought-provoking comic about some grumpy old bastard that has some shit to say.
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