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Movie: American Splendor
Written & Directed by Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini
Starring Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, Harvey Pekar (HBO Films)
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes
The theme song of American Splendor is "Ain't That Peculiar" and that certainly sums up Harvey Pekar's life. Harvey is well-known to older comic book fans as the writer of the comic series the movie is named for. He might have always been a faceless person on his dead end job, (literally dead end, he files away the records on the deceased at a hospital) but he happened to be a friend of Robert Crumb, the father of the underground comic, long before he was famous. Years later when Harvey proposed an idea for a new comic based on the absurdity of his own life, to Harvey's amazement Robert drew much of the first book and helped get it published. The rest as they say is history.
Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini have done a superb job bringing Pekar's uniquely mundane experience to the screen. They made the film part comic book with picture frames and incidental artwork intruding on what might have been a normal dramatization of Pekar's life. They also got Harvey himself into the act; Pekar does one whole scene, which was filmed about 20 years ago. It's his first appearance on David Letterman, where he briefly became a recurring curiosity, if not celebrity. Harvey also provides recurring commentary and some interaction with Paul Giamatti who plays him. This movie won't make Pekar a household word and it won't make Giamatti one either, but he'll probably be playing bent characters like Pekar the rest of his life because he does it so well.
American Splendor has a rare kind of existential humor. You'll laugh a lot but it's not black humor, just a kind of nervous laughter at the real lives these people have made for themselves. Maybe the really funny thing is that the dreary life of this clerk, surrounded by other maladjusted folks, really ain't that peculiar at all, or to be precise, uncommon. There are thousands of people like Harvey. They just never got the chance to make art out of it like he did.
The Skinny:
Am I glad I saw the film? A splendiferous Yes.
Would I go to see it again? Next time I'm feel MY life is too peculiar.
© 2003 - Rusty Pipes