Famous
comic book character Harvey Pekar's life is featured in
American Splendor, directed by Shari Springer Berman and
Robert Pulcine. The film switches back and forth between
dramatizations with actors and interviews of the real Harvey
Pekar and his friends. The film begins when Harvey (played
by Daniel Tay) is eleven years old on Halloween night;
at one house, he is criticized for having no costume, so
he pulls out of the annual charade and resolves to have
a real rather than a plastic life. Next, Harvey's second
wife is packing up to leave him (now played by Paul Giamatti).
He dropped out of college and is a file clerk at the Veterans
Administration Hospital in Cleveland, obviously a mismatch
for his wife, Lana (played by Vivienne Benesch), who now
has a Ph.D. Harvey's quest for authenticity leads him to
write stories about real people for a cartoon series, though
he cannot draw. His onetime neighbor and friend Robert
Crumb (played by James Urbaniak), who works at the American
Greeting Card Company, is amazed when he returns to Cleveland
in 1972, so he decides to draw the stories into the first
issues of a comic book for both adults and children. Called
American Splendor, the comic book first appears in 1976
and is such a hit that he attracts the attention of David
Letterman in 1986 for yearly visits until 1988, when Letterman
can no longer handle his candor. Meanwhile, one of his
fans, Joyce Brabner (played by Hope Davis), is frustrated
one day when copies of the latest issue of American
Splendor have been sold out in the comic book store that she runs
with a partner in Wilmington, Delaware. She writes Harvey,
they converse by telephone, and soon she comes by train
to Cleveland. Harvey quickly informs her that he has had
a vasectomy, and he does not tidy up his apartment so that
she will not get the wrong idea about him. After a few
social outings, she says, "Let's skip the courtship
and get married," which they do. Harvey accepts her
idiosyncrasies and vice versa, they marry, and she moves
to Cleveland. Although the marriage is not a "live
happily ever after" fantasy, the two enjoy each other
because they are honest and real people, who in turn attract
decent if unglamorous friends, including Harvey's coworker
Toby Radloff (played by Judah Friedlander), who is proud
to be a nerd. At one point Harvey is diagnosed with lymphatic
cancer, and he suffers through chemotherapy and possibly
radiation therapy, an ordeal that Joyce shrewdly realizes
will make a great story for a hardcover comic book, Our
Cancer Year (1994), so she hires an artist named Fred (played
by James McCaffrey), to depict Harvey's suffering until
he is pronounced free from cancer. (Actually, Frank Stack
is the artist.) Laughter comes easily in American
Splendor as Harvey and his friends enjoy being themselves rather
than conforming to some stereotypic model of the exemplary
American. American Splendor instead urges everyone to stop
being conformist clones and spouting bullshit, though the
tagline is "Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff." Issues
of American Splendor are still being published.
MH
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