Although comics may be the oldest narrative medium, comic creators are still marginalized as creators of a preadolescent art form. In the 1960s, R. Crumb, founder of the underground comic book movement, helped change that impression by introducing over-the-top sexual perversion into comics, revolutionizing them for an adult audience while managing to stay within the familiar framework of larger-than-life archetypal characters and animals.
In the ‘70s, Harvey Pekar responded by breaking what taboos remained by reconceptualizing what could be considered appropriate content in a comic, simply by writing about himself. In his ironically titled comic, American Splendor, he proved that the life of an average guy could be as interesting as something invented, if not more so.
In a new film based on the comic, noted character actor Paul Giamatti plays Pekar. Born and raised in Cleveland, he goes to college, drops out, and begins working as a file clerk in a Veterans Administration hospital. He’s lonely and bored with his life, apart from the diversion he finds in his hobbies. He reads a lot of interesting novels and he’s obsessive about his collections. His focus is comic books until age 16, then turning to jazz records. Combing through boxes at a garage sale, he meets and befriends Crumb, a greeting card artist on the verge of breaking into comic books. Crumb moves to San Francisco and becomes famous for his alternative Zap! Comics. Pekar, still in Cleveland, is so impressed with his friend’s fame that he decides to do comics himself.
But Pekar can’t draw-so Crumb agrees to illustrate for him. Soon enough, Splendor takes off, introducing him to all sorts of people and experiences. He meets his future wife, the depressed Joyce Brabner, portrayed admirably by Hope Davis, makes several appearances on the David Letterman show, and ends up battling testicular cancer. Pekar may be neurotic and pissed-off, but he always has some insightful comment to offer.
American Splendor’s filmmakers, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, successfully take Harvey Pekar’s body of work and reshape it into an astounding and often surprising living tribute. The adaptation of Pekar’s story to film is executed with more sophistication than previous attempts at bringing comic books to the big screen-exposing the relative strengths and weaknesses of still pictures and their moving counterparts.
A film based on real life is essentially nonfiction, yet the filmmakers purposefully blur the line between actors and real people, scripted scenes and actual footage. The real Harvey Pekar narrates the exploits of his actor-counterpart and comments on how strange it is to watch a movie about himself with a guy who “don’t look nothin’ like me.” Vignettes are taken right from the pages of Pekar’s original American Splendor comics.
The film intermittently steps outside itself into an all-white set, a bizarre meta-reality where the real Pekar and friends mingle with the actors. At one point, the real Pekar narrates a scene where the actor-Pekar attends a play about the American Splendor comics. On stage, yet another actor (Donal Logue) plays Pekar. The play-within-a-film-within-real-life scenario sounds like a ridiculous exercise in postmodernism, but like the rest of the movie, you’re laughing before you realize what’s going on.
As the film rolls through Pekar’s battle with cancer, Giamatti delivers a monologue lifted from the comics. As crazy a name as Harvey Pekar is, there are two others in Cleveland. “What’s in a name?” he asks, “who are the other Harvey Pekars?” It’s no small task for a funny movie to ask serious questions about life and art. Here, on the cusp between fiction and reality, and between comedy and drama, American Splendor is brilliant.
