WhatzUp

American Splendor
by Derek Neff

Like Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Harvey Pekar has a lot to complain about. Unlike the extremely wealthy David, however, Pekar always has been and - judging by his web-log at www.harveypekar.com- always will be too financially strained to know much about the swanky restaurants, SUVs and L.A. privileges of Mr. David’s world. In the biopic American Splendor, directors Shari Springer and Robert Pulcini have recreated Pekar’s impoverished, difficult life with loving, inventive spirit.

Born and raised in Cleveland, where he has continued to live (and flounder) all of his life, Pekar (brilliantly played by Paul Giamatti, best known as Pig Vomit from the Howard Stern film Private Parts) compulsively collects old vinyl jazz recordings and comic books. (I’m not sure what the connection is between 78 LPs and comic books, but in Crumb, Ghost World, and now this movie the connection is well established.) Pekar works as a file clerk in a hospital with his nerdish friend Toby (Judah Friedlander). His wife has left him. His house is unspeakably cluttered. A self-professed social reject who has learned not to expect better, Pekar arrives at a point where he feels he has nothing to lose by writing about his own life in the form of a comic book. It doesn’t hurt that underground comic book artist R. Crumb, also a native of Cleveland and a fellow collector of 78s, agrees to illustrate Pekar’s first book. And thus Pekar creates an entirely new type of underground comic, one in which the “hero” is a working-class schlub.

If American Splendor had been satisfied with staying a standard biopic, there wouldn’t be much else to talk about here. But Springer and Pulcini cleverly intercut the actors playing Pekar and his friends with the real-life Pekar and company, who comment on (and even complain about) what we’ve just seen.

It becomes fascinating to see how American Splendor the comic book begins to affect Pekar’s life in unforeseen ways. A comic book store owner by the name of Joyce (Hope Davis) contacts Pekar, and soon the two are - in their own awkward, grousing way - falling in love. Pekar’s comics eventually become so renowned that David Letterman himself invites Pekar to come on the show, where he becomes a semi-regular, until Pekar screws things up by telling Letterman what he really thinks. And then there is Pekar’s terrifying battle with testicular cancer, which he recounts in his much-lauded comic book Our Cancer Year.

We are slowly given to understand that Pekar’s relationship to his own success is an uneasy one; he is almost more comfortable in his role as a cancer-sufferer. On those painful terms he can accept himself; as a regular on a late night talk show he just can’t bear it. Pekar is the underdog’s underdog. He rejects success out of a (misplaced?) sense of integrity, a sense that, at least in his own low expectations, he’s being honest.

From his recent blog entries, it’s clear to see that Pekar is still not comfortable in his newfound success as the main character in a critically acclaimed movie. In one recent posting, he wants us to know he’s still quite poor. Even the money he is getting from the movie isn’t enough; he wants us to know that he knows it’s nothing he can take for granted. It’s a one-time thing, to be enjoyed while it lasts.

Did I say “enjoyed”? I meant endured. We are talking about Pekar here, after all.