Movie a day #356 - American Splendor

[jenna2891]

good stuff. i was surprised at just how much i actually liked this movie.

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Plot Synopsis: Harvey Pekar is file clerk at the local VA hospital. His interactions with his co-workers offer some relief from the monotony, and their discussions encompass everything from music to the decline of American culture to new flavors of jellybeans and life itself. At home, Harvey fills his days with reading, writing and listening to jazz. His apartment is filled with thousands of books and LPs, and he regularly scours Cleveland's thrift stores and garage sales for more, savoring the rare joy of a 25-cent find. It is at one of these junk sales that Harvey meets Robert Crumb, a greeting card artist and music enthusiast. When, years later, Crumb finds international success for his underground comics, the idea that comic books can be a valid art form for adults inspires Harvey to write his own brand of comic book. An admirer of naturalist writers like Theodore Dreiser, Harvey makes his American Splendor a truthful, unsentimental record of his working-class life, a warts-and-all self portrait. First published in 1976, the comic earns Harvey cult fame throughout the 1980s and eventually leads him to the sardonic Joyce Barber, a partner in a Delaware comic book store who end ups being Harvey's true soul mate as they experience the bizarre byproducts of Harvey's cult celebrity stature.


Review - Amazon.com
One of the most acclaimed films of 2003, American Splendor is also one of the most audaciously creative biographical movies ever made. Blending fact, fiction, and personal perspective from the comic books that inspired it, this marvelous portrait of Harvey Pekar--scowling curmudgeon, brow-beaten everyman, insightful chronicler of his own life, and frustrated file clerk at a Cleveland V.A. hospital--is an inspired amalgam of the media (comic books, TV, and film) that lifted Pekar from obscurity to the status of a pop-cultural icon. As played by Paul Giamatti in a master-stroke of casting, we see Pekar and his understanding wife (played by Hope Davis) as underdogs in a world full of obstacles, yet also infused with subtle hope and (gasp!) heartwarming perseverance. We also see the real Pekar, and this multifaceted commingling of "reel" and "real" turns American Splendor into a uniquely cinematic celebration of Pekar's life and, by extension, the tenacity of an unlikely American hero. --Jeff Shannon

 

[Bada0Bing]

I saw this a couple of years ago. I remember thinking that this is a very strange movie. I had seen Paul Giamatti in a few films, but this was the first one in which he really stood out.

 

[Mike Olbinski]

This is really weird...

I feel like I've posted about seeing this movie somewhere...maybe I'm not searching enough.

Do we merge Movie A Day's with threads already created about the same movie?

 

[jenna2891]

This is really weird...

I feel like I've posted about seeing this movie somewhere...maybe I'm not searching enough.

Do we merge Movie A Day's with threads already created about the same movie?

you very well could have. i just searched the movie a day list and didn't see it on there. sorry.

 

[Mike Olbinski]

you very well could have. i just searched the movie a day list and didn't see it on there. sorry.

No, don't be sorry...

Just North Country, and this one...I feel like I've posted about them recently...and now I can't find them at all.

 

[jenna2891]

No, don't be sorry...

Just North Country, and this one...I feel like I've posted about them recently...and now I can't find them at all.

there was definitely another north country thread, i remember there being a lot more comments in it. come to think of it, i think i posted in it, something about me not having an ounce of desire to see it.

 

[Mike Olbinski]

there was definitely another north country thread, i remember there being a lot more comments in it. come to think of it, i think i posted in it, something about me not having an ounce of desire to see it.

So what happened to it?

 

[jenna2891]

So what happened to it?

dunno. i just tried to search the site with google and couldn't find anything on either movie. weird.