American Splendor is a 2003 American biographicalcomedy drama film written and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. The film, which chronicles the life of comic book writer Harvey Pekar, is a hybrid production featuring live actors, documentary, and animation. It is based on the 1976–2008 comic book series of the same name written by Pekar and the 1994 graphic novel Our Cancer Year written by Pekar and Joyce Brabner.[3] The film stars Paul Giamatti as Pekar and Hope Davis as Brabner.[3] It also features appearances from Pekar and Brabner themselves (along with Pekar's long-time co-worker Toby Radloff),[3] who discuss their lives, the comic books, and how it feels to be depicted onscreen by actors.
On Halloween 1950, Harvey Pekar refuses to dress up as a superhero while trick-or-treating. A few years later,
we see Harvey walking the Cleveland streets, then the real Harvey Pekar appears in a documentary-style setup. In 1975, a scratchy-voiced Harvey visits a throat doctor and exhibits hypochondria. Harvey's wife derides their "plebeian" lifestyle and leaves him, while he has no voice to argue. A few months later, Harvey is at his file clerk job at a VA hospital when Mr. Boats offers advice from an Elinor Wylie poem.
In a documentary scene, the real Harvey discusses his years as a part-time used-record collector/salesman. Flashing back to 1962, Harvey meets shy greeting card illustrator Robert Crumb while browsing records at a yard sale, and the two bond over jazz and comic books. Returning to 1975, the now-popular Crumb is in Cleveland for a visit. The newly single and frustrated Harvey has a sobering moment in the VA hospital's "deceased" files section, leading him to try drawing his own stories, but his lack of talent stops him. An incident at the supermarket with his animated subconscious inspires him to stay up all night writing. At a diner with Crumb, Harvey shows Crumb scripts he's been working on for a new comic, while Crumb offers to illustrate them.
Harvey publishes eight issues of American Splendor to critical acclaim but little financial gain and remains a file clerk. He runs into Alice Quinn, a woman he briefly knew in college, and they catch up and discuss Theodore Dreiser's novel Jennie Gerhardt. He leaves their encounter feeling even more alone.
Meanwhile, in Delaware, Joyce is frustrated with her partner in the comic book store, who has sold her copy of American Splendor No. 8. She corresponds with Harvey and they discover they are kindred spirits, so she travels to Cleveland to meet him in person. Following a dinner date, she is overcome with a bout of nausea and vomiting at his apartment. A concerned Harvey offers her chamomile tea, and Joyce suggests they skip courtship and get married.
A week later, Harvey sees his VA colleague Toby Radloff sitting in his car eating. Toby is on his way to Toledo to see the new movie Revenge of the Nerds, while Harvey is on his way to Delaware to marry Joyce and help her move to Cleveland. Sitting alongside the real Harvey, the real Joyce Brabner talks about what it was like to become a character in Harvey's stories.
Now married, Harvey and Joyce attend a screening of Revenge of the Nerds with Toby, which Harvey finds insipid. Back at their apartment, Joyce gripes about Harvey's possessions, but their spat is interrupted by a message from a theater producer who wants to make American Splendor into a play. After the play's Los Angeles debut, Harvey's growing success is complicated by Joyce's emotional struggles and desire for children, compounded when a producer calls to offer Harvey a guest spot on Late Night with David Letterman. Harvey is a hit on the show and comes back for multiple appearances, while Toby becomes an MTV star.
Back in Cleveland, someone recognizes Harvey from Late Night, but their reasons anger him. Meanwhile, Joyce seeks fulfillment as a creator and activist and travels to a peace conference without Harvey's permission. One night, Harvey discovers a lump on his groin.
With Joyce still away, Harvey returns to Late Night wearing an "On Strike Against NBC" shirt, leading to chaos. Joyce returns and discovers Harvey's lump and he is soon diagnosed with lymphoma. She suggests he make a comic book about it, but he just wants to die, so she enlists Fred, an artist, to illustrate the experience. Fred brings his daughter Danielle to their first brainstorming session, and Joyce is smitten with her. Harvey reluctantly agrees to participate in the comic and asks Fred to keep bringing Danielle.
Harvey's treatment is difficult. One night, he wonders if he is real or a comic book character, and whether the story will end or continue if he dies. Harvey wanders through a dreamscape, musing about other Harvey Pekars he finds in the telephone book. One year later, Harvey and Joyce sign the completed Our Cancer Year, and he is declared cancer-free. They adopt Danielle, and Harvey adjusts to being a parent. The real Harvey retires from the VA hospital and the staff hold a retirement party, during which Joyce, Danielle and Harvey embrace.
Gary Dumm (a long-time illustrator for American Splendor) as The Extra (in a suede jacket), who asks Pekar for his autograph in the Our Cancer Year book-signing scene
The film was originally intended to be screened on HBO. The script was written before the September 11 attacks, was cast right afterward, and shot in about a month in the fall of 2001.[6]
Though Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini had directed documentaries before, American Splendor was their first narrative feature. Of the film's alternating of fictional portrayals with real-life appearances by Pekar and his friends and family, co-writer/co-director Pulcini recalled,
"It really was the only way that made sense to tell that story because we were handed this stack of comic strips where the main character never really looks the same because he's drawn by so many different artists. We wondered how to stay true to the material, and that's the concept we came up with. The structure came out of that very naturally. It wasn't something that we labored over."[7]
Berman added that upon meeting Pekar they felt compelled to include him in the film:
"We also got to know Harvey even before we wrote the screenplay. We actually went to Cleveland and spent time with Harvey and Joyce, and spoke to them on the phone a lot. Once we spent some time with both of them, we were like, 'Oh my God, we have to put them in the movie!' That was a case where we were still using our documentary instincts and had to figure out a way to include him in it that was a natural fit for the material."[7]
At one point, Pekar meta-references the structure of the film by doing a voice-over for a one-shot of Paul Giamatti playing him by saying "There's our guy. Well, it's me. Or the guy playing me. Though he don't look nothing like me, but whatever." (Pekar and Brabner had been approached previously by actors interested in playing Pekar on film, including Rob Schneider.)[10]
David Letterman refused to appear in the film, and his old network of NBC did not allow the filmmakers to use footage of Pekar's disastrous fourth and sixth appearances on Late Night (aired July 31, 1987 and August 31, 1988, respectively), though they had no problems with the other Pekar appearances that are shown in the film.[11] The supposed "final appearance" was done using oblique camera angles and a voiced-over audio of the incident.[12] (In actuality, Pekar returned for two more appearances on the Letterman show in 1993 & 1994.)[11]
The film's original production budget was $1.5 million, and as the film was coming together, HBO gave the filmmakers more money for post-production, animation, and music.[6][2]
Music
Mark Suozzo wrote the film's score.
Music played in the film mostly reflects Pekar's affection for avant-garde jazz and American music from the 1920s and 1930s. A couple of songs by American Splendor illustrator Robert Crumb and his band are also featured.
The American Splendor (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) was released by New Line Records in 2003, and featured the following songs:[13]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 94% rating based on reviews from 186 critics, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Exhilarating both stylistically and for its entertaining, moving portrayal of an everyman, American Splendor is a portrait of a true underground original."[14] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 90 out of 100, based on 42 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[15]
Roger Ebert awarded the film four stars out of four in his review, calling it a "magnificently audacious movie, in which fact and fiction sometimes coexist in the same frame." He remarked "the casting of Giamatti and Davis is perfect", writing that they "mastered not only the looks but the feels and even the souls of these two people", as well as praising Friedlander's performance. He also found the film "delightful in the way it finds its own way to tell its own story", describing its presentation as "mesmerizing in the way it lures us into the daily hopes and fears of this Cleveland family."[16]
Columnist Jaime Wolf wrote a laudatory review of the film in Slate, also drawing attention to formal parallels with Woody Allen's Annie Hall and his other films.[19]
Harvey Pekar wrote about the effects of the film in various stories published in American Splendor: Our Movie Year (2004).[20]
