American Splendor | Chris Ambrose, Nick Baxter

American Splendor | Chris Ambrose, Nick Baxter | Quality, Six stars not Five!

DVDs:

American Splendor

	American Splendor Chris Ambrose, Nick Baxter HBO Video, 2004 average customer review:based on 127 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Based on the life and work of underground comic book writer Harvey Pekar- a prickly poet of the mundane who knows that all the strategizing in the world can't save a guy from picking the wrong supermarket checkout line.

Excellent film

If you're unsure about buying this, it's worth checking out just to see the characters. The crazy thing is that they're essentially real people. Go to wikipedia and look up Harvey Pekar, Robert Crumb, Toby Radloff, and Joyce Brabner. It's a pleasant surprise that they exist. See the movie. (It was in great condition when I got it, too.)

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Quality, Six stars not Five!

In my opinion this was one of the best films out there. Beautifully shot, written, and acted. I love this movie so much that I don't eve care that people didn't get it...it's their loss, and I hope that if you have not seen it, check it out and see for yourself.

original, funny, banal, pathetic, and uplifting

I was given a copy of Pekar's first anthology in 1985, and I read it so many times I practically memorized it. The great thing was that it had down to earth stories about normal people in a nowhere city, but they came through with a pathos and sense of striving that were throbbing with life. Not much happens, but they leave an imprint, if you like good dense fiction. Pekar is his milieu, however egomanaical, maladjusted, and sad he seems. The stories range from reasoning about his non-existent career while buying bread to hanging out with a horrible, clueless woman for sex because he is so lonely. All in a declining rustbelt city.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this film, but I bought it anyway. From the start, I thought it was completely successful and a work of art that stood on its own. You have the real Harvey Pekar as narrator, who occasionally appears to comment from a kind of inner sanctum mixing comics and the film set, and you have a wonderful actor, Paul Giamatti. Then, you also have them watching themselves in a play and then on David Letterman. It was a strange double or triple reflection of reality.

The story is very well put together. It starts when Pekar is getting divorced (2nd time), shows his life as a working-class intellectual, and then how he falls in love with someone as strange yet endearing as himself, Joyce. Then, he survives cancer and even accepts a child into his life, which with his loudly announced vasectomy (on his first date with his wife) he was adamant never to do. All through it, Pekar strives to develop his art, comic book writing that others illustrate. He does his thing through sheer gall - and hey, if he doesn't, who would? Every freelancer will identify with this.

Giamatti really gets Pekar: the constantly worried brow, the shuffling slump with his constant companion (a mild depression), yet also the good mind that is entirely self-taught. It is brilliant. But the feel of the film also reflects what I have witnessed: there is even a scene where one character is introduced, Toby (whom I did not recall from the comic), and for a second I was convinced he was someone I really knew. (You read this, Chris?) I had to watch that scene several times, and even got my kids to watch the "nerd" as he defined himself - we all laughed, but felt sympathy as well. That is typical Pekar.

Someday, I believe, Pekar's work will be regarded as genuine literature that portrays the age, much I would wager, as do Chaucer or Froissart. People will do Phds on it, but I prefer to simply enjoy it for what it is. Warmly recommended.

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I'm Impressed

I left the USA in 1999, so I have no clue about any of the material that preceded this film. It was some underground comic books and I don't know what else. Coming into it with no clue about all this background, I was quite impressed. The movie does pull you into the world of Harvey Pekar, which apparently blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction to give us ordinary life. It's also an excellent trip through the 60s, 70s and 80s, and a great way to spend a couple of hours, and you'll think about it after it's over. In other words, get it.

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