#7 American Splendor

Biopics are definitely one of my favorite genres. Profiles of real life individuals are often Oscar bait because they begin with a story people are already interested in. But American Splendor is probably my favorite biopic of the decade, and it was about somebody I had never heard of.

That somebody is Harvey Pekar. But it's hard to say if it's strictly a biopic. Harvey Pekar is played by Paul Giamatti, but the movie also features interviews with the real Harvey Pekar. It's a story about an incredibly sad man and Giamatti's amazing performance makes this man's woes hilarious. So in a way American Splendor is a sad, funny, fictional documentary.

The movie starts off with Pekar being a depressive file clerk in 1970's Cleveland, Ohio. And it ends with Pekar as a depressive file clerk in 2000's Cleveland, Ohio. This everyman persona is exactly what makes this character so interesting. Harvey must have known it himself, because he started writing comics based off his monotonous existence. Originally drawn by legendary comic artist Robert Crumb, Pekar facetiously titled his comic book American Splendor which were just boring stories based off of his boring life. Yet somehow people found these tales very interesting.

But it's not hard to tell why. The movie American Splendor takes many scenes that occur in the American Splendor comics, and lets Giamatti bring it to life. His bitter, complain about everything attitude, is somehow hilarious in a Larry David-esque sort of way. You know that both characters are good deep-down, but they're both so honest that they come off as assholes. For instance, when a fan(who would later become his wife) flies out to meet Pekar, he introduces himself by saying "You might as well know right off the bat, I had a vasectomy."


It also does a great job of showing American life throughout the past few decades. In the 80's Harvey's friend Tobey (an insanely funny character played by Judah Friedlander) sells out at as he gets swept up in the MTV generation. Harvey himself can't handle his mild celebrity as his frequent appearances on Late Night with David Letterman as Letterman's punching bag eventually blow up in Pekar's face.

The movie constantly breaks the fourth-wall, as Pekar will go into soliloquies about life in general. There is one scene where he attends a play which is based on his life and he comments about what a weird sensation that is. And how it will be even weirder to see the movie that's based on his life. Now consider how weird it is for the real Harvey Pekar, who is featured within the movie, to see an actor in that movie playing Harvey Pekar, who is watching a play based on his life and remarking what it will be like to see a movie about himself.

And while that might not be the best ending to this particular post, I think it segways perfectly into my next film...