#92 - American Splendor

I love it. I love it. I love it. You wanna talk about something that hits all the right buttons in my brain. I love the subject matter. I love the concept for the movie. I love the presentaton of the movie. Truly fantastic, well done, imaginitive, and quite unique. It's right up my alley in so many respects. Should I continue to go on and on about it, or actually say what it is I liked about it? Right.

First of all, the movie is a bio-pic. Or is it "biopic"? No, that sounds like an eye disorder or a problem in the renal division. Anywho, this movie is the story of Harvey Pekar, who happens to be the author of the classic underground comic book that I bet if you really thought about it, you could figure out the title of. The comics, which were originally drawn by Harvey's friend R. Crumb, are essentially autobiographical tales about his life as a file clerk, and this movie is based on those stories. Oh yeah, count me in.

But here's where it gets really good, and what I think makes it unique. Harvey Pekar is excellently played by Paul Giamatti. The narrator of the movie is Harvey Pekar himself. It makes sense. He was the voice of the comics, why not be the voice of the movie. But wait, there's more. We actually get to see Harvey in the movie. And not in a halucination scene sort of way like Fear and Loathing. We see him in a documentary style interview way. So, other than what we know about Harvey from the narrative portions, we get a little deeper and more personal than we otherwise would. I think this is a fascinating technique. It's not a case of using dramatic re-enactments to support a documentary, it's documentary type elements to add more depth to a movie. Where this really gets interesting is in the case of the people around Harvey. The other characters in the movie, specifically his wife and his co-worker, are interesting characters with bizarre eccentricities and quirks that you could see coming from a comic book world. But just as honest as Giamatti's performance is about who Harvey Pekar is, so are his co-stars. And we know this because the people they are based on are in the movie as well. It's fascinating to see what appears to be odd caricatures turn out to be real people. It's fascinating. It's funny. It's touching. It's well made in all aspects. Oh, and there's discussion about the social ramifications of Revenge of the Nerds.