American Splendor (film)

2003 American biographical film about Harvey Pekar

American Splendor premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2003, and was released in the United States on August 15, by Fine Line Features. The film received critical acclaim. It was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 76th Academy Awards.

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.

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." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 90 out of 100, based on 42 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". 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." American Splendor won the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, in addition to the award for Best Adapted Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America. At the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, the film received the FIPRESCI critics award. American Splendor was given the Guardian New Directors Award at the 2003 Edinburgh International Film Festival. It was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2003 Academy Awards. 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. Harvey Pekar wrote about the effects of the film in various stories published in American Splendor: Our Movie Year (2004).