American Splendor
By Jeremy Schmall
Columbus Wired Columnist

With a world-weary Cleveland as its backdrop, American Splendor follows the true life of Harvey Pekar, a glum career file-clerk and eventual comic book celebrity as he struggles with his own daily disappointments. The film begins with the real-life Pekar narrating as we’re plunged into a scene in which his second wife (and recent PhD. graduate) walks out on him and his “plebeian” life. Pekar, afflicted with swollen vocal chords, can barely squeak out a pathetic, “Don’t leave,” as she walks out. The depression-addled Pekar is left with his obsessive record collection, frightfully cluttered apartment, and dead-end employment.

Lonely and hopeless, it’s through a chance encounter at a garage sale that he meets up with Howard Crumb, a fellow record collector and then-unknown eventual comic book giant with whom he strikes up a friendship. One day, while trapped behind a fussy old lady at the grocery store, all of Pekar’s frustration boils over. He storms out, determined to make his mark on the world.

Inspired by Crumb’s recent success in San Francisco’s burgeoning comic book culture, he stays up all night writing a stick-figure comic, which Crumb later agrees to illustrate for him. This comic, called American Splendor, written about the grind of Pekar’s day-to-day life, quickly becomes a huge underground success, leading our character toward his strange and unique brush with fame.

Filled with a host of quirky, expertly acted characters, the film takes on a uniqueness and strengthened importance by weaving in the movie’s real-life counterparts to provide narration and dialogue. We’re even treated to a few actual clips of Pekar’s seasick appearances on David Letterman. And what’s truly remarkable here is the dexterity of the filmmakers in placing these scenes. Done clumsily, the film could get sidetracked and lose momentum. Instead the technique brings an added depth, with every hard-luck “plebeian” in the movie becoming much more than just well acted characters. We see the depressed and gritty actual human beings slugging it out in a modern-age that’s stacked against them.

Perhaps in spite of itself, I found the film uplifting. But not because of any played-up happy ending, or because of any “triumph of the human spirit.” I simply found it to be an honest look at the mountain of debris threatening to bury us every time we wake up. It’s easier to let the debris overcome us, and much harder to keep plugging away, no matter how mundane the landscape may be. At one point in the film, lonely and drifting across the blanched cement of a Cleveland highway overpass, Pekar questions what the value is of any given day, which he’s able to sum up with, well, “Every day’s a new deal.” A working-class pragmatist finds his poetry, and his audience, with tremendous benefit to both.