American Splendor

Yesterday I posted my The Movie Psychic movie review. More than a joke than anything else. Yes, you can say I am wrong for trashing a film that I've never seen before. Fair enough. Still, I am going to assume that film is trash and I probably will never see it.

I thought I'd write about a truly great flick today, American Splendor from 2003. This film stars the great Paul Giamatti as the writer and creator of the comic book of the same name, Harvey Pekar. What this movie does that is so unusual is that, although Harvey and all the people in his life are portrayed by actors, the real people do appear in the film. Not as extras or cameos, but as themselves. The film isn;t afraid to cross that forth wall. It works. You see, we all know that Paul Giamatti is not Harvey Pekar and the film is not a document of Harvey's actual life. The film right away says, Yes, we know that you know and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Besides, it sort of makes the story more real knowing that all the real people are being represented.



This film is on cable every now and the, IFC (Independent Film Channel) shows it about one a month, I would guess. The next clip is early in the film in which Harvey is first getting the idea to write a comic book. It's a funny scene.