Oct 07, 2009 04:28:26 PM by
Maverage 
Not yet rated
American Splendor has been one of those movies in my NetFlix queue for quite a while. I'm not sure why I added it - but now I've added it to my list of best-films ever. It joins 'Music Within', 'Beach Party', 'Groundhog Day', 'The New Interns', 'Little Children', and others...
American Splendor is the story of Harvey Pekar, and his life as 'Joe Average' file clerk with the Veteran's Administration in Cleveland, Ohio. It started as a comic book series created by Harvey, and a series of artists (starting with Crumb, who has a movie of his own... but that's another topic). Paul Giamatti's take on Harvey Pekar was fabulous - perennially rumpled, always messy, and a neurotic collector with obsessive compulsive disorder. The film character's movements between the film world, and the quasi real-world including the real Harvey Pekar in a stylized all-white file cabinet room, and a comic book-like world of blank white paper walls with stark horizon lines depending alternately the floor, and the 'frame' of a comic panel. But what really hooked me was a simple scene when Giamatti was answering a letter from a neurotic comic-book store clerk in Baltimore - she was asking for a copy of the latest issue of the "American Splendor" comic, when it became clear that their neuroses'es (???) were going to be compatible. I laughed out loud, and realized that yes... there's a woman out there for Harvey Pekar. And if there's a RGW (really great woman) for a slovenly, sloppy guy like Harvey, then there MUST be someone out there who's just right for ME.
But does this mean I need to hone the ying/yang of my neurosis's to a potential partner's neurotic tendencies?