Screening: American Splendor

Monday, March 29, 2010

Comedy that blends fiction and documentary to tell the real life story of grumpy American comic book writer Harvey Pekar. American Splendor premiered in competition at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize.

Before camcorders, before Webcams, before nonstop reality TV, there was Harvey Pekar and his homegrown autobiographical comic book series "American Splendor." Since 1976, the pages of "American Splendor" have found Harvey puzzling, fuming, and marveling over the minutiae of his day-to-day existence. No experience is too ordinary, no thought too incorrect for him to gnaw over in his funny, candid and utterly humane stories. Bringing his own brand of bravery to comic books, Harvey Pekar expresses what so many of us think and feel, but only dream of saying – and he never, ever holds back. The idea that comic books can be a valid art form for adults inspires Harvey to write his own brand of comic book. An admirer of naturalist writers like Theodore Dreiser, Harvey makes his American Splendor a truthful, unsentimental record of his working-class life, a warts-and-all self portrait. First published in 1976, the comic earns Harvey cult fame throughout the 1980s and eventually leads him to the sardonic Joyce Barber, a partner in a Delaware comic book store who end ups being Harvey's true soul mate as they experience the bizarre byproducts of Harvey's cult celebrity stature. the screening is on 31 of March for free.