Harvey Pekar is file clerk at the local VA hospital. His interactions
with his co-workers offer some relief from the monotony, and their
discussions encompass everything from music to the decline of American
culture to new flavors of jellybeans and life itself. At home, Harvey
fills his days with reading, writing and listening to jazz. His
apartment is filled with thousands of books and LPs, and he regularly
scours Cleveland's thrift stores and garage sales for more, savoring the
rare joy of a 25-cent find.
It is at one of these junk sales that Harvey meets Robert Crumb, a
greeting card artist and music enthusiast. When, years later, Crumb
finds international success for his underground comics, 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.
Directed By: Robert Pulcini, Shari Springer Berman
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