Harvey Pekar has never heard of him before. The impression of this movie is just that I have seen a dejected man in front of a blue graffiti background that I have seen several times.
Paul Giamatti and his character prototype seem to have almost no similarities. Here I have to agree with the real Harvey Pekar who narrates his life as a voice-over in the movie. At Letterman's talkshow, Pekar seemed lazy but rather acrimonious. In the movie, Giamatti, who was walking around with her mouth squeezed and shrugged, felt more vivid than Pekar in the comics. (Sometimes he looks like Marlon Brando when he was young, but sometimes he was just an orangutan full of hair.) The
author who created the comic called American Splendor, in reality, only uses circles to represent human heads, which is taken for granted by many people. There is no enthusiasm for things, a humble formal job, perhaps less optimistic about life than one-half of a normal person, such a person. Therefore, the appearance of adult Harvey Pekar naturally starts with a loser, a hapless man who was abandoned by his wife and wanted to stay but couldn't make a sound, until he met the cartoonist Bob Crumb, who seemed to never put himself in the eyes. Unfortunately, when queuing to check out, an endless old Jewish woman inspired a long suppressed anger and momentary inspiration.
And Harvey Pekar in childhood was just a neighbor kid who stood with Superman, Batman, and Robin of the same age carrying a candy bag, but was helpless to be beaten by an unimaginative adult. I like this short but sharp beginning. Harvey Pekar never wanted to be a hero.
Joyce, who appeared as a comic book dealer in the small town of Delaware and later became Pekar’s third and today’s wife, and Danielle, the little girl who finally made Pekar live in a family of three, in a sudden and unbelievable way Came into the life of this man. It seems that unpleasant people will also have inexplicable happiness.
Also, as an ordinary person, Harvey Pekar often has no concealment about his untimely performance. In front of Toby, who had just been inspired by an inspirational film, he vented his extreme dissatisfaction with the bad Hollywood plots. Under the eyes of the public, he unscrupulously said something that should not be heard by the audience. But the more memorable segment is that he hung up the phone, behind the two people who loved him the most, in his most reserved tone and expression, he said what he most wanted to make people hug him. That was one year after he was diagnosed with cancer, he was told that he had recovered.
So when I remembered the beginning of the story, a silent man who claimed that he might have "throat cancer" made people laugh.
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