Movies: May 2004 Archives

I recently saw American Splendor, the Harvey Pekar story. It was really fascinating. I even browsed through one of his comic collections at my local bookstore. It seems to be a really early version of Seinfeld, which was a show about nothing. Although it's a lot grittier and angrier than Seinfeld, it has the same basic premise. Some of it's funny, some of it's sad, some just plain wierd. That goes for both the movie and the comics.

The most interesting thing to me is why this fairly ordinary guy from Cleveland believes that people want to read comic about his life, which is mostly about nothing. How one motivates oneself, and the artists required for this effort must require a certain kind of ego that seems removed from the character in the movie and the comic books. I would like to understand his motivation better.

If you like subtle movies, you might like this one.