American Splendor Certificate: 
- Duration:
- 101 mins
- Year produced:
- 2003
- Director:
- Shari Springer Berman
- Robert Pulcini
- Cast:
- Chris Ambrose
- Joey Krajcar
- Josh Hutcherson
Real-life comic book writer Harvey Pekar is a hospital clerk in Cleveland Ohio, pessimistic and constantly putting himself down, but with a true love of art, music and life's many oddball moments. Eventually he finds an outlet when, inspired by his friend Robert Crumb, he begins writing autobiographical comic books - comics which become hugely popular, and that later deal with subjects such as his unlikely rise to fame and his battle against cancer. This unsentimental tale is a playful “docu-drama” (the real Harvey Pekar himself crops up throughout the film), inventive, funny and highly entertaining.
- Average rating:
- This film has not been rated yet
Fascinating facts
Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.
Ever the bad-tempered “ordinary Joe,” Harvey Pekar was less than impressed when American Splendor was nominated for an Oscar: "If the big shots that run the motion picture studios want to set aside a weekend every year to congratulate themselves, fine,” he wrote at the time. “But leave me out of it. I could be working on some project that would get me money. And to add insult to injury, I have to rent a tux to get into the Academy Awards."