American Splendor
Another dextrous jumble of fact and fiction, this bio-pic of part-time comic book creators and full-blown neurotics Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti) and Joyce Brabner (Hope Davis) was shot in Pekar’s home town of Cleveland by the wife-husband filmmaking team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who snagged an Oscar nomination for their script. Pekar, an ornery depressive who made his living as a file clerk at a veterans’ hospital. achieved furtive renown as an occasional guest on David Letterman’s talk soiree. He appears briefly as himself here, but Giamatti makes him even more endearing-exasperating as the hero-schlub of a flaky romantic comedy. It won the Sundance Jury prize.
