I was watching ‘American Splendor’, a documentary about the true story of Harvey Pekar. How the pathetic wierd-named Pekar inspite of his dishevelled life, became a monumental icon for ‘American’s Common Man”, at least for a short period of time. Out of shear coincidence, I watched the movie ‘Crumb’ which documents the life of Robert Crumb, once famous and notoriously perverse underworld comic cartoonist. Apparently, Robert Crumb played an important role in Harvey becoming a star (Harvey wrote the stories and lent his character for comic books while Robert illustrated them), at least star enough to show up every year in Dave Letterman’s Late Night Show. Robert Pulcini, who plays Harvey was flamboyant. Man! those scenes where his voice gets completely screwed up, he was stupendous. I liked American Splendor more than Crumb, but if you like documentaries and appreciate biographies, you might like both.
I really liked this Elinor Wylie poem that Harvey mentions in one of the scenes :
Avoid the reeking herd,
Shun the polluted flock,
Live like that stoic bird,
The eagle of the rock…
Have you read ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ by Richard Bach? Oh! you should.
