Some thoughts on Harvey Pekar

I'm not a big reader of comic books, but I have lately been reading a few. One series that I plan to read is called American Splendor. The author, Harvey Pekar died a few weeks ago, and I was sorry to hear it. There was something beautiful, familiar, and tragic about the character and maybe the man himself.

On the suggestion of a friend I watched the movie with the same title. The movie stars Paul Giamatti as Pekar and also features pieces of the comics and clips from interviews with Pekar himself. Giamatti does a great job of capturing his physical eccentricities. The comic is auto-biographical and tells the stories of his life. Most of the time Pekar represents himself as a depressed, tragic character whose life is unremarkable except for some of the unfortunate events that he encounters. Many of these brought on by his own attitude.

What makes the comic and the movie interesting is how faithfully he is able to capture the sense of of his characters. He is able to represent the conversation, tone, and pace of his life in a way that feels so real, so familiar, so honest. Most of the stories in the movie are simple, or mundane, or tragic. But, they feel completely real.


What's amazing is that in life's mundane pace, there is so much that is beautiful and interesting, even if it's unremarkable. The beauty and interest arises from the detail. The complexity of real people is interesting, their quirks, their shallow conversation and their trite interests. I found the man's work so rich. It's as though in his negative, complaining attitude, he's obligated to record and portray the complexities and eccentricities of real people. To sum up what I took away from the movie: In its richness life is wonderful, even when the dominant theme is suffering.

Remembering Enemy Mine

"Jerry, old Drac ... where would you be without me, huh?" -
"Back home."


When I was a kid, like every self-respecting middle class American family, we owned a VCR. Unlike most families, we didn't have any rhyme or reason as to what movies we owned. We didn't buy movies for ourselves, and so we owned whatever movies we received as gifts. This resulted in only a handful of very random movies. What few movies we did own we watched over and over. Maybe a hundred times, we'd quote them, we'd make fun of them, the language in these movies became a part of our vernacular growing up. One such movie was 'Willow.' We called each other 'peck' for years.

Another wonderful movie that we owned was called 'Enemy Mine'. Enemy mine stars Dennis Quaid and Louis Gosset Jr. as the Drac. The story is about a future space war between humans and Dracs (the aliens). Quaid and Gosset's characters shoot each other down in a space ship battle royal and get stuck on a hostile planet. They end up cooperating in order to survive and becoming friends. When other humans are found on the planet and become a threat to Gosset, Quaid decides to side with his new friend instead of his own kind. I know what you are thinking, and yes, it's Dances with Wolves, with aliens.

It's a weird movie. Yet it does have it's appeal. I cannot watch it objectively. It's so familiar and ingrained, that I don't have the ability to see it with new eyes. Although, the effects are terrible.

It's available as a streaming movie on Netflix. I encourage anyone who reads this blog to go and watch it, for the first time if you've never seen it before. And tell me, is this a good movie or is it a joke?



Description from Netflix:

Earthling Davidge (Dennis Quaid) is one of many space warriors facing a brutal battle against the reptilian Draconians, among them the soldier Jeriba (Louis Gossett Jr.). But when the pilots' spaceships crash-land on the same planet, these foes must team up to stay alive. The stakes climb higher after Jeriba gives birth to a baby Drac, and Davidge becomes foster father to his own natural enemy as he tries to survive in a hostile land.