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In American Splendor, Pulcini and Springer Berman interweave documentary and fiction, mirroring the premise on which Harvey Pekar based his award-winning comic: the celebration of the hero of ordinary life. In one memorable sequence in the film, Pekar shares his first rough sketches for the comic with artist Robert Crumb, expressing to his friend his desire to create a comic book featuring events of his life. Crumb responds “you’ve turned yourself into a superhero.” It is this notion of Pekar viewing himself as superhero combating the mundane, his constant blurring of fact with fantasy, and his perpetual identity crisis that Pulcini and Springer so masterfully re-create through their convergence of biopic and documentary in American Splendor. Shifting techniques between real and representation are continuous throughout the film— sequences with the actors shift to documentary-style sequences with the real Pekar and his wife, as well as to actual historical footage or still shots of the comic strip—to show that the comic and its creator are a single entity.
This interesting intersection between biopic and documentary (frequent shifts out of the narrative into a documentary) is an element present throughout the film beginning in the first sequence of the narrative. The film’s overall aesthetic is reminiscent of a comic book: frame-by-frame scenes comprise the film, captions are used as a way to introduce sequences, and thought bubbles frequently show Pekar’s inner conundrums. These comic book- like aesthetics are combined with the voice of the real Harvey Pekar who narrates the film, thus introducing the viewer to this notion of blurring fact and fiction from the very start. In one of the first sequences of the narrative, the adult Pekar and his job as a file clerk at a VA hospital are introduced to the viewer by a shot of aisles of files along with actor Paul Giamatti and the omniscient voice of Harvey Pekar: “here’s me, or the guy playing me.”
More drastic shifts between fiction and documentary are seen in the frequent transitions from the muted color sequences of the narrative to the bright white space in which the real Harvey Pekar sits and participates in an interview, documentary style, commenting on such things as his love for records and comics, how his wife (Joyce) and co-workers feel about being featured in his comics, and his relationship with Joyce. This shifting from color to all white in sequences featuring the actual Harvey, is highly conducive to momentarily drawing the viewer outside of the box of the narrative, and turning the representation into the real.
Upon reading Dirk Eitzen’s analysis of the definition of documentary, it is apparent how great of an extent to which Pulcini and Springer Berman’s film stays loyal to Pekar’s comic’s premise of the ordinary hero, of the blur that occurs in Pekar’s everyday and comic book existence. Eitzen writes that a film being classified as a documentary is based heavily on the perceptions and assumptions of the audience. Eitzen explains, “I have tried to show that the question ‘Might it be lying?’ is the key to figuring out whether and when a film is perceived as a documentary.” The audience’s presumptions of truth claims, according to Eitzen, are indicative of when a film is working as a documentary. If the audience is probed to question the truthfulness of a film, then it is working as documentary, not as a piece of fiction. The genius of Pulcini and Berman is that they blur all elements of the film in regards to what is real, including its genre. With its interweaving of elements of the real Harvey Pekar into the narrative—his narration, interviews, and actual historical Letterman footage—the film is never “indexed” by the audience as a film claiming to be real and thus the question of “might it be lying” is never asked. The most commonly talked about sequence is the one in which the actors who play Harvey and Toby (Giamatti and Friedlander) are shown walking off-set, then sitting and watching an interview the real Harvey and Toby- the ultimate collision between fiction and documentary. When it comes down to it, much like Pekar’s comic book existence, American Splendor can be pinpointed as neither fiction nor documentary. It is true to both the interest of documentary filmmakers, as Springer and Pulcini point out, in its play with “what’s real and what’s not,” as well as to Pekar’s perpetual identity crisis. As Pekar himself guides us through the narrative, overall what Pulcini and Berman have created with American Splendor is a commentary on the biopic. Along with the comic book, the film is an examination of identity and what it’s like to watch one’s own life recreated in images.