{"id":8705,"date":"2010-07-16T02:23:38","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T01:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=8705"},"modified":"2010-07-16T02:23:38","modified_gmt":"2010-07-16T01:23:38","slug":"interview-harvey-pekar-on-american-splendor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2010\/07\/16\/interview-harvey-pekar-on-american-splendor\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Harvey Pekar on American Splendor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Harvey Pekar<\/a><\/strong>, the underground author of the acclaimed comic book American Splendor<\/a>, passed away earlier this week<\/a> in Cleveland, Ohio.<\/p>\n

Although he worked for almost 40 years as a file clerk in a hospital, he turned the everyday struggles of his life in to a distinctive series of books, which started in 1976 and were illustrated by artists such as Robert Crumb<\/a>, Gary Dumm<\/a>, Greg Budgett and Mark Zingarelli<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Back in December 2003 I spoke with Harvey in London when the film adaptation<\/a> of American Splendor was released in UK cinemas.<\/p>\n

Directed by Robert Pulcini<\/a> and Shari Springer Berman<\/a>, it starred Paul Giamatti<\/a> as Pekar,\u00a0Hope Davis<\/a> as his wife Joyce and featured an inventive mix of fiction, animation and documentary footage.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Critically acclaimed<\/a>, it won a string of awards<\/a>, including prizes at festivals such as Sundance and Cannes, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.<\/p>\n

We discussed various aspects of his life and career, including how started the comic book, the film adaptation, his feud in the late 1980s with David Letterman<\/a> and the influences on his work.<\/p>\n

You can listen to the interview here:<\/p>\n[audio:http:\/\/filmdetail.receptionmedia.com\/Harvey_Pekar_on_American_Splendor.mp3]\n

You can also download this interview as a podcast via iTunes by clicking here<\/a><\/p>\n

> Download the interview as an MP3 file<\/a>
> American Splendor<\/a> at the IMDb
> New York Times obituary<\/a>
> Various Harvey Pekar links at MUBI<\/a>
> Find out more about the American Splendor comic<\/a> at Wikipedia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An audio interview from December 2003 with the late Harvey Pekar, the writer behind the comic American Splendor, which was turned into an acclaimed film of the same name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,15],"tags":[1471,1470],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}