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He figures it'll never work out so he doesn't bother to call

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He figures it'll never work out, so he doesn't bother to call.""I find this out a couple of months - or maybe even a year later - so I call this guy up directly and we had a deal in five minutes."It's not that Pekar isn't happy for the movie to have been made: "It's better than it not existing," he admits in a voice that defies classification. If its owner is laconic and circumspect, the voice is a wild thing, hitting all manner of discords and flying from one octave to another, sometimes mid-syllable."It brings some hope for the future," he continues, expressionless. He's a bit of a nerd, obsessive about both literature (he's something of an expert in the evolution and history of fiction) and jazz (he met Crumb while rifling through LPs at a yard sale).But despite the fact that he and his family pretty much live on the breadline, Pekar almost let the movie deal pass him by."It's a perfect example of why I take care of business,' notes Brabner. The film brings to life many of the scenes from the book - with Pekar himself providing the voice-over.

We are introduced to him as a twice-divorced, forlorn bachelor. He met Brabner after a short correspondence when, on the strength of one date, the pair decided to get married.In person, Pekar is one of the least-animated individuals I've ever met. He appears simply to sink into his surroundings, looking more than a little bored. In contrast, Brabner is all beady eyes and pointy edginess, hardly waiting for a question to be finished before flinging the answer straight back at me. There are no flies on either of them.American Splendor sells a meagre 5,000 copies a year and, now, retired from the hospital, Pekar continues to enhance his small income with book and music reviews. The film is currently doing spry business at the UK box office.

In fact, as directed by documentary film-makers Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, it's proved the surprise hit of 2003. It was voted best picture by the National Society of Film Critics, beating Clint Eastwood's Mystic River.The title comes from Pekar's underground comic-book series, in which the trials and tribulations of an ordinary guy (Pekar) are catalogued with unflinching honesty; he writes, and a bunch of cartoonists (including Robert Crumb) provide the images. But we're a long way from Cleveland, where Pekar lives with his wife, Joyce Brabner and Danielle, a teenager the couple brought into their family. This unlikely group are the inspiration and stars of American Splendor, an imaginative, fresh-faced biopic that happily juxtaposes dramatisations, documentary footage and animation. As a college drop-out, failed army recruit and low-level hospital file clerk for 37 years, Harvey Pekar would be many people's idea of a loser. The "visionary" moments were often beautiful - though he might have deployed the head voice to more ethereal effect - but the rough, vocally callused fisherman was only ever hinted at. Janice Watson was an affecting Ellen Orford, Anthony Michaels-Moore a sonorous Balstrode and the gallery of Borough stalwarts was duly dominated by the two "fearful old females", Catherine Wyn-Rogers' wonderfully overbearing Mrs Sedley and Jill Grove's overripe Auntie.

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