Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 2003

The Contenders:

American Splendor
City of God
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (winner)
Mystic River
Seabiscuit

It's Real Life, Man

Film: American Splendor
Format: DVD from personal collection on rockin’ flatscreen.

As I look through the various lists of films on my different lists, there are a few movies I’ve kept back for when I needed them. American Splendor is one of those movies. I’ve seen this a couple of times before; it’s a film I know I like. I’ve felt lately like I’ve been in a cinematic rut, and having been really enjoying what I’m watching as much as I think I should. American Splendor felt like a good way to get out of that rut.

American Splendor is based on the comic books written by Harvey Pekar about his own life as an average guy working a dead-end job as a VA hospital file clerk in Cleveland. And that’s really it. It’s just the life of an average man dealing with his life. What makes American Splendor interesting is not so much the stories that we’re told (they’re real life, after all, except for the fact that Harvey Pekar’s real life is also a comic series), but the style in which those stories are told. American Splendor mixes the comic world with the real world and also mixes the real world with the film world. There are layers upon layers of reality and non-reality here, and it all blends into something perfectly coherent.