Harvey Pekar is file clerk at the local VA hospital. His interactions with his co-workers offer some relief from the monotony, and their discussions encompass everything from music to the decline of American culture to new flavors of jellybeans and life itself. At home, Harvey fills his days with reading, writing and listening to jazz. His apartment is filled with thousands of books and LPs, and he regularly scours Cleveland’s thrift stores and garage sales for more, savoring the rare joy of a 25-cent find. It is at one of these junk sales that Harvey meets Robert Crumb, a greeting card artist and music enthusiast. When, years later, Crumb finds international success for his underground comics, the idea that comic books can be a valid art form for adults inspires Harvey to write his own brand of comic book. An admirer of naturalist writers like Theodore Dreiser, Harvey makes his American Splendor a truthful, unsentimental record of his working-class life, a warts-and-all self portrait. First published in 1976, the comic earns Harvey cult fame throughout the 1980s and eventually leads him to the sardonic Joyce Barber, a partner in a Delaware comic book store who end ups being Harvey’s true soul mate as they experience the bizarre byproducts of Harvey’s cult celebrity stature.
1: A movie with a lot of balls. 2: From the idiots what brung you “Dumb and Dumber” 3: The movie the Olympuk comitee wouldn’t allow you to see. 4: You wouldn’t want to meet these pinheads in an alley.
Plot Summary:
Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson) was raised to be the best bowler in the world (trained early on by his father). But a fellow bowler, Ernie McCracken (Bill Murray) and a misunderstanding with some rough punks, leaves poor Roy with the loss of his bowling hand! Not to let this get him down, he gets a prosthetic hand and becomes a traveling sales man. But it’s really all down hill for him from that night on until … One day he meets Ishmael (Randy Quaid) who’s a Quaker that sneaks away from the farm to bowl (his fellow Quakers would disown him if they knew)! Roy convinces Ishmael to let him be his trainer and he’ll make him the best bowler the world has ever seen. Reluctantly Ismael agrees to go on the road and shortly afterwards actually finds that life outside the farm is quite fun. Soon their paths cross that of Ernie McCracken who is still top ranking bowler. While Roy’s career and life have landed in the toilet bowl, Ernie is still drawing huge crowds and all the babes! They both square off for the untimate bowling championship … to see which one truly IS the champion. To find that out you’ll have to see this funny and original movie. Bill Murray is at his best, since Caddyshack. Randy Quaid makes some daring choices that really work and Woody Harrelson brings us the comdey style from “Cheers” that made him a household name!
