Paul Giamatti, starring as real life Harvey Pekar in "American Splendor" is the son of the late Yale University President and Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti.

As the antithesis of his father, Paul the son, portrays a character that is unhip, unhandsome, misanthropic, potbellied, confused, depressed and depressing, but typical of the Anti Hero that is schlumping their way into prominence, appealing to the current generation of jaded young people, bored with the sentimental.
========================================================
MOVIES: LOSERS ON THE RISE

Unhip, unhandsome, depressed and depressing, the new anti-heroes are slumping into big-screen prominence. Their jaded fans say they're hungry for a darker reality.

Los Angeles Times
By Lynn Smith
Times Staff Writer
August 17 2003

In the just-opened "American Splendor," actor Paul Giamatti plays the depressed, misanthropic, potbellied and outspoken comic book writer Harvey Pekar.

"It was sort of a thrill," Giamatti says. "It's as much of an outlaw as I'll ever play — an outlaw who works in the Veterans Administration office for 40 years."

What kind of an outlaw is this? When it comes to antiheroes, American audiences have always liked theirs handsome, hip and politically significant.

Take Paul Newman as "Cool Hand Luke" knocking the heads off parking meters for no particular reason, or Jack Nicholson in "Five Easy Pieces" (1970) making a social statement out of debating a waitress to get a side order of toast. If a loser would occasionally appear, it would be someone like Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate," who sought comfort in snorkeling in the family pool, but usually got it together in some way — in Hoffman's case, by winning the beautiful Katherine Ross.

The latest incarnation of the antihero is, like Pekar, neither tough nor sexual; he's an everyday schlump who rejects conventional ideas of romance, success and even basic grooming. Unhappy, depressed, confused, he slouches through life, in places like Omaha or Cleveland, sometimes mocking traditionalists.

As alternatives to grandiose or glamorous commercial blockbusters, the new antihero films often play as dark comedies or satires whose central characters are deeply flawed and not necessarily redeemed. These antiheroes and heroines appeal to the current generation of jaded young people, bored with the sentimental. These audiences can relate to protagonists who mirror their own world of diminished expectations, financial insecurity and political and corporate conformity.

If these antiheroes have jobs at all, they're in strip malls, cubicles, restaurants or vintage record shops. Their social skills are on a par with mushrooms.

You know you're in their world when Ron Livingston's boss answers his questions with "Did you get the memo on that?" in Mike Judge's 1999 "Office Space." Or in "American Splendor" when Pekar accepts a marriage proposal from a depressed fan in saucer-shaped glasses on their first date — after he blurts out the news that he's had a vasectomy and she vomits in the bathroom. Or Jennifer Aniston as "The Good Girl" (2002), a retail clerk choosing between a doofus husband and a suicidal co-worker. Or Thora Birch in "Ghost World" (2000), so bored and confused, she seduces a lonely record collector (Steve Buscemi) just because he's the opposite of everything she hates.

This territory has been mined by a particular cadre of writer-directors — Mike White, the Coen brothers, Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne, Terry Zwigoff and Todd Solondz — and actors — Giamatti, Steve Buscemi, Jack Black, John Cusack and John C. Reilly in such cult-favorite films as "Ghost World," "The Big Lebowski," "The Good Girl," "Rushmore," "Clerks" and now the Sundance award-winning "American Splendor."

AUDIENCE AFFINITY

Characters like Giamatti's Pekar or Jeff Bridges' "The Dude" in the 1998 Coen brothers film "The Big Lebowski" also speak to older audiences who have become disenchanted with the demands of life on the grid. Hollywood writer and producer's rep Jeff Dowd, the real-life model for "The Dude," is amazed at the number of fathers and sons, corporate executives, sports nuts and military people who approach him admiringly at festivals held to celebrate the character, described as "the laziest man in Los Angeles County."

A smart and genial layabout, the Dude smokes, drinks and bowls his days away with an assortment of odd friends.

"They seem to be in love with this character," Dowd says. "It reminds them of a life they can't live but wish they could." Even Giamatti, son of the late Yale University President and Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, says he identified with Pekar more than any other character he's played.

Livingston, whose cubicle-bound computer character ultimately rebels, has said strangers have told him they quit their boring jobs because of the film.

The old antihero opposed the conventional values of society but lived by a private code that he would go to jail defending, says screenwriting guru Robert McKee. And ironically, McKee says, "by defending or acting on their private code, the antihero tended to benefit society, whether society liked him or not." Think Rick Blaine in "Casablanca."

"Clearly in the '60s, that sensibility found itself. At other points in time, it's running contrary to the prevailing sensibility and seems fresh and alternative," says producer Albert Berger ("Election").

The new antiheroes tend to be as messed up as the world around them. "They recognize life is meaningless, but they don't have any great project to substitute a meaning," McKee says. "They're clinging to the thinnest of things: an orphan in Africa [in 'About Schmidt'], marriage to a dolt ['The Good Girl'], the creation of a comic book scenario" ['American Splendor']." They're the kind of characters writers empathize with, imbuing them with an appealing defiance, a sad sweetness. Screenwriter Jim Taylor ("Election" and "About Schmidt" with director Alexander Payne) sees his characters as "noble in their patheticness. Just being a human being is really difficult," he says. "It's something that Alexander and I are drawn to: people who are struggling to get out of bed."

The characters reflect the honest and painful truths of everyday life. "We're all stuck in this world," Taylor says. "I guess it's an existential thing."

In "The Good Girl," Aniston layers lie upon lie to be nice, protect other people and avoid confrontation. "It created a false way of communicating with everyone," says actor-writer Mike White ("Chuck & Buck"). "It's not something I am trying to idealize or glamorize or proffer forth as a way to live," he says. "It's something that seems pretty prevalent in myself and people I know."

Antiheroes have proliferated in an atmosphere of heightened sensitivity since Sept. 11, says Ray Carney, film studies director at Boston University. While commercial filmmakers reacted to the threat by exaggerating the good- versus-evil axis in films like "The Matrix" sequels and Vin Diesel and Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicles, other more independent filmmakers "took precisely the opposite emotional lesson," he says. "They responded by seeing the world as more complex, looking at the grays, the inadequacies, failures, shortcomings in American life, our own hearts, our own souls," he says.

Some of these films, like "The Good Girl," achieved modest success at the box office; others were commercial duds. But even the failures developed passionate fans, while others found audiences in their DVD, video and cable TV afterlives. Last month 800 people showed up in Louisville, Ky., for the second annual Lebowski Fest, which honored "The Big Lebowski."

Web sites devoted to "The Dude" and "Office Space" include long lists of quotes from the films.

Similarly, interest has been rekindled for a tongue-in-cheek John Cusack-for-President campaign, says its creator, political consultant Dan Carol. Last year the campaign, a benign front for a grass-roots social service campaign, signed up 5,000 members on 100 college campuses before Cusack (1989's "Say Anything" and 2000's "High Fidelity") asked them to stop.

Quirky characters have even begun to cross over into the mainstream in some cases. Barry Mendel, who produced the 2001 Wes Anderson film "The Royal Tenenbaums," says, "It was a pleasant surprise to see how much more of a mainstream group was going to 'The Royal Tenenbaums' than [Anderson's 1998 film] 'Rushmore.' "

More antiheroes are meandering their way to both the big and small screens soon. White's next project is a TV series, "Cracking Up," set to premiere in January, about a psychology graduate student who lives with a Beverly Hills family while mentoring the youngest child. "Once he gets into the house, he realizes they're all insane," he says.

Giamatti is considering a lead role in Payne and Taylor's next movie, "Sideways": He would play a divorced and emotionally crippled writer trying to publish his novel.

Needless to say, major studios aren't competing to finance films with main characters who appear unlikely to inspire a rush to the box office.

Many of these films don't follow standard Hollywood narratives — including the requisite upbeat ending that pulls in more people. The struggle of ordinary life may be real, but, Taylor says, "It's probably true that people go to a movie still expecting to feel good at the end and not think about it that much.

"Studios aren't that interested in movies that do moderately well," he says. "They want a really big home run movie."

"Office Space's" Judge has said that Fox executives, hoping for a success like "There's Something About Mary," kept telling him, "More energy! We gotta re-shoot it! You're failing!" The film, which barely recouped its original $10- million budget, now ranks among the home entertainment division's top 20 bestsellers.

It took White five years to make "The Good Girl," he says, partly because producers resisted his dark ending.

"They wanted to make her character more heroic and less selfish There are 10 movies a year with those elements in it," he says. "I felt it would lose all its bite. It meant for a lot more lunches where you fall on your fork."

Producer Berger says the "left of center" studios like Miramax, Fox Searchlight, New Line Cinema and Paramount Pictures are the ones that take a chance on alternative films starring antiheroes. And then, it's often only after celebrities like Nicholson and Aniston agree to appear in them. Well-known or handsome actors, however, aren't always convincing as total losers. Even though Nicholson's career has been defined by antiheroes, some say his larger-than-life persona worked against his (Oscar-nominated) performance as the depressed Middle American Schmidt.

IRONY AND EMOTION

Another problem is that the irony that has fueled satires for the last 15 years undercuts real emotions, Taylor says. "It's something we're trying to be aware of and not live in that land of irony completely, even though we love it."

Filmmakers who focus solely on antiheroes also face an ethical issue, Carney says. "If you actually bought into the ironic view, you'd be paralyzed," he says. "It's not an adult view you can live by. [Antihero] films allow for mocking at what it is but not telling you what is your next step. It's a complicated thing. It's not entirely good to be in the antihero situation. It raises the troubling questions of how do you live your life, how do you go on from there?"

In some cases, the pressure to deliver commercially and emotionally satisfying films leads to an alternative film hybrid in which antiheroes wind up happy or audiences are left longing for an era when good and bad were more clear cut.

In "About a Boy" (2002), a fatherless boy inspires Hugh Grant to see the error of his predatory, consumerist, TV-watching ways. Taylor calls Grant's character a "Teflon sad sack," someone who caters to everybody's sentimental desires and isn't really about somebody in pain, though he pretends he is. "It's still delivering the commercial goods," he says.

In the multilayered "American Splendor," which overlays the real Pekar, with Giamatti's performance and cartoon images, Pekar takes pains to let the audience know that, despite what might appear to be success in life and love, his life is still a mess.

In a time when emotions run high over conformity, tradition and security, the desire for happy endings runs deep, even within the writers themselves.

"Most of my favorite movies are hopeful and have an inspirational effect," says White, who also worked on the first two seasons of TV's "Dawson's Creek." In the fall comedy "School of Rock," written by White, Jack Black portrays an immature rock musician who inspires a class of privileged, straight-A kids headed for the same sort of upper-middle-class conformity deplored in "The Graduate."

"People's lives are not exclusively unpleasant," White says. "Trying to shove that unpleasant reality into your face is unreal in its own way."

His favorite characters, however, remain "sad and broken," White says. "If I can capture a life that has both good days and bad days, that's the kind of movie and art that stays with me."

calendarlive.com: Losers on the rise
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/
cl-ca-smith17aug17,2,3777179.story?coll=cl-calendar
========================================================
BRIEF ENCOUNTER
MR. SUCESS? HA!
For Harvey Pekar, every silver lining is equipped with a large cloud.

Los Angeles Times
Victoria Looseleaf
August 17 2003

Growing up in Cleveland, a much-maligned city, Harvey Pekar was also mocked — because of his weird-sounding name. Years later, in 1976, Pekar took matters into his own hands: He began writing — not only about his moniker and the city he's called home for the last 63 years, but also about his working-stiff, bum-steer kind of life.

These trials, tribulations and torments of Pekar's soul gave birth to the comic book "American Splendor." Illustrated by a smorgasbord of cartoonists, including Robert Crumb, the autobiographical tomes now number 28.

While cranking out comics, the existential scribe supported himself doing 37 years of file clerk servitude at Cleveland's Veterans Affairs hospital. In 2001, Pekar retired with a modest pension.

But that could soon change. "American Splendor," a quirky bioflick that blends animation, TV footage and appearances by the real Pekar and his wife, Joyce Brabner, opened Friday.

Ensconced at the Bel Age Hotel, Pekar, clad in fraying jeans, cotton shirt and sneakers, looks weary, his thinning hair typically askew. But, like a slashed wrist, he opens up, grousing about his world, one that might best be described as, well, Pekaresque....

calendarlive.com: Mr. Success? Ha!
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/
cl-ca-qampa17aug17,2,4769400.story?coll=cl-calendar