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HBO Online Exclusive Interview with Harvey Pekar

HBO
Harvey, tell us a little about what your life has been like since "American Splendor" came out.

HARVEY PEKAR
Well, you know, I had to make a lot of trips and shit. There were two periods when I had to leave town for six weeks at a time. I just got through a trip where I went from Cleveland to San Francisco to Honolulu to Tokyo to Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, then to New Zealand...

HBO
Jesus.

HARVEY PEKAR
And then Ireland and England and then back to Cleveland again.

HBO
All promoting the movie?

HARVEY PEKAR
Some of it was. There were festivals. They were like a couple of book festivals and a comedy festival and stuff, you know. They wanted me to appear; festivals that it had already been in. It was in Australia and New Zealand before it was in America - the movie. It started off there.

HBO
How did it feel when you were at Sundance? How did it feel sitting there, seeing yourself and Joyce up there on the screen with these actors portraying the two of you?

HARVEY PEKAR
It didn't mean nothing to me. I've been portrayed by all kinds of people. First of all, I've been in movies before, you know - documentaries, but still they're movies.Second of all, guys have been drawing me for years. And I also I've been portrayed in plays. Plays have been made of my comics.

HBO
So this is nothing new. And then there's Letterman.

HARVEY PEKAR
Yeah.

HBO
What do you think about him?

HARVEY PEKAR
Well, he got his problems. [LAUGHTER] We don't get along too well.

HBO
He's had you on his show a bunch of times...

HARVEY PEKAR
Yeah, but not for a long time. He can't take me. I upset him.

HBO
[LAUGHS] So the festival scene -- you're not blown away by this fame business, are you?

HARVEY PEKAR
No, I'm aggravated by a lot of the shit that I gotta put up with.

HBO
Why? A lot of people would love to be in your position.

HARVEY PEKAR
I know they would. Well, more power to 'em. Well, like on this last trip where I went all over the world. I mean, I was carrying suitcases all over the fucking place, stuff was getting lost all the time. I was on the move constantly. Couldn't sit down and relax. Always in new places. I'm a guy that likes to sit in one place. You know what I mean?

HBO
Speaking of staying in one place a long time, when did you stop working at the VA hospital in Cleveland? How long had you been there?

HARVEY PEKAR
I'd been at the hospital, working for the federal government for thirty-seven years. I worked in the 50's I worked for some government agencies and I started in 1965 with the Navy Finance Center. And I worked for them for a year and then the rest of the time I worked for the VA hospital. And in 2001 I quit.

HBO
And while you were there you decided that you needed to tell these stories.

HARVEY PEKAR
Yeah, I decided I was going to tell these stories.

HBO
And during this period, you met Crumb, who went on to illustrate your cartoons. Tell us about the first time you met him.

HARVEY PEKAR
He lived around the corner from me. We were both record collectors. And a mutual friend said, Come on around the corner and meet this guy, Crumb, you know. He's another guy you can maybe trade records with. So I went around the corner. So it turned out he was the cartoonist. So his roommate over there says, Hey, look at that -- he's really good. So I checked his stuff out.

And it was really good, you know. It was different. It was like adult oriented. And I thought, Wow. You know, when I saw that, I started realizing comics just weren't, you know, kid stuff.

I used to read comics when I was a kid but I got sick of them because they were so, you know, predictable and everything. They're just for kids, you know - Superman and shit like that.

HBO
You were looking to do something different.

HARVEY PEKAR
I was looking to do something a little different, yeah. I mean, I got tired of that shit when I was eleven years old. You know. So...

HBO
And the name...

HARVEY PEKAR
"American Splendor"...

HBO
...Where did it come from?

HARVEY PEKAR
That's a satirical name. First of all, because people who would look at it generally wouldn't think my life was splendid at all. You know? They'd think it was kind of funky. And I got the 'American' from the old D.C. comics. They had a lot of titles like, called Star Spangled Comics or All American Comics and stuff like that. So I got American from them. And Splendor, I got from "Splendor in the Grass" - that movie with Natalie Wood.

HBO
Sure.

HARVEY PEKAR
So I put the two together and I come up with "American Splendor." Some people think it's American Squalor.

HBO
[LAUGHS] Your first batch of stories, you wrote them what year?

HARVEY PEKAR
In 1972.

HBO
And you gave them to Crumb?

HARVEY PEKAR
Right.

HBO
What did he say?

HARVEY PEKAR
He said he liked them and he wanted to take them home and illustrate them. So he took them home and he illustrated one. And he gave some others to some other guys to illustrate. And I was in business.

HBO
And then through your collaboration with Crumb, the comic distributors were open to looking at your stuff.

HARVEY PEKAR
Well, it gave me legitimacy, see? I mean they'd never seen any comics like that before. So they probably thought, Wow, this is really something new, you know? But it's got Crumb in it so, you know, maybe it'll sell.

HBO
And how many years did it take to establish yourself on the underground scene?

HARVEY PEKAR
Well, it didn't take long to establish myself. I mean, as far as people thinking my work was good. They liked it from the start. But as far as it selling, it took a million years 'cause it never sold, except for last year when the tie-in book came out with the movie.

HBO
When you met the filmmakers, how did you feel about that whole collaborative process?

HARVEY PEKAR
It was fine. I didn't bother them, they didn't bother me. You know? They wrote their script, I talked to them. I saw they weren't stupid. And so that made me feel good. I trusted them. I thought they'd make the best movie they could, you know. They seemed sincere, and now they exceeded my expectations.

HBO
You were happy with the results?

HARVEY PEKAR
I was very happy with the results.

HBO
Tell me about today. What are you writing today?

HARVEY PEKAR
Today I'm going over a so-called graphic novel that I've written. I've written it to be illustrated by the guy who hooked me up with (executive producers) Good Machine. He's an illustrator and so this is about my early life. This is about from when I was born until like when I met Crumb. It's like a prequel to this.

HBO
What's it called?

HARVEY PEKAR
I don't know.

HBO
You haven't titled it yet?

HARVEY PEKAR
No, I haven't titled it yet.

HBO
This is the work in progress.

HARVEY PEKAR
WIP.

HBO
So you're going back to the early years.

HARVEY PEKAR
Yeah.

HBO
Sounds good.

HARVEY PEKAR
I hope they'll like it. I think it's pretty good.

HBO
So last question. Do you think success has spoiled Harvey Pekar?

HARVEY PEKAR
No, of course I'm still a wonderful guy. [LAUGHS]

HBO
How do you want the world to see you?

HARVEY PEKAR
I don't care. I just want them to identify with me. You know? Everybody's like everybody else and everybody's different from everybody else. So I want them to understand, you know, what we have in common. That's why I write, so people can understand what we got in common and they'll see they're not the only person in the world that's like that.

A lot of people get worried. They think, Jesus, I'm the only person in the world like this. I'm really fucked. But they don't know that there are a lot of people that are fucked out there. See? It makes you feel good. It makes you feel good to know that there's other people afflicted like you.