Come See the Splendor

So I got caught up with watching the movie American Splendor the other day. Since Pekar's got a posse, I guess IFC decided to paint that movie all over their schedule.

It got me remembering watching Harvey Pekar on Letterman back in the 80s.

Listen up, you kids. Letterman's the king of late night tv in my book and he can still put on a really good show... but you're probably not familiar with the David Letterman that was on in the 80s. He makes a great effort at being a diplomatic gentleman these days, but back then... if you got on his bad side, he could go after you.

Pekar was always the definition of "outsider". He would really mix it up with Letterman, trying to get a rise out of him, turning on the audience. Letterman had him on a few times because he made for interesting television, but Pekar started getting upset at his perception of how he was being used. As some small-town object of ridicule.

From this article:

Pekar would later tell the Los Angeles Times: "On some of the shows, I was doing a deliberate self-parody, and now there's a lot of people that think I'm some sort of maniac, you know? I think that's unfortunate — I'd rather be liked than thought of as a crazy man, but with Letterman, I've been in a situation where you either lay down and let him insult you or you do something about it. Most people keep their mouth shut and let him dump on them. I don't wanna do that."

What I love about the clip below is that you see Letterman losing his cool for real. And in a medium so dominated by people putting up facades, I find it fascinating to watch a figure like Letterman act like a regular human being who can get frustrated by a person and a situation.

When I watched this stuff as a kid, I thought Pekar was some kind of monster. In hindsight, I think he was just trying to provoke Letterman into acting like a regular person on camera...