I rented American Splendor, the film biography of Cleveland writer and file clerk Harvey Pekar, because it was one of the few promising titles left at the video store on a Friday night. I was still hopeful of the possibility that I had stumbled upon something that was going to be worth a damn. I liked Paul Giamatti, in the few things I had seen him in at that point, and the story of a “flunky file clerk” becoming an influential figure in underground comics sounded like there was more than enough promise.

"Lemme put it this way. When I started out, I thought it was for the everyman. And even we got really good reviews, it didn’t sell too well. But, when the movie came out, it was real successful, and it surprised the hell out of me."