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consuming nearly two years of their lives (readers impatiently awaiting the next issue of Eight/ml! will confirm this). ‘lt didn‘t have a life of its own. So we decided to keep the two main characters and their dilemma and place in the world. We came up with Seymour to see what would happen if we included him in their story. Then wound up taking things that were tiny little tangents in the comic and expanding them in the film.‘ Such as?
‘That scene where Seymour gets held up by women crossing the street with all their baby carriages and toddlers,‘ says Zwigoff. ‘This happened to me. I was in a really bad mood and I got held up at this stop sign. This little kid has this really nasty expression on his face and his mouth was all smeared with chocolate. He was just an evil looking little monster. A lot of the plot was done to accommodate these little details. It was a crazy way to write. but the only way that was satisfying to me.
These personal anecdotes and tangential details flesh out the film‘s bare bones storyline. It's a refreshing antithesis to increasingly bland. formulaic western filmmaking. Hollywood has long since succumbed to Zwigoffs ‘monoculture'. The storytelling in Ghost World is authentic. and it captures the tone of the comic which has variously been described as if: i 1:"; 153:: i, I." '
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‘oftbeat‘. ‘oddball‘. ‘skewered‘ and in the pages of this magazine. ‘queasy’.
Like the comic. the film is also peppered with in-jokes. A record that Enid feigns interest in and that Seymour says ‘isn't too good‘ is one of Zwigoff and Crumb‘s jazz/blues musical collaborations. The summer art school that Enid is forced to attend is run by a pretentious teacher (played by the great Illeana Douglas) who writes off comics as trash. ‘1 was basically transcribing my own days in art school and putting them on film.‘ admits Clowes. ‘It was funny that I put this poor teenage girl on a soapbox just to voice my frustrations at the art world.‘ (Clowes’ hand also appears in the film. but he won‘t say where.) ‘And that Seymour character is me thinly disguised. having fun at myself.’ adds Zwigoff. ‘The comic is about Dan. about his relationship with himself. It's a very complicated. messy thing. but once you add me to the equation. the film becomes more about this relationship between me and Dan.‘
So. Ghost World the movie; the story of a director. an artist. his comic and their film about the id. the ego and the decline of western civilisation.
Ghost World (Film) UGC, 17 Aug, 9.30pm; GFT, 21 Aug, 8.30pm. The next issue of Eightball is out in Sep.
Left to right:
Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi; Birch; Terry Zwigoff; Scarlett Johansson and Birch; Illeana Douglas
Far left: Dan Clowes self-portrait, and his Ghost World strip
16—22 Aug 2001 THE LIST FESTIVAL GUIDE 9