Steve Buscemi in Ghost World: discuss

older man has sex with teen => he is then unhappy, and so is she... how is THIS a middle-aged fantasy?

Why do you think this is the case?

SEYMOUR RULES OK!!

mmmm.

Um, Frankenstein did end up making a bride for his creature. (Or am I just completely hallucinating the existence of "Bride Of Frankenstein"?)

Funniest moment in GW - when Enid pretends to drop the Skip James rec and the way Seymour reacts. Funny BECAUSE IT'S SO TRUE!!

I wonder how teenagers liked the movie? It seemed a pretty accurate portrayal of a smart sensitive teenager, but what do I know, I haven't been a teenager in 21 years.

Those assholes at the fanzine store, though, I've been dealing with people like that all my life.

I've just realised I love this movie.

The comic had way better pacing too. It wasn't dialogue between the girls - it was word baloons.

But, she's not cooler than these people, as is made abundantly clear (the "this is an ORIGINAL punk outfit" tantrum). She whines - her complaints about her father's girlfriend who comes off as quite nice. So Zwigoff has you identifying with a complete hypocrite, who's no better or cooler than the people she mocks. Look at how the movie ends - she pronounces loser Seymour her hero, and she's nice to the man on the bench that had been a target before, ultimately taking his place.

To read the movie as one where we just identify with early Enid, rather than maturing Enid or even one where we're supposed to question our identification with early Enid and how savage she was to people, ignores a great deal of the film.

A couple of throwaway jokes about Americans not appreciating foreign cinema and that wacky contemporary art aren't misanthropy. And the teacher, even being a lousy artist (she is a high-school remedial art teacher, not exactly a prestige position) isn't a bad person. She sponsors Enid's scholarship, and tries to defend her 'art' at the show. (No matter how awful and stupid and fake the art might be, the teacher believes in the idea of art.) The annoying girl is doing something about her future, and Zwigoff's joke has less to do with her than with high-school graduation clichés. Yeah, the two girls make fun of her appreciation of a tacky strip-mall restaurant - but aren't they coming back to the same place over and over? (cf. hypocrisy, who we're identifying with and why)

The movie isn't great - some of the jokes were funny ("he might get AIDS when he date-rapes here," the annoying girl hit very close to home with some of my experiences), but it was OK. The editing seemed off somehow - Birch and Johannson were talking around each other rather than to each other, and Birch can't act to save her life, etc. The criticism here just reads as simplistic and misguided.

The entire first part of the film consists entirely of such footage. There was nothing else going on but this kind of uninspired cultural criticism until Seymour showed up. And while he may have intentionally made the film asshole-pandering at first to challenge the assholes later with the destructive ramifications, I don't think it's necessary to "trick" the audience into thinking the director's an asshole too. The comic did a great job of presenting the story more objectively.

I've got the comic (or the collected group of comics, something - one paperback graphic-novel sized thing) sitting around here somewhere, and I didn't find it very interesting. I don't read comics normally, maybe that had something to do with it (and I saw the movie first). Comparing films to their source material is another wrong turn for me, because they're (usually) such different forms - literature v. film, comics v. film - and you can't expect them to deal with the story or characters in the same way. Or even to have the same focus and intent. (cf. Morvern Callar, where the novel makes much more out of her everyday life and class background and future than the film.)

If the film is still going for the same point - and I think we agree that it's about Enid's hypocrisy and why/how we identify with her an her attitude - how do you do that without the turnabout trick? You can't. If she's nice from the get-go, it's completely different. If she's mean the entire time, it's completely different. If we see the film from another character's POV, it's not even close to the same movie.

Ultimately, maybe different/better/more sympathetic actresses wouldn't have worked out well. Birch was a blank, but the character she played was blank, too - a more emotive (read: better) actress might have killed that.

Showing something does not equal an endorsement of the same.

Was Zwigoff looking to create a true portrait of the post-high school world? I don't see it. The cliches and stereotypes were removed to the point of absurdity. "The audience which showed up to watch hipsters mock suburban mundanity" is the key statement, as I see it.

The audience shows up to mock suburban mundanity, or is agreeable to it, and the film is shown through Enid's POV, identifying with her, laughing as she taunts the 'cool kids' and tacky suburban decor, etc.. But isn't her life just the same suburban mundanity, and isn't it the same thing for most people in the audience, laughing with her?

Your argument turns on the assumption of Zwigoff's sympathies lie with Enid, and that he stacked the deck in her favor. If anything, I see the deck stacked against her - she's a singularly disagreeable and dislikable human being, with no apparent facets to her personality or life other than a taste for kitsch because, as she perceives it, that separates her from the herd. Even the worst kind of teenage hipster has something good about him or her, something decent inside.

And, ultimately, Enid does. She makes peace with Johannson (I still can't remember that character's name), honors Seymour as something other than a fucktoy or freakshow, and moves on with life. I doubt that she'll wander around wherever she's going following "Satanists" and hating everyone.

I agree, too, that the early part did make it seem like he (and the audience) were Enid - without that identification, you can't have the pivot to the second half. (Or, I guess the change really only comes third act?)

One of the best things is that it is confrontational in nature - more subtlety and backstory would have made it less so.

xpost - Richard III? I'm all for removing high/low art stigmas, but I don't see Zwigoff or Clowes as Shakespearean by any measure.

Sure, the movie's no clasic, but that seems to me a fairly basic precept that's getting missed here.

I’m sorry, guys - I found Enid smug, complacent, cruel, deceitful, thoughtless, malicious and disloyal....Of course, I didn’t expect Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, but there’s a limit to the mean-spiritedness one can endure in a character one is supposed to find delightful. Enid’s favorite targets are people who are older, poorer or dumber than she is, which is to say that the California wasteland fashioned by Mr. Zwigoff and Mr. Clowes seems made up almost entirely of stooges for Enid and Rebecca to tease and taunt....Hence, when Enid persuades a male companion to take her to a video sex shop so she can smirk at the embarrassed customers, I truly hated her, as well as Mr. Zwigoff and Mr. Clowes.

of course movies "manipulate" you and "trick" you. that's the point! otherwise you could just walk down the street or something.

You and me both, schweetheart.

I was always a bit disappointed by the ending, otherwise a decent film

watched Living In Oblivion yesterday, which I enjoyed and thought was pretty funny.

the art school satire killed me

thats all i really remember about 'ghost world'

The art school bit, yeah. At the time I was in school for fine art, my freshman or sophomore year (obv, since I flunked out after three semesters), and it summed up a great deal of my frustration at the time.

The art school satire was mostly based on a short comic called "Art School Confidential" and another one by Clowes (I can't remember the title of the other comic, but the idea of making old racist cartoons into postmodern art was taken from that). Oddly enough, when Zwigoff and Clowes later made a whole movie based on "Art School Confidential", it didn't work out quite as well. Maybe because they'd already used all the best ideas in Ghost World?

can someone explain Seymour's last couple scenes in this movie to me? I've seen it like three times and am still ambivalent about it as a whole, but the last couple bits with him in the therapists office/getting picked up by his mom just confuse me... he was forced to move in with his mom (okay, he lost his job = makes sense), but why does he ask the therapist if he can "get back to his old life"? What does he need her permission for? Couldn't he just get another job and move out? idgi

I got the impression he'd had a mental breakdown, maybe hospitalization. Which would explain the "old life" question.

But it's been a while and I don't remember that particular scene too well.

yeah the implied powerlessness over his situation also implies a greater life failure/intervention scenario (he got arrested? institutionalized/medicated? for what?) than what's already been shown... it just seems like an unnecessary (and unexplained) final humiliation.

also would have appreciated more Terri Garr in this movie fwiw

never read the comic, but that could be part of his personality -> lifestyle. the guy's a tragic character. thinking about it, enid could be on the path to seymourdom, but she chooses to leave town ... her personal choice could be setting her free from that. or it could just be running away from reality, which will make her seymourlike. idk, haven't seen the movie in about a decade. definitely want to read the comic now.

Enid is such a horrible person. she ruins his life and then runs away! awesome! a good example of the irritatingly bleak nihilism in Clowes' stuff

"never read the comic"

He's not even a character in the comic.

yeah the comic is so totally different. it's tiresome in a different way!

I like the comic and its not terribly bleak.

I agree it's kinda before the rot set in with Clowes, it's probably the last thing he did that I found funny. the film just puts the EVERYBODY IS LOATHSOME schtick into overdrive

i don't really find the comic bleak or nihilistic -- enid and becky are easily the fullest and most rounded characters in any of his comics. i'm surprised anyone thinks it's more nihilistic than, like, 'needledick the bug-fucker' or all those stupid 'i hate everything' strips.

those strips have jokes!