I didn’t think I liked this movie all that much right after viewing it but it’s been growing on me as I continue to think about it.
There was so much taken from the Robert Crumb/Harvey Pekar stories it seemed kind of transparent to me. Seymour’s character is a kind of amalgam of the two, probably leaning more toward Pekar. And I really love American Splendor, which I think was done better. GW seemed like a watered-down version of the same story.
Enid’s character is what is growing on me the most but I’m not sure why. Is “indomitable spirit” too much of a cliche?
And what about that Indian music video. Gawd, I watched that silly thing three times in a row trying to wrap my head around it. Talk about taking a Western idea and running with it! Is the head-shaking thing – like the girl is squinching up her nose and saying, “No, thank you” – an Indian thing?
I really liked Ghost World, myself. I liked it almost right away, though…
I saw i after American Splendor and saw the similarities, but I didn’t think Seymour was that close to Pekar. He actually seemed a little more functional. (Well, Harvey Pekar did marry so maybe not.) They were both socially awkward loser types, but Seymour kind of felt a little…I dunno, nicer to me. I genuinely liked his character.
They were both big on quirky characters, but in American Splendor, it seemed more quirky for its own sake. Ghost World felt like they were trying to do a little bit more.
Are you saying Dan Clowes’ work is too derivative of that of Crumb and Pekar in general? Or that Clowes and Zwigoff just put too much Crumb/Pekar into the one character?
I think some of the resemblance is coincidental. Seymour’s obsessive record-collecting for example is based mostly on Zwigoff. That is to say Zwigoff, like his buddies Crumb and Pekar, is a fussy, obsessive, record-collecting nerd. Well, Pekar is perhaps almost too rough-edged to be a true nerd - he was actually a bit of a brawler in his youth. But all three share that common trait and taste in music - one of the reasons they’re all friends.
That was via Clowes, who owned the video and thought it was the coolest thing ever. It mentions that in the above interview as well. In another one ( or maybe on the movie’s commentary track ) he says he used to use it as a “coolness test” of visitors to his home :p.
Really? because I felt the opposite. She seems to be playing the same dull, monotonous character in every movie I see her in. I always wondered why Thora Birch wasn’t getting more prestige after I saw it.
I agree, the character was nothing exciting. But she is soooo cute, I knew she’d advance on that alone. Thora Birch was really, really great in American Beauty, but I wonder if her role in that abomination Dungeons and Dragons curtailed her career in any way…
I brought this up in the last Ghost World thread, but according to an article in Rolling Stone I read a while ago, the reason Thora Birch isn’t a bigger deal is because she really tried to get into Enid’s head for the role and it kind of fucked her up for a little bit. By the time she came back, the Ghost World-hype had left her behind.
As for the movie itself, I really enjoyed it, but I had trouble convincing myself that two girls that looked like that would be outcasts in any way.
I think I remember you saying that in another thread, Justin. It makes sense.
I think a lot of it was self-imposed, their being outcasts. I mean, I’m a pretty cute girl, but in high school, I was angry and hated everyone and ignored them, but I just didn’t have an equally angsty sidekick to share it with.
Oh, I know I would’ve passed his. Enid’s, though? I’m not so sure about that. I thought she was so awesome, but based on both the graphic novel and the movie, she’d probably think I was a somewhat extraverted loser. Plus I like reggae.
I’m not accusing it of being “too” anything. But it definitely borrowed things from both Crumb and American Splendor. Enid sketching people in the diner for instance. Also, both Crumb and Pekar were record collectors. In American Splendor, when they meet at a garage sale, Pekar’s character is kvetching about a crack in the laminate of a record. Seymour does the same thing in GW. Stuff like that. I’m not complaining about it. But I did like AS better.
The first installment of the Ghost World graphic novel came out 10 years before American Splendor Movie and one year before the first installment of the AS graphic novel. Ghost World follows the graphic novel pretty closely. I get the feeling this is a very personal work and is not derivative of any other work.
I knew a very pretty girl in high school who was this kind of outcast. I kick myself today for not seeing that she maybe was a a step ahead of the game.
Ghost world is one of my favorite movies ever. It seems to get everything right. I used to live with a guy who was pretty much Seymore, only younger. He had more records though.
Didn’t director Terry Zwigoff say that it wasn’t about that, though? I can’t find anything googling but I thought he did. I’m not sure what else it would mean, though. Maybe she literally did just leave town on the bus. Norman got on it earlier–maybe she was just wrong about the bus line having been cancelled.
I thought that the bus stood for moving on to another stage of your life. For the old man, it was death, but for Enid it represented maturing and moving into adult life.
I’d like to believe that, but I’m not really sure she did mature. True, she did eventually go to talk to Seymour, and she seemed to try to square things away with Becky, but I didn’t see much evidence that she was maturing.
