Scarlett Johansson as Rebecca and Thora Birch (with glasses) as Enid, the two teenage misfits whose skewed world-view is the subject of Ghost World.

GIRLS ON FILM

The irony is, Terry Zwigoff never wanted to do another ‘comic-book’ film, not after Crumb. Even his producer advised him against it. Trouble was, as Zwigoff read through the mountain of screenplays that came his way after the enormous success of his documentary about the legendary (“Keep on truckin’”) comic-book artist, RD Crumb, nothing really took his fancy. Until, that is, his wife happened to pick up a copy of Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World. And, wouldn’t you know it? Dan Clowes’ Ghost World was a comic. “My wife was always saying, ‘You should call this guy, this guy’s so great’,” says Zwigoff, recalling her initial (and, as it turns out, decisive) enthusiasm from the Ghost World editing suite shortly after July 4. “But I actually told her at the time, ‘I’m totally sick of comics after the Crumb film! I don’t ever want to see another comic. I’m going to get pigeonholed as the comic-book director’. “The irony of the whole thing is,” he adds ruefully, “I only like probably two or three comic-book artists in the world: Robert Crumb, Dan Clowes and maybe Carl Berks, the guy that used to draw Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck.”
The fact that he ended up making Ghost World and had a great time doing so is par for the course with Zwigoff, who seems to drift into his best gigs almost by accident. He became a filmmaker after finding an old 78-rpm record by a forgotten blues musician in a record store in 1978. Himself a musician, Zwigoff set out to find out more about the bluesman. It was a slow process but eventually, in 1985, it resulted in a one-hour documentary called Louie Bluie, which was released to considerable critical acclaim and a respectable theatrical run in the States. Roger Ebert called it “a delight from beginning to end... a wonderful film”.
Zwigoff had obviously found a new vocation, but it took him a further decade to make Crumb. When that film came out, however, it completely eclipsed the success of Louie Bluie, winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1995, grossing 17-and-a-half times what it cost, heading every (yes, every) ‘Best Documentary of the Year’ list and appearing on more Top 10 lists than any other film that year (over 100 of them). “A marvellous movie, an instant American classic” said Newsweek, in one of the more restrained critical responses to the film. After Crumb came out, Lianne Halfon - who had executive produced the movie - suggested Zwigoff look around for a regular screenplay: one that was inspired by words on a page, not pictures in boxes. Zwigoff obligingly did so, reading several hundred thousand words on pages, but still couldn’t find anything he really wanted to make.

Then Ghost World came along. Its skewed vision of Enid and Rebecca, two high-school outcasts with a jaundiced view of the world, struck an instant chord. Here was someone who saw the world pretty much as he does. And how might that be? “You know, modern America and its culture all in decline,” he says cheerfully.
Recently described by Newsweek as “more Catcher in the Rye than Conan the Barbarian”, the comic-book (or graphic novel, as adult readers prefer to call it) Ghost World had made Clowes one of America’s most acclaimed comic-book artists - something which he describes as “a bit like being the most famous badminton player”. In particular, Clowes’ ear for the way teenage high-school students speak to one another was so acute that one fan wondered whether Clowes didn’t sit behind them on buses with a tape recorder. “I wish,” says Clowes. “In California, there’s only old women sitting on the back of the bus.”