Ghost World

Ghost World Information

Ghost World is a 2001 American comedy-drama film directed by Terry Zwigoff, based on the comic book of the same name and screenplay by Daniel Clowes. The story focuses on the life of Enid and Rebecca, two teenage outsiders in an unnamed American city. The film experienced limited commercial success but has since gained a cult following.

Plot

The film follows the lives of best friends Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) during the summer after their high-school graduation. The girls are both social outcasts, but Rebecca is more popular with boys than Enid. Enid's diploma is awarded on the condition that she attend a remedial art class. Even though she is a talented artist, her art teacher, Roberta (Illeana Douglas), believes art must be socially meaningful and dismisses Enid's sketches as "light entertainment".

Shortly after graduation, the two girls see a personal ad in which a lonely man named Seymour (Steve Buscemi) asks a woman he met recently to contact him. With Becky at her side, Enid makes a prank phone call to Seymour, pretending to be the woman and inviting him to meet her at a diner, and when he goes there, the two girls secretly watch and make fun of him. However, Enid begins to feel sorry for him, so a few days later they follow him to his apartment building, where they find him selling vintage records in a garage sale. Enid buys an old blues album from him, and they gradually become friends. One of her favorite activities is trying to find women for him to date. Meanwhile, Enid has been attending her art class. In order to please Roberta, Enid persuades Seymour to lend her an old poster depicting a grotesquely caricatured black man, which was once used as a promotional tool by the fried-chicken franchise where Seymour holds a middle management position. In class, she presents the poster as a social comment about racism, and Roberta is so impressed with the concept that she later offers Enid a scholarship to an art college.

At this point, Enid's and Becky's lives have seriously diverged. While Enid has been spending time with Seymour, Becky has found a job and become more interested in clothing, boys, and other material things. Enid finds a job so the girls can rent an apartment together, but she is fired after only one day. Finally, Becky gives up on looking for an apartment with Enid after their personal differences erupt in an angry argument. Sometime after Enid loses her job, Seymour receives a phone call from Dana (Stacey Travis), the woman he had written to in the personal ad. Enid encourages him to develop a relationship with Dana, but becomes jealous when he begins avoiding Enid to spend time with Dana. At the end of the summer, Enid's and Seymour's lives fall apart. When Enid's poster is displayed in an art show, school officials find it so offensive they force Roberta to give her a failing grade; when Enid discovers she has lost her scholarship, she visits Seymour for solace, resulting in a drunken one-night stand. Seymour then breaks up with Dana before realizing he has no chance with Enid, and loses his job after the poster is displayed in a newspaper. Becky tells Seymour about Enid's phone prank, and he becomes hospitalized after attacking a boy who was with the girls at the time.

Finally, Enid gives in to her childhood fantasy of running away from home. Throughout the film, she has periodically spoken with an old man named Norman (Charles C. Stevenson, Jr.) who was waiting at an unused bus stop for a bus that never arrived. After quitting her new job and meeting with Seymour in the hospital, Enid sees a bus finally arrive to pick up Norman, and the next day, while Seymour discusses the summer's events with his therapist, Enid goes to the bus stop and gets on the bus when it arrives. The film ends as the bus drives away.

Cast

Thora Birch as Enid
Scarlett Johansson as Rebecca
Steve Buscemi as Seymour
Brad Renfro as Josh
Pat Healy as John Ellis
Illeana Douglas as Roberta Allsworth
Bob Balaban as Enid's father
Stacey Travis as Dana
Teri Garr as Maxine
Dave Sheridan as Doug
Tom McGowan as Joe
David Cross as Gerrold
Brian George as the convenience store owner
Debra Azar as Melorra
Rini Bell as the graduation speaker
Ezra Buzzington as Weird Al
Ashley Peldon as Margaret

Release

Ghost World premiered on June 16, 2001 at the Seattle International Film Festival, to lower than average recognition by audiences, but admiration from critics. It was also screened at several film festivals all over the world including the Fantasia Festival in Montreal.

With a limited commercial theatrical run in the United States, Ghost World's commercial success was minimal. The film was released on July 20, 2001 in five theaters grossing $98,791 on its opening weekend. It went on to make $6.2 million in North America and $2.5 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $8.7 million, just above its $7 million budget.

Critical reaction

The film's critical reception has been highly positive; it currently has a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 88 metascore on Metacritic. Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, "I wanted to hug this movie. It takes such a risky journey and never steps wrong. It creates specific, original, believable, lovable characters, and meanders with them through their inconsolable days, never losing its sense of humor". In his review for The New York Times, A. O. Scott praised Thora Birch's performance: "Thora Birch, whose performance as Lester Burnham's alienated daughter was the best thing about American Beauty, plays a similar character here, with even more intelligence and restraint". Kevin Thomas, in his review for The Los Angeles Times, wrote, "Buscemi rarely has had so full and challenging a role, that of a mature, reflective man, unhandsome yet not unattractive, thanks to a witty sensitivity and clear intelligence". In his Chicago Reader review, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, "Birch makes the character an uncanny encapsulation of adolescent agonies without ever romanticizing or sentimentalizing her attitudes, and Clowes and Zwigoff never allow us to patronize her". Time magazine's Andrew D. Arnold wrote, "Unlike those shrill, hard-sell teen comedies on the other screens, Ghost World never becomes the kind of empty, defensive snark-fest that it targets. Clowes and Zwigoff keep the organic pace of the original, and its empathic exploration of painfully changing relationships".

Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A-" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "Ghost World is a movie for anyone who ever felt imprisoned by life but crazy about it anyway". In her review for the LA Weekly, Manohla Dargis wrote, "If Zwigoff doesn't always make his movie move (he's overly faithful to the concept of the cartoon panel), he has a gift for connecting us to people who aren't obviously likable, then making us see the urgency of that connection". In Sight & Sound, Leslie Felperin wrote, "Cannily, the main performers deliver most of their lines in slack monotones, all the better to set off the script's wit and balance the glistering cluster of varyingly deranged lesser characters". In his review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw wrote, "It is an engaging account of the raw pain of adolescence: the fear of being trapped in a grown-up future and choosing the wrong grown-up identity, and of course the pain of love, which we all learn to anaesthetise with jobs and mundane worries". However, in his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris disliked the character of Enid: "I found Enid smug, complacent, cruel, deceitful, thoughtless, malicious and disloyal. Worst of all, she's rarely funny and never charming ... 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".

Legacy

Ghost World topped MSN Movies' list of the "Top 10 Comic Book Movies", it was ranked number 3 out of 94 in Rotten Tomatoes' "Comix Worst to Best" countdown (where #1 was the best and #94 the worst), ranked 5th "Best" on IGN's "Best & Worst Comic-Book Movies", and Empire magazine ranked the film 19th in their "The 20 Greatest Comic Book Movies" list.

Soundtrack

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Music in the film includes "Jaan Pehechan Ho" by Mohammed Rafi, a dance number from the 1965 Bollywood musical Gumnaam (which Enid watches and dances to early in the film), and "Devil Got My Woman" by Skip James in 1931, as well as "Pickin' Cotton Blues" by the bar band, Blueshammer.

There are songs by other artists mentioned in the film, including Lionel Belasco, which are reflective of the character Seymour, and of director Terry Zwigoff himself, who is a collector of 78 RPM records, as portrayed by Seymour. Other tracks are by Vince Giordano, a musician who specializes in meticulous recreations of songs from old 78 RPM records. Track 14-19 are not in the film, being selections from Zwigoff's collection.

Referenced in the film is R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders, a band that Zwigoff played in. Enid asks Seymour about the band's second album, Chasin' Rainbows, and Seymour replies, "Nah, that one's not so great."

Missing from the soundtrack is "What Do I Get" by Buzzcocks, which can be heard when Enid dresses up like a punk, and the song "A Smile and a Ribbon" by Patience and Prudence.

Awards

Won

Chicago Film Critics Association"?Best Supporting Actor (Buscemi)
Golden Space Needle Award"?Best Actress (Birch)
Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay (Clowes and Zwigoff)
Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor (Buscemi)
L.A. Film Critics Association"?Best Screenplay (Clowes and Zwigoff)
New York Film Critics Circle"?Best Supporting Actor (Buscemi)
Toronto Film Critics Association"?Best Actress (Birch)
Toronto Film Critics Association"?Best Screenplay [Runner-up] (Clowes and Zwigoff)
Toronto Film Critics Association"?Best Supporting Actor [Runner-up] (Buscemi)
Toronto Film Critics Association"?Best Supporting Actress (Johansson)

Nominated

74th Academy Awards"?Best Adapted Screenplay " Daniel Clowes, Terry Zwigoff
Golden Globe Awards"?Best Actress"?Musical or Comedy " Thora Birch
Golden Globe Awards"?Best Supporting Actor " Steve Buscemi
American Film Institute"?Best Screenplay " Daniel Clowes, Terry Zwigoff
American Film Institute"?Best Supporting Actor " Steve Buscemi
Grand Prix of the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics
Independent Spirit Award"?Best First Feature " Terry Zwigoff
Writers Guild of America"?Best Adapted Screenplay " Daniel Clowes, Terry Zwigoff