Ghost World

She was also in The Hole(2001) with Keira Knightley.

 

Fantastic news, thanks!!!

 

Get better friends. Or at least friends who can provide a slightly more articulate critical opinion than that a movie "sucks".

 

One of the few movies I walked out on (at home). I found the lead character so repulsive I didn't care if she got run over by a truck.
I recognize the tenderness it has for vinyl collectors, but I felt that his character was written in a clichés that many people in general public insist must be true for music collectors. As this place shows, having a vinyl collection and being a functional person in society are not mutually exclusive.

 

Enid is basically Zwigoff's fantasy girlfriend, what Crumb described as a "bad high school girl". Not my taste, and I couldn't stand being around her - or most high school girls for that matter - for any length of time. But as a character in a movie, I can enjoy her snarkiness for a couple of hours.

Seymour is a self-parody of director Terry Zwigoff, with loads of his best friend Robert Crumb and a handful of their mutual friends like Marty Pahls and Harvey Pekar. Seymour was only in one or two panels of the original comic book.

These people know they are obsessed with things the rest of the world has abandoned, that they are seen as socially maladjusted geeks and they are frankly a little annoyed about it. For instance, Zwigoff has a huge collection of Valmor products from the 20s and 30s - things like "Follow Me Boy Sachet Powder" and "Lucky Mojo Oil" - the chicken ad was probably from his own collection. He wrote about it in one of the issues of Weirdo magazine that Crumb and his wife Aline published. Heck, Zwigoff was the editor of Weirdo for a bit!

I wouldn't hold this place up as the paragon of social function. The Mods do a quite a bit to make this lot appear reasonable.

 

So true. Imagine of the Gorts went on strike for a day.

 

Sounds like lots of in jokes in there. While It doesn't make me want to finish watching it, I can at least mentally grasp what you're saying.

 

Watch "Crumb" and "American Splendor" and see if the real Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar don't seem like Forum residents.

 

What would they strike for, higher pay? I say double their pay! Triple it even!

 

I did see Crumb. Something about it profoundly disturbed me. Well done doc. But frightening at some level to me. It's on the short list of films I never want to see again, but glad I did see it.

 

Very excited about Criterion releasing Ghost World. Now hoping they will do American Splendor.

 

The viewer finds out Crumb is a weird guy, then his family is introduced...

 

I saw "Crumb" in the theater and it tore me up emotionally, especially when I learned that Charles had killed himself.

 

In defense of the film, Enid's character does get her comeuppance, and - at least slightly - becomes wiser and more centered in the final reel.

Also - Steve Buscemi is brilliant as the suffering Crumb surrogate. The clichés attached to his character are peeled away fairly early in the film. I can't imagine not enjoying this film.

 

"Crumb" family history explains so much about Robert's fetishes. The scene flipping through Charles' old sketchbook is absolutely chilling. It's like The Shining's "all work & no play makes Jack...", only IT'S REAL! I loved Ghost World, partly because I have a friend who collected old blues 78s & adopted the R. Crumb aesthetic. The collector's at Seymour's party reminded me of some of the guys I'd been introduced to. So true!!

 

I'm a huge R. Crumb fan, with a nearly complete collection of the Complete Crumb series, and most of Zappa, Weirdo and the various other titles he published. So the film wasn't shocking to me as far as Robert went, but Charles and Max were. My wife is of the opinion that Charles was the better artist.

He's a difficult person to empathize with - a mentally ill pedophile - but at the same time an immensely intelligent and sensitive person who protected the world from desires he knew were wrong by never leaving his home and ultimately killing himself. Charles appeared in several Crumb stories, fictionalized as a bunny. Robert was also of the opinion that high school pretty much destroyed any chance Charles had of a normal life.

 

Good news. Everyone on this forum has a little Seymour in them.

 

Don't know about you, but that is definitely true for me. I'm a 56 year old obsessive geek with limited social skills and little patience with things that interest the vast majority of my fellow citizens.

Seymour: I can't relate to 99% of humanity.

 

That's a great idea for a movie about the Steve Hoffman Forums. I'll suggest "The Gorts Shrugged" as a title.

 

Who The Panda would have preferred as the lead character:

 

When you walked out, where did you go?

Likewise. That and Schindler's List.

 

Into the bedroom, I had a great book waiting for me

 

sorry, don't get it, if that's supposed to be funny

 

Her character was the exact opposite of Enid.

Very excited this is coming from from Criterion. One of my favorites and most wanted on blu-ray for years.

 

Good to see that most of the people in this thread loved the movie!

Any fans of Ghost World should also check out Art School Confidential (2006), another film by Terry Zwigoff adapted from a Daniel Clowes comic.

If I had to pick my favorite of the two, I'd probably still go with Ghost World, but they're definitely "on par" with each other. And while Art School Confidential unfortunately lacks Steve Buscemi and scenes about obsessive audiophiles, it does have John Malkovich!