I've been putting off discussing my next film choice as it's a film so dear to my heart and one that has had such a huge effect on me that I've had to build up to it really. It's Ghost World... I've seen it so many times I know the dialogue off by heart. Not hard as it has some of the best lines going, which I will get on to later. This film is a complete revelation, an oddball, a curiosity completely out of leftfield. The structure is pretty ordinary - two teenage girls hang out and annoy people. It's been done in other films, but its usually male characters. The fact that Enid (the main character, played brilliantly by Thora Birch) is a somewhat geeky yet clued up music and comic book nut further makes this film so extraordinary. In most teen comedies the girls are cheerleaders without much substance. Enid is a heroine. I've pretty much based my whole life on her to a certain extent. I even tried to dress like her at one point so taken with her was I.

The other reason for watching this film is Steve Buscemi. He plays lonely, middle aged "loser" Seymour who Enid and her friend Rebecca (a sarcastic Scarlett Johansson) meet through dubious circumstances. They notice an ad in the lonely hearts placed by Seymour and respond jokingly to the add by leaving a fake message on his answerphone pretending to be an older woman. They set up a date and go and wait for him to show up. When he arrives, Enid immediately feels guilty. They decide to follow him and a few days later go back to his house, where he and his flatmate are having a "yard" sale. Seymour is selling records, which Enid finds interesting. She buys one from him and this kick starts a friendship based on mutual cynicism and feeling like an outcast. Rebecca, meanwhile, drifts apart from Enid as she pursues a more conventional route of work and moving out her parents and into her own apartment. Enid continues to live with her Dad and, because she failed her high school tests, has to take a remedial summer art class. Some of the best scenes in the film take place in the art room. Illeana Douglas plays the stereotypical art teacher to perfection and some of the other students attempts at art are frankly, hilarious. Enid submits her comic book diary which is dismissed by the teacher as "amusing" but not real art.

It's one of those films that celebrates absurdity and finding respite in the obscure. It is very similar in its themes to the equally fantastic American Splendor. I completely identify with that whole urge to seek out non-mainstream culture. Seymour collects original jazz and blues 78s, but this obsession has cost him a meaningful relationship. He finds it hard to connect with ordinary people. This is most apparent when he and Enid go to a local bar to see an original blues guitarist play. Drunken idiots play pool and watch football and Seymour has to leave. On the way home, he tells Enid:

"I'm not even on the same planet as those creatures back there. It's easy for everyone else - you give 'em a pair of Nikes and a Big mac and they're happy. I can't relate to 99.9 per cent of humanity!"


Again, it's the details in this film that make it so wonderful to watch. It's a whole intricate universe. The side characters, like Enid's dad, the comic book shopowner, Josh (the boy that both Enid and Rebecca fantasize about), the crazy guy who hangs around the shop where Josh works. Then there's all the other details like the history of Cook's Chicken, music by Skip James, Memphis Minnie and Lionel Belasco, the 50s diner Wowsville, Enid's clothes, the opening sequence with the Indian dancers from the 60s etc etc, it's a gold mine of curiosities.

I could quote it all day long, some of the best lines

"This is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again"

"I'm taking a remedial high school art class for fuck ups and retards"

"I just hate all these extroverted, obnoxious pseudo-bohemian losers"

"I think only stupid people have good relationships"

Enid: "I would kill to have stuff like this"
Seymour: "Please go ahead and kill me"

"Let the machine get it. I have no desire to talk to anyone who might be calling me"


The whole movie is a comment on the decline of American culture I guess. This is best typified by a scene in which a man in a video rental store asks the clerk if they have the film 8 1/2. The clerk looks puzzled, types in the name and comes up with 9 1/2 weeks. The man explains that's not the film, he's after 8 1/2, the Fellini classic. The clerk just looks at him baffled. This film is a celebration of all things weird and obscure and lost. It's a complete attack on conformity and commercialism and you don't often get that in films today.