I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #184 - Ghost World (2001, dir. Terry Zwigoff, Written by Daniel Clowes & Terry Zwigoff)

Rebecca: This is so bad it’s almost good.

Enid: This is so bad it’s gone past good and back to bad again.

In the nineties Daniel Clowes had a run of his comic Eightball entitled “Ghost World” that, among others, featured the odd stories of recent high school grads Enid and Rebecca. Clowes’ series was a cult classic in the comic world and as the “Ghost World” narrative gained popularity, Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes turned the story into the crazily rad film that I have the pleasure to attempt to turn you onto for this post! I’ve always been a bit of a comic nerd with a penchant for the underground and alternative stories, so I fell in love with Clowes’ Eightball (at the same time as I found the Hernandez Brothers Love & Rockets series). With that in mind, I was extremely pleased when the film, in an abnormal turn of events, happened to live up to the insane awesomeness of the comic.

The story follows Enid (Thora Birch) as she and her best friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), having just graduated high school, embark on the beginning of the rest of their lives. All seems well as they follow Satanists from their favorite haunt to the “like, Taj Mahal of fake 50’s diner’s,” mess with their ‘friend’ Josh at his convenience store job, and Enid dryly fumbles through her remedial art class, however life becomes much more complex as the both of them deal with the ennui of the real world in different ways.

While reading through the personal ads in the paper, they come across a “missed connection” (pre-Craig and his list) of a man who believed he had a connection with a woman who he had randomly helped. The two decide that it would be fun to mess with the guy, make a date with him and watch as he is “stood up.” Fast-forward; as Enid watches the man sit and sip his vanilla milk shake an interest is piqued within her. Having followed the man home they began stalking him, eventually discovering that the man, Seymour (Steve Buscemi), runs a makeshift record store out of his garage on Saturdays. Enid picks up a 33RPM compilation of old Blues 78’s and her interest begins to become an obsession (thanks to Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman”). While Enid further falls down the rabbit hole of Seymour’s anti-glamorous life and escapes further into defensive sarcasm, Rebecca begins to embrace the real world working at a coffee shop and looking for an apartment. And from there, well, the story evolves.

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

One of the things that hits me most about Ghost World is the fact that every time I watch this film (or read the comics or graphic novel compilation) I see it from a different perspective. The root of the film is transition. Enid and the rest of the characters are all going through major changes and transitions in their lives and the ways that they deal with them are extremely relatable and human. All of the characters offer a different perspective on change and evolution of self, which make the film/comic endlessly fascinating.  The story/comic is gorgeously imbued with this relatability, and the film under less capable direction and with less committed performers could have easily fallen flat. Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, and Steve Buscemi prove to be such perfect live action representations of their much-beloved characters that it almost seems as if Clowes had written/drawn the characters for those particular people.

While I have certainly focused more upon what makes this a remarkable and important film, I can’t express enough how enjoyable and hilarious the movie truly is! The trials and tribulations of Enid’s life in transition, while at time heartwarming/breaking, are often hysterical and the sardonic sense of humor of the main character permeates the entirety of the film. Being a new addition to the Criterion Collection I can’t say enough about Ghost World and knowing that words won’t fully be able to describe the appeal of this eccentric gem, I will end this edition of “I’d Love To Turn You On,” so you can go and experience it for yourself!

-         Edward Hill

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #181 - Mirrormask – (2005, dir. Dave McKean)

When I was in a freshman in high school in the early nineties, I wanted to hang out in T-Court, an outdoor space carved out between the junction of three academic buildings where all of the weird, creative older students ate lunch. These students traded cassette tapes by Bauhaus and Sonic Youth, talked about movies like The Fisher King and Edward Scissorhands, and read comics like Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. From that point forward, I felt a deep connection between Neil Gaiman’s work and what it means to be young, strange, and drawn to the less explored corners of life. Dave McKean’s off-kilter, evocative cover illustrations for The Sandman series provided an influential touchstone for the decade’s non-mainstream style. In 2005, Gaiman and McKean teamed up with The Jim Henson Company to create Mirrormask, a coming-of-age movie that bristles with all of the emotional intensity and unbridled imagination of an adolescent fever dream.

While an inventive credits sequence establishes the visual language of the film, Gaiman and McKean drop the audience into an unfolding domestic drama within minutes of the opening curtain for The Campbell Family Circus. The performers are busy warming up, but Helena, the daughter of the couple who own and run the circus, sits in her trailer amusing herself with an improvised sock puppet show. As the circus begins, Helena’s mother rushes to her daughter’s locked trailer and pleads, “All of those kids in there, they want to run away and join the circus.” In real life!” Helena’s fight with her mother escalates and she yells out something hurtful that she might regret instantly, but certainly feels a deep, growing sense of remorse when he mother falls ill during that night’s performance. By the next morning, Helena and her father are facing the mounting challenges of medical bills, the fate of the circus, and the uncertainty of her mother’s health problems. One night during this stressful, traumatic week, Helena falls asleep and wakes up in world that quickly reveals itself to be a skewed reflection of the life she knows. Mirrormask proceeds with an idiosyncratic fluidity that blurs the distinction between the images in an artist’s sketchbook and dreams that inspired them. Before this movie, Gaiman and McKean had been working together for years on collaborative projects that honed their complementary artistic styles. Adding The Jim Henson Company to bring this shared vision to life on screen feels like an inevitable choice. Stephanie Leonidas, although no longer in her teens during production, brings a surprisingly authentic innocence, churlishness, and honesty to her performance of Helena, a teenager facing a crisis while balancing just on the edge of impending adulthood. Gina McKee and Rob Brydon, two great, veteran supporting actors from British film and television play Helena’s parents and provide the film’s generous heart as well as its wicked sense of danger.

Mirrormask shares more than a few similarities with Jim Henson’s 1986 coming-of-age fantasy romp, Labyrinth, but something about this movie feels like a secret and it possesses a delicate intimacy absent from the earlier movie. Gaiman offsets his masterful fantasy world-building skills with a wry, literate sense of humor while McKean and The Jim Henson Company push the bounds of CGI to create moments that feel like walking through a living abstract sculpture exhibit. When I first saw this movie, I realized that Helena reminded me of the kids who hung out in T-Court. Helena feels like a real teenager coping with massive changes in her life and struggling to make sense of what’s happening. In portraying Helena’s journey so beautifully, Gaiman and McKean achieve an unflinching emotional impact unusual for a movie aimed at young people.

-          John Parsell