''Ghost World'' is a 2001
black comedy film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the old ...
directed by
Terry Zwigoff
Terry Zwigoff (born May 18, 1949) is an American filmmaker whose work often deals with misfits, antiheroes, and themes of alienation. He first garnered attention for his work in documentary filmmaking with ''Louie Bluie'' (1985) and '' Crumb'' ( ...
and starring
Thora Birch
Thora Birch (born March 11, 1982) is an American actress and producer. She made her feature film debut in 1988 with a starring role in ''Purple People Eater'', for which she received a Young Artist Award for "Best Young Actress Under Nine Years ...
,
Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Ingrid Johansson (; born November 22, 1984) is an American actress. The world's highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019, she has featured multiple times on the ''Forbes'' Celebrity 100 list. ''Time'' magazine named her one of the 100 ...
,
Brad Renfro
Brad Barron Renfro (July 25, 1982 – January 15, 2008) was an American actor. He made his film debut at the age of 11 with a starring role in '' The Client'' (1994). He went on to appear in 21 feature films and won several awards.
Prior to bei ...
,
Illeana Douglas
Illeana Hesselberg (born July 25, 1961 or 1965), known professionally as Illeana Douglas, is an American actress and filmmaker. She appeared in three episodes of '' Six Feet Under'', for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination as O ...
and
Steve Buscemi. Based on the 1993–97
comic book of the same name by
Daniel Clowes
Daniel Gillespie Clowes (; born April 14, 1961) is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. Most of Clowes's work first appeared in '' Eightball'', a solo anthology comic book series. An ''Eightball'' issue typi ...
, with a screenplay co-written by Clowes and Zwigoff, the story focuses on the lives of Enid (Birch) and Rebecca (Johansson), two teenage outsiders in an unnamed American city. They face a rift in their relationship as Enid takes interest in an older man named Seymour (Buscemi), and becomes determined to help his romantic life.
The film debuted at the
Seattle International Film Festival
The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), held annually in Seattle, Washington since 1976, is among the top film festivals in North America. Audiences have grown steadily; the 2006 festival had 160,000 attendees. The SIFF runs for more th ...
in 2001. It had little box office impact, but was critically acclaimed. It was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
The Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay Film adaptation, adapted from previously established material. The most frequently adapted media are novels, but other adapted narrative formats include st ...
and has become a
cult film.
Plot
Best friends Enid and Rebecca face the summer after their high school graduation, with no plans for their future other than to find jobs and live together. The girls are cynical social
outcasts, but Rebecca is more popular with boys than Enid. Enid's diploma is withheld on the condition that she attend a remedial art class. Even though she is a talented artist, her art teacher, Roberta, believes that art must be socially meaningful and dismisses Enid's sketches as nothing more than "light entertainment".
The girls see a
personal ad
A personal advertisement, sometimes called a contact ad, is a form of classified advertising in which a person seeks to find another person for friendship, romance, marriage, or sexual activity. In British English, it is commonly known as an adve ...
in which a lonely, middle-aged man named Seymour asks a woman he met recently to contact him. Enid makes a
prank phone call
A prank call (also known as a crank call) is a telephone call intended by the caller as a practical joke played on the person answering. It is often a type of nuisance call. It can be illegal under certain circumstances.
Recordings of prank pho ...
to Seymour, pretending to be the woman and inviting him to meet her at a diner. The two girls and their friend, Josh, secretly watch Seymour at the diner and make fun of him. Enid soon begins to feel sympathy for Seymour, and they follow him to his apartment building. Later they find him selling vintage records in a garage sale. Enid buys an old
blues album from him, and they become friends. She decides to try to find women for him to date.
Enid has meanwhile been attending her remedial art class, and she persuades Seymour to lend her an old poster depicting a
grotesquely caricatured black man, which was once used as a promotional tool by
Coon Chicken Inn
Coon Chicken Inn was an American chain of three restaurants that was founded by Maxon Lester Graham and Adelaide Burt in 1925, which prospered until the late 1950s. The restaurant's name contained the word ''Coon'', considered a racial slur, a ...
, the fried chicken franchise now known as Cook's Chicken, where Seymour works in corporate. Enid presents the poster in class as a social comment about racism, and Roberta is so impressed with the concept that she offers Enid a scholarship to an art college.
Seymour receives a phone call from Dana, the intended recipient of his personal ad. Enid encourages him to pursue a relationship with Dana, but she becomes unexpectedly jealous when he does so.
Enid's and Rebecca's lives start to diverge. While Enid has been spending time with Seymour, Rebecca starts working at a coffee shop. Enid gets a job at a movie theater so she can afford to rent an apartment with Rebecca, but her cynical attitude and reluctance to
upsell
Upselling is a sales technique where a seller invites the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons to generate more revenue. While it usually involves marketing more profitable services or products, it can be simply e ...
concessions get her fired on her first day. The girls argue, and Rebecca abandons the idea of living with Enid.
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 and revoke the scholarship. Enid turns to Seymour for solace, resulting in a drunken
one-night stand
A one-night stand or one-night sex is a single sexual encounter in which there is an expectation that there shall be no further relations between the sexual participants. It draws its name from the common practice of a one-night stand, a single ...
. Seymour breaks up with Dana and is called to account at work when the Coon Chicken poster is publicized in a local newspaper. He unsuccessfully tries to contact Enid, only for Rebecca to tell him about Enid's prank phone call, describing the way they mocked him at the diner. Seymour is upset and goes to the convenience store where Josh works. Another customer ends up in a violent confrontation with Seymour, resulting in his being injured and hospitalized. Enid visits him in the hospital to apologize.
After everything that has occurred Enid gives in to her childhood fantasy of running away from home and disappearing. She has seen an old man, Norman, continually waiting at an out-of-service bus stop for a bus that will never come. Finally, as Enid watches from across the street, Norman boards an out-of-service bus. The next day, while Seymour discusses the summer's events with his therapist, Enid returns to the bus stop and boards the out-of-service bus when it arrives.
A
post-credits scene
A post-credits scene (commonly referred to as a stinger or credit cookie) or mid-credits scene is a short clip that appears after all or some of the closing credits have rolled and sometimes after a production logo of a film, TV series, or video g ...
shows an alternate version of Seymour's scene in the convenience store, in which he wins the fight and is not injured.
Cast
Production and technique
The film was directed by
Terry Zwigoff
Terry Zwigoff (born May 18, 1949) is an American filmmaker whose work often deals with misfits, antiheroes, and themes of alienation. He first garnered attention for his work in documentary filmmaking with ''Louie Bluie'' (1985) and '' Crumb'' ( ...
with cinematography by
Affonso Beato
Affonso Henrique Beato (born July 13, 1941) is a Brazilian cinematographer. He has served as the President of the Brazilian Society of Cinematographers, receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. He is also a member of the American Society ...
. Zwigoff and ''Ghost World'' comic creator
Daniel Clowes
Daniel Gillespie Clowes (; born April 14, 1961) is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. Most of Clowes's work first appeared in '' Eightball'', a solo anthology comic book series. An ''Eightball'' issue typi ...
wrote the screenplay together. Years later, Clowes admitted that writing the screenplay came with a significant learning curve. He recalled, "I started by trying to transcribe the comic into
Final Draft. I figured that’s how you do an adaptation. Then I tried throwing everything away and writing an entirely new story that was very different from the book. And I synthesized those two things into a final screenplay. The actual film itself is very different from the script we wrote. We ended up
jettisoning the last twenty pages and rethought the whole thing as we were filming. It was really held together by hair and spit."
Zwigoff and Clowes presented Beato with the task of making a
comic book
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...
look to the movie. They asked for a fresh technique: earlier examples of the form such as ''
X-Men
The X-Men are a superhero team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, first appearing in ''The X-Men'' #1 by artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby and writer/editor Stan Lee in 1963. Although initially cancelled in 1970 due to lo ...
'' and ''
Dick Tracy'' were dismissed as literal-minded and "insulting" to the art form.
According to Clowes, cameraman Beato "really took it to heart," carefully studying the style and color of the original comics.
The final cut is just slightly oversaturated, purposefully redolent of "the way the modern world looks where everything is trying to get your attention at once."
Zwigoff also added his individual vision to the adaptation, particularly in his capture and
editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, o ...
of
languid, lingering shots, a technique derived from his experience as a
documentarian
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in term ...
.
Another notable touch is his minimal use of extras in the film, making the city and its streets intentionally empty – Clowes notes approvingly, "It captures this weird feeling of alienation in the endless modern consumer culture."
Themes
Ending and suicide theory
In a 2002 interview, Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff were asked if the ending of the film adaptation was a metaphor for suicide. Daniel replied, "Yeah, it could be. It's hard to figure out why people have that response. The first time I heard that I said, 'What? You're out of your mind. What are you talking about?' But I've heard that hundreds of times". Zwigoff expanded on his views in a 2021 interview, saying: "Many interpreted it to mean Enid died by suicide
..I personally thought of the ending as more positive: that she’s moving on with her life, that she had faith in herself".
[Ghost World at 20: ‘In an era of teen comedies and American Pie, this was an antidote’](_blank)
3-17-2021, ''The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
''
Birch, on the other hand, stated: "Honestly, it’s a sad film, to me... I have a very dark view of where that story is leading, unfortunately".
Soundtrack
Music in the film includes "
Jaan Pehechan Ho
"Jaan Pehechan Ho" ("Let's Know Each Other") is an Indian rock, Indian rock & roll Music of Bollywood, Bollywood song, sung by Mohammed Rafi, composed by duo Shankar Jaikishan, and with Hindi-Urdu lyrics by Shailendra (lyricist), Shailendra. It ...
" by
Mohammed Rafi
Mohammed Rafi (24 December 1924 – 31 July 1980) was an Indian playback singer and musician. He is considered to have been one of the greatest and most influential singers of the Indian subcontinent. Rafi was notable for his versatility and ...
, a dance number choreographed by
Herman Benjamin
Herman Benjamin was a choreographer of dance numbers in various Bollywood movies from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s. Also known as "Harman", he started his career as a choreographer in the popular 1958 film ''Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi''. He ...
from the 1965
Bollywood
Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (fo ...
musical ''
Gumnaam
''Gumnaam'' (translation: ''Unknown'' or ''Anonymous'') is a 1965 Indian Bollywood thriller film directed by Raja Nawathe, starring Manoj Kumar, Nanda, Pran, Helen and Mehmood. The film is a loosely-inspired adaptation of the 1939 mystery n ...
'' which Enid watches and dances to early in the film, and "
Devil Got My Woman
''Devil Got My Woman'' is the fourth studio album by American blues singer Skip James, released in 1968. It was his last record before his death in 1969. The title track is featured in the 2001 film '' Ghost World''.
Reception
AllMusic critic ...
" by
Skip James
Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James (June 9, 1902October 3, 1969) was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter. AllMusic stated: "This emotional, lyrical performer was a talented blues guitarist and arranger with an impressive ...
(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
Lionel Belasco Maracaibo (Venezuela) 1881 – ) was a prominent Venezuelan pianist, composer and bandleader, best known for his calypso recordings.
Biography
According to various sources, Belasco was born in Maracaibo (Venezuela), the son of ...
, which are reflective of the character Seymour, and of director
Terry Zwigoff
Terry Zwigoff (born May 18, 1949) is an American filmmaker whose work often deals with misfits, antiheroes, and themes of alienation. He first garnered attention for his work in documentary filmmaking with ''Louie Bluie'' (1985) and '' Crumb'' ( ...
. Zwigoff is a collector of
78 RPM
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog signal, analog sound Recording medium, storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove ...
records
A record, recording or records may refer to:
An item or collection of data Computing
* Record (computer science), a data structure
** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity
** Boot sector or boot record, ...
, as portrayed by Seymour. Other tracks are by
Vince Giordano
Vince Giordano (born March 11, 1952 in Brooklyn) is an American saxophonist and leader of the New York-based Nighthawks Orchestra. He specializes in jazz of the 1920s and 1930s and his primary instrument is the bass saxophone. Vince Giordano and ...
, a musician who specializes in meticulous recreations of songs from old 78 RPM records.
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 album are "
What Do I Get?" by
Buzzcocks
Buzzcocks are an English punk rock band formed in Bolton, England in 1976 by singer-songwriter-guitarist Pete Shelley and singer-songwriter Howard Devoto. They are regarded as a seminal influence on the Manchester music scene, the independen ...
, which can be heard when Enid dresses up like a punk, and the song "A Smile and a Ribbon" by
Patience and Prudence.
Release
''Ghost World''
premiered
A première, also spelled premiere, is the debut (first public presentation) of a play, film, dance, or musical composition.
A work will often have many premières: a world première (the first time it is shown anywhere in the world), its first ...
on June 16, 2001 at the
Seattle International Film Festival
The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), held annually in Seattle, Washington since 1976, is among the top film festivals in North America. Audiences have grown steadily; the 2006 festival had 160,000 attendees. The SIFF runs for more th ...
, to lower than average recognition by audiences, but admiration from critics. It was also screened at several film festivals worldwide including the
Fantasia Festival
Fantasia International Film Festival (also known as Fantasia-fest, FanTasia, and Fant-Asia) is a film festival that has been based mainly in Montreal since its founding in 1996. Regularly held in July of each year, it is valued by both hardcore ...
in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
.
Following the film's theatrical exhibition in the United States, ''Ghost World'' was released on VHS and DVD format via
MGM Home Entertainment
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Home Entertainment LLC (d/b/a MGM Home Entertainment and formerly known as MGM Home Video, MGM/CBS Home Video and MGM/UA Home Video) is the home video division of the American media company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
History 1 ...
in early 2002. Additional features include deleted and alternative scenes, "Making of Ghost World" featurette, Gumnaam music video "Jaan Pehechaan Ho", and the original theatrical trailer. The film was released on
Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...
on May 30, 2017 by
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
, with a
4K transfer, interviews with the performers, and
audio commentary
An audio commentary is an additional audio track, usually digital, consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with a video. Commentaries can be serious or entertaining in nature, and can add informatio ...
.
Box office
With a
limited commercial theatrical run in the United States, ''Ghost Worlds commercial success was minimal. The film was released on July 20, 2001 in five theaters grossing $98,791 on its opening weekend; it slowly expanded to more theaters, reaching a maximum of 128 by the end of the year.
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.
Reception
''Ghost World'' has a 93% approval rating on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on 162 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus read, "With acerbic wit, Terry Zwigoff fashions Daniel Clowes' graphic novel into an intelligent, comedic trip through deadpan teen angst." As of November 2020, the film had a score of 88 out of 100 on
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, based on 31 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim."
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
gave the film four out of four stars and wrote: In his review for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'',
A. O. Scott praised Thora Birch's performance as Enid: In his ''
Chicago Reader
The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded by a ...
'' review,
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for ''The Chicago Reader'' from 1987 to 2008, when he retired. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has ...
wrote: However,
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism.
Early life
Sarris was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Greek immigrant parents, Themis (née Katav ...
of ''
The New York Observer
''The New York Observer'' was a weekly newspaper printed from 1987 to 2016, when it ceased print publication and became the online-only newspaper ''Observer''. The media site focuses on culture, real estate, media, politics and the entertainmen ...
'' disliked the character of Enid: Kevin Thomas, in his review for the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', praised
Steve Buscemi's portrayal of Seymour: ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine's Andrew D. Arnold wrote:
Michael Dean of ''
The Comics Journal
''The Comics Journal'', often abbreviated ''TCJ'', is an American magazine of news and criticism pertaining to comic books, comic strips and graphic novels. Known for its lengthy interviews with comic creators, pointed editorials and scathing re ...
'' addressed the concerns of comics fans head-on: "Those with higher expectations – and, certainly, ''
Ghost World'' purists – are likely to experience at least a degree of disappointment. Some of the comic's air of aimless mystery has been paved over with the semblance of a Hollywood plot, and to that extent, the movie is a lesser work than the comic. But it's still a far better movie than we had a right to expect." According to Dean: "The injection of a relatively trite plot situation into ''Ghost World''s more enigmatic stream of events is perhaps forgivable, since the film might otherwise never have been produced. Its greatest sin, the misappropriation of Enid's longing, is not so forgivable, though the overlap between Zwigoff's distaste for modernity and Enid's distrust of social acceptability makes it almost palatable. In any case, we want to forgive it, because so much is right about the movie."
''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
'' gave the film an "A−" rating and
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for ''Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...
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
''LA Weekly'' is a free weekly alternative newspaper in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Jay Levin, who served as president and editor until 1991. Voice Media Group sold the paper in late 2017 to Semanal Media LLC, whose paren ...
'',
Manohla Dargis
Manohla June Dargis () is an American film critic. She is one of the chief film critics for ''The New York Times''. She is a five-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
Career
Before being a film critic for ''The New York Times'', ...
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
''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
'', 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
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', 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."
Several critics referred to the film as an
art film
An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily f ...
.
Accolades
Legacy
''Ghost World'' topped
MSN
MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95.
The Microsoft Net ...
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
''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...
's "Best & Worst Comic-Book Movies",
and ''
Empire
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...
'' magazine ranked the film 19th in their "The 20 Greatest Comic Book Movies" list.
It is considered a
cult film.
It was added to the
Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
in 2017.
See also
*
List of films based on comics
This is a list based on comics. It includes films that are adaptations of comics, and those films whose characters originated in those comics.
English, French, Japanese
As some languages and forms have been extensively adapted into films, they ...
References
External links
*
*
*
*
*
*
''Ghost World: Séance in Wowsville''an essay by Howard Hampton at the
Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ghost World (Film)
2001 films
2001 black comedy films
2001 comedy-drama films
2001 independent films
2000s buddy comedy-drama films
2000s coming-of-age comedy-drama films
2000s female buddy films
2000s teen comedy-drama films
American black comedy films
American buddy comedy-drama films
American coming-of-age comedy-drama films
American female buddy films
American independent films
American teen comedy-drama films
British black comedy films
British coming-of-age comedy-drama films
British female buddy films
British independent films
British teen comedy-drama films
2000s English-language films
Films based on American comics
Films directed by Terry Zwigoff
Films scored by David Kitay
Films set in the United States
Films shot in Los Angeles
German black comedy films
German coming-of-age comedy-drama films
German independent films
English-language German films
German teen comedy-drama films
Live-action films based on comics
Mr. Mudd films
Films set in a movie theatre
2000s American films
2000s British films
2000s German films