This scene is not in the movie or on the DVD, dammit! Who • What • Where • Home

Stuff I Love (first in a series) I love Enid Coleslaw. The evening I realized this began as one of the most alluring kind. A cold front had come in, pushing the tropical weather south, making the humid air not only tolerable, but downright pleasurable. I could finally put my windows down as I hurtled across the Causeway for Tampa. In my book, speeding along with one of your favorite songs blaring on the stereo about five notches louder than normal is one of the simpler joys of life. The mix disc in the player was fresh from my computer, a hodge-podge of stuff you don’t hear on the radio anymore, if ever. I had been dying to see Ghost World again for a while. Because it was only playing at the arty multiplex downtown, I had to have a day off, time for a drive, and spare change for the parking garage. As the film unspooled, and I started to fall for Enid, I thought hard about whether I was infatuated with the character, or the actress playing her, Thora Birch. Enid is a cynical loner who just happens to also look great in red. Thora Birch is an actress, and I don’t know much about her, except some movies she's been in and that she's a vegetarian. Enid wears cute glasses and has bobbed (usually) dark hair. I don't think Thora Birch wears glasses in real life, and I think she likes to wear her hair longer than Enid. Ah, who am I kidding? Thora and I would never work out. Not to knock the vegetarian thing, but that's not me. But Enid... At the official Ghost World website ( www.ghostworld-themovie.com ), Enid's super-power is listed as "super-cuteness." How can I resist? I've met girls like Enid. I've loved girls like Enid. Sometimes, I am just like Enid – but in a guy way. There ought to be warnings about the futility of falling in love with fictional characters. Although I must plead helplessness because that's what movies are supposed to do to you. I read once (probably in Cameron Crowe's Conversations With Wilder) that the camera has to love the leading lady, or the audience never will. There's plenty of examples in the films I admire, from Fran Kubelick in The Apartment to Penny Lane in Almost Famous. But Enid... Well, there should just be a warning about falling in love with a girl like Enid anyway. In one scene of the movie, Enid appears in a sheer red blouse, red skirt and black stockings. There’s no way I could resist that. I think the filmmakers intended the red to signal danger, but I could care less. I wanted her then and there. Enid's got spunk. Enid's got style. Enid's funny. Enid's emotional. Enid's unique. She's got some issues, but I think by the end of the movie she was on the road to figuring herself out. There's more to Ghost World than just Enid, though. I have lots of reasons to love the film, primarily because I can appreciate the view of the outsider, the loner (and dare I say, the uncool ). And Ghost World is an uncompromising look at such unique spirits making their way through the world and dealing with change. As the film opens, Enid and her confidant, Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) are graduating high school (sponsored by Hostess and Dunkin Donuts, of course) amidst a class of the clueless and the phony. Despite the impending freedom, however, the duo are melancholy about the loss of the only sure thing they've known for years. Enid and Rebecca take refuge in sarcasm, shooting from the hip on everything from hypocrites to funky hair and awful movies. But with the safe harbor of school behind them, Rebecca comes to realize what's expected of her in "the real world" and sets about getting a job and an apartment. Enid, on the other hand, prizes her individuality to an almost stubborn excess. As the rift between the two widens, Enid is drawn closer to an apparent loser by the name of Seymour (Steve Buscemi), who represents a lonely yet completely honest approach to life, taking refuge in his collection of old 78's and artifacts of an America long forgotten by many. Enid lives in a similar cultural time warp, stocking her bedroom with children's records, crazy artwork, and H.R. Pufnstuff memorabilia. Enid marches boldly into a world that rejects individuality and embraces homogenization, but has no battle plan. Throughout the film, she feels her way around, looking for a way to remain an iconoclast while everything she knows is shifting. She takes up a quest to prove that a nonconformist like Seymour (and thus someone like herself) can still find a kindred spirit. "I can't stand the idea of a world where a guy like you can't get a date," she laments. Enid's convictions are trampled when she realizes that even Seymour can be seduced into change by the promise of romance. The characters of Ghost World inhabit a land of cookie-cutter apartment buildings and the ugliest strip malls ever committed to film. Enid and Rebecca stand out among everything else on the screen with their wardrobe alone, a combination of bright colors and thrift-store chic. Television also plays a supporting role in the film, fulfilling its reputation as the opiate of the masses in most cases. One scene even plays with our unabashed attraction to the idiot box by centering a TV screen full of moving images in a frame between two barely moving people having a conversation. Suddenly you realize that a damned commercial is drawing your attention away from two live human beings. Not everyone's gonna love Ghost World. It's cynical, edgy and a bit cruel. But it's real. It's achingly real. Even in its moments of exaggeration, the film elicits chuckles of recognition. Illeana Douglas' character of a radical feminist seems like a caricature, but if you've ever been to a film festival, you've seen countless attempts at "art" films like hers. As Enid looks disapprovingly upon what Rebecca insists is a "totally normal" apartment, a pregnant woman walks through the background smoking a cigarette and carrying a beer. Creepy, maybe. Real? Unfortunately, yes. Most of all, Enid, Seymour and Rebecca are real. And thus we can feel for them, understand them, appreciate them for what they are. Those of us who are still looking for our place in the world share a lot in common with these characters, and each represents a different approach to life, with different positives and negatives. But Enid... Dammit, I wanna live in Enid's world.

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