Comic Effect

Art School Confidential director Terry Zwigoff on shooting nude scenes, befriending R. Crumb and being spun by the press.

by Bilge Ebiri

May 09, 2006

Terry Zwigoff has had some problems with the press. It might also be due to the disconnect between the man's outward appearance and his films. Soft-spoken and pleasantly rumpled, the fiftysomething Zwigoff doesn't seem like the type of person who'd be helming high-profile indie pictures — especially ones about teenagers. But Zwigoff's two collaborations with the comic artist Dan Clowes — 2001's Ghost World and the new Art School Confidential, both based loosely on stories in the artist's comic Eightball — are a virtual compendium of teen angst, painfully and astutely depicting the efforts of sensitive, smart kids to adapt and fit in to their hilariously volatile and often hopelessly petty environments.

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The Wisconsin-born, San Francisco-based Zwigoff began his filmmaking career making documentaries. Crumb, his legendary 1994 portrait of the underground comic artist R. Crumb, vaulted him into the big time, where he's stayed ever since. Ghost World was nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar, the Billy Bob Thornton-starrer Bad Santa was a bona-fide box office hit, and Art School Confidential, despite its relatively low budget, boasts a cast that includes John Malkovich, Anjelika Huston, Jim Broadbent, and Steve Buscemi (who also appeared in Ghost World).
The film focuses on Jerome (Max Minghella), an idealistic young freshman at a prestigious New York art school, as he discovers the perils of having his work judged by his peers, tries to find love, and winds up entangled in a bizarre series of violent crimes (don't worry, it's a comedy). Even though the comic was based loosely on Clowes's own experiences as a student at Pratt Institute, Art School still feels like a typical Zwigoff film in its focus on intelligent yet affected characters who struggle mightily to transcend the messy emotions of the world around them, and fail utterly. It's also yet another chance for the director to be forced to deal with the press. Nerve caught up with him in New York. — Bilge Ebiri

I've been reading some articles about you.
Oh god! It's all lies.

Judging by what I've read, you're some kind of weird, shy eccentric who hates interviews.
People need an angle. The classic example of this was when The New York Times took a picture of me. They wanted to find an interesting room in my house, and we picked the room where I keep a lot of old records and posters. They tried to let a lot of light in to take the picture, and I said, "Well, if you want an accurate picture of me in here, I'd just be sitting with the curtains drawn and the lamp on." Because I try to keep the sunlight away from the stuff on the walls, so they don't get damaged. So the next thing I know, there's an article in the paper titled, "The Film Director Who Likes to Sit in the Dark." I guess that's one reason why I hate doing press. I just want to make a few good movies and die. [Laughs.]

Director Terry Zwigoff

Now I'm going to call this article "The Film Director Who Wants to Die."
Okay. I should be careful what I say. I guess if I keep talking like that, it's what I get.

How did Art School Confidential come about?
Dan and I always wanted to do another movie after Ghost World, because we connected so well. We decided on this one, and we were going to write the script together. But I got the chance to do Bad Santa, and while I was doing that, Dan just wrote the script himself. And it was really different. What I like about Dan's writing style is that it's not obvious. Hollywood movies, even Bad Santa, tend to be very obvious, very direct. They tell you exactly what they think and what you should feel. But Dan's work is not like that. You don't always know what to think. So this script was very much Dan's work. In that sense, it was a very different process from Ghost World.

In Ghost World, you actually inserted yourself into the story, through the character of Seymour, played by Steve Buscemi.
Dan's world is very hermetically sealed — he's got these characters so perfectly worked out. Enid and Rebecca are really two sides of his psyche. So I had the idea of introducing the Seymour character, who was more like me, but also had elements of Charles Crumb and Robert Crumb and other people I've known. It was easier for Dan to start on Art School Confidential from scratch. But as a result it was harder for me to introduce myself into it.

Did you try to introduce yourself?
In different ways, on different scenes. I found ways to relate to these characters and their particular struggles. The film tackles some of the broader issues that happen to people who are trying to become artists or filmmakers. It delves into things I've handled in other films — the notion of success in art, of art versus commerce, of what other people think of your work, of acceptance. But this world is so specific in some ways. I was primarily concerned with just getting it right, especially not having been to art school myself. Dan was a producer on this, as well as the writer, and the consultant. So I wound up relying on him a lot.

Is it hard translating a comic book into a film? They're both visual media, so it must not different than translating a piece of fiction into a film.
It's tricky. It's like the difference between documentaries and features. There's some overlap, but it's really not the same thing. Film is images connecting to other images. It's more about motion, and montage. In a comic, the reader controls the world. If you get to page six in a comic, and you want to go back to page one, you can just go back and take your time. I always get asked if I sit down and study Dan's comics when I make a film. I don't. I almost intentionally try to avoid looking at the comics when I'm making the film.

You didn't pull back on the horniness of the characters in the film.
I like the fact that this sensitive artist character played by Max Minghella is being forced to endure this coarse, beastly aspiring filmmaker roommate [played by Ethan Supplee]. I just found that so fraught with comedy potential. And sure, words like "skank" and "scag" and "Can I smell your fingers?" These kids talk that way.

The most exalted moment in the film occurs when a character drops her bathrobe and poses nude.
That was a touchy thing, both for the actress and for me as a filmmaker. I was trying to get the tone right for it, especially with the music I chose. It was a classical piece, so it dictated a certain style to it, a certain attitude towards that character. It was really tricky to shoot, in that sense. I used to go ask directors when I was first starting to shoot narrative films, trying to find out what I needed to do, how much coverage I should get, etc. And they all said, "Don't worry about that stuff." David Lynch gave me the best advice. He said, "Just go to the set. Try not to have anything in your mind till you get to the set. It's very scary, and the actors won't like it. But be in that environment, see how they're dressed, see how the set is. That will tell you on some emotional level how to direct the scene."

I've heard you described as a perfectionist. Were there any other scenes that gave you difficulty when you were shooting Art School Confidential?
There was one scene with Jim Broadbent, where we did something like twenty-five takes to get it right. When we were finally done, he turned to me and said, "You are by far the most obsessive director I've ever worked with," which I of course took that as a great compliment. In the scene, Jerome is drunk and vomits on Jim Broadbent's rug. And Jim's character is supposed to casually pick up this newspaper from his couch and throw it on the vomit. And he would throw it very directly, almost angrily. But I wanted him to toss it like it was an everyday thing. I was being very particular, because once upon a time somebody had dragged me over to some heroin addict's house in San Francisco, in the hopes I'd do a film about her. One of the times I was there, she must have gone to the bathroom and shot up or something, and she came out and puked on the rug. She did that exact thing — picked up this newspaper and tossed it like it was an everyday occurrence. I never did that film. But being trained to work as a documentary filmmaker, I've tried to recreate things I've seen in real life. I did that even when I was making documentaries. I'd try to get people to re-do things that I'd seen them do. They're not always comfortable with that.

Can you give some examples of re-creations in your documentary work?
Well, the main struggle I had was Robert Crumb in general. Because I didn't want to appear on camera, I'd try to get him to incorporate my questions into his responses. He was really unwilling to help me out in that way. It created more problems in the editing, and we had to do a lot more cut-aways. I had met Charles Crumb in the early '70s when I'd gone to visit Robert's family, back when his father was still alive. I wanted to recreate what had happened that night, where I sat in Charles' room with Robert and him talking, and just sort of discovered his family. Charles Crumb was one of the most unforgettable characters I've ever known. When I went back with a camera twenty years later, not much had changed except his father was no longer alive. Charles hadn't changed at all. I really wanted to recreate that first night, and in that sense I feel like those scenes in the documentary were almost constructed. We talked about exactly the same stuff. Charles was really the heart of that film. When we got to the testing stage of Crumb, they did test screenings, and audiences almost to a person wanted us to get rid of Charles Crumb. They kept saying just make it about R. Crumb.

Do you still keep in touch with R. Crumb?
Yeah, I just talked to him a week or two ago. He lives in France now, though, so we rarely see each other. We finished two scripts in the 1980s that never got made. They were totally crazy. I read one of them, The New Girlfriend, recently, to see if there was any chance it could get made. It's good. I was thinking there might possibly be some way it could work as an animated feature, but it would have to be R-rated, so you can't get any studio to make it. Cause there's no way they could sell it to kids. n°