Word: birchings
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They have cast themselves as outcasts. Standing apart at their high school graduation, they gaze at the proceedings from the Olympus of their scorn. "This is so bad it's good," says Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson). Enid (Thora Birch) corrects her only friend: "This is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again." The girls are subtle connoisseurs of bad. They have a favorite lousy comedian, ugly doll, porno store and, eventually, a favorite pathetic nerd. That's Seymour (Steve Buscemi), who collects old records and fresh psychic wounds. "I would kill to have stuff like this...
Zwigoff gave Clowes complete control over the onscreen characters. And he agreed with the writer's belief that the girls should be played by actresses no older than 18. In the project's anguished gestation, Christina Ricci, the original star, grew too old for Enid. Enter Birch, fresh from her role as the daughter in American Beauty, and Johansson, who has been playing wise children for almost half her life (Manny & Lo, The Horse Whisperer). "Enid is an original," says Birch, now 19. "Timeless." So is the actress's incarnation. She gives Enid the stooped posture and scowl...
...UNITED ARTISTS FILMS Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch play Rebecca and Enid in 'Ghost World...
...Ghost World," the movie, keeps the same premise as the book. Two best-friends, Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), just graduated from high school, share a private universe of weirdness. Unfunny comedians, Indian rock and roll music of the sixties, abandoned pants on a sidewalk: anything uncoopted by the corporate American monoculture becomes an object of worship. They gripe about having no sex because all the boys are intolerably interested in sports or guitars and amuse themselves by obsessively following weirdoes around their homogenous, suburban neighborhood. But slowly the relationship becomes strained as Enid befriends Seymour (Steve Buscemi...
...Thora Birch, with her black bobbed hair and constantly changing "look," embodies the cartoon Enid so closely it almost feels embarrassing-- like seeing someone you know on the screen. Fans of the Clowes original will want the audience to like her even if she's kind of obnoxious and opinionated. Johansson likewise perfectly matches the blonde, more reserved Rebecca. And though his character doesn't exist in the original comic, Buscemi's self-hating, nerdish record collector Seymour could easily have stepped out of its pages...