Daniel Clowes
"Ghost World" is the anti-thesis to all the terrible teen flicks which were bombarded with each year. This outsider film was summed up by a fan earlier in the year as "a film about 2 girls who hate the world and don't own mobile phones", which was reason enough for Designer Magazine to declare it the Best DVD / Video of 2002 ahead of A.I. and From Hell. We got on the phone to talk to the author of the original comic Daniel Clowes to tell him the good news and also to find out the latest about his new book "David Boring" which continues in Clowes' vision.
Q: If we could start by taking it back to your childhood.
I've read in previous interviews that you were a very bookish child. What
was it about the world of comics that attracted you over art forms?
A: I was not necessarily bookish, but I was in a world
of my own and amused myself. As a very young child we didn't have a television
set and so comic books were the best form of entertainment I had. I had
stacks of old comic books that my brother left lying around and that was
the first media that ever really attracted me.
Nobody ever took me to movies or anything so I had no
real sense of that whole world. I would just spend every single night reading
these old comics and even before I could read I would look at the pictures
and try and figure what was going on. As a kid I thought everyone read
comics and it was only when I got to school that I was quite shocked that
only 3 kids in my class read comics...especially when they only cost 12
cents!!!
Q: So how did you get from reading comics to actually
becoming a published author?
A: Even before I could read I was drawing imitations
of the comics I was reading then. I would draw the word balloons coming
from the characters and put chicken scratches and marks because I couldn't
write letters. I think I had a sense of drawing comics from before I could
even write sentences. It was something that kept me going out of my mind
a few times. It was a way for me to organize the events in my life and
try and make sense of things in some way.
At certain point, around 20, I wanted to get away from
it all because "it was a dying field - this is not going to be around in
5 years"...but I couldn't get away from it. I just kept coming back to
it. I was trying to be a magazine illustrator and I wasn't enjoying it
and I just kept doing comic books in my spare time. So I thought if i'm
going to spend so much time doing this I might as well try and make a living
out of it.
Q: What was it that kept you interested in comics throughout
all this time?
A: I just felt there was more to do with it. I felt these
really talented people would do comics and then they would just stop at
the level designed for a 13 year old. They would assume there was nothing
more you could do with it than do super hero comics or really low level
humour comics or newspaper daily strips which are designed to appeal to
the lowest common denominator reader. I just felt there was so much more
you could do with it if you just kept going with it and trying new things
and right around that time there was a whole bunch of artists who clearly
had the same idea (people like the Fernandez Brothers and Robert Crumb).
It just felt that something was really going on and it felt exciting all
of a sudden.
Q: After the Lloyd Llewellyn comics it was the Eightball
Series that really made your name in the world of comics. What was the
concept behind Eightball?
A: After a while I had outgrown the Lloyd Llewellyn concept,
which was very limited by design. With Eightball I wanted something where
I could just do anything that came into my head with every issue and it
all made sense. I wanted it to be like the very early MAD magazine where
it was all this crazy stuff by different artists...except in my case it
was all by the same artist drawing in different styles.
Q: We'll talk about the adaptation of "Ghost World"
from the comic to the movie later. But when you were writing "Ghost World"
you wanted to portray girls in a way you felt they hadn't previously in
the media. Could you elaborate on this?
A: I wasn't necessarily think on those terms. I just
wanted to create 2 characters that I thought were interesting compelling
characters and once they came to life I couldn't stop working on those
characters - it was like they were living in my head and I couldn't turn
them off!!!
I always put the same amount of myself into every character
and they come out in different ways. And I've had people talking about
my characters saying this person is a really despicable horrible person
and I'll think it's just me just slightly tweaked in a different direction.
I don't know how to write otherwise, other than to find some part of me
that is similar to the character.
Q: Throughout "Ghost World" there were bits you could
just sit there and laugh, but at the end it offered this really bleak view
of friendship. Was it always the intention to avoid the usual happy ending
scenario?
A: I wouldn't say it's necessarily bleak because it seems
that it's something that everybody has to go through at a certain point.
It was very tempting to have the two of them stay together as friends at
the end, but then that just seemed unrealistic. It seems that that isn't
what happens with those kinds of intense friendships...they can't last
forever...they're just too close. It's very hard for somebody to move on
when they're that close to somebody, I think it's too hard for you to rethink
of yourself as an adult.
I had close friends, but nothing like that. Nothing where
I even really noticed that the friendship was over...it was just like one
day I realized I hadn't chatted to him in years. But I knew people who
specially had friendships like that and they always used to end in tragedy.
There was something terribly sad about it because it was just so cool to
watch these 2 girls that were closer than any family members you would
ever meet...and to see that end it always seemed like a real tragedy.
Q: How was it seeing your comic book transferred from
paper to an actual film?
A: I was very much involved in the film, so it was something
I was working on a day to day basis. We started off trying to make the
film almost mirror image of the comic book and it wasn't interesting to
me because i'd already done the comic book. Then once we started changing
it and making it into a new story it got really interesting to me and to
work with the same characters and give them new situations to work in -
it was really a lot of fun.
Q: Everything you have ever done is written from the
viewpoint of the outsider. As someone now in your early 40s and married
do you still consider yourself to be an outsider?
A: It would be very hard for me to write a character
that was part of the community and happily in place. I couldn't really
relate to that unless it was viewing that as an outsider. I think what
ever your identity is when you're 10 years old is pretty much the identity
you'll have throughout the rest of your life. You figure out different
ways and strategies to make it palatable, but in my case I can't imagine
feeling any way other than nervous and alienated.
Q: Moving onto the new book "David Boring". I believe
this is the first character that is not based around yourself. Could you
tell us a little about the book?
A: That was the idea...and then of course that never
quite happens. It slowly turns into me more and more even though I was
fighting it all the way. The comic was intended to be such a complex story
that nobody could ever condense it down into a sound bite. I was trying
to tell a story that was somewhat like an old Fielding or Dickens novel
where the searcher goes through a series of adventures and ends up in some
place that he was trying to get to the whole way. It's a young mans adventure....
Q: Finishing off. Were doing the Best of 2002 and "Ghost
World" is in the Top 3 for the Best DVD / Video category alongside A.I.
and From Hell. How does it feel have "Ghost World", a comic which you never
even saw as a film, end up in the best video category?
A: When we were writing it and it was starting to come
together I thought if we could even get 10% of this on film it would be
a really good film. Then when we making it, I was so close to it you couldn't
tell if it was good or not - you don't laugh at the jokes you've written
and re-written 500 times. It was all very technical at that point and then
to see it with an audience and watch them react to it was amazing.
To be up there next to A.I feels ridiculous, because you
look at a film like that and there is more money spent in one shot on A.I.
than there is in the whole budget of Ghost World. It's almost like comparing
a movie to a play or something so it's hard to compare them. In a way it's
very flattering and in another it just seems absurd.
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"Ghost World" is out now on DVD and Video in all
good stores
"David Boring" is published by Jonathan Cape in
the UK
For more info
www.ghostworld-themovie.com
www.randomhouse.co.uk
www.fantagraphics.com
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