Art School Confidential

I would love to say that I am not a fan of Terry Zwigoff. But honestly that’s not really true. I have seen two of his movies and really liked 50% of them. I actually despised the other 50% and never saw another one of his movies after that. Hmm…maybe I’m not a fan of Terry Zwigoff.

The 50% that I despised was, of course, his critically lauded Ghost World. Lots of people disagree with me and say GW is great, to which I say: you are wrong. Read the comic. Zwigoff missed the point entirely, and managed to somehow turn Daniel Clowes’ non-sexual love story between to teenage girls into another movie about R. Crumb. (The ultimate irony being that I loved Zwigoff’s first move about R. Crumb.)

Which brings us to Art School Confidential. Again working from Clowes’ source material, Zwigoff has decided that a four-page spread on the stupidity of art school is enough material to support a feature film. That being said, it’s a pretty good trailer.

The opening line from John “Malkovich, Malkovich” Malkovich takes me back. It is what every art teacher wanted to say to my peers and I, everyday, through our four years of higher education. Malkovich actually has the best lines in this trailer. They bookend the whole thing and really make the trailer seem better than it is.

The middle of the trailer can be divided into two parts. One consists of shots of students “creating art”. These are great. The giant ice cream cone, terrible self-portrait and hilariously bad “performance” pieces of the other students are so dead-on, I found myself cringing. This will be a difficult movie for first year art students to watch.

The rest of the trailer is, unfortunately, your usual college movie fare. Complete with the “You’ve never been laid?!” comment and Zwigoff’s requisite “girls are shitty” message that creeps into all his films.

I just realized that the trailer sums up all the major parts of Clowes’ original comic. Way to go, guy who edited this trailer. You just made my favorite comic book movie. Except for all the parts I thought were stupid.