Ter­ry Zwigoff: ​‘Hol­ly­wood responds to the three Bs: brava­do, blus­ter and bullshit’

There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t won­der whether Ter­ry Zwigoff will announce anoth­er film project. His immac­u­late direc­to­r­i­al can­non includes 1994’s Crumb, con­sid­ered one of the great pro­file doc­u­men­taries of the mod­ern era, 2001’s Ghost World, arguably one of the great (if not the great­est?) com­ic book movies ever made, and the Cit­i­zen Kane of drunk, dys­pep­tic San­ta Claus movies, Bad San­ta, from 2003.

Fol­low­ing the release of Art School Con­fi­den­tial, things went a lit­tle qui­et, but Zwigoff him­self seems to sug­gest that he wasn’t real­ly a Hol­ly­wood guy, and work­ing with­in the sys­tem was tough. Yet, with such a superla­tive per­son­al cat­a­logue of film works, his lega­cy remains untaint­ed. And so we speak to him ahead of a vis­it to Lon­don, for a spe­cial ​“immer­sive” screen­ing of Ghost World where he’ll be joined by no less than Robert Crumb to play music and a new lim­it­ed vinyl sound­track of the film will be avail­able for purchase.

LWLies: As this is a cel­e­bra­tion of your film and music work, I’d like to first ask you about Blue­sham­mer. How often do you encounter Blue­sham­mer-like bands in your life? What is your take on the world of con­tem­po­rary pop­u­lar music?

Zwigoff: I pret­ty much steer clear of any place that would have a band like this, but have stum­bled onto my share of non­sense over the years. Con­tem­po­rary pop­u­lar music? Have always found it to be taste­less slop for the most part. When I was a kid my father would con­trol the TV and he’d always watch shows like The Per­ry Como Hour with music like the McGuire Sis­ters or Paul Anka. So dull and unin­ter­est­ing – just part of the bland, white­bread, main­stream cul­ture. There was always some pop music that was a lit­tle more inter­est­ing like Bud­dy Hol­ly or Roy Orbi­son or the like. Chuck Berry was good. I don’t know if you con­sid­er him pop or not. I don’t. Today, I have enough great music on 78s I can lis­ten to for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t know Rhi­an­na from Adele, and I’m not tempt­ed to invest the time to find out. I’d rather sit here and lis­ten to my Jel­ly Roll Mor­ton and King Oliv­er records.

Can you talk about your deci­sion to open Ghost World on Jaan Pehechan Ho? How did you first encounter the song, and what’s the process of get­ting it on the soundtrack?

Dan Clowes had a VHS tapes of a bunch of weird clips he’d saved, things like fart­ing TV evan­ge­lists, old campy com­mer­cials, that sort of thing. Mixed in there was a very grainy, 5^th-gen­er­a­tion clip of 30 sec­onds from this. I made him play it over and over – I just loved it. I obses­sive­ly fig­ured out a way to force it into Ghost World. I think Dan thought I was crazy, but I final­ly made it work. I was able to obtain a pris­tine copy of the film thanks to the orig­i­nal pro­duc­ers in India. They actu­al­ly hand-car­ried the orig­i­nal film ele­ments over to LA so we could use them.

Enid becomes fix­at­ed with the Skip James track Dev­il Got My Woman, and I’d love to know the last time you just played the same song over and over and over.

I’ve done that try­ing to learn a tune. After being in a film edit­ing room and sound mix, though, I’m aware how much that can turn your favourite tune into some­thing you nev­er want hear again. When my wife puts on a CD in her car of old reis­sues, I force her to skip over the ones I own on 78s as I don’t want to get sick of them. I would rather not use it as ​“back­ground music” while we chat in the car, and save it for home where I can hear it on bet­ter equip­ment and real­ly enjoy it and focus on it.

The line, ​“It’s Amer­i­ca dude. Learn the rules.” has echoed through the years. Watch­ing the film now, the nun-chuck guy now comes across as a vision from the future. It’s chill­ing. Was it strange to re-encounter the film’s many prophet­ic ele­ments when you worked on the Cri­te­ri­on release?

I liked Idioc­ra­cy a lot for that rea­son – still do. I always thought it would make a good dou­ble bill with ​“Ghost World”. Quentin Tarantino’s the­atre in LA recent­ly put them togeth­er for a dou­ble bill a few years ago.

In the peri­od after Art School Con­fi­den­tial, were there any oth­er graph­ic nov­els you had inter­est in adapt­ing for the screen? Did inter­est in non action com­ic book movies wane?

No. I don’t read graph­ic nov­els. If some­one I trust rec­om­mends one occa­sion­al­ly I’ll take a look at it, but haven’t been excit­ed by what I’ve seen. The action com­ic book films con­tin­ue to mys­ti­fy me with their pop­u­lar­i­ty. How can any­one suf­fer through them of their own free will? Is it the increased lead lev­els in the drink­ing water?

In inter­views you come across as a can­did and log­i­cal per­son who speaks his own mind. Do you feel that’s anti­thet­i­cal to suc­ceed­ing in the mod­ern film indus­try? Or any indus­try for that matter?

It does’t help, but I usu­al­ly can’t help myself. I’m too straight-for­ward and self-dep­re­cat­ing. That doesn’t fly in pitch meet­ings. They seem to respond to brava­do, blus­ter and bull­shit… the three B’s.

Did you ever find your­self play­ing a game, or hav­ing to pre­tend to be some­one you’re not, while work­ing in Hollywood?

Years ago I expressed my frus­tra­tion to a pro­duc­er friend about a film we were pitch­ing with no suc­cess. I ​‘how come the same stu­dio is turn­ing this down while they con­tin­ue to make films by the likes of ______ _____?! His films are always ter­ri­ble and nev­er make mon­ey! My track record is a mil­lion times bet­ter than his.’
My pro­duc­er: ​‘Oh, that’s because he’s so good in a room! He real­ly knows how to work the room!’ I admit I’m no good at pitch­ing, but any­one with any sense should realise that being good at pitch­ing does not nec­es­sar­i­ly make you good at mak­ing a film.

Do you remem­ber the last time you laughed in the cinema?

Last week. I laughed at Tarantino’s lat­est – at the end when Brad Pitt has a big show­down with the Man­son girls. Brad Pitt was ter­rif­ic in that film. So was the hitch­hik­er, Mar­garet Qual­ley. Very funny.

What advice would you give to some­one start­ing out to build a col­lec­tion of 78s?

Go back in time to when they were affordable.

What is your cur­rent sound sys­tem set-up?

I’ll take a pho­to and attach… (above)

Thrones TD 124 turntable (made in Switzer­land) late ​’50s
Marantz Mod­el One tube pre­amp late ​’50s
Marantz 2270 amp.
Large old RCA speak­er.
The only guy left on the plan­et who can still make the cor­rect sty­lus for 78s lives in Ashtead, Sur­rey Eng­land – Expert Sty­lus Co., Paul Hodgson.

Has the inter­net destroyed the fun of record col­lect­ing for you?

In the old days when i first start­ed col­lect­ing, you could some­times feel like an arche­ol­o­gist mak­ing some impor­tant dis­cov­ery and pre­serv­ing it for pos­ter­i­ty. Now with eBay and all the info online, not as much. But it’s still fun.

Ter­ry Zwigoff will be in Lon­don on 28 Sept at the Troxy for an immer­sive screen­ing of Ghost World where he will also play music with Robert Crumb. Lim­it­ed edi­tion copies of the Ghost World sound­track will also be for sale. Tick­ets are for sale here: smar​turl​.it/​z​w​igoff