Ghost World (partially found deleted scenes of comedy/drama film; 2001)

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Ghostworld.png

Still depicting a scene with "Oomie", Rebecca's grandmother, from the DVD

Status: Partially Found

Ghost World is a 2001 comedy-drama film distributed by United Artists. It was directed by Terry Zwigoff and based on alt-comic author Daniel Clowes' graphic novel of the same name. The story focuses on the lives of teenagers Enid and Rebecca (played by Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson), in the summer after their high-school graduation.

Despite the public release of the final shooting draft of the script both as its own book and its republication in the Ghost World: Special Edition with multiple scenes described that would have made the movie a more faithful adaptation to its source, the DVD's deleted scenes offer very little in terms of deleted/alternate footage and none of the released deleted footage focuses on either of the film's protagonists. [1]

There is photographic evidence of at least two of the lost deleted scenes, one of which appears in the Ghost World: Special Edition (the one of Josh and Enid marked 'Scene 73') and the others from DVD box art and promotional materials.

In addition to the stills that have been released which depict Enid and Rebecca watching TV with Rebecca's grandmother and Enid sleeping with Josh, we are also missing an extended version of Rebecca and Enid's conversation in the College Coffee House with more conversation between the girls before and after the Alien Autopsy Guy approaches them which cuts to various fantasies of Enid's reminiscent of those in the original graphic novel but with Josh substituted for the girls' former teacher. In addition to this, there are also various other one-liner references to the pseudo-love triangle with Josh. It's theorized that these scenes were simply omitted due to them complicating the plot and making the viewers less sympathetic towards Enid when she eventually sleeps with Seymour later on in the film. [2]

Criterion Release

In May of 2017, the film was released as a part of the Criterion Collection, a home video company which focuses its efforts on restoring and licensing "important classic and contemporary films." Although the release did feature the full-length version of the deleted scene in which Enid sleeps with Josh (pictured in the first two stills below) and several scenes which were formerly unknown about to the general public, at least two other scenes remain lost.

Despite the fact that neither scene has yet to be released, they were discussed in passing during the commentary of the Criterion release, with co-writer Daniel Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff describing the scene with Oomie to be one in which Enid and Rebecca were sitting on a couch with her and watching a "sexually charged sitcom," which, after questioning, Rebecca claimed was Oomie's favorite show. The other scene, mirroring the same sexual fantasies Enid has in the graphic novel with Josh in place of her former teacher, was also mentioned but without any further discussion beyond what was already known.

Missing Web Content/Extras

One website also refers to fake documentaries that appeared on the official Ghost World tie-in website but the website is now defunct and the supposed documentaries no longer accessible. [3] (The now dead tie-in site's URL being at www.ghostworld-themovie.com)

The Wayback Machine can be used to access the main site but fails to load the video page (as well as several of the other pages) at all let alone any of its content.

Published Stills/Photos of Scenes

References