Zwigoff: For a long time there was this rumor that I turned down doing "Austin Powers," which is not true. While they did send me the script, I don't think I was ever a serious consideration to direct it. I'm sure they probably sent it to 20 others as well. I did turn down "The Virgin Suicides." I talked to the producers about it and I just honestly told them that I didn't get it. Is it supposed to be funny, is it a thriller, what is it? Most of the scripts I was getting after "Crumb," however, were just so false and contrived. It was stuff like a nuclear physicist named Dupree and he's also a mountain climber. So, of course, when I read Dan's script for "Ghost World," it was so authentic, and it had characters that acted and talked like real people. You don't know how rare that is to find.

Were you entirely comfortable developing a story from the perspective of two 18-year-old girls?

Clowes: It's nothing I ever considered doing until the characters came to me slowly as a drawing I did in a sketchbook. The way you draw a character sort of indicates their personality and [Enid] sort of came to life in my head in a weird way. If I had to write a story about her right now, I could do it very quickly. I just hear her voice in my head -- it's a schizophrenic kind of thing, I guess.

	Also Today "Ghost World" Two teenage girls spring to life in Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff's comic tale of obsessives, compulsives and searchers of authenticity. By Andrew O'Hehir Print story E-mail story

Zwigoff: I tried to avoid thinking about them as 18-year-old girls. I just tried to think of them as people with their own set of problems. One of Enid's dilemmas that I could certainly connect with was her inability to find a place for herself in this culture.

Much of "Ghost World" considers the overwhelming effects of consumer culture in America today. In fact, the film has a sense of anti-product placement.

Clowes: That sense of omnipresent corporate commercialism was something Terry and I both wanted in the film. We wanted that stuff to be viewed as oppressive. I mean, that's the kind of world we live in, where we're defined by the objects we choose to surround ourselves with, and I think that's what the movie is about and what the character Enid's about. She's trapped in this world of very limited consumer choice. She doesn't want to pick Pepsi or Coke; she wants some weird soda that she's never heard of. She has a bigger imagination than what she's offered.

In response to the corporate cola world, both Enid and Seymour choose to seek out and surround themselves with old, neglected stuff. I know both of you are also chronic collectors.

Zwigoff: You really have to dig in this culture to unearth the good stuff. For me, art, music and design all came together in the late '20s. What would you rather have? In 1929 you could go see the latest Picasso exhibition and then go see Jelly Roll Morton play at a nightclub. In 2001, you can go see either 'N Sync or the Backstreet Boys. There's no comparison.

Clowes: Collectors like us are usually all really troubled people who find solace in their dank apartments filled with decaying old stuff, and they're often a trial to deal with. Of course, I live in my own little sanctum/sanatorium with all my books covered with Mylar. I collected a lot of sleazy '50s and '60s sex paperbacks and recently found one from 1968 called "Ding-a-Ling Broad." It has the dumbest-looking woman that I've ever seen on the cover. It's something that is an endless source of joy for me.

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