The main thing that strikes you about Terry Zwigoff is how much he resembles Robert Crumb, his old friend and star of Zwigoff's brilliant 1995 documentary, Crumb. The lolling, sardonic cadences, the worn cardigan sweater, even the mustache is in order. When interviewing Zwigoff about his new film, Ghost World, the similarity between filmmaker and subject gave both films a residual ring of truth--as though Zwigoff truly was born to do cinematic justice to the essence of underground comics, an art form that has been utterly mishandled onscreen in the past. To that end, I wondered what the challenges of rendering such a beloved comic were. The first trick was navigating Hollywood interference.

"Every time we went to pitch this film," Zwigoff laughed, recalling the exchanges with a mixture of indifference and scorn, "the first thing that Hollywood studios--every one turned us down--would say is, 'Okay, teenage girls, great! Let's talk about the soundtrack.' And as soon as they heard that I didn't want to put in a pop soundtrack, they were 50 percent as interested. 'Okay, can you get Sarah Michelle Gellar? Jennifer Love Hewitt? Freddie Prinze Jr.?' I said no, I don't want any of those people. They're really all those 90210 people, not part of Ghost World. These people have to be outcasts, they have to be alienated, you know?"

What about the self-styled alienated Hollywood hipster contingent?

"I had a lot--not a lot, but some--Oscar-winning actors who were lobbying hard to play the roles of Seymour [Steve Buscemi] and Enid [Thora Birch]," he explained. "Those were the two main roles people were creaming over. And I'm very flattered that they wanted to do it, but most of them just looked like these rugged, perfect-looking guys. You know, Seymour, he's somewhat funny-looking, and you know, physically weak. He's wearing this back girdle. It's gotta be funny or else it's gonna become tragic if I cast you in it."

The real challenge turned out to be finding a way to translate Dan Clowes' sweaty grotesques of real life without just transferring the comic itself; author and director collaborated closely to carve out a film that, like Crumb, was not only true to the source, but also to the people making it.

"The comic doesn't really have a story," Zwigoff said. "It's kind of episodic, slice-of-life. I told Dan from the start, I said, 'You know, you're gonna hate this film, it's gonna be different than the comic. It's not gonna translate; it won't be the same thing. This comic's clearly about you. These girls are the two sides of you.' The screenplay and the film became more about this relationship between Dan and me, in some weird, indirect way. It's hard to even talk about. It's like, if you see 30 Woody Allen films, even though he's denying in every pressroom--and he does--that he's that guy, you know he is. Every one of his characters is him, in every one of his films."