Cinematherapy for Lovers The Girl's Guide to Finding True Love One Movie at a Time

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Chapter 1 The New Happily Ever After: Make Your Own Music Movies If you're feeling like a solo singer in a Captain and Tennille world, and you're beginning to sound a little off-key, retune your instrument with one of theseMake Your Own Music Movies,where happily ever after doesn't always involve a march down the aisle into an off-screen married utopia. These movies help us to understand that sometimes a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do in order to reach her own happy ending--which may or may not involve a lace-trimmed white gown, a coterie of gals in blushing and bashful pink, and a guy in a matching cummerbund. And if achieving happiness means leaving your fiance in the lurch and going off to London, Paris, or Tokyo to discover yourself, or standing your ground solo right here at home, then so be it. These alternative happy endings remind us all that the only true happily ever after involves making our own dreams come true, and that the only way to achieve harmony with someone else is to find the melody in our own hearts. Ghost World (2001) Stars: Thora Birch, Steve Buscemi, Scarlett Johansson Director: Terry Zwigoff Writers: Daniel Clowes, Terry Zwigoff, based on the comic stripGhost Worldby Daniel Clowes While riding off into the sunset on a broken-down bus headed for parts unknown with only a hatbox for company may seem like a dubious metaphor for a happy ending, in Ghost World, a movie adapted from Daniel Clowes's comic book of the same name, this lonely image is a heartening reminder that if we wait long enough at the bus stop of fate, our destiny will eventually arrive. And while the future is always revealed one local stop at a time, if we maintain our faith in ourselves and our journey, wherever the bus stops we'll always be home. Enid (Thora Birch) is woefully out of step with the suburban strip mall wasteland that she calls home. She doesn't fit in at high school graduation (in fact, she finds out at graduation that she has to go to summer school in order to get her diploma). She doesn't fit in at the prom, she doesn't fit in hanging out at the local convenience store, she doesn't fit in even in an art class (and she's an artist), and, perhaps hardest of all, she no longer even fits in with the one oasis of companionship she's found in her lonely, teen-angst-ridden desert: her best friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) and their plan to get jobs, find an apartment, and move in together after graduation. As this first summer of their independence unfolds, everything goes according to plan for Rebecca, who presents a far more socially acceptable picture to the world. Rebecca quickly finds a job in a local coffee bar, a boyfriend, and ultimately, an apartment for her and Enid to move in to. Not so for Enid, whose path turns out to be a long and winding road that does not lead to Rebecca's door, or indeed to anything even remotely resembling normal post-high school teenagedom. Confined to the outskirts of small-town society, Enid experiments with ironical and asymmetrical and sometimes downright startling fashion statements, dabbles in random displays of confrontational performance art, and strikes up an intense and insular relationship with some guy named Seymour. Seymour (Steve Buscemi) is a middle-aged fried chicken franchise middle manager, who harbors a passion for collecting vintage records and whose fashion statements are as startling as Enid's only without the sense of irony, and who looks like, well, Steve Buscemi. As the demand for purpose and direction widens into a deep chasm in Enid's life, her options keep narrowing until she is stuck between a rock and the hard place of her own eccentric worldview. Finally, when all of the obvious choices elude her, Enid at last finds the courage to turn her back on the claustrophobic horizons of small-town normalcy, and board her bus to nowhere and everywhere. If yo