Art School Confidential (2006)

dir Terry Zwigoff

Needed something to watch while I was painting and coincidentally needed an excuse to rewatch this fun thing. Match made in heaven!

Terry Zwigoff’s stuff with Daniel Clowes absolutely rocks my socks off. I dream of the Frida Cinema hosted an Art School Confidential/Ghost World double feature. Everybody seems to loooooove Ghost World (understandably so. It’s a stellar film) but where is the appreciation for Art School Confidential? It’s snappy, silly, cynical, suspenseful. The plot is basically a 2 hour Seinfeld episode. Matt Keeslar is a rare treat. I think he’s just the cutest thing. He always plays dumb so well, especially opposite Max Minghella acting as a total dick the whole time. Great foils. And John Malkovich could literally never disappoint me. All he has to do is show up and make a crinkly little face and I die. I say it every time but WHY does he look so much like my dad if only my dad were bald?

We also get a Kate Moennig special appearance! As a dyke with a mullet, what else could she possibly be. Art School was released 2 years after the pilot of The L Word. The craziest thing to me is that Kate was not out at the time. Like, yeah, she looked like that, but she firmly refused to discuss her sexuality even whilst being on The L Word! I actually did some snooping because I was like okay, how did she become Hollywood’s default dyke before she was even a dyke? Hello? Well… turns out she is Gwyneth Paltrow’s cousin. So she’s already a little bit connected. I’m assuming that whenever anybody needed to cast a hot, androgynous lesbian, somebody mentioned that Gwyneth has a cousin named Kate…

If you’ve never seen this one, you have to give it a shot. Immediately, preferably. It’s on Tubi for free! No excuses.