Art School Confidential
In Dan Clowes' comic book, Eightball #7 (1991, Fantagraphics), there'a a four-page story called "Art School Confidential." In it, Clowes described his experiences in art school as the "biggest scam of the century," where the art teachers were useless, the students a bunch of no-talent posers, and craftsmanship was looked down on with snide disgust.
Fifteen years later, Art School Confidential is a movie (I haven't seen it yet) and Clowes wrote the screenplay (He also co-wrote the excellent screenplay to a much longer story that appeared in several issues of Eightball called Ghost World).
Clowes' screenplay for Art School Confidential takes the ideas touched upon in the four-page story, and expands on them, wrapping them around a lively and very funny coming-of-age story, with a murder mystery thrown in for good measure. If you enjoy Clowes' unique brand of misanthropic humor found in his comics (and I love it), you'll enjoy Art School Confidential.
The four-page comic book story is reprinted in this book, in case you missed it the first time around.
As much as I love Clowe's comics, his screenplay has me hoping he'll write a novel one day. $9.72 on Amazon (More Clowes on Mad Professor here)
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Hey Mark, I've been looking forward to this movie too. When I first read the comic I was blown away, because it came out the same year I graduated from... art school. Not just any art school, but the same one Clowes parodies in his comic. In fact, the instructor in the comic was based on one of my instructors, and let's just say that fact IS stranger than fiction. He did a great job of capturing the insanity of art school. Now let's see how the movie version plays out - I'm sure it'll be fantastic, just like Ghost World was.
Amusingly, his art school alma mater is touting his name: http://www.pratt.edu/prattshow/