Eternal Sunshine/Charlie Kaufman
- Thread starter Ethereal
- Start date
It's a mind-fuck of a movie, but not nearly as much as Synecdoche, New York. But, it is much better overall than Synecdoche imo.
You need any links? 123. HD.
***SPOILER***
I didn't find any single good source. I read every Charlie Kaufman interview I could find, though. In one of them he helped with the burning house. It resembles the choices people make in life that eventually kill them (ie. smoking). When she looked at the house it was on fire; I don't remember what she said exactly, but she acknowledged the fire; she said something as to the dangers of being in a burning house, yet she moved forward with buying it and moving in. In the end, it killed her. She lived all those years in a house on fire and it eventually killed her.
When I looked around the movie was still pretty fresh. It was never released in theaters in the U.S. (I believe, maybe limited) and I downloaded it before it was out on DVD. Now would have been a better time to research.
I'll keep you posted if I find anything.
You need any links? 123. HD.
***SPOILER***
I didn't find any single good source. I read every Charlie Kaufman interview I could find, though. In one of them he helped with the burning house. It resembles the choices people make in life that eventually kill them (ie. smoking). When she looked at the house it was on fire; I don't remember what she said exactly, but she acknowledged the fire; she said something as to the dangers of being in a burning house, yet she moved forward with buying it and moving in. In the end, it killed her. She lived all those years in a house on fire and it eventually killed her.
When I looked around the movie was still pretty fresh. It was never released in theaters in the U.S. (I believe, maybe limited) and I downloaded it before it was out on DVD. Now would have been a better time to research.
I'll keep you posted if I find anything.
Watched Synecdoche, NY last night. Definitely one of the most strange movies I've seen. Really, the movie isn't all that enjoyable to watch. It's depressing as fuck. Yet at the same time I was watching it and thinking "Holy shit, this is one of the most bizarre movies I've ever seen. This is great".
To me the fact that someone was able to think up the concept and get it made into a movie is pretty astounding. I guess this goes for pretty much all of Kaufman's movies. I mean the concepts for these films are like "What the fuck? How did someone think this shit up?"
Great recommendation. Kaufman is the shit. I'm a bigger fan of his work now.
To me the fact that someone was able to think up the concept and get it made into a movie is pretty astounding. I guess this goes for pretty much all of Kaufman's movies. I mean the concepts for these films are like "What the fuck? How did someone think this shit up?"
Great recommendation. Kaufman is the shit. I'm a bigger fan of his work now.
And thats why i feel Charlie Kaufman is a serious master of the art of film. To be able to conceptualize such bizarre ideas, and encapsulat them in mere hours of film, is astonishing. this is what film making SHOULD be all about, to stand up and stab an audience with an emotional yet nebulous storyline. Thank you Charlie motherfucking Kaufman!
News
Kaufman: 'The business right now is a disaster'
The Oscar-winning screenwriter didn't do so well in his directorial debut. He talks to The Globe about what went wrong and why.
Marsha Lederman
Vancouver — From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published on Friday, Oct. 02, 2009 1:16PM EDT
Last updated on Wednesday, Oct. 07, 2009 5:56PM EDT
Charlie Kaufman has not given up on directing. Despite mixed reviews and the definitive box-office failure of his directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York , the Oscar-winning screenwriter wants to give it another shot. He's been hired to write a script for a film he will direct – if it gets made.
It's a brave decision for someone who was deeply stung by the intense criticism of his last film, and who could easily retreat back into the relative anonymity and comfort zone of screenwriting. It's also a hopeful move for someone who doesn't have a lot of optimism about Hollywood in general these days.
“The business right now is a disaster,” Kaufman said during a recent interview. Wildly original screenplays like the ones he has written – including Being John Malkovich , Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (for which he won an Academy Award for best original screenplay) – are harder than ever to get made, he says, in this conservative Hollywood blockbuster-or-nothing climate. The recession, he adds, doesn't help.
“All the studios are running scared ... and any [script] that's idiosyncratic or at all eccentric is not on the table – certainly if it costs any money.” If Kaufman had been a rookie screenwriter in today's climate trying to sell a studio on the idea for Being John Malkovich (his 1999 film debut is about a portal that allows people to enter Malkovich's mind for 15 minutes at a time), he doubts the project would have ever gotten made.
It may not be the best message for young filmmakers to hear, but so be it. Kaufman is in Vancouver today as part of New Filmmakers' Day at the Vancouver International Film Festival's Film and Television Forum. He'll be speaking about his process.
It's a process that's changing: The five years he spent on Synecdoche (writing and making the film) was just too long, he says. And, at 50, he's not sure how much time he has left to write movies, and he's also eager to “get back out there and see where I stand” post- Synecdoche .
Kaufman has been a critical darling for his innovative and sometimes self-referential scripts. (Adaptation features a blocked screenwriter named Charlie Kaufman who is having trouble adapting the novel The Orchid Thief for the screen – which is how Adaptation began: The real Kaufman was hired to adapt The Orchid Thief , and was having trouble with the assignment.)
But last year, the once-steady praise dropped off when many people simply did not know what to make of Synecdoche, his tale of a depressed, hypochondriac, small-time theatre director (Philip Seymour Hoffman), his failing marriage to a visual artist (Catherine Keener) and the grand theatrical experiment that quite literally takes over his life. Was this the work of a mad genius (like Kaufman's protagonist)? Or was it just not a very good movie?
Some critics loved it, to be sure, but audiences clearly did not.
“[It was] obviously commercially enormously unsuccessful," Kaufman says. Indeed, the film grossed just over $3-million (U.S.) domestically, but cost about $20-million to make.
But what was most shocking for Kaufman was the venom with which not just the film, but he himself, was attacked.
“[I'm] reading people who hate me and hate me in a way that seems very personal,” he says. “I read way too much of [the criticism] and my feelings get hurt. ... I don't feel like it's right to get hurt feelings, but I do.”
Kaufman believes that being an unusually well-known screenwriter has made him a target. “‘Why does he always write about himself? You know, who does he think he is? He's so pretentious,'” he says, recounting some of the more hurtful comments he has come across. “And the idea that somebody – and I've read this many times – would scream ‘the emperor's new clothes' is kind of nonsensical to me. Because the implication there is that I spent five years of my life trying to trick you. … And why in the world would I do that? It's not logical.”
And yet, because directing has been a lifelong dream, he wants to do it again. He's been making films since he was a child; he went to film school to study directing. And he has discovered he likes the control – and self-discipline – that come with being the ultimate decision maker on-set.
“As the writer on a film set, I can be the shy, moody guy in the corner, and that's comfortable for me. And I can get my feelings hurt if somebody doesn't pay attention to me. But I can't do that as a director. And that's good for me.”
And along with all the hurt feelings Kaufman suffered through while trolling the Internet and reading those sometimes scathing reviews, he admits something constructive has come from the response to the film.
What would that be?
“Go see my next movie. You'll see what I learned. It's in there.”
Charlie Kaufman speaks at the Vancouver International Film Centre at 1:15 today as part of the Vancouver Film and Television Forum. Rush tickets only (www.viff.org/forum).
[source]
Kaufman: 'The business right now is a disaster'
The Oscar-winning screenwriter didn't do so well in his directorial debut. He talks to The Globe about what went wrong and why.
Marsha Lederman
Vancouver — From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published on Friday, Oct. 02, 2009 1:16PM EDT
Last updated on Wednesday, Oct. 07, 2009 5:56PM EDT
Charlie Kaufman has not given up on directing. Despite mixed reviews and the definitive box-office failure of his directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York , the Oscar-winning screenwriter wants to give it another shot. He's been hired to write a script for a film he will direct – if it gets made.
It's a brave decision for someone who was deeply stung by the intense criticism of his last film, and who could easily retreat back into the relative anonymity and comfort zone of screenwriting. It's also a hopeful move for someone who doesn't have a lot of optimism about Hollywood in general these days.
“The business right now is a disaster,” Kaufman said during a recent interview. Wildly original screenplays like the ones he has written – including Being John Malkovich , Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (for which he won an Academy Award for best original screenplay) – are harder than ever to get made, he says, in this conservative Hollywood blockbuster-or-nothing climate. The recession, he adds, doesn't help.
“All the studios are running scared ... and any [script] that's idiosyncratic or at all eccentric is not on the table – certainly if it costs any money.” If Kaufman had been a rookie screenwriter in today's climate trying to sell a studio on the idea for Being John Malkovich (his 1999 film debut is about a portal that allows people to enter Malkovich's mind for 15 minutes at a time), he doubts the project would have ever gotten made.
It may not be the best message for young filmmakers to hear, but so be it. Kaufman is in Vancouver today as part of New Filmmakers' Day at the Vancouver International Film Festival's Film and Television Forum. He'll be speaking about his process.
It's a process that's changing: The five years he spent on Synecdoche (writing and making the film) was just too long, he says. And, at 50, he's not sure how much time he has left to write movies, and he's also eager to “get back out there and see where I stand” post- Synecdoche .
Kaufman has been a critical darling for his innovative and sometimes self-referential scripts. (Adaptation features a blocked screenwriter named Charlie Kaufman who is having trouble adapting the novel The Orchid Thief for the screen – which is how Adaptation began: The real Kaufman was hired to adapt The Orchid Thief , and was having trouble with the assignment.)
But last year, the once-steady praise dropped off when many people simply did not know what to make of Synecdoche, his tale of a depressed, hypochondriac, small-time theatre director (Philip Seymour Hoffman), his failing marriage to a visual artist (Catherine Keener) and the grand theatrical experiment that quite literally takes over his life. Was this the work of a mad genius (like Kaufman's protagonist)? Or was it just not a very good movie?
Some critics loved it, to be sure, but audiences clearly did not.
“[It was] obviously commercially enormously unsuccessful," Kaufman says. Indeed, the film grossed just over $3-million (U.S.) domestically, but cost about $20-million to make.
But what was most shocking for Kaufman was the venom with which not just the film, but he himself, was attacked.
“[I'm] reading people who hate me and hate me in a way that seems very personal,” he says. “I read way too much of [the criticism] and my feelings get hurt. ... I don't feel like it's right to get hurt feelings, but I do.”
Kaufman believes that being an unusually well-known screenwriter has made him a target. “‘Why does he always write about himself? You know, who does he think he is? He's so pretentious,'” he says, recounting some of the more hurtful comments he has come across. “And the idea that somebody – and I've read this many times – would scream ‘the emperor's new clothes' is kind of nonsensical to me. Because the implication there is that I spent five years of my life trying to trick you. … And why in the world would I do that? It's not logical.”
And yet, because directing has been a lifelong dream, he wants to do it again. He's been making films since he was a child; he went to film school to study directing. And he has discovered he likes the control – and self-discipline – that come with being the ultimate decision maker on-set.
“As the writer on a film set, I can be the shy, moody guy in the corner, and that's comfortable for me. And I can get my feelings hurt if somebody doesn't pay attention to me. But I can't do that as a director. And that's good for me.”
And along with all the hurt feelings Kaufman suffered through while trolling the Internet and reading those sometimes scathing reviews, he admits something constructive has come from the response to the film.
What would that be?
“Go see my next movie. You'll see what I learned. It's in there.”
Charlie Kaufman speaks at the Vancouver International Film Centre at 1:15 today as part of the Vancouver Film and Television Forum. Rush tickets only (www.viff.org/forum).
[source]
Really good interview with Charlie Kaufman
Charlie Kaufman is adapting
By Glen Schaefer Wed, Sep 16 2009
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is clearly the big draw for the industry-themed Film and Television Forum at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.
Kaufman, who won an Oscar for 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and was nominated twice before that for Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, appears for a moderated question and answer session at 1:15 p.m. Saturday Oct. 3 at the Vancouver International Film Centre. That’s the forum’s New Filmmakers Day, and the $80 day-long passes are no longer available online. Call the box office (604-685-8297) for availability, or buy a $325 pass for the full five-day forum here.
Meanwhile, I talked to Kaufman over the phone from his California home. His most recent movie, last year’s Synecdoche, New York, was also his directing debut. As well, in 2005 he wrote and directed the stage play Hope Leaves the Theatre in Brooklyn, starring Meryl Streep, Hope Davis and Peter Dinklage.
Kaufman studied film at New York University, and got his writing start in the early 1980s, writing parodies for National Lampoon magazine. He wrote for various American TV sitcoms before his work with director Spike Jonze on Being John Malkovich launched his movie career in 1999.
He has a lot to say about the troubled future of the mid-budget Hollywood movie, the clash between business and art, his own focus on stories that open a window on a character’s subjective viewpoint, fictionalizing screenrwriting guru Robert McKee in Adaptation, and how he doesn’t think other screenwriters would be interested in what he has to say. I’d disagree with that last point.
Here’s the full conversation.
Q: You’re appearing before an audience of screenwriters, and I’m wondering if that’s something you do often?
A: No. What it’s really going to be is a conversation with a moderator and questions and answers from the audience, which I have done before, usually associated with the promotion of some film. In this case, not.
Q: It’ll be basically an audience of screenwriters.
A: I guess, I don’t know. I told them I don’t have any speeches to give, and I’m happy to answer questions. I don’t really have a lecture.
Q: Do you get screenwriters asking for your counsel on how to do their work? Does that sort of thing come up?
A: You mean professional screenwriters? No, there’s not much of a community of screenwriters, we all work by ourselves. I don’t really know any screenwriters. I don’t know that they’d be interested in my opinion anyway.
Q: When you think of the movies, when people talk about styles of movies, they’ll generally refer to directorial styles, Hitchcockian or whatever. I can’t think of another screenwriter that I see referred to as often in terms of other people’s work, where it’s said ‘Here’s someone who’s trying to do something in the style of Charlie Kaufman.’ That comes up frequently in reviews of movies that you haven’t written.
A: I guess it’s not that common, but I think that mostly screenwriters are hired to write a certain kind of screenplay, and so they become somewhat less identifiable maybe because of that. I’ve had the fortune to have stuff produced that’s maybe more idiosyncratic than normal.
Q: Are you conscious of having evolved an identifiable style?
A: No. I think anybody who’s writing their own stuff is going to end up having what looks like a style. I certainly don’t set out to try to adhere to a style or anything — it’s me. I guess there are similarities, I don’t know. I have no interest at all in establishing a style.
Q: Is there anything you’re working on now that you can talk about, that’s close to production?
A: I’m writing something but nothing that’s close to production now, and nothing really that’s at the stage where I’d want to talk about it.
Q: When you look back at your produced movies, how do you measure their relative success, or is that something you think about at all?
A: I don’t really think about it. I work hard on these movies. I work hard at directing or I work closely with the directors. I feel close to all of them and some of them do better than others, some of them do more business than others, that’s just sort of how it is. I don’t know how to rate them, I guess.
Q: You wouldn’t necessarily look at box office success being a measure of the movie’s success.
A: No, I don’t believe in that at all. Having box office success in some form, where you’ve made more money than you’ve spent, is certainly good for getting financed for future movies, so I hope for it. But I wouldn’t set that as a goal, nor would I set that as a standard for success.
Q: So much of that is out of the writer or the creator's hands.
A: It’s just not my business to do that. I’m not creating a product. I’m not making a car or a can of beans, I’m trying to express something.
Q: When you do these Q and As, are you able to talk about how you do what you do? Are you able to talk about your process?
A: I can talk about my process if they’re interested. I’ll explain what I do and and I’ll answer questions. But my process is my process and one of the things that I would express is that you need to figure out what works in your writing. There’s no one set way to do things.
Q: It was interesting to hear that you were coming to talk to an audience of screnwriters. One of your more famous scenes was that bit in Adaptation where your character goes to the Robert McKee screwnwriting seminar. Here, you're essaying a form similar to the one you were parodying in the movie.
A: I guess I don’t think that’s what I’m going to be doing. I don’t have a prescription for success, I don’t think that a screenplay needs to be in a specific form. None of that is going to be discussed.
Q: You’re not all about story structure, but you had some participation from Robert McKee in that movie.
A: We needed his life rights in order to portray him and use his name in the movie. He had to approve that. The only thing he really required is that he said he didn’t want his students to be made fun of and he thought the script might be doing that. And it seemed like a fair thing to request, so we took that out. But he didn’t have any say in changing the script.
Q: How did you two get along? I’m assuming that was the first time you met him.
A: Yeah, I took his class because I knew I wanted to use him as a character in the movie so I had to see what it was like. I went to the weekend workshop and we had a meeting. I spent a few hours with him and Spike (Jonze) he was a nice guy and he seemed like a smart guy.
Q: If I were looking for a theme or motif that runs through your movies, it’s the notion of some sort of window, a stylized window into consciousness.
A: A window into people’s interior lives, trying to express the subjective existence, which I think is the only thing a person can understand — we’re all living in subjective existences. So if you’re writing a character it seems to me it needs to be written from the inside. I’m interested in exploring people’s psychology, I don’t think that’s a particularly unusual thing for a writer to do. It’s a little more tricky in movies because you can more easily get inside a character’s head in a novel, the literary form. It’s a little more complicated to do it in film, but it interests me to do that.
Q: A means of making the conscious visual. You’ve gone at it in different ways — Being John Malkovich is not at all the same approach as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You’re getting a window into a mind in both cases but you’re getting a different plot mecchanism or device.
A: I don’t think even if I were to limit myself to the exploration of subjective experience for the rest of my life there would be any limit of stories to tell. The way I tell a story has to do with what the story’s about and what I’m interested in looking at. I don’t create devices and then end up trying to tell a story. I create a structure or storytelling based on what it is I’m looking at, so it’s organic to what it is I’m speaking about, hopefully not a trick or a gimmick.
Q: Is that a concern as you do your work? Do you worry about the risk of being perceived as someone who would return to those sorts of devices? Do you worry about repeating yourself?
A: I’m a person and I have a specific brain and a specific experience in the world and a specific world view that I have to work with, and I think that’s true of anybody who does anything that’s creative. I think screenwriting is maybe one of the only art forms that I can think of, where people are actually criticized for having a vision, where you could say about a screenwriter, ‘well, why doesn’t he do a western?’ Which would be like taking, I don’t know, taking Manet and saying ‘why does he not paint this?’ I’m working with what I think about and not only do I think it’s OK to do that, I think it’s necessary to do that in order to do anything honest. My life goes on and I have different experiences as I get older. I meet different people and different things happen. That’s all stuff that I think about.
Q: It’s synthesized in your work.
A: Well, it’s what my work is. It isn’t to say that my work is all autobiographical in a way that anybody’s work isn’t autobiographical if they’re doing real work. This isn’t a production line. I’m not trying to figure out a formulaic way to get people, you know, butts in the seats in the theatre. I’m trying to do something that’s honest. In a way trying to do something that’s a bit of an antidote to what this popular art form has become. I think it’s a disaster out there. The fact that I’m not making superhero movies or spy thrillers doesn’t seem to me like a flaw. I think it’s kind of funny to say that I’m repeating myself when this business has been reduced to one story over and over again. To the point where there isn’t even a story anymore and it doesn’t matter, writers are unnecessary. I’m not really even bristling, I know I sound like I’m bristling but it is something that I take issue with.
Q: One of the things about making movies is that it’s a technically complex and expensive thing to do, more so than painting a canvas or writing a novel even. Do you ever look at — you’ve been able to hew to a pretty personal vision and way of telling stories through film, which a lot of people haven’t been able to do. But the fact that it costs upwards of $20 million each to make one of these things poses all sorts of limitations. I’m just wondering if you ever look at that situation and think, well maybe I could write novels. You’ve studied film and it’s the medium that called you.
A: It’s what I’m interested in also, I love it as a medium. I don’t love the business of it that much. As I said earlier it’s getting scarier and scarier out there. The business is a bit of a disaster now. I gather probably most businesses are right now, people are running more and more scared. There were avenues of exploration and experimentation that existed prior. I don’t know what that means for me. I made a movie this past year that didn’t do very much business. The movies I’d done before, none of them were financial blockbusters, but people made their money back, a little profit, and there was some award prestige attached to them. All that stuff that keeps interest in financing them. But I think all that’s going away. I don’t think the mid-range movie is going to exist anymore. Movies are going to be blockbusters or really, really tiny budgets. And the tiny-budget movies have a very, very hard time getting distributed. All the places that distribute those movies have closed down. That’s going to keep people from making them and investing in them. I think we’re going to be left with just more and more versions of Batman. It is a function of the cost of these things and it is a function of a lot of fear. People don’t think of this as a form of expression, but as a form of business. So I’m worried about that, and yes I have been thinking of writing other things or doing theatre.
Q: You have done theatre as well.
A: Yes, and I’d like to continue to do it. But I’m pressing on, I’m writing another screenplay and I’m hoping that when it’s done someone will want to make it, and that I can direct it. See what happens.
Q: I know you made your debut as a director with your last film, and obviously it was fulfilling and it worked out for you. You’ve had some fruitful collaborations with other directors, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. Is it your plan ongoing to take the director’s helm yourself?
A: I’m intersted in directing this movie that I’m writing now. I think I’m going to take it movie by movie. I feel like I want to do it again, there’s a lot of stuff obviously that I learned that I want to apply to the next movie. My background is in theatre and acting when I was starting out. Working with actors is something that really appeals to me. I feel like I talk the language that they talk. I’m interested in character psychology and talking about motivations with people, even in my daily life. It’s fun for me. I like having that control, taking something from the writing stage and making it real. And it’s a nice balance with the writing, which is lonely, to go into a very social situation.
Q: How does the experience of directing compare to the experience of writing and then having someone else direct your work, even having someone really sympathetic direct your work?
A: I think my experience with directors for the most part is pretty atypical. I had really good collaborations with the people I work with, I really respected them and I felt that they really respected me. It was much closer to a partnership than probably most screenwriters get. But I wanted to see what it would feel like to complete the vision. And I like the work, I like doing it. So regardless of what I feel about the realization of the piece, I want to keep doing it, it’s enjoyable to me.
Q: I’m wondering if there’s anyone you can point to among screenwriters whom you really like, people you view as a success.
A: I don’t know a lot of screenwriters, to tell you the truth. I think the Coen brothers are really good, really funny writers. I always admire that, they have a singular take on things. They’re the people I think of off the bat. Woody Allen’s older stuff, Crimes and Misdemeanors is a beautfully written and beautifully realized movie.
Q: He wasn’t above using reality-altering devices to find his way into a story as well, come to think of it.
A: No, Woody Allen has certainly been a major influence in my career and in my life.
Q: Are you going to be in Vancouver for any of the rest of the festival?
A: Just for a couple of days. I have to come back and work. I’m trying to plow through it. It’s been difficult though, it’s always a struggle for me.
Q: How long would you have been working on this piece? Do you set yourself a deadline?
A: I set myself a deadline and then I don’t really ever make the deadline. You can do what you can do. For me at least, things take time. I mull over a lot of things, go through a lot of false starts. That’s the process that I have. I can’t predict for this one. I’ve written things that took six months and I’ve written things in two years..
Q: How long have you been working on this one so far?
A: I try not to look at the calendar, it gets very distressing. I don’t really know. I’d really rather not think about it, I just try to do the work.
Q: Well, actually I think that’s a glimpse at the process all on it’s own. Thanks for that. Generally directors go back to particular actors in their work, but I know in your stuff, your stage work and the movies as well, you do return to specific actors as collaborators.
A: Well, the only movie that I actually cast is Synecdoche, New York. The fact that Catherine Keener appears in three movies that I’ve been involved with — I wrote her into Adaptation, but the original casting (in Malkovich) was Spike Jonze’s vision. [Keener also appeared in Synecdoche.] The other thing that happens is, these are the people I know. So I did a play with Meryl Streep and I knew her from Adaptation. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable calling Meryl Streep on the phone and asking her to do a play with me if I didn’t know her.
Charlie Kaufman is adapting
By Glen Schaefer Wed, Sep 16 2009
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is clearly the big draw for the industry-themed Film and Television Forum at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.
Kaufman, who won an Oscar for 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and was nominated twice before that for Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, appears for a moderated question and answer session at 1:15 p.m. Saturday Oct. 3 at the Vancouver International Film Centre. That’s the forum’s New Filmmakers Day, and the $80 day-long passes are no longer available online. Call the box office (604-685-8297) for availability, or buy a $325 pass for the full five-day forum here.
Meanwhile, I talked to Kaufman over the phone from his California home. His most recent movie, last year’s Synecdoche, New York, was also his directing debut. As well, in 2005 he wrote and directed the stage play Hope Leaves the Theatre in Brooklyn, starring Meryl Streep, Hope Davis and Peter Dinklage.
Kaufman studied film at New York University, and got his writing start in the early 1980s, writing parodies for National Lampoon magazine. He wrote for various American TV sitcoms before his work with director Spike Jonze on Being John Malkovich launched his movie career in 1999.
He has a lot to say about the troubled future of the mid-budget Hollywood movie, the clash between business and art, his own focus on stories that open a window on a character’s subjective viewpoint, fictionalizing screenrwriting guru Robert McKee in Adaptation, and how he doesn’t think other screenwriters would be interested in what he has to say. I’d disagree with that last point.
Here’s the full conversation.
Q: You’re appearing before an audience of screenwriters, and I’m wondering if that’s something you do often?
A: No. What it’s really going to be is a conversation with a moderator and questions and answers from the audience, which I have done before, usually associated with the promotion of some film. In this case, not.
Q: It’ll be basically an audience of screenwriters.
A: I guess, I don’t know. I told them I don’t have any speeches to give, and I’m happy to answer questions. I don’t really have a lecture.
Q: Do you get screenwriters asking for your counsel on how to do their work? Does that sort of thing come up?
A: You mean professional screenwriters? No, there’s not much of a community of screenwriters, we all work by ourselves. I don’t really know any screenwriters. I don’t know that they’d be interested in my opinion anyway.
Q: When you think of the movies, when people talk about styles of movies, they’ll generally refer to directorial styles, Hitchcockian or whatever. I can’t think of another screenwriter that I see referred to as often in terms of other people’s work, where it’s said ‘Here’s someone who’s trying to do something in the style of Charlie Kaufman.’ That comes up frequently in reviews of movies that you haven’t written.
A: I guess it’s not that common, but I think that mostly screenwriters are hired to write a certain kind of screenplay, and so they become somewhat less identifiable maybe because of that. I’ve had the fortune to have stuff produced that’s maybe more idiosyncratic than normal.
Q: Are you conscious of having evolved an identifiable style?
A: No. I think anybody who’s writing their own stuff is going to end up having what looks like a style. I certainly don’t set out to try to adhere to a style or anything — it’s me. I guess there are similarities, I don’t know. I have no interest at all in establishing a style.
Q: Is there anything you’re working on now that you can talk about, that’s close to production?
A: I’m writing something but nothing that’s close to production now, and nothing really that’s at the stage where I’d want to talk about it.
Q: When you look back at your produced movies, how do you measure their relative success, or is that something you think about at all?
A: I don’t really think about it. I work hard on these movies. I work hard at directing or I work closely with the directors. I feel close to all of them and some of them do better than others, some of them do more business than others, that’s just sort of how it is. I don’t know how to rate them, I guess.
Q: You wouldn’t necessarily look at box office success being a measure of the movie’s success.
A: No, I don’t believe in that at all. Having box office success in some form, where you’ve made more money than you’ve spent, is certainly good for getting financed for future movies, so I hope for it. But I wouldn’t set that as a goal, nor would I set that as a standard for success.
Q: So much of that is out of the writer or the creator's hands.
A: It’s just not my business to do that. I’m not creating a product. I’m not making a car or a can of beans, I’m trying to express something.
Q: When you do these Q and As, are you able to talk about how you do what you do? Are you able to talk about your process?
A: I can talk about my process if they’re interested. I’ll explain what I do and and I’ll answer questions. But my process is my process and one of the things that I would express is that you need to figure out what works in your writing. There’s no one set way to do things.
Q: It was interesting to hear that you were coming to talk to an audience of screnwriters. One of your more famous scenes was that bit in Adaptation where your character goes to the Robert McKee screwnwriting seminar. Here, you're essaying a form similar to the one you were parodying in the movie.
A: I guess I don’t think that’s what I’m going to be doing. I don’t have a prescription for success, I don’t think that a screenplay needs to be in a specific form. None of that is going to be discussed.
Q: You’re not all about story structure, but you had some participation from Robert McKee in that movie.
A: We needed his life rights in order to portray him and use his name in the movie. He had to approve that. The only thing he really required is that he said he didn’t want his students to be made fun of and he thought the script might be doing that. And it seemed like a fair thing to request, so we took that out. But he didn’t have any say in changing the script.
Q: How did you two get along? I’m assuming that was the first time you met him.
A: Yeah, I took his class because I knew I wanted to use him as a character in the movie so I had to see what it was like. I went to the weekend workshop and we had a meeting. I spent a few hours with him and Spike (Jonze) he was a nice guy and he seemed like a smart guy.
Q: If I were looking for a theme or motif that runs through your movies, it’s the notion of some sort of window, a stylized window into consciousness.
A: A window into people’s interior lives, trying to express the subjective existence, which I think is the only thing a person can understand — we’re all living in subjective existences. So if you’re writing a character it seems to me it needs to be written from the inside. I’m interested in exploring people’s psychology, I don’t think that’s a particularly unusual thing for a writer to do. It’s a little more tricky in movies because you can more easily get inside a character’s head in a novel, the literary form. It’s a little more complicated to do it in film, but it interests me to do that.
Q: A means of making the conscious visual. You’ve gone at it in different ways — Being John Malkovich is not at all the same approach as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You’re getting a window into a mind in both cases but you’re getting a different plot mecchanism or device.
A: I don’t think even if I were to limit myself to the exploration of subjective experience for the rest of my life there would be any limit of stories to tell. The way I tell a story has to do with what the story’s about and what I’m interested in looking at. I don’t create devices and then end up trying to tell a story. I create a structure or storytelling based on what it is I’m looking at, so it’s organic to what it is I’m speaking about, hopefully not a trick or a gimmick.
Q: Is that a concern as you do your work? Do you worry about the risk of being perceived as someone who would return to those sorts of devices? Do you worry about repeating yourself?
A: I’m a person and I have a specific brain and a specific experience in the world and a specific world view that I have to work with, and I think that’s true of anybody who does anything that’s creative. I think screenwriting is maybe one of the only art forms that I can think of, where people are actually criticized for having a vision, where you could say about a screenwriter, ‘well, why doesn’t he do a western?’ Which would be like taking, I don’t know, taking Manet and saying ‘why does he not paint this?’ I’m working with what I think about and not only do I think it’s OK to do that, I think it’s necessary to do that in order to do anything honest. My life goes on and I have different experiences as I get older. I meet different people and different things happen. That’s all stuff that I think about.
Q: It’s synthesized in your work.
A: Well, it’s what my work is. It isn’t to say that my work is all autobiographical in a way that anybody’s work isn’t autobiographical if they’re doing real work. This isn’t a production line. I’m not trying to figure out a formulaic way to get people, you know, butts in the seats in the theatre. I’m trying to do something that’s honest. In a way trying to do something that’s a bit of an antidote to what this popular art form has become. I think it’s a disaster out there. The fact that I’m not making superhero movies or spy thrillers doesn’t seem to me like a flaw. I think it’s kind of funny to say that I’m repeating myself when this business has been reduced to one story over and over again. To the point where there isn’t even a story anymore and it doesn’t matter, writers are unnecessary. I’m not really even bristling, I know I sound like I’m bristling but it is something that I take issue with.
Q: One of the things about making movies is that it’s a technically complex and expensive thing to do, more so than painting a canvas or writing a novel even. Do you ever look at — you’ve been able to hew to a pretty personal vision and way of telling stories through film, which a lot of people haven’t been able to do. But the fact that it costs upwards of $20 million each to make one of these things poses all sorts of limitations. I’m just wondering if you ever look at that situation and think, well maybe I could write novels. You’ve studied film and it’s the medium that called you.
A: It’s what I’m interested in also, I love it as a medium. I don’t love the business of it that much. As I said earlier it’s getting scarier and scarier out there. The business is a bit of a disaster now. I gather probably most businesses are right now, people are running more and more scared. There were avenues of exploration and experimentation that existed prior. I don’t know what that means for me. I made a movie this past year that didn’t do very much business. The movies I’d done before, none of them were financial blockbusters, but people made their money back, a little profit, and there was some award prestige attached to them. All that stuff that keeps interest in financing them. But I think all that’s going away. I don’t think the mid-range movie is going to exist anymore. Movies are going to be blockbusters or really, really tiny budgets. And the tiny-budget movies have a very, very hard time getting distributed. All the places that distribute those movies have closed down. That’s going to keep people from making them and investing in them. I think we’re going to be left with just more and more versions of Batman. It is a function of the cost of these things and it is a function of a lot of fear. People don’t think of this as a form of expression, but as a form of business. So I’m worried about that, and yes I have been thinking of writing other things or doing theatre.
Q: You have done theatre as well.
A: Yes, and I’d like to continue to do it. But I’m pressing on, I’m writing another screenplay and I’m hoping that when it’s done someone will want to make it, and that I can direct it. See what happens.
Q: I know you made your debut as a director with your last film, and obviously it was fulfilling and it worked out for you. You’ve had some fruitful collaborations with other directors, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. Is it your plan ongoing to take the director’s helm yourself?
A: I’m intersted in directing this movie that I’m writing now. I think I’m going to take it movie by movie. I feel like I want to do it again, there’s a lot of stuff obviously that I learned that I want to apply to the next movie. My background is in theatre and acting when I was starting out. Working with actors is something that really appeals to me. I feel like I talk the language that they talk. I’m interested in character psychology and talking about motivations with people, even in my daily life. It’s fun for me. I like having that control, taking something from the writing stage and making it real. And it’s a nice balance with the writing, which is lonely, to go into a very social situation.
Q: How does the experience of directing compare to the experience of writing and then having someone else direct your work, even having someone really sympathetic direct your work?
A: I think my experience with directors for the most part is pretty atypical. I had really good collaborations with the people I work with, I really respected them and I felt that they really respected me. It was much closer to a partnership than probably most screenwriters get. But I wanted to see what it would feel like to complete the vision. And I like the work, I like doing it. So regardless of what I feel about the realization of the piece, I want to keep doing it, it’s enjoyable to me.
Q: I’m wondering if there’s anyone you can point to among screenwriters whom you really like, people you view as a success.
A: I don’t know a lot of screenwriters, to tell you the truth. I think the Coen brothers are really good, really funny writers. I always admire that, they have a singular take on things. They’re the people I think of off the bat. Woody Allen’s older stuff, Crimes and Misdemeanors is a beautfully written and beautifully realized movie.
Q: He wasn’t above using reality-altering devices to find his way into a story as well, come to think of it.
A: No, Woody Allen has certainly been a major influence in my career and in my life.
Q: Are you going to be in Vancouver for any of the rest of the festival?
A: Just for a couple of days. I have to come back and work. I’m trying to plow through it. It’s been difficult though, it’s always a struggle for me.
Q: How long would you have been working on this piece? Do you set yourself a deadline?
A: I set myself a deadline and then I don’t really ever make the deadline. You can do what you can do. For me at least, things take time. I mull over a lot of things, go through a lot of false starts. That’s the process that I have. I can’t predict for this one. I’ve written things that took six months and I’ve written things in two years..
Q: How long have you been working on this one so far?
A: I try not to look at the calendar, it gets very distressing. I don’t really know. I’d really rather not think about it, I just try to do the work.
Q: Well, actually I think that’s a glimpse at the process all on it’s own. Thanks for that. Generally directors go back to particular actors in their work, but I know in your stuff, your stage work and the movies as well, you do return to specific actors as collaborators.
A: Well, the only movie that I actually cast is Synecdoche, New York. The fact that Catherine Keener appears in three movies that I’ve been involved with — I wrote her into Adaptation, but the original casting (in Malkovich) was Spike Jonze’s vision. [Keener also appeared in Synecdoche.] The other thing that happens is, these are the people I know. So I did a play with Meryl Streep and I knew her from Adaptation. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable calling Meryl Streep on the phone and asking her to do a play with me if I didn’t know her.
Finally got around to watching it this evening. And to answer your question is is worth checking out. I can not really tell you how good it is because this is one of those movies that can be interpreted as either brilliant or terrible, depending on how well you pick up on what is going on, specifically the underlying themes. I thought it was really good.
Read this before you watch it: A philosophical burlesque, Human Nature follows the ups and downs of an obsessive scientist, a female naturalist, and the man they discover, born and raised in the wild. As scientist Nathan trains the wild man, Puff, in the ways of the world - starting with table manners - Nathan's lover Lila fights to preserve the man's simian past, which represents a freedom enviable to most. In the power struggle that ensues, an unusual love triangle emerges exposing the perversities of the human heart and the idiosyncrasies of the civilized mind. Human Nature is a comical examination of the trappings of desire in a world where both nature and culture are idealized.
And remember the title "Human Nature" is not ambiguous; that is literally what the entire movie is about.
Read this before you watch it: A philosophical burlesque, Human Nature follows the ups and downs of an obsessive scientist, a female naturalist, and the man they discover, born and raised in the wild. As scientist Nathan trains the wild man, Puff, in the ways of the world - starting with table manners - Nathan's lover Lila fights to preserve the man's simian past, which represents a freedom enviable to most. In the power struggle that ensues, an unusual love triangle emerges exposing the perversities of the human heart and the idiosyncrasies of the civilized mind. Human Nature is a comical examination of the trappings of desire in a world where both nature and culture are idealized.
And remember the title "Human Nature" is not ambiguous; that is literally what the entire movie is about.