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Charlie Kaufman

King Mob

21:30 / 01.04.04

Adaptation, Being John Malovich, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Human Nature, and now The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind...

fuck, this guy rules!

He so does.

Kind of funny. I just finished reading his older script for Eternal Sunshine (here if anyone wants to read it) when I saw this thread pop up. It never ceases to amaze me how... human his grasp of dialogue is. The awkward little stumbles and cracks in social speech, the clumsiness of his characters.

Good meaty stuff in his writing that I'll never get sick of.

LDones

22:55 / 01.04.04

Kaufman's a brilliant guy. I look forward to everything he writes. His script for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was apeshit brilliant.

Clooney hit most of the spots with the finished film, but the script is so dense, so full of symbol, that it'd be insane to expect it all onscreen.

D Terminator XXXIII

08:54 / 02.04.04

Which TV series has he done?

LDones

10:41 / 02.04.04

Direct from random net biography:

"His earliest credits after moving to the West Coast were as a writer for the offbeat television sitcom Get a Life; he later wrote for the variety series The Dana Carvey Show, and was both writer and producer for the comedy series Ned and Stacy, while also trying to pitch ideas for significantly odder pilots such as Depressed Roomies and Rambling Pants. (Kaufman was also a producer for the short-lived sitcom Misery Loves Company). In interviews, Kaufman has preferred to downplay his television experience, saying that reading authors such as Flannery O'Connor, Samuel Beckett, Shirley Jackson, and Franz Kafka ultimately had a greater influence on his screenwriting, and adding that he only wrote for Get a Life in the show's second season, which he felt wasn't especially good."

Murray Hamhandler

17:05 / 02.04.04

Wow. I suddenly feel somewhat less ashamed about admitting that I used to actually watch Ned And Stacy...

Hieronymus

20:51 / 02.04.04

I'm ashamed to say I thought Get A Life was hilarious. And the Dana Carvey Show still stands as one the funniest piss-take variety shows to ever insult their sponsor to their face (mostly Pepsi) before the sponsors caught wind of it and pulled their money.

DANA CARVEY (looking at friend's glass of Mountain Dew): Yeah... but what does it LOOK like?

FRIEND: Like liquid sunshine?

DANA CARVEY: But what does it LOOK like?

FRIEND: Like an invigorating refreshment on a summer's day?

DANA CARVEY: I know... I know. But look at it. Doesn't it remind you of SOMETHING?

Genius.

My respect for Charlie is now tenfold.

Murray Hamhandler

23:16 / 02.04.04

Ashamed? Of liking Get A Life? Dude! It rocked! No shame required!

diz

02:05 / 03.04.04

Get a Life not only had Charlie Kaufman, but also Bob Odenkirk of The Ben Stiller Show and the amazing Mr. Show With Bob and David on the writing staff. it's like some kind of nexus of Six Degrees of Contemporary Weird Comedy, especially now that David Cross is in Eternal Sunshine, which makes the whole thing terribly incestuous.

PatrickMM

03:52 / 10.04.04

Here's something I've always been wondering. Did Kaufman write Being John Malkovich specifically for John Malkovich? Or was it written as Being any actor, and Malkovich happened to be interested?

I just rewatched the movie, and it's really phenomenal, just full of great concepts. And I particularly liked Charlie Sheen's line about "Hot lesbian witches" always being good, as Buffy shows.

bigsunnydavros

09:02 / 10.04.04

Being John Malkovitch was written specifically with Malkovitch in mind, yes. I think I've read at least one Kaufman interview where he's said that Malkovitch is essential to the movie -- something about a combination of him having just the right amount of fame/seriousness/silliness, and also having a surname which sounds good when repeated over and over.

Malkovitch Malkovitch?

Malkovitch?

Malkovitch.

LDones

10:27 / 10.04.04

He's been quoted on numerous occasions stating directly the opposite (That John Malkovich came much later as he was writing the script).

bigsunnydavros

12:43 / 10.04.04

Sorry, I think I may have phrased my last post badly: no, the story did not initally feature Malkovitch, but he was specifically chosen by Kaufman during the script-writing process. The character was "John Malkovitch", rather than "celebrity X".

bjacques

13:29 / 10.04.04

This spate of Phillip K. Dick-esque movies has to be the most , um, Phillip K. Dick-esque-est episode in Hollywood bandwagon-jumping ever, but if it means more work for Charlie Kaufman, then so much the better.

Get A Life was fantastic!

TeN

16:06 / 12.04.04

I'm going to see Eternal Sunshine this week, I can't wait!

Kaufman is absolutely brilliant. Who else could have written Being John Malcovich or Adaptation?

Also, isn't it strange how he works alot with directors who usually direct music videos? First Spike Jonze, and now Mike Gondry.

electricinca

18:04 / 12.04.04

I feel that Charlie Kaufman is overrated, prententious metaphysical bollocks. I far prefer the down to earth style of his brother Donald. It is very unfortunate that his script "The 3" never made it to screen although there are aspects of it to be found in the movie Identity.

HCE

02:33 / 13.04.04

I refused to see Adaptation on the grounds that one of that horse-faced actor was bad enough, I couldn't stomach two of them.

I saw Being John Malkovitch and thought it was an amusing gimmick.

So all his films are gimmick-driven?

Just saw Eternal Sunshine. What an absolute waste of a perfectly charming movie about two appealing characters. Everything ticks along more or less pleasantly until the 'memory part' (I don't want to spoil things). All of a sudden it became a movie in the service of a style instead of the other way around. I'll reserve futher comment till others have seen the film. There was more than enough in the story about the two main characters to fuel a charming, sweet, sensitive film without turning it all into some kind of ham-fisted slapstick or whatever it was supposed to be.

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