“What I have to offer is me, what you have to offer is you” – Charlie Kaufman.
For whatever reason I was having a hard time writing this weeks article for Vice Versa. To no avail I tried writing about Roger Deakins and Emmanuel Lubezki. And after a few days of not writing I thought It would be more fitting to write about someone who writes about writing (and not writing). That someone is Charlie Kaufman. Charlie Kaufman is a screenplay writer and a director and the mind and words behind some of the most original movies of the last two decades. In the year 2002 he was asked to adapt The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean into a screenplay. He gave it a read, told the studio he didn’t know how to do it, and proceeded to do it anyway. Tried to, at least. He struggled with it for a very long time until he came about the question “What is this doing for me now?” And the answer became the script for Adaptation. A film about a writer called Charlie Kaufman who starts losing his mind trying to write a screenplay adaptation of a novel called The Orchid Thief by Susan Orleans. Some of you might remember it as the movie with the two Nicolas Cage.
Before Adaptation he wrote Being John Malkovich, a film about a brilliant but unsuccessful puppeteer who discovers a portal into the mind of John Malkovich. This you might remember as Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich, Malkovich. It also granted him his first Oscar nomination for best original screenplay, an award he would later take home for Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.
Then came Synedoche, New York. The pinnacle of all things Charlie Kaufman. His directorial debut and masterpiece. A film so great and profound and beautiful and funny that makes an entire article full of gibberish worth it as long as the last line reads “Go watch Synecdoche, New York”. Declared the film of the decade by Roger Ebert, it elevated Charlie Kaufman’s writing to the height of Bergman. On the surface Synecdoche, New York is a movie about a theater director who wins a grant that allows him to build a living, never ending play. But like all of Charlie Kaufman´s films, deeper philosophical meaning is found everywhere. Few movies (if any) manage to be that personal and universal at the same time.
When enquired about his writing process, Charlie Kaufman explained that it is no different from the way he lives. “The exciting thing is the thing that you come by when thinking about something” he said. Finding richness in the discovery of things through living, through creating. The tangents we take in life that expand our consciousness towards new meanings. Human nature. The search for the resounding. The way we choose to live. The burden of human consciousness. The hunger for transcendence. The fear of being. Love. All this things are recurrent themes in Charlie Kaufman’s movies. Always rapped under his humor and oddity and genious, be it a character’s last name, an ever burning house, a never ending play, a screenplay within a screenplay, a man within a man, a woman within a man, a play within a play, a traumatized monkey, a puppeteer, a theater director, a screenplay writer, a regular Joe, John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman, you, me, everyone.
Charlie Kaufman is a rarity, a unicorn. An immensely talentedwriter who chose screenplays as a medium to discover what resounded within him, and in doing so, discovered things that resound in all of us.
Now go watch Synecdoche, New York, twice.