Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter behind Adaptation and Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts, is without doubt one of the smartest and most unique writers in Hollywood. Humor author Tom Gerencer remembers being very impressed with Kaufman’s 1999 debut movie Being John Malkovich.
“I bear in mind being fully blown away by it and completely loving it,” Gerencer says in Episode 549 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “It’s completely my fashion of humor. I like this bizarre, off-the-wall, surrealist, actually humorous and actually tied-to-real-life stuff.”
Kaufman’s current initiatives haven’t been as widespread with audiences as his early work. TV author Andrea Kail thinks that Kaufman’s more and more bleak outlook, epitomized by movies reminiscent of I’m Pondering of Ending Issues, could also be alienating some viewers. “What’s lacking from this film, and this part of his artistic life, is the humor that’s in Being John Malkovich and Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts,” she says. “These are humorous motion pictures. There may be nothing humorous about this. It’s like a mirror into his middle-aged despair, and it’s painful to look at.”
Geek’s Information to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley sees similarities between Charlie Kaufman and George Lucas, who each appear to have benefited from constraints on their creativity. “[Kaufman] is somebody who’s a visionary, and his early work took that imaginative and prescient and filtered it by collaborators who had been extra regular and will make it one thing the viewers might relate to extra,” Kirtley says. “And as soon as he bought sufficient energy to fully make it his imaginative and prescient, the viewers for essentially the most half is like, ‘Eh, I sort of preferred the sooner stuff higher.’”
Science fiction writer Matthew Kressel hopes that Kaufman will create extra movies which have the identical kind of steadiness his earlier motion pictures did. “Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts is strictly the kind of expertise I’m going for,” he says. “It’s reflecting again to me, the viewer, what it’s prefer to be a human being, with each the gorgeous issues and the horrible issues, each the enjoyment and the struggling, and being OK with either side of that. That’s why I believe the film is so stunning.”
Take heed to the whole interview with Tom Gerencer, Andrea Kail, and Matthew Kressel in Episode 549 of Geek’s Information to the Galaxy (above). And take a look at some highlights from the dialogue beneath.
Tom Gerencer on Being John Malkovich:
The film is all about how individuals have issues we need, we’ve got issues we would like, and the way far we’re prepared to go to get what we would like, by way of simply fully screwing another person over and never even wanting again. John Cusack‘s character goes, “Wow! There are such a lot of implications about this,” and also you suppose he’s going to start out speaking about one thing profound, and he even says, “There are actually profound implications.” And he goes, “For instance, I went in there with a bit of wooden in my hand. The place is the wooden now? Is it nonetheless in Malkovich?” That’s all he can provide you with.
Matthew Kressel on Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts:
I’ve heard individuals criticize this film, “Oh, she’s the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” And for those who have a look at it in a superficial method, you could possibly say, “Oh yeah, she’s bought the dyed hair, and she or he’s spontaneous and impulsive, and she or he crashes the automotive, and she or he likes to drink and exit all evening.” However for those who have a look at it actually, I imagine it destroys that trope. And the rationale why is, she doesn’t save him. She’s not the one which comes and saves his life and makes all his desires come true. She’s simply as flawed as he’s, and when he comes to acknowledge that—that she’s not going to avoid wasting him and never going to resolve all his issues—and nonetheless accepts her anyway, that’s the great thing about the second.
Andrea Kail on I’m Pondering of Ending Issues:
It’s constructed as a horror film. You’re strolling by that barn, and also you’re simply ready, and then you definately’re going into that basement, and also you’re ready. You’re simply ready for the blood to start out pouring out of the partitions or one thing, and it by no means occurs, however that’s kind of after I realized that it’s a horror film, but it surely’s an inner horror film. It’s the horror of being trapped in your recollections and regretting life … These are all of the horrible issues that occur to you in center age—dad and mom dying, realizing your life’s half over and also you’re a janitor in a highschool. In order that’s the place I believe that each one comes from.
David Barr Kirtley on mortality:
I noticed Charlie Kaufman say in interviews that everybody’s going to die, you’re going to die, you’re going to lose every part, and that’s how life finally ends and he needs to be trustworthy about that. And all of that’s true clearly, but additionally all of us are extremely fortunate to ever have been born in any respect, when you concentrate on how statistically unlikely it’s that any of us would ever have been born and been alive to expertise grass and oceans and sunsets and every part. So I really feel like fixating on the adverse just isn’t essentially being trustworthy. It’s kind of shading issues in a selected course that you just don’t must do.
Nicks
