CHARLIE KAUFMAN

'Charles Stuart Kaufman' (born November 1, 1958) is an American playwright, film producer, theater and film director, and Academy Award and BAFTA award winning screenwriter. In 2003 Kaufman was listed at #100 on Premiere's annual "Power 100" list.^[1] He was also identified by Time Magazine in 2004 as one of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood.^[2]

Contents

Personal life

Career

Early Work

Television

Film

Theater

Themes

Influences

Quotes

Credits

Films

Television

Plays

External links

Interviews

References

Personal life

Kaufman is known to be protective of his private life.^[3] He rarely speaks about himself, and has only made one televised interview appearance, (an episode of ''Charlie Rose'' in 2004).^[4]
He was born to a Jewish family in New York City, but they moved away shortly after. Kaufman is a graduate of William H. Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut. He then briefly attended Boston University before transferring to NYU Film School,^[5] where one of his classmates was filmmaker Chris Columbus.^[6]
Kaufman lived and worked for a time during the late 1980s in Minneapolis, MN, answering phone calls about missing newspapers at the Star Tribune before moving to Los Angeles, CA. ^[5]
He currently lives in Pasadena, California with his wife and two children.^[3]

Career

Early Work

Between 1983 and 1984 Kaufman, along with college friend Paul Proch, wrote comedic articles and spoofs, including spoofs of Kurt Vonnegut and the X-Men, for National Lampoon magazine on spec.^[9]

Television

After moving to Los Angeles, Kaufman got his start in television by writing two episodes for Chris Elliott's ''Get a Life'' during the 1990-92 season.^[5]
During the 1993-94 season, Kaufman worked on Fox's sketch comedy show ''The Edge''. Of note, he later worked as a writer for ''Ned and Stacey'' and ''The Dana Carvey Show''.^[3]

Film

He first came to mainstream notice as the writer of ''Being John Malkovich'', earning an Oscar nomination for his effort and winning a BAFTA. He also wrote ''Human Nature'', which was directed by Michel Gondry and then worked with Spike Jonze again as the screenwriter for ''Adaptation.'', which earned him another Oscar nomination and his second BAFTA. ''Adaptation'' featured a "Charlie Kaufman" character that is a heavily fictionalized version of the screenwriter, including an "identical twin brother," a sell-out screen-writer reflective of Kaufman's anxieties about Hollywood.
He also penned the screenplay for ''Confessions of a Dangerous Mind'', a biopic based on the "unauthorized autobiography" of Chuck Barris, the creator of such popular gameshows as the Dating Game and host of the Gong Show. The film focuses on Barris's claim to have simultaneously been a CIA hitman. It was George Clooney's directorial debut. Kaufman angrily criticized George Clooney for making dramatic alterations to the ''Confessions of a Dangerous Mind'' script without consulting him. Kaufman said in an interview with William Arnold: "The usual thing for a writer is to deliver a script and then disappear. That's not for me. I want to be involved from beginning to end. And these directors [Gondry, Jonze] know that, and respect it."^[12]
His most recent film is ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'', his second with director Michel Gondry, for which he received his first Oscar for best original screenplay and third BAFTA. Kaufman also received the prestigious PEN American Center 2005 prize for screenplay for the film ^[13]. David Edelstein described the film in Slate as "The Awful Truth turned inside-out by Philip K. Dick, with nods to Samuel Beckett, Chris Marker, John Guare—the greatest dramatists of our modern fractured consciousness. But the weave is pure Kaufman."
Kaufman will make his directorial debut with his next project, ''Synecdoche, New York''. Academy-award winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Michelle Williams are both attached to the film, which tells "the story of an anguished playwright who is forced to deal with several women in his life."^[14]

Theater

Kaufman wrote and directed the audio play ''Hope Leaves the Theater'', a segment of the sound-only production ''Theater of the New Ear''.^[15] This play starred Meryl Streep, Hope Davis and Peter Dinklage. In the world of the play, it was the last thing Charlie Kaufman (the character) wrote before he committed suicide. The title actually refers to Hope Davis' character "leaving the theater."
''Theater of the New Ear'', including ''Hope Leaves the Theater'', debuted in April 2005 at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY.^[16]

Themes

Kaufman's works are often cited as being surrealist,^[17] and focus on an introverted, somewhat shy, male protagonist and a more dominant female figure. This is true of ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' (Joel/Clementine), ''Adaptation.'' (Charlie/Susan), and ''Being John Malkovich'' (Craig/Maxine).
Though he sometimes includes "facts" about his life into his work, notably ''Adaptation'' and ''Hope Leaves the Theater'', they are often fiction based in large part.
Apes are also prevalent in Kaufman's work. In ''Being John Malkovich'' Lotte has a pet chimp named Elijah. In ''Human Nature'', Puff was raised as an ape. The original deus ex machina in ''Adaptation'' called for a swamp ape.^[18]

Influences

Among Charlie Kaufman's favourite writers and influences are Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Stanisław Lem, Philip K. Dick, Flannery O'Connor, Stephen Dixon, Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith.^[3] The phrase "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" is drawn from Alexander Pope's poem Eloisa to Abelard.^[20] There are also references in Kaufman's work to another literary figure, Italo Svevo. One of his characters is named after the Italian Modernist writer (Mary Svevo in ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind''), and Svevo's novel ''La Coscienza di Zeno'' (''Confessions of Zeno'', or ''Conscience of Zeno'', 1923) also seems to be important in connection with Kaufman's writing.

Quotes

"Consciousness is a terrible curse. I think. I feel. I suffer."
- ''Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) in Being John Malkovich''
"You are what you love, not what loves you."
- ''Donald Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) in Adaptation.''
"I liked Woody Allen when I was younger. The early Woody Allen is a complete mess, which I liked as a kid, but he was also a person that I could aspire to be, you know, short Jewish guys up there on the screen. I wanted to write comedies when I was younger, and yeah I liked his style. But I had a different idea of things then." (...)
"I don’t really have anything against stories, but I just want to feel something happening. I read something that Emily Dickinson said that I’m going to paraphrase: you know something’s poetry if a shiver goes up your spine."
- ''In an Interview with Michael Koresky and Matthew Plouffe, Reverse Shot Online, Spring 2005''

Credits

Films

★ ''Being John Malkovich'' (1999; writer)

★ ''Human Nature'' (2001; writer)

★ ''Adaptation.'' (2002; writer)

★ ''Confessions of a Dangerous Mind'' (2002; writer)

★ ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' (2004; writer)

★ ''Synecdoche, New York'' (2008; writer, director)

Television

★ ''Get a Life'' (1991-92)

★ ''The Dana Carvey Show'' (1993)

★ ''The Trouble With Larry'' (1993)

★ ''The Edge'' (93-94)

★ ''Ned and Stacy'' (96-97)

Plays

★ ''Hope Leaves the Theater'' (2005; playwright, director)

External links

★ Being Charlie Kaufman - A thorough fan site

★

★ New York Times biography

Interviews

★ Charlie Kaufman, the Man behind "Malkovich", by Anthony Kaufman, indieWire.com, October 27, 1999

★ Charlie Kaufman Au Naturel, On Human Nature, by Rod Armstrong, Reel.com, April 11, 2002

★ Profile: Wanted: Charlie Kaufman, Outlaw Scribe, by David Fear, 'Moviemaker'

★ Interview with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman, by Ray Pride, 'Movie City News', March 17, 2004

★ Interview with Michael Gondry and Charlie Kaufman, by Brendan MacDevette, 'Independent Film Quarterly'

★ Why Charlie Kaufman doesn’t watch movies anymore, by Michael Koresky and Matthew Plouffe, Reverse Shot Online, Spring 2005

★ "The 'Quirky' New Wave" Alternate Takes

★ Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Interview Future Movies

References

1. Premiere's Power 100 List, 2003.
2. Time's 100 Most Influential People.
3. Salon.com Interview by Michael Sragow.
4. Kaufman on Charlie Rose.
5. Being Charlie Kaufman Biography.
6. Box Office Prophets.
7. Being Charlie Kaufman Biography.
8. Salon.com Interview by Michael Sragow.
9. Scans of said articles.
10. Being Charlie Kaufman Biography.
11. Salon.com Interview by Michael Sragow.
12. Kaufman interviewed by William Arnold.
13. PEN Center USA: 2005 Literary Awards Winners
14. Kaufman's Directorial Debut Lands Williams, Hoffman
15. Creative Screenwriting Magazine on Hope Leaves the Theater
16. The Body - Projects - Theater of the New Ear
17. Indie Wire interview.
18. Adaptation (Draft 2)
19. Salon.com Interview by Michael Sragow.
20. ''Elosisa to Abelard'' text.