An interesting interview with Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and writer/director of Synecdoche New York (2004). See also my annotated bibliography of this resource.
As I haven't found the written text anywhere please find below my transcript of this interview by the Writers Guild of America. I feel Kaufman's views are relevant to many writers, screenwriters and other creatives.
If you are the copyright holder of this material and wish that I remove the transcript from this page please contact me.
Interview Transcript
Writers Guild of America (WGA): Did your first directing experience teach you anything about writing that you can apply to your next project?
Charlie Kaufman: In the thing that concerns me about having directed and going on to the next thing is that I find myself thinking about things that a director needs to think about and a writer doesn’t need to think about. And I’m trying to remove those from my thought process. Things like pragmatism. I want my imagination to be able to continue to have as free a reign as I can allow it. So if I’ve learned anything coming off of this as a director is that I don’t want to incorporate that into my writing.
WGA: In the film, Caden struggles for decades to complete his play. Have you had similar experiences in your writing?
Kaufman: I struggle all the time when I’m writing. And I think that part of the thing that happens when you’re writing, especially if you’re writing one piece over an extended period of time, is that you have an evolving understanding of the world and an evolving understanding of the piece. And so if you’re trying to be truthful you start out with one idea and as you become more familiar with it or explore different aspects of the idea different things become revealed to you. And you have to incorporate that. And so, whereas Caden’s city kept getting bigger and bigger and more populated as he was going on over years and years trying to do this thing there was really no ending to it. So that becomes a bit of a hindrance when you’re writing but I do feel it’s the way I like to write. So I guess it is similar in that way.
WGA: You’ve said that one of the differences between theatre and film is that “plays are alive and movies are dead.” Can you elaborate? What attracts you to screenwriting?
Kaufman: I love movies. I’ve always loved movies. It’s been a big passion of mine my whole life. I just think that there’s a kind of a one way of making movies in this culture. And that seems to be this mindset that it has to be “this one thing and this is the structure of it and this is what has to happen to the characters”. And I think that, like in anything, like in any art form, the world opens up when you take that away. And you allow yourself to think in a larger and more creative way about the process. So it’s not movies that I’m questioning. It’s what’s been done with movies. And then the reference to theatre is just that I wanted to try to create a way to, in my mind, that you can view the same piece of film on different occasions and have different experiences with it. Which is what I was referring to when I said you watch a play five times and it’s gonna be different every time because it’s alive. The audience relation to a movie doesn’t affect the movie. The movie is already set in stone, you know. So what you can offer people or at least what I’ve decided I’d like to try to offer people is an ability to watch this movie now and watch it in five years and have a different experience because you’re a different person. Or watch it tomorrow and have a different experience because there are things you cannot see the first time. There’s too much to see or you don’t have the information at the beginning of the experience to see things at the beginning of the movie that will only be revealed at the end of the movie. I just think that stuff is fun and that’s what I want as an audience. So it’s what I try to incorporate.
WGA: Do you have any advice for writers who want to tell stories that might be considered unusual or outside the Hollywood norm?
Kaufman: I don’t really have any advice because I feel the circumstance that I find myself in I think is attributable to luck to a large extend. I wrote for a lot of years in obscurity and I wrote this script for Being John Malkovich which got me attention but was never gonna be made. And then I got the lucky break of Spike Jones being interested in making it and having the power at that point in his career to get a movie made that nobody wanted to get made. The only thing I can say is that if you’ve got a thing that you’re exploring then explore it truthfully. If you want to do that. If you’re interested in doing what you want to do in the world then do it! Explore it truthfully. Continue to try to find your voice which I think is kind of an ongoing lifelong process. I’m still trying to do that. I don’t feel I’ve arrived anywhere. Just be diligent and somewhat courageous in your attempts to do your stuff in the world.
References
Writers Guild of America. (2008, October 23). Charlie Kaufman on his latest film & why “movies are dead”. YouTube. Retrieved April 28, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxps3oouNiQ
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