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 Information to the Galaxy podcast. “It’s completely my model of humor. I really like this bizarre, off-the-wall, surrealist, actually humorous and actually tied-to-real-life stuff.”
Kaufman’s latest initiatives haven’t been as fashionable with audiences as his early work. TV author Andrea Kail thinks that Kaufman’s more and more bleak outlook, epitomized by movies resembling I’m Pondering of Ending Issues, could also be alienating some viewers. “What’s lacking from this film, and this part of his inventive life, is the humor that’s in Being John Malkovich and Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts,” she says. “These are humorous films. There’s nothing humorous about this. It’s like a mirror into his middle-aged despair, and it’s painful to observe.”
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 via collaborators who have been extra regular and will make it one thing the viewers might relate to extra,” Kirtley says. “And as soon as he obtained sufficient energy to fully make it his imaginative and prescient, the viewers for essentially the most half is like, ‘Eh, I sort of appreciated the sooner stuff higher.’”
Science fiction creator Matthew Kressel hopes that Kaufman will create extra movies which have the identical form of steadiness his earlier films did. “Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts is strictly the form 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 attractive 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 lovely.”
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 issues we wish, and the way far we’re prepared to go to get what we wish, 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 begin 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 chunk of wooden in my hand. The place is the wooden now? Is it nonetheless in Malkovich?” That’s all he can give you.
Matthew Kressel on Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts:
I’ve heard individuals criticize this film, “Oh, she’s the Manic Pixie Dream Woman.” And should you have a look at it in a superficial means, you can say, “Oh yeah, she’s obtained the dyed hair, and he or she’s spontaneous and impulsive, and he or she crashes the automotive, and he or she likes to drink and exit all night time.” However should you 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 goals 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 fantastic thing about the second.
Andrea Kail on I’m Pondering of Ending Issues:
It’s constructed as a horror film. You’re strolling via that barn, and also you’re simply ready, and then you definitely’re going into that basement, and also you’re ready. You’re simply ready for the blood to begin pouring out of the partitions or one thing, and it by no means occurs, however that’s form of once I realized that it’s a horror film, but it surely’s an inside 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 thing, and that’s how life finally ends and he desires to be trustworthy about that. And all of that’s true clearly, but in addition 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 thing. So I really feel like fixating on the unfavorable isn’t essentially being trustworthy. It’s form of shading issues in a selected route that you just don’t should do.
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