Charlie Kaufman, who wrote the whimsical 1999 film "Being John Malkovich" has written and directed a film called "Synecdoche, New York," which will be in limited release starting October 24, 2008. "Synecdoche" is meant to be pronounced "Schenectady," as in the city in NY, but is also a word meaning: "a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in ten sail for ten ships or a Croesus for a rich man."
I went to a screening of the film last night at LA Film School and it reminded me how much I appreciate Charlie Kaufman's take on life and on writing. He was pleasingly unpretentious about both during the Q & A, explaining how he wrote "Being John Malkovich" simply to get assignment work; how it took him over ten years after getting out of NYU to get a job in the business, just because he didn't really understand how to get one; why he prefers to explore ideas when writing a script than sticking to a formal, restrictive outline, and never puts a title on a work until after it's written, because he couldn't have known what it was about before he wrote it. This was a fun Q & A, which you can access by subscribing to Creative Screenwriting's free podcasts in iTunes, if you so desire.
My fiance is convinced that he's crazy and that the movies he writes don't have a real structure, but that's precisely it for me. I think he's a bit of a genius because he does take the rather mundane concerns we have in life, and get us to think about them in a new way, revealing their profundity again for us. Questions of mortality, love, relationships, survival, etc. are dealt with in a very real way, refusing to pander to the audience. He's also about the only screenwriter whom I will tolerate whimsy out of, just because he's so grounded in the darkness and confusion of the human condition.
"Synecdoche, New York" is a mind-boggling film that may turn off even devoted fans of Kaufman. Yet I think that if you can get over the twisty plot machinations, the sometimes gross fixation on bodily functions, and frequent non sequiturs, you will find an honest and intelligent meditation on life. Here's the trailer:
"Being John Malkovich" helped sign off the last year of the 90's. I remember seeing this film in a tiny screening room at my college, and thinking that the intimate setting really suited this ambitious, but kind of cozy movie about the seeming impossibility of human beings truly emotionally connecting with each other. Charlie Kaufman mentioned this scene from the film last night, it's pretty funny:
Being John Malkovich (1999)
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