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Charlie
Kaufman’s staring down the barrel of a big year. The
writer behind 1999's instant cult classic “Being John
Malkovich” returns to cinemas in 2002 with three more
productions forged from his aggressively offbeat scripting.
The Year
of Kaufman kicks off in April with the Fine Line release of
“Human Nature,” a comedy centering around three
troubled characters: a feral man dubbed “Puff” (played
by “Notting Hill” scene-stealer Rhys Ifans) who
thinks he’s an ape; the repressed scientist (Tim Robbins)
who “civilizes” him; and a self-loathing nature
writer (Patricia Arquette) with extraordinary body-hair issues.
Like “Malkovich,” it’s a tale filled with absurd
grace notes – mice trained to use forks and knives, an
ape-man testifying before Congress, a heroic pistol-wielding
dwarf and the like.
Next up is Sony’s “Adaptation,” directed by
“Malkovich” helmer Spike Jonze. Kaufman initially
intended to craft a straightforward adaptation of New Yorker
scribe Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief,” but
soon found he couldn’t spin a script out of the story
of a man obsessed with a particular type of flower. His solution?
To write one of the most audacious pieces of narcissism this
side of “Stardust Memories” – the tale of a
writer named “Charlie Kaufman” (played by Nicolas
Cage) who can’t spin a script out of “The Orchid
Thief.” The absurd grace notes here are simultaneously
more self-involved and more disturbing – with the movie’s
sad, fat, sweaty, balding “Kaufman” ultimately stalking
“Susan Orlean” (Meryl Streep) and losing complete
control of his creative process. (The movie’s “Kaufman”
even has a dopey [and, in real life, fictitious] twin brother
– also played by Cage – who’s trying to write
a formulaic serial-killer movie.)
Finally, Miramax will release Kaufman’s adaptation of
“Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.” Long considered
one of the great unproduced Hollywood screenplays, it’s
based on game-show host Chuck Barris’ memoir of the same
title – in which the “Gong Show” emcee claims
to have secretly moonlighted as a CIA assassin. George Clooney,
who plays Barris’ mysterious CIA overseer in the film,
also directs.
Although his seemingly out-of-nowhere success with “Malkovich”
makes Kaufman seem like some sort of arriviste, he actually
scrabbled into “the biz” the old-fashioned way –
struggling to get an agent’s attention for over a year,
then working in television comedy for another seven. (Among
his TV-writing credits are episodes of “Ned and Stacey,”
Chris Elliott’s landmark sitcom “Get A Life,”
and the short-lived “Dana Carvey Show.”) His scripts
for “Malkovich” and “Confessions” floated
around Hollywood for years – legends of the movie development
community, deemed brilliant but too “edgy” –
before Jonze and Clooney, respectively, finally nudged them
into the green light.
Here’s what Kaufman has to say about all that.
I.
GENERAL REMARKS ABOUT “HUMAN NATURE,” WITH
EXCESSIVE PRAISE HEAPED ON
RHYS IFANS; PLUS AWKWARD
OBSERVANCES ON HOW
BEAUTIFUL PATRICIA ARQUETTE LOOKS NAKED AND COVERED IN DOWNY
FUR
There
are moments in your “Human Nature” screenplay that
reject the value of the spoken word. One of the movie’s
best scenes is the one where Puff’s saying, haltingly
and with total disgust, “…Words..!”
Uh-huh.
I mean,
I don’t really need to point out the irony, given your
career.
[Laughs] Well, I wasn’t exactly making fun of words –
I was also kind of making fun of the idea of these movies
that make fun of the idea of civilization – you know,
all this sort of “wild-child,” “human-nature-is-pure”
stuff I was having a bit of fun with. I wouldn’t write
something sincerely about that theme, because I think everything
is quite a bit more complicated than that. I think that whole
“if we were more like our pure selves, we’d be fine”
theme is kind of silly.
Did
you write the man-ape character “Puff” with Rhys
Ifans in mind? He’s phenomenal in the movie.
No, not at all – in fact, the audition process was really
extensive. I mean, we went through a lot of people, because
Puff has to be everything – he has to go from this very
primitive person to this very sophisticated person. There
were different actors who were really strong in different
areas, but Rhys was strong and funny all the way across the
spectrum.
He’d be saying these elaborate sentences, but they’d
almost seem layered over this primal veneer.
We were trying for that. He’s a tremendous actor –
and a really sweet guy, too.
And
apparently not afraid to walk around naked.
Nope. He was game. There are so many things that Puff had
to deliver on that could have made for a disaster. Little
things that you wouldn’t even think about when you’re
writing a script – like the idea that this grown man
has to appear in a diaper. How do you do that without it just
being horrifying to look at? And you couldn’t do that
with a lot of actors, just because of their sense of self,
you know? And because Rhys was so comfortable with it, it
just became acceptable – and not even ridiculous.
And
no actor will ever find a better way to deliver the line,
“Apes do not kill their presidents, gentlemen!”
[Laughs] Yeah. He’s great in the Congress scenes.
You’ve
talked in other interviews about wanting to bring “respect”
to all the characters you write, even the strangest ones.
How do you cultivate that respect for an artificially cultured
man-ape?
Well, the respect is more like, “What is their struggle
– and how do you make that sincere?” You know, even
if it’s a comedy, to the people who are going through
what they’re going through in the movie, it’s not
a comedy.
Puff is a terribly manipulated human being from the beginning
– his father is insane and raises him as an ape, you
know? You can’t get more manipulated than that. And then
he’s manipulated throughout the movie by everybody –
including Patricia’s character. So I have a lot of sympathy
for Puff. He’s tortured.
And I think Nathan – Tim Robbins’ character –
is, too. In a lot of people’s eyes, Nathan is the least
sympathetic character – but I never felt that way about
him. He’s also manipulated and tortured – by his
family, and by his parents, and by his insecurities.
How
do you get an actress like Patricia Arquette to do all the
crazy stuff she does in this movie? She’s walking through
the woods naked, covered with unsightly body hair, singing
and climbing through the trees …
You know, that’s probably a question for Patricia, not
for me. She really liked the project and was committed to
it from the beginning – that was an enormous help in
getting financing. I know that she wanted to work with [director]
Michel Gondry – she’d done a Rolling Stones video
with him a few years earlier.
She’s
very courageous, you know? Big-name actresses just don’t
do naked any more.
Courageous in a bunch of ways – because not only was
she naked, she was also covered with hair in a way people
might consider unflattering. Not that – I didn’t
think that – I mean, we all were so amazed with the actual
beauty of it when she, uh –
She’s
quite stunning in that body-fur getup.
Yeah. Which was important to us – not that the hair be
“beautiful,” but we didn’t want to be mocking
of the character, because we don’t feel that way about
her, so we didn’t want people to laugh at her. So it
was kind of a makeup issue, figuring out how best to portray
this.
How’d
you come to settle upon “Human Nature”’s director,
Michel Gondry? He’s most famous on these shores for directing
Bjork [which the interviewer mispronounced “Bork”]
videos.
Not “Bork.” Bee-york. Robert Bork never starred
in any music videos as far as I know. I met Michel though
Spike. I was really impressed with his music videos and his
commercials. They’re beautiful.
I was
very pleased to see some of the same obviously artificial,
gorgeous, creepy “nature” effects in “Human
Nature” that I’d seen in Bjork’s “Human
Behaviour” music video.
Yeah, a lot of rear-screen kind of stuff. He’s ingenious
that way.
How
much of that artifice is a function of budget and how much
is your conscious approach to the material?
“Human Nature’s” not a big-budget movie by
any stretch of the imagination – but I’m not sure
it would be less expensive to shoot in a real forest than
it was to mount this big rear-screen stuff, which is complicated
… . If we shot on a soundstage and we didn’t want
you to know, you wouldn’t know.
Is
“Human Nature” your first producing gig?
I was an executive producer in name on “Malkovich,”
but yeah – it’s my first producer gig.
As
producer, did you see your main job as protecting your director’s
vision or protecting your script?
Well, I wanted to be a producer because I wanted to protect
my script. Which isn’t to say I had any doubts about
Michel at all – it’s just that, you know, as a writer,
you find out pretty quickly that you’re not the king
of the hill. The director is.
But I felt at the same time it was important that Michel have
the freedom to do his work, and so I didn’t get in his
way. I mean, during production I was just almost not even
there. I came around, but I didn’t talk.
Well,
that’s one way of dealing with it.
Well, yeah – because it’s not healthy for the production
for there to be two voices on the set. So if Michel and I
would have any issues, I would talk to him afterwards, privately.
He did what he wanted, and I was certainly happy with it.
II.
ON WRITING “QUIRKY” AND SWEATING OUT “ADAPTATION”
Have
you noticed an evolution in the way executives react to your
material now, since “Being John Malkovich” was such
a success?
Oh, sure. There’s no question that I’m in a better
place. The thing is, before “Malkovich” came out,
I still had a good reputation because of “Malkovich.”
There was interest in me.
You
were known among development people.
Yeah. Everyone had read the script. I was offered “Confessions
of a Dangerous Mind” before “Malkovich” was
even made. But it was always kind of like, “Well, people
love this script” – and I was told this a lot in
television, too – “but no one will ever make it.”
I’ve been told that a lot. When “Malkovich”
was made and it got the critical acclaim that it got, it certainly
opened people up to possibilities for that kind of work.
I was
going to ask how you kept from despairing during that “This
will never get made” period, but I suppose getting a
nice TV-writing paycheck helped.
Yeah, I’m sure it did. And I was just thrilled that people
really liked this stuff. That was sort of enough. But I didn’t
have any expectations that “Malkovich” would ever
get made. By the time that Single Cell produced it and Spike
came along, it was sort of a surprise.
Is
it possible to be typecast as a writer of quote-unquote “weird”
scripts?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, people send me “quirky”
ideas a lot. And that’s in quotes, because a lot of them
aren’t things that I’m interested in, but they fall
into that sort of “quirky” realm – “weird”
ideas or “weird” people or “weird” biopics.
I don’t think it’s affected me that much because
I really haven’t taken that much new work on since all
this happened. So I haven’t felt typecast that way.
Still,
on some level, “Adaptation” reads as kind of your
response to that sort of typecasting.
Well, there is an element of that. I mean, “The Orchid
Thief” – the great book that the screenplay’s
based on – isn’t “quirky” in that way.
I liked that the book was about flowers – and I had no
idea going in how I would make that into a movie, but the
challenge interested me: There’s not much of a plot in
the book, but the natural-history stuff that she was writing
about fascinated me, and I also liked the character that [author]
Susan Orlean was following around, this John Laroche guy.
The
toothless, insanely obsessed guy who moves from obsession
to obsession.
Yeah, exactly. So it wasn’t necessarily a response to
[typecasting], but I wanted to do it because it wasn’t
like anything I’d done before and that interested me.
At
some point, “Adaptation” becomes this sort of very
self-devouring loop – in the sense that, at the beginning,
the “Kaufman” character in the movie takes on the
assignment to adapt “The Orchid Thief,” but the
rings of self-reference wind closer and closer – until
we have the character based on you following around the character
based on Susan Orlean and we’re literally seeing the
filming of this moment as the Kaufman character is writing
it. There’s like three layers of self-reference there.
Did you have a moment like that where adapting “The Orchid
Thief” went off the rails for you personally?
Yeah. Definitely. The reason I decided to do it that way was
because I couldn’t … . I mean, the movie is about
failure. And frustration. That’s what I was feeling.
I didn’t know how to write it – so I thought I’d
write about not knowing how to write it.
And I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t tell the studio,
because at that point I didn’t know any other way to
do it, and I was certain they would say, “No – what
are you talking about? This isn’t what we hired you to
do.” But I had to turn something in, and it was scary.
I felt like when I turned it in that I was going to be blacklisted.
[Laughs] You know, “I took these people’s money
and then I turned in this nonsense.” And self-indulgence!
I mean, I put myself in – what was that?
You
put yourself in and a fictitious twin brother. You put yourself
in twice.
Maybe fictitious. Donald. My brother Donald … . And they
liked it, and they wanted to make it.
What
was that week like between turning in the script and finding
out they liked it?
I was terrified when I turned it in and relieved when they
liked it. It’s probably not as dramatic as it would seem.
The terror part of it is always stronger for me than the relief,
so it’s sort of what I remember of it. Once they accepted
it, I wasn’t jumping up and down or anything. I don’t
do that much. Fortunately.
You
know, I have to ask you the question that you’re probably
going to get asked a jillion times: What the hell did Susan
Orlean think of all this?
She’s happy with it, as far as I know. You know, she
came around and she met with the producers and the director,
and she seems to be very supportive. I can’t speak for
her, but I’m sure she’s happy that the movie’s
getting made. She certainly hasn’t objected.
Having
Meryl Streep play Orlean probably helps. And Nicolas Cage
is playing you.
He’s really, really wonderful in it, and he plays two
characters, which is a difficult thing, because they’re
in scenes together often – he’s acting with himself,
separating and delineating the characters in a very subtle
way.
Did
he gain weight?
He gained a little weight – probably not as much as the
character needed to, but you know he has … prosthetic
help.
Did
he do the actor thing where he met with you and said, “I
want to get inside your head”?
Uh … . He did meet with me a few times, and I know that’s
what he wanted to do, but he was very respectful about it
and very subtle about it. He asked me questions, and I guess
he “observed” me – but not in any way that
made me uncomfortable.
And he isn’t really playing “me,” because the
Kaufman character isn’t even really physically like me
– so that gave him some freedom and license to do his
own thing. But there’s certainly mannerisms and things
I see when I watch the movie that I recognize. [Laughs] So.
It’s
kind of a shame that the recurring script direction in “Adaptation”
– “Kaufman sweats” – won’t be in
the movie. That kept cracking me up.
[Laughs] There’s a lot of that.
Does
Mr. Cage, in fact, sweat a lot in “Adaptation”?
He sweats a bit. Maybe he doesn’t sweat as much as he
does in the script. There’s some sweating going on.
One
comes away from reading descriptions of the “Kaufman”
character in the movie thinking of someone like, say, Philip
Seymour Hoffman.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And
talking to you, you don’t sound at all like this self-loathing
character in the script.
Uh-huh. [Laughs] I have that element to my personality. You’re
just not hearing it now. It’s all interior-monologue
stuff.
The
Kaufman character emerges from “Adaptation” profoundly
changed. Did writing “Adaptation” change you? Did
it mark an evolution point in your writing?
[Pause] I don’t know.
It
almost reads like a chapter stop in your …
Well, it’s intended to feel like that. Without getting
into too much detail about what happens in the movie, the
script’s intended to play with that notion. I don’t
know. I don’t know. I mean, it changes your life when
you finish something because you’ve finished it and you
don’t have to do it anymore. [Laughs] Other than that,
I’m not sure.
III.
ON RISING THROUGH THE BRUTAL WORLD OF TELEVISION-COMEDY WRITING,
WITH SOME SAGE ADVICE FOR UP-AND-COMERS ON BUGGING THE CRAP
OUT OF YOUR POTENTIAL AGENT
What
did you bring to “Human Nature” from your TV-writing
days?
I don’t know. I don’t feel like TV was a training
ground for me so much as it was a job and an opportunity to
write. As my first professional experience, it gave me a certain
confidence. I was a pretty shy person going in, and it’s
a very public way of writing. You’re with a group of
people in a room pitching ideas, basically.
Yeah,
that’s brutal.
It’s brutal, and it’s not my personality, and I
survived it. It’s very competitive, and you’re writing
on really hard deadlines. And it was hard after a while.
Before I got my first job, which was on “Get A Life”
– I mean, immediately before that – I was answering
telephones in an art museum in Minnesota. I remember when
I went on the lot at “Get A Life,” I had a parking
spot with my name on it, you know? [Laughs] It was wild. And
I was driving this beat-up 1980 Jetta, which I’d driven
from Minnesota, that had no air-conditioning. And it was all
rusted out, because all cars from Minnesota are.
It
must have felt like quite a validation when “Get A Life”
became this sort of cult hit and several episodes were collected
on VHS.
You know, “Get A Life” is my favorite show that
I worked on, and it was my first show. I couldn’t believe
my luck.
I’d come out here during the hiring season, and I didn’t
have any money, and I really had avoided L.A. for a long time
because I was terrified of it. And I was out here for two
months, and I didn’t get any interviews. I was heading
back to Minnesota when I got called in for “Get A Life,”
and met with David Mirkin, the executive producer. I’d
gotten one other job offer, for a bloopers-type show with
Fred Willard as the host, that was shooting in Minneapolis.
And Mirkin told me, “Don’t go back to Minneapolis.”
Had I gone back, I don’t think I’d be doing any
of this – because I wouldn’t have come out here
again. I just wouldn’t have. That was it.
And
you really had to hound your agent for quite some time before
that, correct?
For years I’d send things to agents and not get any kind
of response. And I just decided at one point that I was going
to be a television writer, so I got an agent who agreed to
read my stuff – and I decided I was going to be tenacious.
Every time the agent said he was going to read it in a week,
he wouldn’t – but it gave me permission in my mind
to call. So I’d call every time at the end of the week.
And this went on for over a year.
[Laughs]
Oh, my God. Fifty-two calls!
At least, yeah. Finally, I was just so frustrated, I said
to the assistant, “Look – is there somebody else
you recommend who might be willing to read this, so I can
start this process all over again?” And the agent got
on the phone – the first time I’d ever spoken to
him. And he said, “Charles, I’m going to read it
this weekend.” And of course he didn’t. But it gave
me permission to keep calling. Two months later, he read it
and he liked it.
That’s
what it takes.
The only advice I’ve ever given anybody – because
it’s the only advice I feel sure of, and the only advice
I wouldn’t have listened to myself – is that you’ve
got to be persistent. Because the hardest thing is getting
anyone’s attention. Once you’ve done that, it’s
much easier.
I’ve
read what you have to say in “Adaptation” about
people who try to give advice on formula script structure.
You know, if that’s your goal as a writer, I’m not
judging it. It’s just that, for me, it doesn’t serve
my purpose – which is that I’d like to do something
that’s challenging or risky or that I don’t feel
has been done or haven’t seen done before. I feel like
I’m doing something then … . The risk of failure
is important.
IV.
“KUNG FU” WITH A
TROUBADOUR POET: THE LOST KAUFMAN TV SCRIPTS
Well,
using the horrible segue, “Speaking of failure …
.” You wrote a series of TV pilots that didn’t air.
What were they about?
There were a bunch of different ones. I wrote something called
“Depressed Roomies,” which was about two guys who
live in a tenement apartment, and…. Well, it’s kind
of silly. [Laughs] They’re absurdist, I guess. It got
attention and people liked it, but it was weird, and it dealt
with sexuality that was questionable for television at the
time. And it didn’t feel like a sitcom – it wasn’t
naturalistic. It was sort of theatrical.
I also wrote something called “Rambling Pants,”
which was a pilot about a poet, a traveling poet whose name
is Pants.
“Rambling
Pants”? That’d be a good band name.
[Laughs] Yeah. He was a very bad poet, but he doesn’t
know that. He travels the country and gets into different
kinds of adventures – again, pretty silly. And that one
has a lot of singing in it. People break into song way too
much in that one – like every fourth or fifth line.
You
kind of worked out those demons a bit in “Human Nature,”
as well.
I haven’t worked them out yet. It will rear its ugly
head again.
So
this was sort of the “Kung Fu” of troubadour-poet
shows.
Sort of, yeah. That could be a model for it. He has a sidekick
who was actually a newspaper reporter who kind of went astray
and looks to Pants as a hero – this very naïve,
sort of dumb Jimmy Olsen kind of guy.
And I wrote something for HBO which was about a relationship.
I wanted to follow this relationship from its inception, but
it’s sort of anti-romantic – it’s a couple
in this sort of a gridlock situation, where people are together
but there’s never really any clear reason why. And it
was called “In Limbo.”
Was
every episode going to end with them deciding to stay together
for some totally depressing reason?
No, it wasn’t, because that one was more naturalistic.
It was probably closer to “Adaptation” in its form.
I get really frustrated with sitcom romance and movie romance
in general, because it doesn’t seem to bear any relationship
to my own experiences in that realm. I was just trying to
do something that seemed true to me, about struggles that
couples have. I think there’s a lot of damage done to
me personally by movies that don’t reflect the real world
– because I tended to feel “less-than” watching
movies, because my life is never like that. So I didn’t
even want to be mocking of them – I have sympathy for
it, so I thought it might be interesting to present that.
And you know, all of these pilots got fairly close. Some of
the HBO executives liked “In Limbo” – but I
don’t know if it didn’t have “the hook”
or what.
V.
CHAMPIONING AND
SHEPHERDING (BY GEORGE
AND SPIKE, RESPECTIVELY)
You’ve
been shepherded through Hollywood, to a degree, thanks to
Spike Jonze taking an interest in your work. You’re able
to make those assertions about screenwriting because you have
a very privileged vantage point. Do you feel blessed?
I guess I’m lucky. It was a long time coming. It’s
not like I just arrived here. I’ve been struggling to
get into the business for many, many years, and after I did
get into the business, I was working in situation comedies
for a good seven years. So I did serve my time. But when I
hear about other writers’ experiences, yeah, I’m
happy I get to do – at least at this point – what
I’m interested in doing.
What’s
your relationship with Spike Jonze? You’ve now worked
on three movies together. [In addition to directing “Malkovich,”
Jonze co-produced “Human Nature” and directed “Adaptation.”]
He’s a great guy, and I couldn’t be more fortunate,
because he was very interested in my contribution to “Malkovich”
and kept me involved throughout the process, which is atypical
as I understand it. I mean, I was involved in preproduction
and casting and production and editing – I was a partner
in it.
And he’s also interested in the things I’m interested
in – the characters, and what the character’s motivations
were at different points in the movie. We went through the
script with a fine-tooth comb and talked about everything
that happened.
Did
he have a lot of dialogue or story suggestions? I know he
comes at it not only as a director, but as an actor.
Well, the script for “Malkovich” changed considerably
in the last third, and I knew that was going to happen going
in. The original script flew off into some sort of chaos,
which had been my intention, but it wasn’t interesting
to anyone else. [Laughs] So we worked together on changing
the end. But it’s my dialogue, and the first two-thirds
of the movie are almost exactly the same as the original draft.
In terms of Spike’s background as an actor and a director,
the questions that he had were always about character, and
if we needed to change something, the discussion was always
based on him asking, “What’s going on here?”
and my defending it acceptably or not. And I would write the
dialogue.
And
now George Clooney has sort of become your champion, getting
your adaptation of “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”
to the screen.
Yeah, well, George Clooney liked the script. From the beginning,
he wanted to support it by playing one of the roles, helping
it get made – and it went through a series of directors,
stops and starts for various reasons, and he finally decided
he wanted to direct it.
A friend
who’s familiar with “Confessions” asked me
to ask you this: You think Chuck Barris was serious about
this CIA-assassin stuff, right?
He doesn’t treat it as a joke in his book, so I didn’t
treat it as a joke. Again, I like to leave it open to the
viewer, which was my intention – because I think it’s
interesting if it’s true and it’s interesting if
it’s not true. That’s why I took the job. If it’s
not true, why would he come up with this fantasy? In a way,
I always thought it was such a pre-adolescent fantasy. You
know, if you’re not happy with what you did with your
life and you want to embellish it, to say that you were an
assassin for the CIA as an adult – as a 50-year-old man
– seems odd. So I wanted to look at the psyche that would
create that fantasy. If it was a fantasy.
Clooney’s
worked with a lot of strong directors. Do you know if he’s
bringing a strong vision to the material?
You know, I don’t know, really. They’re up in Canada.
I hear that he’s doing a really good job; I’ve spoken
to the producer a few times, and they’ve sent me some
production stills, and it looks beautiful. I was told that
Clooney’s extremely prepared – he’s got a complete
shot list and storyboards and stuff. And they’re on schedule,
and he’s got a good cast – so he’s got good
taste in that regard. He’s partners with Steven Soderbergh;
they have a production company together, and I know they’re
good friends, and obviously Soderbergh’s a real healthy
influence.
VI.
THE KAUFMAN FORMULA:
BIG IDEAS, NO SOLUTIONS
You
told Salon magazine once that you don’t like “solutions,”
and you don’t like movies that provide them. In fact,
you called movies that provide solutions “meaningless.”
Wow. Them’s fightin’ words.
Well,
I wanted to ask you – at the risk of falling into some
colossally pretentious wordplay – if this means that
you find “meaning” in, you know, the Buddhist sense
of the word, in irresolution, in nothingness.
Uh, well … . I’m not really presumptuous enough
to assume that I have any solutions for anything. And I think
a lot of movies fall into that trap, or they feel that people
want them to say, “OK, this is the problem, and that
is the solution – this is what you need to do.”
You know, “If you just love each other, or put your family
over your career” – whatever the hell they’re
talking about. My life is confusing, and I don’t have
any solutions to my own problems. For me to get up there and
present solutions to other people’s problems seems silly
to me. I’m more interested in the confusion and the struggle,
and I feel pretty secure that if I explore that, then I’m
being truthful, as opposed to sticking on some sort of moral
or resolution.
You
put the conclusion-drawing on the audience.
Well, I also think movies or any other kind of fiction are
more interesting if you allow people to come away with different
interpretations of it. I love that about “Being John
Malkovich.” We didn’t really say what the movie
was about for that reason. We didn’t want to taint the
experience. People would talk about it in reviews or online
– what they liked, what they identified with, what they
thought the movie was about – and stuff like that to
me is wonderful. I love people to have conversations about
the things that I’ve worked on, you know?
What’s
your “way in” to a screenplay? Do you start with
characters or do you start with a conceit?
I think I start with a few things. I think about it for a
long time. I don’t do a lot of writing at first –
I play it out in my head and figure out relationships. As
I said, I was sort of inspired on “Human Nature”
by those movies that suggest there’s a “pure”
state for humanity that we need to try and achieve. And I’d
always wanted to write about a feral man. And then I was thinking
about nature. There’s a sort of mock seriousness about
it – although I wanted the characters to be real and
for people to have real feelings for them, I also was kind
of playing with philosophical notions just for fun. I think
I did that in “Malkovich,” also.
It
strikes me in surveying your work that you’re structuring
your stories almost like light-hearted episodes of “The
Twilight Zone.” Each of your screenplays takes a handful
of Big Ideas and messes with them in broad, funny strokes
– “Malkovich” explores mind and body and celebrity,
“Human Nature” dives into language and socialization,
and “Adaptation” tackles the artistic process. Do
you go into these stories with that sort of mission in mind?
The answer is, “Yeah.” [Laughs]
All
that and it was a yes-or-no-question.
I do like to step outside of the conventions of American movies
and play with form and ideas. It’s just another layer.
My idea is to pile as much stuff into it as you possibly can.
The more you stuff into it, the richer the experience –
and the more it gives people to play with in their own minds.
And it’s fun for me, too.
But there’s also a quality of improvisation to it, also;
I do leave things really open when I start writing. I don’t
necessarily want to draw conclusions for myself or know where
the script is going, even – because that makes it more
fun and more challenging and also more of an adventure for
me, and I think it does for people watching it, too, if things
go well. It’s a high-wire act.
Now,
your movies are funny – although there’s a huge
undercurrent of sadness in “Human Nature” –
but it strikes me that your movies are funny in the situational
sense, not the one-liner sense.
Uh-huh.
I know
that’s not an easy path to tread these days in movies,
particularly when they’re so influenced by sitcoms. Do
you just find one-liners tiresome?
Well, I like writing colorful dialogue – I think that
both “Malkovich” and “Human Nature” have
quotable lines in them – but I don’t like writing
lines that have nothing to do with the characters. I can’t
have people making jokes; I have to have people talking about
what they’re talking about because that’s what’s
interesting to me. Hopefully, I’ll do it in a funny way,
or have a dynamic between the characters be funny, or even
have the way that people speak be colorful – but yeah,
I don’t laugh at sitcoms, generally.
You
also told Salon that you try to write your scripts so they
can be pleasurably read.
Yeah. I can’t imagine not doing that. I’m writing
something, you know?
I know for me, one of the problems going into production is
that I consider these scripts finished products – I try
to write it like I’ve written a story, for a bunch of
reasons. One is that I think it helps you sell the ideas that
you’re trying to sell, and I also think it’s important
to create a kind of mood in the reader. And it’s good
for the people who are making the movie – to give them
a sense of the feel of the script, what it needs to look like
when it’s a movie, how it needs to play, what the rhythms
of it need to be.
You
told IndieWire.com that you write down ideas on a little pad
in your pocket.
[Laughs] It’s weird to have this stuff out there, you
know?
What’s
on the little pad in your pocket at the moment?
Let’s see … .[Pause] Oh, you know what? It’s
a new pad, and the only thing on it is the title of a book
that I was interested in buying – and I’m not going
to tell you what that is.
VII.
WHAT’S NEXT:
A NOVEL? A MOVIE?
A MEMORY-WIPING ROMANCE?
You’ve
now moved from being a writer to being a writer and a producer.
Is there a directing gig in your future, or perhaps a novel?
I think both, I’m hoping. The question is: Which first?
Because both are such enormous time commitments, and I can’t
decide. I feel like I need to direct. I’m really only
interested in directing things that I’ve written; I’m
not interested in being a director for hire.
Do
you have a story in mind?
I have ideas. After the movie that I’m working on now
– that Michel’s also directing – gets together,
I’m free for the first time in a long time, so I think
I’m going to write a spec script – so I’ll
own it, and that’ll give me a better chance of getting
the director job.
What’s
the new movie with Michel about?
It’s called “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
It’s a movie about memory. USA is making it; hopefully
it’ll be in production sooner or later this year, depending
on casting issues.
It takes place in a man’s memory as part of it is being
erased. He found out his girlfriend had done this – had
him erased from her memory – and he doesn’t want
to be alone with the memory of their relationship, so he decides
to go and have the same procedure. So most of the movie takes
place in his head, as the memories are being erased –
and you’re watching their relationship unfold sort of
backwards, from the end to the beginning, as each moment is
being erased.
And at the end of it, as the relationship’s close to
the beginning, he becomes more attached to her, because these
are better times – so he wants to stop the erasure process.
So he’s inside his head, and he’s basically trying
to hide her from this procedure. So there are a lot of technical
problems with how to play a story backwards, and have a man
function inside his own brain, and interact with his own memories,
stuff like that.
And it sold at the same time as I took on the job for “Adaptation,”
and all of a sudden, out of not doing anything, I was saddled
with two complicated scripts. It was a difficult time.
Sounds
like you do a heck of a lot of multi-tasking.
Yeah, or avoiding. [Laughs] I had to block out certain projects
to focus on others. I’m not great at writing different
things at the same time, because I really do like to immerse
myself. When I wrote “Malkovich” and “Human
Nature,” I wasn’t working as a screenwriter –
I wrote them for myself during my time off from television.
So there was no pressure, and no one was expecting anything.
But it didn’t work out that way this time around: Things
start to pile up, and people want to shoot a movie.
And the thing I didn’t realize about writing movies that
are going to get produced is that the writing doesn’t
stop until post-production stops – at least for me. During
production, I’m writing when we’re editing and trying
to change things. So you’re living with these scripts
for years. [Pause] It’s awful. [Laughs]
The
nice by-product of all this, however, is that you do have
three movies coming out this year.
I know. That’s so weird. It’s a fluke – they
were all written at different times. You know, “Human
Nature” was originally going to come out last year, and
they talked about releasing “Adaptation” at the
end of 2001, but it just wasn’t ready. And then Miramax
decided to start “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.”
That movie’s been started and stopped several times over
the years.
Do
you feel there’s a lot riding on these three movies?
Is there a lot riding on “Human Nature”’s success?
[Exhales] I don’t know. You know, I can’t think
about it, because it’s not anything that I have any control
over. You know, the “Malkovich” thing was kind of
an extraordinary … fluke, probably. I guess if I have
three movies come out and they all lose enormous amounts of
money, it’ll probably change my profile. [Laughs] But
what can I do? I’ll just continue as long as I can to
do what it is that I want to do – and then I guess when
I can’t, I’ll try to figure out another job.
Well,
you’ll still have had a remarkable run, given the kind
of material that you’re writing.
Yeah, but, you know, I still need to earn a living. So I’ll
have to go back and do TV or something – if they’ll
let me. 
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