Given the furiously comic nature of Charlie Kaufman's screenwriting, it's easy to imagine him as the intensely sarcastic, spontaneously witty type. Instead, he seems to exercise that aspect of his personality on the page. In fact, the real Charlie Kaufman looks so unremarkable that, walking into a recent interview, I hardly recognized the shy, bearded man waiting across the room (though that has more to do with the fact that the reclusive writer never allows his photograph to be taken).
This is the guy behind Being John Malkovich? This is the guy portrayed by Nicholas Cage as a fat, balding and intensely neurotic screenwriter in Spike Jonze's new film, Adaptation? Adaptation is the second of three ambitious Kaufman scripts to be produced this year, along with the bizarro love-triangle comedy Human Nature and George Clooney's directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, about "Gong Show" host and part-time secret agent Chuck Barris (or so the movie suggests).
It takes some getting used to, the notion that movies as wildly imaginative as these might come from someone as mildly mannered as this. When posed with questions, Kaufman doesn't stammer like Woody Allen or blurt with Hunter S. Thompson's gusto. He takes his time and thoughtfully crafts his responses, hesitantly deflecting his gaze as he speaks. He's shy, not sheepish, and his answers reveal something of his true personality. We wanted to know what Kaufman looks for in movies, what inspires him, so we asked him to recommend five films of personal significance. Here's what he picked.
What Happened Was...(1994, dir: Tom Noonan, starring: Karen Sillas, Tom Noonan)
It's a two-character movie that takes place in one apartment. It's about a first date. I've seen the movie maybe 10 times, and I always find something new in the dynamic between these two people. I was asked to present a movie that I really liked at UCLA last year, and it's the first time I saw it with an audience. It was amazing the kind of stuff people were laughing at. There were things that I found really moving and horrifying that people were laughing at, and I didn't mind it. I thought it was kind of great. That's the thing I love about good movies, that people can have different reactions to the same moment. There's a lot of stuff I don't understand about what's going on -- sometimes I find the movie very funny, sometimes it's just tragic and sometimes it's both -- but it's really fascinating to me. I just think it's true, and I think that if you can have two characters in a room for two hours, you've done an amazing thing.
Naked(1993, dir: Mike Leigh, starring: David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp)
It's sort of similar, the way that Mike Leigh and Tom Noonan work. They workshop these things, and I think that's where they get the richness and the density in the performances and the script, the precision. There seems to be this truth found in moments that you don't see in movies that are really heavy scripted. Mike Leigh will work for six months developing these characters with the actors, not knowing where the story's going to go. It's about a drifter who comes to London to see this old girlfriend of his. It follows him on this odyssey through London, meeting all these different characters. Every single person he meets is so funny and sad and rich. David Thewlis, who plays the lead, gives one of the best film performances I've ever seen. He's such an awful character on paper, yet you find yourself having such sympathy for him. I have sort a theater background, and I really like good actors, so if I were to direct a movie, it's certainly a way that I would consider doing it.
Safe(1995, dir: Todd Haynes, starring: Julianne Moore, Xander Berkeley)
I first saw Julianne Moore in Vanya on 42nd Street, where her character was the polar opposite of the one she plays in this movie. Here she's a stereotypical sort of upper-middle-class suburban housewife who develops one of these allergies to the world, and it takes over her life. I think she's great. She gives this almost blank, sad performance that's completely in tune with the style of the movie. It has this balance between surreality and the real world that's very impressive to me. It's one of those movies where it's also funny maybe, but you're not really sure. It doesn't tell you what to think about anything that it shows you, which is something that I always aspire to in stuff that I'm writing. All these movies are comedies in a way. In Human Nature, we wanted to strike a balance. We didn't want to make fun of Patricia Arquette's character, which was delicate because the idea of a hairy woman is so freaky to people. We had great affection for that character, and we didn't want people to see her on the screen and laugh. We didn't want it to feel like it was a Farrelly brothers presentation of a person.
Barton Fink(1991, dir: Joel Coen, starring: John Turturro, John Goodman)
I think it's the Coen brothers' weirdest movie. It's just great, with really good performances by everybody: John Goodman and John Turturro, all the supporting people. It's full of really, really funny moments, and it's so strange and creepy. It's about this sort of Clifford Odets writer in the '30s. He's this socially conscious New York playwright who gets hired by the studios to be a screenwriter, so he moves out to Los Angeles to write this wrestling movie. It's about his struggle to write this script, but it's just very odd and demented. I think anybody who writes screenplays identifies with not knowing how. Adaptation is a very conceptual movie, but it has the same basis. The structure of the movie turns in on itself and transforms as you're watching it. It's got two stories that it follows: One is the story of the guy writing the screenplay, and the other is the story of the woman writing the book that he is basing the screenplay on. They take place in two different times three years apart. They kind of inform each other and interact in a way that things that are separated by time can, and then they come together in the present at the end of the movie in a hopefully surprising way. I was hired to write an adaptation of this book [The Orchid Thief], and I didn't know how to do it, so I decided to write what I was thinking about. I didn't tell the studio because I didn't think that they would let me do it, and I didn't have any other ideas, so I figured I would just take my chance and do it.
Ladybird Ladybird(1994, dir: Ken Loach, starring: Crissy Rock, Vladimir Vega)
It's based on a true story, and it's about a woman in England who's considered an unfit mother. She's got a bunch of children that are being taken away from her, and she's trying to deal with that as well as a new relationship that she's starting with this really nice man. Again, it's the acting that gets me. Crissy Rock plays the mother. I think she was a standup comic or something, and this is the first part she ever had in a movie. It's one of the most real, heartbreaking performances that I've ever seen in a movie. This is not a comedy by any stretch of the imagination. It's a really hard movie to watch, but it's just so real and so compelling because of that. You feel like you are seeing an actual live person on the screen.
