BEING CHARLIE KAUFMAN

There is no question that Charlie Kaufman is a complicated genius. His screenplays twist in and out of the conscious world and the depths of our understanding. He makes no claim to understand any better than we do at any time. He is merely telling the story as he sees it, presenting it to us to do with as we will. I feel that if I had the chance to ask Kaufman what it all means, his guess would be as good as mine. He has been nominated three times for screenwriting Oscars (once he even shared the credit with a fictitious twin brother) and this month marks his first attempt at directing with the highly anticipated, SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK. First, Black Sheep looks back at the screenplays and movies that grew from such enigmatic beginnings to become the fascinating experience of being Charlie Kaufman.


Before his screenplay for 1999’s BEING JOHN MALKOVICH fell into the hands of Francis Ford Coppola (who passed it on to his daughter, Sofia, who then passed it on to then husband, Spike Jonze, who went on to direct the film and score an Oscar nomination in a particularly fierce year), Kaufman dragged his talent through the mud writing for television shows as forgettable as, wait … I forget. You can’t keep brilliance like this down forever though. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH made both Kaufman’s and Jonze’s careers when it hit theatres. People had never seen anything remotely like this. It was nearly incomprehensible. Let’s see if I can make sense of the whole thing. Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is a starving puppeteer. His animal loving wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), convinces him to get a real job, y’know, just until the puppet thing takes off. The world beyond his puppet stage makes no sense to him as he has no control outside his safe haven. Outside, the company that hires him operates on the 7 ½ floor, has a secretary with a hearing problem who insists that everyone she encounters has a speech impediment and, oh yeah, his office has a tiny, hidden door that is essentially a portal into John Malkovich’s head. That barely makes sense to me for that matter but this is in itself no matter when the whole thing is so entirely engaging.


Making sense is not what concerns Kaufman. He is concerned with what it all means. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH is a fascinating exploration of what it means to be our selves, the connection between the soul and the body and the governing laws of attraction and success. It leaves a great number of questions unanswered but at no time do you feel like the writer is writing above you or that these unanswered questions have gone forgotten, rendering the experience unfulfilling. If anything, Kaufman has provided a platform from which you can spring forward to challenge your own securities with what it means to be inside your own skin.


The pairing of Kaufman and Jonze was so successful that it was thrilling to hear that the two would work again on Kaufman’s follow-up, ADAPTATION, based on Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief”. Never has the word, “adaptation” been used so loosely. When Kaufman was asked to adapt Orlean’s beautiful and simple novel about flowers, he jumped at the challenge. Kaufman wanted to push himself to do something he had not done before. He didn’t believe that he should just coast along writing what he already knew. Somewhere along the way though, he got lost and ADAPTATION became something about oh so much more than just flowers. Kaufman’s struggle with adapting the source material became the screenplay itself. Before he knew it, he was the protagonist of this film that was supposed to be about flowers. One could call this act self-indulgent or narcissistic but these words, although powerful, cannot fully convey the extent to which Kaufman’s self-obsession reaches. Not only does he write himself into the screenplay but he wrote his twin brother, Donald, in as well. In fact, he called upon Donald to help him write the screenplay and the identical twins went on to earn a shared Oscar nomination for writing. It would have been interesting to see them win though seeing as how Donald is an entirely fictional extension of Kaufman’s own neurosis. (They lost to Ronald Harwood for THE PIANIST).


Charlie (played by Nicolas Cage) is neurotic and believes in artistic value above all else. Donald (funny enough, also played by Cage in an Oscar nominated turn) is trying his hand at writing too but is sticking to conventional Hollywood “wisdom”. They are two opposing forces that make up one complete whole and Cage is a delight as the bridge between them. ADAPTATION becomes a work about adapting – about adapting a book into a screenplay, about humanity’s ability to adapt through the ages and about one man’s struggle with adapting to his own life changes. The cast is completed by more award winning turns by Meryl Streep as Susan Orlean and Chris Cooper as the main subject of her book. Of course, many liberties are taken with Orlean’s source material but you will never see flowers the same way after watching this brilliant work that is perhaps better described as an interpretation than anything else.


Then came the masterpiece. I’ve heard people here and there say that they could not connect with this film but for me ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is an unforgettable experience that dares to tackle one of life’s greatest questions – is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? Joel (Jim Carrey in an underrated performance) sits in a diner. He has called in sick to the job he could care less about and hopped a train into Montauk but he has no idea why. Something inside of him just compelled him to make this uncharacteristically spontaneous move. Clementine (the always charming, Kate Winslet) sits in another booth and Joel is drawn to her. She acknowledges him with a small wave and he asks himself, “Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?” That one questions tells us everything we need to know about Joel. He is lonely and has been for some time. He is a hopeless romantic but also a cynical non-believer. Most of all, he wants to be saved. “Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours,” Clementine says to Joel shortly afterward. And so it would seem the problems are about to begin but in fact they have already begun ages before and run their course.


Exploring a theme he only touched on in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, Kaufman goes deep into the human mind, the conscious and the subconscious parts in ETERNAL SUNSHINE. Clementine has undergone an experimental procedure to have Joel erased from her mind and her life. Who hasn’t wondered if they wouldn’t be better off if they had never met that person who inspired such great passion but also brought about such horrifying turmoil? And when Joel learns that Clementine has done this, he too wants the procedure. Only in the midst of it, he realizes that he doesn’t want this at all. And so he and Clementine revisit every significant moment of their relationship in hopes of finding a place where they can hide until morning when Joel will wake up and Clementine will still be there. Under the sometimes hallucinatory direction of Michel Gondry, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is Kaufman’s most accomplished work and most accessible because of its universal appeal. Even the man who claims not to get humanity clearly gets more than he knows.


Suffice it to say, Kaufman spends an awful lot of time in his head. Up until now, he has managed to take the mess in his mind and make some form of sense on it on paper. He has also been fortunate enough to work with directors that have not only understood his logic but also connected with it in a way that makes it possible for us to do the same. With SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK, Kaufman has cut out the middle man. Now we will see exactly what he does and this will bring us one step closer to taking a trip down a portal into his mind. What remains to be seen is whether we can handle being there any better than he can.

BE KIND, REWIND

Written and Directed by Michel Gondry
Starring Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Melonie Diaz and Mia Farrow


Jerry: The only reason there’s anybody here is because there’s nowhere else to go.

How can someone who has built a reputation for being one of the more imaginative and visually creative directors in modern cinema find himself producing work that feels increasingly limited in scope? French filmmaker, Michel Gondry, broke out of the music video milieu in 2004 with ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. The mind-melting dive into a psyche burnt by love was a dizzying assault on the eyes and a cerebral tickle simultaneously. His narrative film follow-up, THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP (2006), was expected to be a similar experience revolving around the dreamiest of human experiences. While it may have been whimsical, it lacked the firm contemplative nature of its predecessor. This was of course forgiven considering the elusive nature of the subject but disappointment was still felt. Now, as if in direct response to his criticisms of being perhaps too imaginative to be always understood, Gondry has crafted BE KIND, REWIND, where the madness of Gondry falls from the boundless sky and hits the pavement of Passaic, New Jersey, hard. His once ingenious approach is not entirely squashed but rather squeezed into conventional form resulting in a work that tries too hard on all plains.


The beginning of BE KIND, REWIND is both bizarre and boring. A video store clerk (Mos Def), his boss and mentor (Danny Glover) and a junkyard mechanic (Jack Black) sit around with colanders on their heads and stare across the street at a supposedly pimped out ride (an economy car outfitted with gigantic aluminum piping that looks like a musical wind instrument out of the world of Dr. Seuss) as they blabber on about working in a microwave or something equally nonsensical. Gondry just drops us there. He explains nothing as if everything we see is supposed to already make sense. Apparently, it means nothing to Gondry that we are not permanent residents in his brain. By the time Black’s Jerry concocts some plan about sabotaging the neighboring power plant with a grappling hook that I can only assume he found in the junkyard, I was ready to walk. Gondry’s attempt to ground the imagination in a real context only served to show how the two worlds are separate for a reason. Naturally, the sabotage is a disaster and this leads to every videotape in the “Be Kind, Rewind” store being erased by magnetism. Def’s Mike must now replace the tapes before his father figure finds him out and he proves to be the disappointment he fears he truly is. Thankfully, hilarity finally ensues.


Jerry and Mike proceed to reshoot “classic” fare like GHOSTBUSTERS, RUSH HOUR 2 and DRIVING MISS DAISY to replenish the shelves of wasted tapes. As they parade around in costumes made of aluminum foil and Christmas garland, they remove every trace of quality from these conventional crowd pleasers. Their antics and approaches are goofy and very funny in an intimate fashion; the chemistry between the pompous Black and the timid Def is just what the film needs to get the audience laughing and rooting for its formerly uninteresting heroes. And while they may look to be ruining these films at first, what they are really doing is reminding the audience that movies needn’t be made for millions of dollars to be entertaining. Suddenly, there is a lot being said in BE KIND, REWIND. The neighborhood that is home to the store is being entirely remodeled and Glover’s Mr. Fletcher wants to transition from VHS to DVD in order to compete with the chain stores that are gobbling up small business. The nostalgia for simpler times points out how glossing everything over to look new doesn’t erase what is underneath. Despite this, Gondry is too busy glossing his own work over to solidly make his point.


When BE KIND, REWIND is funny, it’s hysterical. When it is not, it is awkward and annoying. Though the film praises the amateur filmmaker in all of us, this is no excuse for it to play out like it was actually made by an amateur. Still, the film fosters a strong community effort to work together and be a part of movie making magic – a world so many of us admire regularly from afar but so few comparatively get to be involved in. The little guy can have his voice too and push his imagination further than, well, he ever imagined. Unfortunately, Gondry makes a crucial mistake and forgets to ask the audience to join in all the fun.

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP

Written and Directed by Michel Gondry

I am half asleep while writing this review. I think that’s appropriate. I think, therefore I am awake? Maybe I’ll fall in and out of my own dreams while I write but I doubt it. With rare exceptions, I do not have any difficulty differentiating between my subconscious and my conscious life. The same cannot be said for Stéphane (Gael Garcia Bernal), the naïve and enigmatic dreamer who carries us charismatically through writer/director Michel Gondry’s THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP. Stéphane has an easier time living in his dreams than in his monotonous day-to-day life where nothing seems to go the way he’d like it to. In his dreams, he is the host of “Stéphane TV”; he calls the shots and dictates to his apparent audience what to think, where to look and how to see things. His television studio comes from the imagination of Gondry, an infamous dreamer. The walls are made of egg cartons; the cameras are made out of boxes; and Stéphane is showing his audience a recipe for dreams. Mix random thoughts with reminiscences from the day just passed, like songs you heard or things you saw. Blend that with past memories of friends and lovers and you have hours of dreaming ahead of you. Take one part linear romantic boy-chasing-girl storyline and several parts absurdist visual experimentations, mix well and you have THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP.

Stéphane, a Mexican-born painter, has just moved to Paris at the insistence of his mother. His father has just died and she tells him that she can get him work as an artist. He has taken up in her apartment to find that not much has changed. He soon realizes that the work his mother secured for him is much less artistic than he had been led to believe it was. Amidst his frustrating disappointment, he meets Stéphanie, his next-door neighbor. Though it is not love at first sight, he falls for her and they dance the dance that no one seems to know how to dance without stepping on each other’s toes. Gondry weaves Stéphane’s pursuit of Stéphanie in and out of dream and reality. The seamlessness between each existence confuses the viewer to the point where one is not clear whether or not he is really getting any closer to her. When it isn’t going well in the real world, Stéphane almost forces himself into his dreams where he feels he has a better grasp on the situation. Though, the surreal atmosphere can be interpreted numerous ways, the real path can be traced and appreciated. There is pain but there is escape from that pain.


Gondry does not limit his analysis of sleep to when people are actually sleeping. In fact, while sleeping, Stéphane does an awful lot more living and learning than when he’s awake. Stéphane’s passion is for painting the greatest disasters the world has ever known. He would like nothing more than to combine these images with astrological forecasts, creating a new kind of calendar – disasterology. Instead of making this calendar, he is wasting away as a typesetter. Gondry now folds a different kind of dream into the batter, the conscious dreams we have that serve as hope for a better future. Stéphane might as well be asleep given that the drab nature of his work is pushing his dreams further away. Then there is the work colleague that sleeps with any girl he can. As every experience is purely visceral and devoid of meaning, he is passing his time more than anything else. Even the world’s greatest time waster is given a grandiose send off as Stéphane and his same colleague (Alain Chabat), hurl a television into a river after feeling inundated with useless imagery. Gondry is fascinated with the mysterious yet inevitable lost hours that pass while we sleep and the exorbitant amount of time that we knowingly throw away while we’re awake.

Though not as satisfying as Gondry’s attempt to answer the question whether it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all (ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND), THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP is an amusing puzzler that plants seeds of thought in the gardens of your mind without you noticing. Stéphane’s life is a perfect example of how little life makes sense. His dreams take the elements of his life he cannot comprehend and try to make sense of them in his head by mixing them up and placing them in a new order. The sad thing is that while he’s trying to pick it all apart with his scientific approach to sleep, he doesn’t see that he’s met someone who speaks his language and shares similar dreams.