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You may have seen the Oscars. Here's Octavia Spencer, Green Book producer, showing John Cusack how to get off at the 7 1/2 floor.

Thanks to Dave!

HEY NOW.

Charlie's unfilmable novel about an impossible movie has a pre-order page on Amazon's U.K. site, and the previously untitled novel NOW HAS A TITLE, and the title is: Antkind.

If Amazon can be believed (and in essence I think it can), the book clocks in at 336 pages and will be published on 6 February, 2020, though I wouldn't be quick to bet my life savings on that date. That's the UK edition, published by 4th Estate, the "literary fiction" imprint of Harper Collins. (Franzen, Proulx, Chabon and Eugenides are in their stable.)

Says the cryptic blurb:

A bold, provocative and very funny debut novel from the award-winning screenwriter and director A bold, timely and boundlessly original novel about identity, masks, memory and reality, from the mind that brought you films such as Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York.

I imagine Antkind is a play on mankind. 300 pages seems pretty sensible. For some reason I was expecting Charlie to hit us with a Foster Wallace-esque doorstop.

Antkind hasn't shown up yet on the U.S. Amazon site.

Just in case the U.K. Amazon page vanishes, behold proof:

A little Googling turned up a page at Harper Collins (UK)...

... but clicking the link leads to a dead page.

Still, the little blurb in Google's search results and at Amazon UK can be found at Kobo, too.

Huge thanks to Seed for the tip!

In 2003 Meryl Streep accepted a BAFTA on behalf of Charlie and Donald Kaufman (Best Adapted Screenplay, Adaptation), and he wrote a speech for her to read out. It was pretty funny, and it was very, very Charlie. I posted about it at the time, but I don't think there was video online, and I never bothered checking in later years, but here we go! Popped up in one of my feeds the other day.

So here is a thing I'd heard nothing about until a couple hours ago. The NY Indie Theatre Film Festival runs February 8-11, and premiering there (among other films, panels and events) will be Hey Charlie, a short film starring none other than Mr. Kaufman. It's directed by Shaun Irons.

"Hey Charlie" is a short hallucinatory film featuring renowned screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman. Nearing the end of his stay at an artists' retreat, Charlie’s daily ritual walk in the woods turns into an ordeal of repetition and delusion. These interruptions - either real or imagined - break into his consciousness, causing anxiety and panic as he contemplates how much (or little) he has accomplished during his time at the Colony. (Source)

Here's the teaser on Vimeo:

I came across this via a Broadway World article.

So here's 2019, and just to make you feel old immediately, Den of Geek brings us 20 movies turning 20 this year, including Being John Malkovich.

1999 was a great year in cinema.

Being John Malkovich

A puppeteer discovers a door behind a filing cabinet of the 7½th floor of a faceless office building that leads into the mind of John Malkovich. Wait, what? The premise for the first feature-length movie from music video director Spike Jonze was pretty out there to say the least. And it only gets more inventive (and weird) as the story unfolds. An existentialist fantasy of mind-blowing scope, nobody had seen anything like it before. Writer Charlie Kaufman came up with the story and used it as his portal from the world of TV into feature films, while John Cusack became involved as puppeteer Craig after asking his agent for “the craziest, most unproduceable script you can find."

Cameron Diaz shed her blonde bombshell image and is almost unrecognizable in the role of Lotte, Craig’s wife, who falls for his co-worker Maxine (Catherine Keener) while inside Malkovich’s head. Oh, and of course John Malkovich plays himself and, at one point he enters his own mind through the portal. It’s almost too much for our tiny brains to comprehend, and it blew the minds of critics, audiences and the Academy, with three Oscar nods – for Jonze, Kaufman and Keener. (Source)

Lucy Benjamin has a deep essay on Maifeminism.com, looking at sex in cinema, and Anomalisais a reference throughout.

Here's the intro and a snippet.

The problem that orients this paper is straightforwardly simple: is it possible to dismantle the synonymy between the filmed body of the woman having sex and the subsequent (masculine) consumption of the body in question?

[...]

Situating claims that encompass film – though not purely visual – aesthetics, politics and philosophy within the narrative framework of Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s 2015 stop-motion film, Anomalisa, affirms the force of the voice and the aural as sites of political performance. The film’s abstraction of reality through the use of stop-motion puppets emphasises the presence of voice, a stress that is heightened by the film’s narrative preoccupation with voice and identity. All the film’s characters are voiced by Tom Noonan, the only exception being the protagonist Michael (David Thewlis) and the anomalous Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), hence the film’s title – a portmanteau of anomaly and Lisa. The seemingly simplistic casting of three voice actors for the entire film complicates the spectator’s understanding of what it means to connect and empathise with a character. I argue that this disconnection is born in direct relation to the flatness of the character’s voicing, an opacity which is broken principally by the singularity of Lisa’s voice. (Source)

Thanks to Chay!

In a lengthy interview with ShortList on "growing up, being fired and #MeToo," Sarah Silverman gives Charlie a cool little shout-out.

I did go through a little bit of not knowing how I was gonna make money. I’m lucky in that I don’t really think about the future much. I never have. I never think: “Where will I be in five years?” I always just keep my head down, do stand-up, and things just happen. One of my favourite quotes is from Charlie Kaufman, who said something like: “Do not fear failure; failure is a badge of honour. It means you risked failure.” And that’s a life-changer if you take it in. (Source)

Also, today this site turns 17. HOORAY. That's very bloody long for a site to stay online. Much thanks goes to my not having a life. HOORAY.

Jesse Plemons is the latest name attached to Charlie's adaptation of Iain Reid's "m Thinking of Ending Things. Says Variety:

Jesse Plemons is in talks to co-star with Brie Larson in Charlie Kaufman’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” for Netflix, sources tell Variety.

Plemons will play Jake, a man going on a road trip to meet his parents on their secluded farm with his girlfriend (Larson), who is thinking of terminating their relationship. When Jake makes an unexpected detour leaving her stranded, a twisted mix of palpable tension, psychological frailty, and sheer terror ensues. (Source)

Thanks to Mark for the tip!

Casting news! Via The Playlist:

At the beginning of this year, it was reported that Kaufman had gone to Netflix to make “I’m Thinking Of Ending Things,” based on the book by Iain Reid — which features a book blurb by Kaufman. Now, Kaufman’s found a star in Brie Larson, aka Marvel‘s Captain Marvel (who maybe not so coincidentally has a new trailer debuting tonight). (Source)

Whee! Nothing else to report yet, though.

This is wonderful and sad and reminded me of Caden Cotard. Or Black Mirror.

ReplyAll is a fantastic podcast that you all should check out, and they recently did a piece on a woman who, as a 13-year-old, built "a tiny world that she has complete, perfect control over. And then one day, that world forces her to make an impossible decision." Don't want to give away too much more.