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Remember Too Many Cooks, Adult Swim's insanely long, weird, Kaufmanesque opening credit sequence for a show that doesn't exist? You're missing out if you haven't seen it.

Inverse have published an oral history of how the thing came to be.

The world changed forever on October 28, 2014, at four in the morning, but most of us wouldn’t know it until almost a week later.

When Adult Swim debuted Too Many Cooks in that early morning time slot, almost no one thought it would find an audience. Within a week, the surreal 11-minute parody of a ‘90s sitcom theme song had racked up over 5 million views on YouTube and earned public praise from the likes of Zach Braff and Star Wars director Rian Johnson. (In the years since it’s pulled in another 15 million streams on YouTube, and that’s not even counting all the parodies, explainer videos, and unofficial rips.)

It took a full year, a skeleton crew, and dozens of extras to bring this half-baked concept to life. To mark its four-year anniversary, and shed a little light on how a bit of late-night stoner comedy won over the internet with surrealist humor and a catchy tune, Inverse spoke to 10 people behind Too Many Cooks, from creator Casper Kelly to the musicians who wrote the song, to the villain. (Source)

The original:

Synecdoche sure has been getting some love in its 10th anniversary year. (News which will both delight and frustrate Charlie.)

Here's Show Me The Meaning! podcast, chiming in with a discussion of the film.

On Birth.Movies.Death, A Case For Greatness is a series of posts that "tries to argue for, and to champion, forgotten or underappreciated films in a variety of genres that may be worthy of being called 'classics.'"

Enter their take on Synecdoche, New York:

When I first watched Synecdoche, New York back in the winter of 2008, I couldn’t wait to turn it off, and I very aggressively did not want to talk about it afterward; even though I was a huge fan of Charlie Kaufman, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and virtually everyone involved, there was something in it that made me deeply unhappy, but more than that, I just found it profoundly unsettling in a way I could not qualify, and didn’t want to try. Nevertheless, it stuck with me and stayed in my mind, sporadically popping up over the next several months to remind me of its choices, and before long, I found myself sitting down to watch it for a second time. What I soon discovered was not just that Synecdoche is one of the best films of the new century, but it’s a profound, wry, moving, somehow misanthropic but deeply hopeful portrait of humanity that grafted itself onto my emotional and philosophical worldview and simply will not let go, even ten years later. (Source)

It's a lengthy post and well worth checking out.

A: Heroes (2006-2010).

The show's creator, Tim Kring, is developing a new series called Unknown 9, about an occult conspiracy, and he spoke to Inverse about the inspirations behind Heroes at the NY Comic Con.

“Then I saw my friend Charlie Kaufman’s film that he wrote, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Kring continues. “His daughter and my son were in school together. I was really influenced by that movie.”

Kring explained how Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) took two typical people and thrust them into extraordinary circumstances with a bizarre sci-fi twist about deliberately deleted memories.

[...]

“The idea of these hyper-normal characters, the kind of people you’d see walking on the street and never look twice at, they’re not just anonymous but hyper-anonymous,” Kring says. “The idea that extraordinary things could happen in their lives. I hadn’t seen that on television yet.” (Source)

The other two inspirations he mentions are a specific scene in his earlier series, Crossing Jordan, and the film Magnolia.

This 3-minute documentary from 60 Second Docs (!) reminds me of a movie I once saw. Street puppeteer Ricky Syers is a talented dude.

In news not too shocking, Cary Fukunaga--currently showrunner for the Kaufmanesque Maniac on Netflix--has confirmed Charlie as an influence, but the film he names in this Den of Geek interview is a little surprising.

Like Kaufman's 2004 romance classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Maniac features plenty of scenes within the architecture of the human brain and even deals with a man and woman whose consciousnesses just can't seem to be separated. [...] Maniac director/showrunner and future Bond director Cary Fukunaga confirmed that these Kaufman influences were very much intentional.

Interestingly it's not Eternal Sunshine that Fukunaga brings up but another Kaufman film (and the first he directed), Synecdoche, New York. 

"Synecdoche, New York is what we would have preferred to have as a budget and a timeline of the show to explore until everyone grew old," Fukunaga says. (Source)

I watched the first episode last night. It's pretty good, but the Kaufman comparison will probably drive Charlie a little nuts. (From a 2016 interview: “Yes. I sometimes see things and think ‘Oh, that may have been influenced by me,’ and people tell me that they’ve been influenced by me. But I’ve also seen critics say ‘This is a Charlie Kaufman-type movie, and so-and-so made it.’ And it’s like… why do they get to make Charlie Kaufman movies and I don’t? I think about that all the time.”)

BCKster Dillan sends news that Netflix have a page for I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Charlie's upcoming adaptation of Iain Reid's novel. Of course it's not much to look at just yet--production hasn't started, as far as anyone knows--but it's something, and it's an official tangible something:

How's about a 10 minute video essay putting Eternal Sunshine alongside German philosopher Schopenhauer and suffering? Yes? HAVE I GOT THE THING FOR YOU.

From the Youtube description:

The collision between 19th century Arthur Schopenhauer and 21st century film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Is pessimism rational?

It's part of a series called Renegade Cut: Philosophy and Politics in the Movies.

Here's a good video essay on the evolving ways Charlie has approached his pet themes throughout his work.

Says Open Culture:

Now acclaimed as a screenwriter and the director of the films Synecdoche, New York and Anomalisa, he brought his penchant for the intersection of the philosophical and surreal even to the first projects he worked on. These include episodes of television shows like Get a Life, the early-1990s sitcom known primarily for its weirdness, and the more subtly askew Ned and Stacey a few years later. But only at the end of the 1990s did Hollywood and its audiences taste Kaufman's writing in its purest form in Being John Malkovich.

Being John Malkovich [...] launched a cinematic exploration of Kaufman's signature themes: control, connection, identity, mortality. That exploration would continue in Kaufman and Jonze's next film, Adaptation, as well as in his collaborations with director Michel Gondry, Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. "Writing with Honesty," the Channel Criswell video essay above, shows us how Kaufman has approached those themes in the films he has written for other directors as well as for himself. (Source)

In 2012 it was reported that Guillermo del Toro and Charlie were once thinking about adapting the Vonnegut classic Slaughterhouse Five, and in 2013 it was reported that del Toro hadn't entirely given up on the idea. Now Variety reports that a Slaughterhouse series has landed at Epix and neither of those guys are involved.

Universal Cable Productions’ “Slaughterhouse-Five” series is now in development at Epix, Variety has learned exclusively.

Based on Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel of the same name, the project focuses on Billy Pilgrim, a WW2 soldier who becomes “unstuck in time” and travels back and forth through his past, present and future. The novel explores the idea of predestination versus free will, the impacts of war, as well as the perception of time itself.

UCP will produce. The series hails from writer and executive producer Patrick Macmanus, who is currently the showrunner on “Happy!” at Syfy. Gale Anne Hurd of Valhalla Entertainment will also executive produce along with Jon Brown of Ensemble Entertainment and Bradley Yonover of Brand Y Media. Kari Skogland, who recently secured an Emmy nomination for her work on “The Handmaid’s Tale,” is attached to direct. (Source)

Which doesn't rule out a Kaufman adaptation, but it doesn't exactly increase the likelihood, eh?