When Charlie Kaufman was just a Charlie Kaufman, as opposed to the Charlie Kaufman, he emailed Tom Noonan:

I made a movie called “What Happened Was” in 1992 and it won ‘Best Film’ at Sundance and it was relatively popular.

Charlie had seen the movie back in the early 90’s when he wasn’t really Charlie Kaufman yet and he wrote to me, a couple different e-mails because I was a pretty available person and he began communicating with me and was very complimentary about me, the movie and loved it.

Then we stopped writing, time went by and “Being John Malkovich” came out and “Adaption” [sic] and Charlie, in an interview, was being asked who his influences were and he generally talked about me which was very gratifying.

Over time, because he was talking about me a lot, we ended up meeting and became friends at which point, he reminded me he had written an e-mail to me years earlier.

Charlie and I were friends basically through my work and were friends for more than a decade before he casted me in “Anomalisa,” the play, in 2005. (Source)