In an interview to promote FX series Fosse/Verdon, its costume designer Mellisa Thoth talked to Deadline. She also happened to be the costume designer on I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and commented briefly on working with Charlie.

You recently reteamed with Charlie Kaufman on his latest directorial effort, I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Was that exciting for you?

Of course! What I would like to say is that I think every producer in Hollywood should give him as much money as possible to make as many films as he wants, at any time. He’s brilliant. I would collaborate with him on absolutely anything. The latest, you couldn’t call it anything but a Charlie Kaufman movie, and to me, that’s one of the highest compliments you can pay. (Source)

CAN'T WAIT.

Charlie finally managed to seel that gorgeous bungalow, according to the LA Times:

Charlie Kaufman’s Pasadena home sale went according to script. Just a month after listing his 109-year-old Craftsman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter sold it for $2.535 million ­– or $60,000 less than his asking price.

[...] Georges Rouveyrol of Sotheby’s International Realty held the listing. (Source)

I guess I can stop saving for it. I already had like $200 squirrelled away.

Thanks to Justin!

Video essayist Michael Tucker's YouTube channel Lessons From the Screenplay recently hit the 1 million subscriber mark, and he celebrated in a pretty nifty way: by analysing Adaptation, in the form of a short film about Tucker trying to figure out how to make a video analysing Adaptation. Surpisingly it's actually pretty great!

Self-referential work is really easy to create (I say this from personal experience, and from seeing a lot of stuff inspired by Adaptation), but it's difficult to do well (also personal experience and seeing a lot of it in my Inbox) and it's always much better if there's a reason for going all self-referential. This one ticks the boxes. Plus Tucker gives some good insight into Charlie's film, which is the point of the whole thing.

For $2.595 million, you can have CK's Pasadena bungalow. 109 years old in the Arroyo area, 1/4 acre, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms,  2-bed/1-bath guesthouse, terraced gardens, yadda yadda. More info and pics here.

I spent some time squinting at the book spines in his study.

Thanks to Mark!

[EDIT: I remembered Charlie and his wife had a Pasadena house up for sale a few years ago, too, so I checked and it was this same house, back in 2011.]

The Trouble With Larry was a shortlived 90s sitcom starring Bronson Pinchot, right after Perfect Strangers ended. How shortlived was it? Three episodes aired, and that was the end of Larry's troubles. Courteney Cox was in it, too.

If memory serves, Rick Cunningham was one of the show's writers--he would go on to script the unproduced Killing Charlie Kaufman. Also on Larry's staff was Charlie himself, who scripted one unproduced episode.

Over at the blog Perfect Strangers Reviewed, Philip J. Reed takes a two-part deep dive into the show, including Charlie's unproduced episode. How Reed got this script I do not know, but I think I would love a copy? Or maybe I wouldn't. Anyway, the episode's title is 'Pinata Full of Bones.'

It’s written by Charlie Kaufman, though, and while I’d love to say it’s hilarious, brilliant, or even moderately clever, it’s actually pretty awful.  It does have at least some of the hallmarks of a writer who knows he’s too good for the crap he’s writing.

Part 1, Part 2. Part 2's the one with Charlie's episode.

Rob Harvilla of The Ringer thinks so.

Being John Malkovich turns 20 this year (!!!), as does every film released in 1999... and since 1999 was arguably one of the greatest years in American movie history, they've been spending this week taking a second look at some of those masterpieces.

Here's how the article starts:

The first hour of Being John Malkovich—Spike Jonze’s first feature film, Hollywood’s equally momentous introduction to dour-genius screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, and without question my favorite movie of 1999 back in 1999—is a plenty psychedelic and traumatic thing. Particularly for John Malkovich himself. This sublimely bonkers movie’s first half alone will forever change the way you think about puppeteering, threesomes, personal identity, office buildings, Cameron Diaz, and the lust of the elderly. But the most shocking and delightful scene is when a terrified Malkovich turns to the only friend he can trust and the last person you’d expect. (Source)

Thanks to Tim!

So here's a thing, which hinges on Catherine Keener's presence in both Being John Malkovich and Get Out:

[In Being John Malkovich] After becoming pregnant by the body of John Malkovich while Lotte was inhabiting it (I probably should have mentioned that this article is NSFW), Maxine [Keener] gives birth to a daughter, Emily, whom she and Lotte happily intend to raise together. Except, as we learn in the last scene of the movie, Craig’s soul is actually trapped in the young daughter’s body. Talk about a classic setup for a sequel!

As the theory (which likely began on Reddit but has now become widespread enough to warrant its own lengthy section on the Being John Malkovich Wikipedia page) goes, Maxine and Lotte continued to crave the experience of inhabiting other people’s bodies, even after the Malkovich portal had closed. They eventually crossed paths with neurosurgeon Roman Armitage, the malevolent patriarch of Get Out, who transplanted the spirit of dressed-down Cameron Diaz into the body of Bradley Whitford (Malkovichy enough, I guess, given the options). Of course when you relocate your family to try and find illicit portals into other people’s consciousness, it’s always wise to assign everybody new identities, so “Rose Armitage” is actually grown-up Emily, and such is the nuance of Allison Williams’s performance that I didn’t even realize she was playing a disgruntled John Cusack trapped in a young woman’s body until at least the third viewing.

[...]

Still on the fence? What if I told you that the place where Chris finds the incriminating photos of Rose’s past paramours in Get Out is … BEHIND A VERY TINY DOOR? (Source)

Jordan Peele was asked about this theory and apparently likes it so much that he's decided it is true.

Big thanks to Tim!

Pitchfork recently published a rundown of what they believe are the 50 Best Movie Soundtracks of All Time, and Eternal Sunshine gets a look in at #37.

Perennial L.A. cult figure Jon Brion’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind score, rich in filigree, has all the hallmarks of his own music and his more pointillist collaborations with Fiona Apple, though the brief cues often pull up agonizingly short of fully realizing that promise. But the bruised heartache that left his solo album on the major-label shelf for years was the perfect match for a film that crystallized the impossibility of a perfect love, exploding into its ultimate form with Beck’s devastating cover of the Korgis’ “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime.” Even the most invested follower of Brion’s work would’ve been surprised by his trajectory after this soundtrack, which elevated him from a fêted figure within a tight local scene to a go-to collaborator for Kanye West and Spoon. –Laura Snapes (Source)

Thanks to Mark for that!

Meanwhile, when Eternal Sunshine's trailer first hit the web, by far the most popular question in my Inbox was "What's the name of that song?" It was ELO's Mr. Blue Sky, and it came from the double album Out of the Blue, which turns 42 this year. The band released this animation to commemorate the occasion and to celebrate what is one of co-founder Jeff Lynne's favourite songs.

Says Variety, Brie Larson has exited I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and into her shoes steps Jessie Buckley. Also signing on: Toni Collette and David Thewlis. Thewlis previously starred in Charlie's animated flick Anomalisa.

Which is a little confusing, given this report that says the film has been shooting recently "around the Hudson Valley this week, including at the Red Line Diner in Fishkill." Maybe they were filming exteriors, scouting locations and whatnot?

Thanks to Tim, Jerome and Mark for the heads up!

I have a backlog of other links and stuff to work through. I'll get them up as soon as possible.

Great piece on Vanity Fair's site, where Jim Carrey and Michel Gondry got together to share memories of working on Eternal Sunshine. There are a handful of nuggets here that I don't remember hearing before.

A post-S.N.L., pre-30 RockTracy Morgan, for example, played Joel’s neighbor in a few flashbacks that did not make the finished film. “He’s a comedic genius,” said Gondry—“Genius!” Carrey emphasized. But “the reality is he was Tracy Morgan”—which made his presence a bit of a distraction. (Morgan’s rep says the comedian doesn’t remember if he acted in the film.)

At least Morgan is in good company: the film also could have featured Ellen Pompeo, who had a scrapped scene as Joel’s ex-girlfriend, Naomi. To this day, Carrey swears Gondry cast Pompeo because of her glancing resemblance to Renée Zellweger, with whom he had just broken up before filming Eternal Sunshine.

[...]

Gondry had one concern, though; his debut film, Human Nature (also written by Kaufman), was about to hit theaters, and he was pretty sure it was going to be a box-office flop, which could very well scare away the big movie star he had just hooked. “Michel and I sat in this restaurant, and he made me sign a napkin saying when Human Nature came out and was a bomb, I wouldn’t let him go,” Carrey recalled with a laugh.

[...]

Gondry, for his part, remembered knowing Winslet was exactly right for the part of the kooky, bewigged Clementine because she was the only person unafraid to give notes on Kaufman’s script. (Source)

One anecdote I think Carrey gets wrong, speaking of changes made to the script: “We don’t end up together in Charlie’s version. I walk away,” Carrey said in a recent phone interview. Doesn't the script marked as the First Draft end on a depressing note, with Carrey's character as an old man, still living out the memory erasure loop, trying to reconnect with Clem? I dunno. Probably at some point, the script had the ending Carrey describes. It's been 15 years and I am too sleepy/lazy to check.

Big thanks to Mark, Laurel and Julie!