The team behind Anomalisa have reached their minimum goal of $200 000 on Kickstarter. HOORAY -- it looks like Charlie's "sound play" actually will be adapted into an animated short film. They'd love to raise more funds, though, and they've recently added more nifty incentives for folks who wish to contribute dough to the project. An email was sent out today, listing some of those rewards for backers of the project:
New tiers including:
A Special Edition Limited (signed and numbered) Run 24x38 Silkscreened Poster
A Special Edition Limited Run American Apparel Black Zip Front Hooded Sweatshirt
A Special Edition Limited Run Pair of Chuck Taylor Shoes
All featuring ORIGINAL KAUFMAN INSPIRED ARTWORK from PENDELTON WARD the creator of ADVENTURE TIME on CARTOON NETWORK!!
Each tier is limited to 100 each and only available to backers of this project! So act fast!!
I would ***LOVE*** that Pendelton Ward artwork. The hoodie features his artwork, too. The shoes would be good also. I'm not fussy.
Speaking of funds and me being not rich, BCK's own annual bills are approaching -- hosting, plugins, domain name, yadda yadda, all the stuff that keeps this site alive -- and I wouldn't say no if you wanted to contribute a few spare coins. Every little bit really does help, and is VERY appreciated. I've set up a little donation thermometer thingy in the sidebar, so you can see how we're goin'.
A team of film-makers is looking to turn Charlie's "sound play," Anomalisa, into an animated short, and they're using Kickstarter to fund the project. WE HAVE TO CHIP IN, GUYS. This looks awesome. The team behind the project would like to raise $200 000, and so far they're at about $31,500.
Anomalisa is a stop-motion animated film written by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).
The film is about a man crippled by the mundanity of his life.
The film will be approximately 40 minutes in length.
[...] Our goal is to produce this unique and beautiful film outside of the typical Hollywood studio system where we believe that you, the audience, would never be allowed to enjoy this brilliant work the way it was originally conceived. We've been working in the television and movie industry for years and we just want to make something ourselves. Something pure. Something beautiful.
So, please pledge as much as you can and be a part of this very special project! (Source)
The film is being produced at Starburns Industries. The creative team's made up of Dan Harmon(Community), Dino Stamatopoulos(Moral Orel), Rosa Tran, and director Duke Johnson. They're providing some awesome incentives for project backers, too.
Some background: a few years ago, Charlie wrote a "sound play" called Anomalisa, for the L.A. leg of Carter Burwell's Theater of the New Ear project. It starred Tom Noonan, David Thewlis and Jennifer Jason Leigh. I'm pretty sure the performance was recorded, but unlike Charlie's other play for the project, "Theater of the New Ear", it was never broadcast anywhere -- so only the lucky folks who were at the one-night-only performance had a chance to see it. (Or hear it.)
HEAPS of people have emailed me about this today. Big thanks to Duke for the heads up!
Update: Here's a more detailed plot synopsis, via indieWIRE:
The film follows a celebrated motivational speaker travelling the country, changing the lives of countless people. But in the course of transforming others, his life has become hollow and meaningless. It's a grey and monotonous existence where people literally look and sound identical.
Suddenly one day, a girl's voice pierces through the veil of nothingness. She fills him with such a rush of "aliveness", he's willing to abandon everything and everyone, including his own family, and escape with her to a better life. (Source)
HAS THE MALKOVICH PORTAL RELOCATED FROM THE 7 1/2 FLOOR TO A COOKIE JAR? Times are tough.
Mostly I just wanted to tell you all that you might like Garfield Minus Garfield. It takes Garfield comic strips and erases the cat, making Jon appear thoroughly depressed and (as seen above) often a bit crazy. It's hilarious.
I'm allowed to make the occasional pointless post, yo.
This might be in danger of imminent deletion, I'm not sure. Someone has uploaded the video of Charlie's BAFTA lecture, which used to be on the BAFTA Guru website. (The Guru site now has only a PDF transcript, audio of the lecture, and a 3-minute video.)
If you haven't seen this, you really probably should. It's not the entire lecture -- it has been edited for length, but it's very close to all of it. If you don't watch this, you should at least watch the "What I Have to Offer" short film I linked to the other day, cos it's cool.
I have been searching everywhere for a decent image of the little glass birdhouse type knick-knack that Joel looks up at after opening his eyes in the first scene of Eternal Sunshine.
I am trying to get a tattoo of it but am having a really difficult time finding something to bring to my tattoo artist to show him what I want.
I know this is a weird one but anything you could possibly do to help would be greatly appreciated.
I'm gonna do some Googlin'. Meanwhile, if any of you folks can help, that'd be cool.
Eliot Rausch has taken the audio from probably my favourite 5 minutes in Charlie's BAFTA speech -- it may be my favourite bit of anything he's written -- and played it over a montage of images that give it a little extra punch. It's fab.
Here's a video of Robert McKee discussing his Adaptation experience. I think I've posted other stuff where he talks about the film, but this clip's new.
Kinda saw this coming, given everything else that Charlie has on his plate, and the fact that we've heard not much on Frank or Francis in quite a while. But it's still a bummer. Says Edward Davis at indieWIRE:
[...] is the project dead? Not quite, but it doesn't seem to be moving forward either. Reps for Charlie Kaufman will only allow that the project has been "postponed," and that makes complete sense given the amount of work that Kaufman has moved on to recently, including his first novel, an HBO series and the adaptation of the sci-fi young adult novel, "Chaos Walking" for Lionsgate. (Source)
You know how Frank or Francis is, in part, about an angry blog commenter? And you know how the comment threads on YouTube (and elsewhere online) tend to be partly populated by people (i.e. trolls) who are VERY VERY ANGRY about stuff? Yeah. This video is about them. I love it.
This is not directly related to Mr. Charlie Kaufman, but a lot of you guys and girls are artists of one kind or another, and many of you are college students or recent college graduates, and I think you might like to check out Neil Gaiman's commencement speech, which is being posted and reblogged all over the place. It's a pretty inspiring and nifty speech, if you're interested in a career in the arts. Any kind of art.
