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Longtime BCKster David Rosen is a musician and podcaster, and he points us to a recent episode of Piecing It Together, in which he and Kris Krainock tackle Antkind and discuss the other books and art they believe may have been an influence on CK's novel. (Ordinarily this is a film podcast with the same approach, but this is CK, and for CK exceptions can be made!) It's a great listen but it's spoilery, so beware.

Couldn't find a way to embed it here, but you'll reach it if you follow the link.

On the 137th episode of Piecing It Together, we do something that we’ve never done before… Cover a book! But it’s not that surprising that I’d want to talk about Charlie Kaufman’s first novel on the show, considering he’s the writer of my favorite movie Adaptation and a number of other films I love. Joining me is returning co-host Kris Krainock who did a great job of filling in the literary gaps with some puzzle pieces I’d have never been able to come up with unless I had another decade or two to read some more books… Did I mention I’m a slow reader? (Source)

It's heeeere:

LOOKS AWESOME. September 4!

It makes sense if you've read Antkind. Or if you've seen Malkovich, for that matter.

Thanks to @catnip2221!

The Ringer's Ben Lindbergh makes a convincing argument that now's the time TV networks should bring out some of their unaired pilots, like for instance Charlie's How and Why and Game of Thrones' reportedly horrible original pilot.

One of the problems with trying to resuscitate those pilots long after some suit pronounced them dead is that they can’t fill a time slot week after week. “I think the issue is to just have a single episode of something,” Tarses says. “There’s really no way to promote and market it without spending money that you don’t want to spend on something that’s a one-off.”

There might be one way: Package the pilots together. At HBO, the original Game of Thrones pilot could conceivably serve as a pilot for a series of previously unseen pilots.

[...] Showtime passed on Ridley Scott’s The Vatican, which starred Kyle Chandler and would have marked Scott’s small-screen debut. CBS passed on Nick Stoller’s Entry Level, a cubicle comedy with a cast that included Michael Angarano and Brie Larson. ABC passed on a Brian Cox fantasy detective drama called Gotham (not the Batman one). NBC passed on Brad Anderson’s Midnight Sun, a Julia Stiles drama about an Alaskan cult being investigated by an FBI cult specialist. Comedy Central passed on David Gordon Green’s Black Jack, starring Ving Rhames as a decommissioned special ops agent. FX passed on Charlie Kaufman’s How and Why—a half-hour comedy starring John Hawkes and Michael Cera—as well as Hoke, a Scott Frank vehicle starring Paul Giamatti as a homicide detective in mid-1980s Miami. (Source)

Holly Williams from The Observer:

Antkind is 706 pages long. It offers a maximalist satire of a contemporary America defined by fake news, corporate bullshit, vacuous pop culture and performative wokeness, but one so excessive, surreal and repetitive that it is itself tiresomely bloated and absolutely exhausting. If anything can happen without consequence, stakes are lowered. It’s absurdism ad infinitum.

Where Kaufman’s films are playfully mind-bending, they usually have real heart. But although Antkind is skippingly clever – saturated with comic allusions, puns, linguistic inventiveness and wildly unfettered imagination – it is sorely lacking characters you actually care about or any emotional narrative to cling to. (Source)

BOOOOO.

Ah well. The initial universal acclaim was bound to give way to a few negative reviews, eh. Charlie is never for everyone.

Ta-da!

What thinkst ye?

The trailer will drop some time in the next 24 hours. Possibly I'll be asleep when that happens, but I'll post it as soon as I'm able. And then... September 4!

Longtime friend of BCK, Davide Romagnoli has a new book out, Sineddoche, Charlie Kaufman, and you'll never guess what it's about! Says the Amazon blurb:

"Sineddoche, Charlie Kaufman" non è un libro biografico per spiegare chi è Charlie Kaufman, dove è nato e cos'ha fatto. E non è nemmeno un compendio esaustivo o una completa esegesi delle opere del regista, produttore e sceneggiatore statunitense. "Sineddoche, Charlie Kaufman" è un invito a conoscere uno degli artisti più interessanti della sua generazione e rivedere, leggendole, le sue pellicole. Tutti titoli ben noti al grande pubblico, come Essere John Malkovich, Il ladro di orchidee, Synecdoche e Anomalisa. Un libro che racconta i retroscena dei suoi film seguendo il filo rosso delle dichiarazioni più interessanti e geniali dell'autore di Se mi lasci ti cancello. Per approfondire i suoi virtuosismi espressivi o anche scoprirli per la prima volta. (Source)

... which Google Translate turns into:

Synecdoche, Charlie Kaufman "is not a biographical book to explain who Charlie Kaufman is, where he was born and what he did. Nor is it an exhaustive compendium or complete exegesis of the works of the American director, producer and screenwriter." Synodoche, Charlie Kaufman "is an invitation to get to know one of the most interesting artists of his generation and review his films by reading them. All titles well known to the general public, such as Being John Malkovich, The Orchid Thief, Synecdoche and Anomalisa. A book that tells the background of his films by following the red thread of the most interesting and ingenious statements of the author of Se mi mi ti ti cancell. To deepen his expressive virtuosity or even discover them for the first time.

Neat, no? Davide sent me a copy, and I can't read a lick of it, but the cover is great!

Another review! This time it's Peter Bradshaw from the Guardian:

This debut novel from the award-winning screenwriter of movie masterpieces such as Being John Malkovich and Synecdoche, New York, is funny, exhausting and very, very long. Reading it is like watching (or being) someone trying to sprint to the top of an Escher staircase.

[...] Finally Antkind comes to its crazy, hellzapocalypticpoppin ending, and this twilight of the puppet-gods dwindles into darkness, leaving me with the punchdrunk feeling I have after all Kaufman’s movies. He may be someone for whom anxiety and sadness are a personal ordeal, but he transforms them into bleak, stark, unearthly monuments to comic despair. (Source)

indieWIRE's David Ehrlich chimes in with a film reviewer's review of Antkind. It's mega-heavy on the spoilers, though, so be warned. (His verdict, if you don't want to read: he really liked it, with a handful of qualifiers.)

Kaufman’s 720-page Globster of a novel initially feels like it’s trying to split the difference between Haruki Murakami and Hollywood Elsewhere (and later flirts with the likes of Pynchon and Borges on its way toward settling down as an adventure that can only be described as Kaufmanesque). (Source)

Was it released on Blu-ray at an earlier point, somewhere in the dim dark past? I can't remember. [Update: it was. Thanks to Bryan for confirming.] No problem, though, cos Adaptation will be coming to Blu-ray later this year thanks to Shout! Factory:

Bonus Features:
· Original Featurette
· Trailer
· Still Gallery

So nothing new, but if you need to update or upgrade your collection of CK paraphernalia, this one's for you!