Did a 54-Year-Old Nonprofit Worker Just Use AI to Become the Next Charlie Kaufman? asks Steven Zeitchik at Hollywood Reporter, probably not disproving Betteridge’s Law of Headlines. But anyway:

The eight-minute short — in which a Parisian man with a facial disfigurement named Marcel dances hopefully in his apartment every night awaiting a non-existent companion — is in fact the brainchild of one Robert Gaudette. Emphasis on the brain. Or, more accurately, the intelligence. Of the artificial kind.

And emphasis on the one.

Gaudette used a series of AI tools — and not a single actor, producer or crew member — to tell his tender story of a man who, for all his travails, hardly wallows in his station. To the contrary: he keeps an irrepressible optimism that we could all use in these days of, well, AI film takeovers. Watching the movie and Marcel’s fragile belief in a world so callous is to feel a surge of possibility for humanity. It is also to feel a much more complicated set of emotions about our AI creative future. (Source)

Great, just great. That's great. There's an irony in picking Kaufman as a comparison, given his public comments on AI, and his Frank or Francis, written in 2010, which includes an AI named Richard's Head (ahem) that can spit out screenplays.

As far back as September, Charlie seemed confident that Later the War wasn't quite dead yet, and guess what? It is indeed not deceased. Today Deadline reports the film is back on the cards with a new cast and new producers.

The Veterans, the L.A.-based sales outfit headed by Vincent Maraval and Kim Fox, has announced it has boarded sales on his long-awaited comedy drama Later The War.

The feature is set to shoot in Cyprus in 2027 with Channing Tatum, Tessa Thompson and Patsy Ferran leading the cast.

[...] 

Kaufman has adapted the script for his new film from the short story ‘Debby’s Dream House’ by author Iddo Gefen, which feature in his short story collection ‘Jerusalem Beach’.  The original story follows a man who manufactures dreams and nightmares for others, including for his own wife.

In Kaufman’s version, Tatum plays Peekman, a wildly popular actor-director, famous for blockbuster physical comedies in which he stars with his wife Kiki (Thompson).  

The more successful he becomes, the more he begins to suspect that deep down, he has nothing to say. In a bid for the artistic legitimacy that he craves, and as his marriage flounders, he attempts a serious Holocaust film, while Kiki moves on to create her own one-woman show.

When Peekman encounters Debora (Ferran), a poet who has no idea who he is, he finds himself desperate to win her approval. This does not go well. 

The film weaves present day reality, films nested within films, and mind-bending dreamscapes to create a world in which Peekman and Kiki, having lost themselves to the pursuit of fame, may find their way back to reality. (Source)

Absolutely nothing autobiographical there, amiright?

h/t: MC

I had an email from a BCKster who alerted me to a scam that's going around. I've edited out some identifying info:

I was approached by New York Publication telling me that Mr. Kaufman's research team had selected my book for transformation into a screen play. 

Unfortunately, I have paid them a good deal of money and now there is no screen play, except the first three chapters, and no contact with New York Publication. I do believe they are Nigerian Scammers using Mr. Kaufman as a ploy.

I wanted to let you know this information and advise you of these evil people.

Apparently part of the scam read:

Because we discussed it with Mr. Kaufman, we needed his validation, and we have it, so there is no chance this screenplay is going to get rejected, and that's the only reason we got in touch with you to discuss everything and get started right away, since they love your story.

If you're contacted by anyone claiming to represent Charlie, check them out online. Don't reply to their email. If you're going to respond to them, contact them via their business' website, which will have an email or phone number for them. If they're using a gmail account or some other free public email service, be tremendously skeptical. 

Also, I don't believe Charlie has a research team. He has an agent, but that's about it. (And if his agent contacts you, you'll be able to find them online, at the agency's website, and contact them that way.)

How To Shoot A Ghost is already on the Criterion Channel... if you're in the US. (Or if you sign up while it thinks you're in the US.) Here's the listing:

How to Shoot a Ghost

Directed by Charlie Kaufman • 2025 • United States, Greece
Starring Jessie Buckley, Josef Akiki

Part ghost story, part city symphony, this elegiac short directed by Charlie Kaufman traces the meeting of two recently deceased young people—a troubled photographer (Jessie Buckley) and a gay translator (Josef Akiki)—whose restless souls wander the streets of Athens, Greece, where they confront both the remnants of the city’s history and the wreckage of their own unresolved lives. Folding complex ideas around mortality, memory, and migration into exquisite, ethereal images, Kaufman arrives at a breathtakingly moving vision of two outsiders searching for connection and consolation beyond the bounds of life. (Source)

This was spotted by our friend u/pavingmomentum, and other Redditors have noticed "it's basically unavailable if you're outside the US," but "you can subscribe with a VPN. once you subscribe, there's no need for a vpn anymore. The only foreign thing needed was an address."

WOOHOO.

Great news for Criterion Channel subscribers: How To Shoot a Ghost and Jackals & Fireflies both feature in March's line-up!

While Charlie Kaufman is best known for cerebral, intricately constructed metafictions like Anomalisa and Synecdoche, New York, his recent collaborations with writer Eva H.D. find him working in a different mode: impressionistic, intuitive, and vividly sensorial. Both city symphonies of a kind, these two shorts—the restless New York cine-poem Jackals & Fireflies and the aching, Athens-set elegy How to Shoot a Ghost, starring Jessie Buckley—drift dreamily through the urban landscape, finding bruising poignancy in the small, fleeting moments and encounters that give life its infinite richness. (Source)

thx to u/pavingmomentum and @mavoyofficial!

Friday, February 20, 2026, 7:00pm, Charlie K and Eva HD will be in attendance for a screening of Synecdoche, New York in New Haven, CT!

Treasures from the Yale Film Archive

2008 | 35mm | Directed by Charlie Kaufman |124 mins

Charlie Kaufman and Eva H.D. in person! Kaufman’s directorial debut follows a theater director whose ambition to reproduce life onstage grows to monumental proportions. Philip Seymour Hoffman heads a stellar cast including Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, and Catherine Keener, to name a few. “Loop-the-looping big themes such as mortality, infidelity, and impotence, this is an hilarious, intellectual roller-coaster ride” (Larushka Ivan-Zadeh). 35mm print from the Yale Film Archive. (Source)

Hopefully someone in attendance will come through with a report!

Given the timing, no doubt Tom Noonan's absence will be felt--as mentioned earlier, Tom passed away this Valentine's Day.

via u/weirdfish1995

Sad news: Tom Noonan passed away on Valentine's Day, age 74. Tom played Sammy in Synecdoche, New York, and "everyone else" in Anomalisa-- both the animated film and the "sound play." Charlie often cited Noonan's What Happened Was... (1994) as a favourite film.

Deadline:

Tom Noonan, an actor who launched his career on the New York stage in the original 1978 Off Broadway production of Sam Shepard’s Buried Child before pivoting to indelible film performances as menacing villains in Manhunter, Robocop 2, Last Action Hero and The Monster Squad, died Saturday, February 14. He was 74.

His death was confirmed on social media by Karen Sillas, his co-star in the 1992 play What Happened Was… and its 1994 Sundance award-winning film adaptation, and Fred Dekker, director of 1987’s The Monster Squad. Additional details on his passing, including a cause of death, were not immediately available, but Silas noted in her post that Noonan passed away peacefully. (Source)

Susan Orlean's book Joyride: A Memoir was released in October, and within it she relates the experience of having her book, The Orchid Thief, turned a Charlie Kaufman movie.

The New Yorker excerpted this part of the book, and it's a fun read. Little snippet:

I flipped through a few pages, and landed on a scene featuring me, as a child, with my parents. What? Another scene included a fictional love affair between John Laroche and me, which was not only embarrassing but, if it had actually occurred, would have violated journalistic ethics. What I didn’t realize at the time was that after struggling for a while with how to write a movie from material that didn’t have an obvious story arc and without betraying the spirit of it, Kaufman had landed on the device of having a fictional movie live within a story about making the movie. He felt he could pay homage to the book in a sincere way and at the same time wickedly portray the meat grinder of Hollywood, which would have wanted to jazz up the story with sex and drugs and drama. He spared no one: his self-portrayal, as a fumbling, whiny artiste who masturbates to my author photo for inspiration, is perhaps the most wicked portrayal of all. (Source)

That link takes you to the New Yorker, but you can hopefully read a non-paywalled version here.

Big thanks to Anthony for the heads up, and sorry I took foreverrrrrr to post!

You might remember, in October Redditor u/pavingmomentum was lucky enough to catch Charlie and Eva speak in Brazil, where Kaufman was awarded the Leon Cakoff Prize "for his historical and present contribution to this art that never ceases to be reborn."

Charlie spoke about his next novel, Orion and the Dark, and an abandoned project about A.I., among other topics. Well do I have cool news for you, if you wished you had been there too! The hour-long talk is now on YouTube:

It's a great watch!

Hello! I am not dead! (And if it's your first time here, I am not Charlie. Just a fan.)

I have returned with a 60-minute interview with Charlie and Eva from November last year, when they were promoting How To Shoot A Ghost. There's not a lot you haven't heard if you kept up with their media tour, but as always Charlie and Eva are an entertaining and interesting way to kill an hour.

I tried to embed it here, but the video doesn't want to co-operate, so head on over in this direction!