The Hot Button
December 18 2002
Act I: The Joy Of Agony, The
Act
III: Imagine Me & You ... I Do
This act begins with Charlie being ignored on the set of Being John Malkovich. And for the first time, we see Donald crossing over into Charlie’s reality. Donald is doing exactly what Charlie never could… charming and seducing Carolyn (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the cute make-up girl on the set. When Donald comes back to Charlie, Charlie berates him about not embarrassing him on the set.
The next scene brings Caroline and Donald into Charlie’s home. What he wants and what he fears is now in his home. They discuss Donald’s script, which is, in context, this film. I’ll just relate Donald’s dialogue:
“You know what I did was, I tried to split the Cassie scene in half – because I wanted there to be more tension. And then you pick it up later. It keeps more tension. That way the audience gets hooked early on.”
This is all being said while Charlie is blocked and listening in his room, in front of an empty page.
Well, as we discussed in Act I, Donald’s Cassie from The 3 is a representation of Susan Orlean in Charlie’s head. And, sure enough, the discussion of Laroche’s wife that starts at the end of Act I will be continued a few scenes after this discussion.
Next, Donald continues to integrate himself into Charlie’s reality. They are at a party, where Donald is acting like “a hip young trendsetter” and Charlie is acting like “an old loser.” (Recall the first Charlie/Amelia party scene.) Amelia appears with a Charlie replacement of a date that, clearly, can never replace Charlie.
Amelia does acknowledge Charlie. This is proof to some people that Donald is intended to be absolutely real. To me, it’s part of the conceit of the creation.
The conversation between Charlie and Amelia that everyone else, not coincidentally, disappears from, repeats the emotional distancing that Charlie can’t seem to stop. She inquires about his work, but he can’t let her close. He admits that he’s in trouble, but then shoos off her interest, hurting her feelings… again.
The next sequence has a frenzied Charlie creating the very sequence that we saw at the beginning of the film, after the Malkovich sequence and before the meet with Valerie Thomas… the history of heaven and earth and Hollywood. Here, he develops the idea because he is trying to find a way to dramatize the arc of the life of a flower. In the earlier sequence, he was trying to describe the arc of his own life that brought him to that moment. He gets to the point where the movie he is writing is just about to really begin and…
BAM!
Donald barges in, screaming about McKee.
Has it occurred to anyone that Donald is supposed to be at Caroline’s, doing some “push push in the bush”? So why is he here, pushing Charlie’s buttons about McKee, the walking representation of traditional structure?
Charlie’s inspiration is gone. But the movie picks up the scene from the end of Act I, as Orlean calls Laroche to discuss what happened to his nursery and his marriage with it.
So begins one of the most magnificent sequences of the film, as Laroche loses his family, his wife, his teeth, his nursery, and starts all over again.
We jump to Orlean meeting with Valerie Thomas, long before Charlie Kaufman’s been hired to adapt her book. The book is going to be optioned.
Jump to a message from Charlie’s agent, wondering when he’ll be finished.
Jump to Valerie loving Charlie’s draft to the point of sexual attraction… but it’s just Charlie’s imagination.
Charlie finishes masturbating and tries to write. He seems obsessed with fulfilling Valerie’s comment to Orlean over lunch, that Laroche will be a “fun character.” But it’s not working.
Donald is outside the house, calling out “Gonna get you… jelly belly, jelly belly, gonna get you.” He seems to be talking to Caroline, but the taunting fits Charlie’s well-established self-image.
The representation of the crassness of Hollywood, Charlie’s agent, is where Charlie goes for safety. But, although he uses all the Hollywood excuses about why the book cannot be adapted, his crass agent just reminds him that he has no choice… he needs to find an answer.
Desperate, Donald comes back. He raises the specter of McKee again. He also offers the first suggestion of adding a completely inappropriate song into the adaptation’s mix.
Charlie pushes Donald off so that he can go to sleep. While the reality of the film seems to be that the next scene, Orlean talking to Laroche, is just coincidentally happening at the same time Charlie is going to bed, I would suggest that it is a dream sequence. It is Charlie’s first real foray into adding sex to his adaptation, in the form of Laroche’s new interest - internet pornography. It is also representative of Charlie coming to the end of Orlean’s book, knowing that she is never going to see the ghost orchid, even though the conversation between Orlean and Laroche ends with Laroche’s promise to take “Susie” into the swamp to see a ghost.
Charlie wakes from the dream, startled and nervous. It’s 3:32 a.m.
Charlie reads from The Orchid Thief. Orlean comes to life on the book jacket.
Charlie masturbates to the idea of Orlean and her sweet sad insights.
Orlean talks to Charlie about simplifying… about finding “the one thing you care passionately about… then writ(ing) about that.”
The next morning, Charlie is happy. He is writing Orlean as she suggested… by giving her a singular passion… “to know how it feels to care about something passionately.”
Donald and Caroline arrive. Suddenly, instead of being Charlie’s torturer, Donald is a pleasant addition to his life. Charlie has Donald-like answers. It’s like a brain factory in there.
Charlie goes to pick up his lunch and runs into Valerie Thomas. Susan Orlean is there… in real life. This panics Charlie. He just figured out how to make her into a Donaldesque creation and now, she is going to become real.
He runs.
He sweats in his car. He knows again that he can’t Donaldize the real-life Susan Orlean. It’s too horrifying. Then those magic words…
“The only thing I’m qualified to write about is myself and my own self…”
Besides defining the movie – again – he also confirms the duality of himself and Donald.
He gets excited and starts writing the movie we’ve already seen, starting with the “bald, fat, repulsive” Charlie Kaufman meeting with Valerie Thomas.
But then Donald shows up again to bring him down… Donald has written Ourobouros into his script and Charlie knows that he is being Ourobouros, writing himself into his screenplay.
He’s still too timid to meet Orlean. And he can’t write the screenplay until he does. But he can’t. But he’s going to try, flying to New York.
Donald offers “Bob’s seminar,” which happens to be coming to NY.
We are in The Orchid Thief. Laroche takes Orlean to find a ghost. They both agree that he is a “fun character.”
But they will not find the ghost orchid that day. They will wander the swamp and Laroche will be anything but fun and Orlean will find her ending… that “life seemed to be filled with things that were just like the ghost orchid. Wonderful to imagine and… easy to fall in love with, but a little fantastic... and fleeting… and out of reach.”
In Reality, Kaufman tries to go see Orlean, but he still can not. His is the last time in the movie that we will see Orlean in a real setting. As the ghost orchid eludes Orlean, Orlean eludes Kaufman. He cannot allow her to be literal to him.
He can’t find an answer. He lashes out. His agent calls to increase the desperation. Valerie want her script. Worse, his agent loves Donald’s McKee-ian screenplay. Desperation!!! The last line of dialogue in the sequence is “Fuck!!!”
McKee. The ultimate form of desperation. Besides the shredding of McKee’s hubris simply by showing his reality, clues to the film we are watching creep up throughout the seminar sequence.
While McKee preaches a “good story, well told,” Charlie beats himself up for even considering these ideas. “Easy answers.” “Rules to short-cut yourself to success.”
McKee: “The measure of the value of the character’s desire should be in direct proportion to the risks he’s willing to take.”
But Charlie is not willing to take the risk of meeting Orlean, no matter how intense his desire to adapt her book. The proportion of the entire film is off, by McKee standards.
After the voice-over gag, Charlie asks a direct question:
“What if a writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens? Where people don’t change, they don’t have epiphanies. They struggle and are frustrated, and nothing is resolved.”
This film is defined by this “question.” The change we are witnessing is not speeded up so that Darwin’s evolution can happen in two hours. The human experience is much, much slower. Orlean experiences that in her book. As excited as she is by Laroche’s passion, it is still elusive. No matter how great Charlie’s passion to do the right thing by Orlean and her book, he can’t let loose his own passion for Amelia.
McKee blasts Charlie’s question. But Charlie gets up his bravery and approaches McKee after the seminar. They go to a bar. Charlie reads the book to the end for McKee.
McKee: “That’s not a movie. You gotta go back. Put in the drama.” And later: “You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end and you’ve got a hit. Find an ending. But don’t cheat. And don’t you dare bring in a deus ex machina.”
Deus Ex Machina – “A person or thing that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.”
Ten lines later, McKee gives Charlie the deus ex machina that drives the entire film… “Julius and Phillip Epstein, who wrote Casablanca… they were twins.”
Kaufman’s non-existent twin brother Donald is the deus ex machina that has actually been responsible for bringing Charlie to desperation and to the easy answers that McKee brings.
McKee on Casablanca: “Finest screenplay ever written.”
END ACT II
Act I: The Joy Of Agony, The
Donald Of Defeat
Act
II: Charlie to Donald to McKee
Act
III: Imagine Me & You ... I Do
(Source)