Daily News Transcript
March 18, 2004
In person, Charlie Kaufman is almost painfully shy. So much so, that he seems to prefer looking at the floor rather than making eye contact while talking. It's on the written page that he jumps alive, banging out strikingly original scripts filled with bizarre situations -- usually about relationships gone wrong -- and crackling dialogue. Among his offbeat scripts that have made it to the screen are "Being John Malkovich" (a husband and wife both fall for another woman) and "Adaptation" (a married journalist falls for the man she's profiling), neither of which were like anything that had been seen in movies before, both of which were nominated for Oscars. He ups his ante with his newest, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," another relationship gone wrong story. In this one, Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) were once in love, but one of them has lost interest, are now both involved in a scientific procedure that will erase each other from their memories. The ending, as well as pretty much everything else about the film, is going to spark some lively discussion among viewers.
"I think that there's hope, as well as questions at the end," says Kaufman, who is compact and wiry, the opposite of the way he was portrayed by an overweight Nicolas Cage in "Adaptation." "I wanted to write a movie that would sort of leave the audience in a position to question what the meaning of the ending was. So I think you could interpret it in a bunch of different ways. It's always my goal to create conversations afterwards, and not spoon- feed people specific answers about anything. Because then it’s an experience, as opposed to a lecture."
The erudite Kaufman, a former Boston University student who studied theater there for a year, then left for NYU after deciding to go into film, always keeps an idea notebook with him, and has been known to insert real-life experiences into his scripts. An early scene in the film has the adventurous Clementine dragging the uptight Joel onto a frozen Charles River in Boston.
"I walked on the Charles when I was at B.U. and, at the coaxing of a friend, I lay down on it," recalls Kaufman. "It was very similar to the scene in the film, and it was an amazing experience, looking out at the skyline and the bridges and all the traffic."
While Clementine, who playfully introduces herself to Joel in the film as "a vindictive little bitch," isn't based on any one real person, she's not exactly a complete figment of his imagination.
"I think she's complicated," says Kaufman, who rarely discusses his characters. "She's an insecure person and she's got a bit of an inferiority complex, perhaps. But that's what I like about her. I like her a lot. She's somebody I wanted to write about and somebody that I kind of want to know. She's a woman that I imagined based on some people that I've seen, but maybe don't know as well as I'd like to."
Kaufman appears to relax some -- he actually does make eye contact -- when asked about the odd title of the film, which is a line out of "Eloisa to Abelard," an epic poem by Alexander Pope.
"I was writing the character of Mary (played by Kirsten Dunst) who likes to read Bartlett's [Familiar Quotations], and I found this thing," he explains. "And it was serendipitously about Abelard and Heloise. I'm in love with Heloise. I included a scene with them in 'Being John Malkovich.' And I liked pulling that line out as a title. But no one could remember it. I couldn't even remember it. I’d sort of have to talk myself through it. But I like that about it. I like that it's not an easy title. In fact, the original title I had for this movie was 18 words long. It was a list of Clementine's hair colors, without any explanation. But I go through titles like water, and I liked this one better. I also like going against the grain, and I thought that a title that's not easy to remember is probably also kind of fitting for a movie that's about not remembering."
Kaufman certainly sounds more sure of himself than he has in past interviews. But he does still recall that before he clicked with critics and audiences, studio decision-makers referred to him as someone without much commercial potential.
"I don't know that I do have a lot of commercial potential," he admits. "I don't think my movies have done particularly well commercially. They’re moderate successes. But I don't care about that stuff, except maybe as how it affects my ability to do my work and get future jobs. But I'm just happy to be able to do my work. The truth is before 'Being John Malkovich' was made, I couldn’t get anything made. And after 'Being John Malkovich' was made, I could. It was a very big kind of splash critically, and it was OK commercially. But since then, nothing's changed for me. I've been able to get things made, always within a relatively low budget, which is fine with me. And hopefully it'll continue."
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was a project that reunited Kaufman with Michel Gondry, who directed his script of the under-appreciated "Human Nature." His next one will get him back with "Malkovich" and "Adaptation" director Spike Jonze. Rumors are that it's a horror film. But Kaufman won't confirm that.
"I don't know what it will be," he says. "I think it's gonna be creepy. I'm in the very early stages of figuring it out, so there's not a lot to say about it. It's a movie about the breakup of a relationship.
"It's about everything that I write. It's about bad relationships," he adds, laughing. "I probably have about 50 titles for it, so I won't give you any."
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