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The Next Best Picture Podcast had a visit from Charlie and Eva HD this week, where they discussed the making of How To Shoot A Ghost. If you hav a half hour to spare, it's a fun listen. It's being a pain in the butt to embed it here, so instead I'll give you the link.

Charlie also took the time to address a rumour that got a little out of hand this week, namely that he'll be working with Spike again some time soon. Not so!

Charlie, my editor would never forgive me if I didn’t ask about the flood of reports that spread yesterday about you and Spike Jonze talking about working together again. What can you tell me about all those reports flying around?

CK: I can tell you that the person who wrote it is lying. They’re doing that, I guess — I can only speculate, so I’ll lie too. They’re doing it for attention.

Eva and I were in São Paulo, giving a talk, when someone asked me if I was going to work with Spike again. I said, I told Spike that I’d like to do something with him again, which is true, and that he seemed open to it. But we have no plans there. We’re not in any talks. So there you go.

EHD: Now you have to be in talks!

CK: Now I have to, yeah.

That’s great clarity. But also, I do hope you work together again. I would love to see the two of you together again.

CK: I like working with Spike a lot, so it would be nice if it happens. But there are no plans.

via r/kaufman

BCKster u/pavingmomentum caught Charlie and Eva's appearance at Mostra de São Paulo, Brazil a week or so ago, and came back with a great wrap-up of what was said.

You can head here for the full write-up, but some highlights:

• Kaufman is writing a new novel, and part of it is about an actor writing a book about acting
• His AI film for Bennett Miller is no longer happening. Trying to write about AI was the one thing he couldn’t make sense of, so he dropped the project, which was the first time he’d ever done such a thing for a project he was legally attached to. Every day a new article in the paper, every day a new advance in AI - it was something he couldn’t wrap his head around.
• Charlie and Spike have talked recently about doing something together, but have no concrete plans--it was basically Charlie and Spike agreeing that they'd like to do something again together some day. More on that in a separate post.
• He approached Orion and the Dark like his other projects - he didn’t think of an audience, therefore he didn’t think about fitting the story into a kids’ animation genre. Which is why Orion was a movie buff who adored Lars von Trier. At the end of the day, though, the studio picked up the script and did whatever they wanted with it - which is why he’d forgotten about it until the person in the audience asked him about it. (Source)

Great write-up at the link! Big thanks to u/pavingmomentum.

Charlie and Eva are still promoting How To Shoot A Ghost, and The Film Stage was their latest stop. For me the most interesting nugget in this one: Charlie would be open to publishing the Frank or Francis script, since it seems the project is never going be filmed.

Charlie, you’ve had some scripts that have never been made, and I’m curious if you can look at them as their own separate work. Can an unmade script function as a piece of literature if it’s never made? Or is an unmade script not a finished work in itself? I’m thinking of this great script you wrote years ago called Frank or Francis, which I remember was widely shared on the Internet, and I feel like everyone I know read it and loved it, but it just never got made. But can you look back at these projects as literary works in a way, comparable to Eva’s medium?

CK: A film script, in my mind, is written to be made into a film. I try to write them in a way that maybe some people don’t write screenplays as sort of pieces of writing, I tried to do that. You know, I wanted it [Frank or Francis] to be made––came close to it, I mean. I cast it. It was certainly a source of great frustration to me for many years that I couldn’t get it off the ground. I mean, I’m happy that people read it. I’m happy that you read it and liked it.

EH: Maybe you should publish your unmade scripts.

CK: I sort of feel like that’s where this question was going. I’d be happy if someone wants to publish Frank or Francis.

Well, I remember reading the physical screenplay of Synecdoche, New York, and it was pretty much published as a book. And I remember there were a lot of scenes in it that weren’t in the final film. So it felt, in a way, almost like the Synecdoche screenplay that was published complemented the finished film in a way, but also just the fact that I could physically read it like a book, it made it sort of feel like it was also a piece of literature in its own way. 

CK: It always comes up whenever there are screenplays that are published: do we want to conform to the finished movie, or do we want to do the script as it was? I always prefer to keep the stuff in there that didn’t make it to the movie because I like a lot of that stuff. I tend to choose that route. Yeah, it’s nice, but I don’t know what people want in a screenplay that they’re reading. I think I would like what you like: that it would define things and help you understand different colors that were in there and learn things about characters that may not have made it into the finished movie. (Source)

This is pretty interesting for me, given that I host a bunch of his scripts on the site, some of them unproduced. In the past Charlie has expressed frustration (understandably) when first drafts get reviewed online before a film comes out; when it seems like a project might be dead I usually wonder how he'd feel if/when that project's script leaks online. NOT PLEASED, I'm sure... but still it's cool that he's open to publishing unproduced work through authorised channels. AND HOPEFULLY MORE NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES.

ANYWAY. Other topics covered: Antkind and Richard Brody, How To Shoot A Ghost (duh), how Eva and Charlie met (old news if you've been here before), getting CK interested in baseball and the Bluejays, and a handful of other things.

Charlie's back from Venice after premiering How To Shoot A Ghost, and this week the Guardian had a chat with him about his career trajectory, filmmaking problems and the state of the world. You know, CHEERY STUFF. Snippets:

I ask whether he can see beauty, too. “I can,” he says after a long pause. “I have a lot of anxiety. And I think that gets in the way of the experience of being alive.”

[...] Kaufman and Gondry spent several days in 1998 driving around Hollywood, pitching the idea for Eternal Sunshine to studio executives. “I had an infected tooth,” Kaufman grimaces. “I’d never been in such pain. But I didn’t have time to go the dentist because we were doing this.” Positive responses offset his agony. “Everybody was, like, ‘It’s a new way to tell a love story’. They knew how to sell it and that was exciting to them.”

[...] “Though the people who own the rights report back to me regularly that it’s still in the red,” he says dubiously. “‘Hollywood accounting’ is what it’s called.” (Source)

We've heard before that the rleease of Memento took the wind out of Charlie's sails for a bit, thinking the reverse-chronology gimmick was too similar to Eternal, but I'd forgotten about another movie from that period:

John Woo’s 2003 science-fiction thriller Paycheck, released before Eternal Sunshine but now fittingly forgotten, also gave Kaufman a fright. “The trailer showed Ben Affleck with this memory-erasing machine on his head,” Kaufman recalls. “Michel and I were, like, ‘Holy shit!’ We called one of our producers and said, ‘We can’t put the movie out now.’”

On the state of movie-making today:

Would it be intolerable for him to take on a movie he didn’t believe in just to get the clout for his own projects? “I think the world is in a terrible, terrible situation right now,” he says, his tone suddenly grave. “I don’t think that Hollywood has nothing to do with it. I could argue that Hollywood has everything to do with it. And I have a responsibility, as I see it, not to put garbage in the world. I’m not going to do that. If you start trying to figure out what it is that people want, you are doing what AI does. The idea of AI precedes AI itself because that’s the Hollywood machine. It’s why they remake the same five movies every 10 years. It’s why they have a formula for what a movie is.”

[...] “The most valuable thing to me in terms of my mental health is to read a poem or see a painting or listen to music which speaks to me, which breaks me open for a moment, and where I feel an experience honestly and delicately portrayed. That’s another reason AI can never create anything artistically. It can trick us into thinking it has, but it doesn’t have the experience of being alive. It doesn’t know loss and joy and love and what it feels like to face mortality. I’m very worried about the future in so many ways, and if we don’t allow ourselves to connect with other humans who have the experiences that we have, then I think we’re lost.”

Charlie and Eva HD will be at the Calgary Film Festival this month, and on 21st September you can see them speak at the Contemporary Calgary Auditorium:

Good interview with indieWIRE this week, in which Charlie and Eva talk How To Shoot A Ghost, The Memory Police and Later the War. Couple of bits and pieces:

How did you land on the character having blue hair? You’re reminded of Kate Winslet in “Eternal Sunshine.”

Eva H.D.: That was [Jessie]! She bought that for 10 quid.

Kaufman: She said, “What if she had a blue wig?” She said, “I found this thing online.” She bought it, and she styled it. I can’t make decisions based on things like that [such as the connection to “Eternal Sunshine”]. People have determined that I fixate on certain things because they’re accidentally things that happen. Here’s an example because it’s meaningless: That I cast Jesse [Plemons] and Jessie [Buckley in “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”] because their names are the same, and I was making some comment. No! It was [originally] Brie Larson and Domhnall Gleeson. They both couldn’t do it. I had no idea who Jessie Buckley was at the time. I called a friend of mine, a production designer, and said, “I need somebody for this role.” She was working with a director in England at the time. I looked at the “Beast” movie [she was in], and said, “OK, I want this person.” And I got her.

[...]

Charlie, is there more anxiety or liberation in the short-film format as opposed to a feature? The life cycle of a short film is less traditional. Does that affect your outlook?

Kaufman: I couldn’t make this as a feature. I can’t even make the features that I write that are more narrative. It’s very difficult to get financing. It’s easier to get financing for [a short], but the downside is that no one is ever going to make any money on it. You have to piece together financing. I don’t need, like in “Jackals,” there were no movie stars. We happen to have Jessie in this, which is great for us, because she brings so much to it. There are all sorts of equations when you’re casting a feature to get financing. This person who is of this value, and it’s garbage. I don’t have to deal with that for a short. It’s a lot of work. It’s not like it’s less work. We’ve been working on this forever, and there’s no payoff.

[...]

Kaufman: We’re working on getting [“Later the War”] going. We had to rethink it. I don’t know what to say about it. We’re still working on getting it going, and I’m hopeful, and it’s very good!

On The Memory Palace:

Kaufman: I adapted that from a novel, and Reid Morano is directing it. I stuck to the book. There are things, as you know if you’ve read the book, that you need to figure out because they’re kind of abstract in the way it’s described. But [my screenplay] follows the book.

Click on through for the full interview!

Charlie's in remarkably good spirits in the latest episode of Hollywood Reporter's podcast, It Happened in Hollywood.

He's there mostly to revisit Synecdoche, New York with host Seth Abramovitch, but they cover a lot of other ground as well: Charlie's start in TV, Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine, How To Shoot A Ghost, and from the horse's mouth we have some further info on what's up with Later the War. 

Honorary BCKster u/pavingmomentum typed up a little transcript of the War part:

The interviewer asks about a film that he was shooting in Poland with Eddie Redmayne. Kaufman corrects him and says that it was in Belgrade, Serbia.

"We had some problems. We're trying to regroup now, see if we can get it made, but it hasn't happened yet."

The interviewer then asks: "Not to give away too much, but it has something to do with dreams and dream manufacturing, something like that?".

Kaufman: I mean, ostensibly. I mean, there's sort of a story within the story in the form of a film. The main character is a filmmaker who is very, very, very, very, very, very popular and very successful, and he's also a physical comedian and he stars in his films and he directs them and he's making an effort to be taken seriously.

Interviewer: Sounds like Jim Carrey.

Kaufman: It's not like Jim Carrey, not really. He’s not a comedian [in that sense]. I would say he’s more like Buster Keaton in terms of the physicality. Also, Jim’s not a director. This guy is a director, and he’s not based on any one person. I don’t think there is a person who fits that description. Certainly, I think about Jim when I think about physical comedy, and that’s been a big part of figuring out what the look of this comedian’s work is, because I want it to feel singular. Jim is so extraordinarily singular in what he's able to do. But I didn’t want it to be like Jim Carrey; I wanted it more like Buster Keaton I guess, more like a silent comedian. What I was talking about? I was telling you...

Interviewer: Well, I’d asked about the dream aspect.

Kaufman: Right. In this new iteration, he’s making serious movies, and there is one that sort of you see him making, and you see the movie throughout the story. You see a lot of his movies throughout the story and it's very fractured. It is, in itself, very dreamlike. The whole movie is very dreamlike in the way it's constructed. But there is a story about a dream factory that is the basis for a movie that he is making and starring in, if that makes any sense.

Interviewer: And the title of the film?

Kaufman: Later the War.

Interviewer: Well, I certainly hope I get to see that film. So best of luck with it.

Kaufman: I hope so too. I would love to see it as well. (Source)

So they did pack up, but it's not dead yet.

Hollywood Reporter have a little article on the episode.

Thanks to Julie and u/pavingmomentum!

Charlie K and Michel Gondry will be in town for Bristol's Encounters Film Festival later this month, and on 24th September they'll attend a special Eternal Sunshine screening:

Encounters is delighted to announce that visionary filmmakers CHARLIE KAUFMAN and MICHEL GONDRY will be reunited on stage on Wednesday 24th September followed by a special screening of the iconic, Academy Award winning ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.

Charlie and Michel will then stay on at the five day festival to introduce the UK premieres of their latest works – Kaufman and Eva HD’s How To Shoot A Ghost, starring Jessie Buckley and Josef Akiki, showing as part of Encounters’ international short film competition and Gondry’s witty, family-friendly feature-length animation Maya Give Me A Title, winner of a Silver Bear at this year’s Berlin film festival.

For our 30th edition, we couldn't think of a more perfect way to launch than by reuniting these two visionaries who embody the experimental spirit that Encounters has championed since 1995. These masters of mind-bending creativity have spent the last three decades redefining what's possible in film, and their reunion on our stage perfectly honours our shared history in bold, original cinema.

But we're not just looking back. The UK premieres of their thrilling new works prove that true innovators never stop pushing boundaries and we are delighted to be presenting them (alongside 44 other premieres) in our jam-packed September 24 to 28 programme.

Encounters 2025 takes place from Wednesday 24 September to Sunday 28 September at venues including Bristol Beacon, Watershed and Arnolfini.

More than 100 shorts from over 50 countries have won through to the festival’s globally renowned competitions, with new works by Simon Ellis, Mark Jenkin and Ida Melum among them, and the acting talent on view including screen appearances by Benedict Cumberbatch, Emma D’Arcy, Marianne Faithfull, Claire Foy, Domhnall Gleeson and Juliet Stevenson.

Festival Pass and Industry Pass holders, along with Bristol Beacon members, will have exclusive access to ticket pre-sale from 10am on Thursday 4th September. General release tickets will be available from 10am on Friday 5th September via the Bristol Beacon website. (Source)

Tixkets and more info available at the link!

Mentioned this briefly earlier today, but in an interview with Filmmaker Magazine to promote "How To Shoot A Ghost," Charlie made passing mention of a film being shot in Belgrade, which is probably Later The War.

Kaufman: One of the things I really liked about the idea of shooting in Belgrade for this movie that we’re going to make is that it’s such an interesting visual environment, and I want to take advantage of that. (Source)

Good news!