You know, if the idea hadn't occurred to me at about 7:30pm on October 31st, we could've had some kind of Halloween costume contest, with a Kaufmanly theme. Eight hundred Malkovich look-alikes parading around town. Or Kaufman look-alikes. Or a bunch of Clementines. Or PORTALS. Or something. Oh well. Next year. If I remember.

Meanwhile, from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

'I don't need to be mentored," says Charlie Kaufman, a touch indignant, when asked if Spike Jonze helped out with advice on Synecdoche, New York. The film, which marks the famously idiosyncratic screenwriter's directing debut, was originally going to be helmed by Kaufman's pal - and his Being John Malkovich and Adaptation director - Jonze.

But here is Kaufman, at a table in a Toronto eatery, getting a tad exercised about the idea that he's not up to directing the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson and Michelle Williams by himself. "I'm my own person. Why don't you put that in your article? The whole point of my doing this is for me to have done it. (Source)

Ahahaha.

Boy. He hasn't seemed too chirpy of late.