Variety interviews Charlie Kaufman about Synecdoche, New York and his big directorial debut at Cannes. We haven't heard much from Mr. Rock 'n' Roll re: Synecdoche - quite a few interesting nuggets in there, and well worth a read.
Kaufman prepared for the rigors of production by directing several plays, which boosted his confidence about working with actors, he says. "It gave me a sense that maybe I'm OK at this." He sent the script to actors he knew, like Hoffman and Keener...
... "I love talking to actors about emotional truth," he says. "It's what I do all day anyway. It's fun for me. That's what drew me to writing, my life as an actor. It's the same thing, just a different side of it."
Shot by "Blue Velvet's" Frederick Elmes and designed by Mark Friedberg, who collaborated on the hallucinatory sets for "Across the Universe," "Synecdoche" was a challenging first project. "We had 204 scenes to shoot in 45 days," says Kaufman, who managed to squeeze the film into two hours. "It was a terrible experience: exciting, tedious, long, and short." Finally, he says he'd gladly do it again.
