TV Scripts

In the early '90s, Charlie Kaufman was a writer for TV. Here's a script from the short lived action/adventure comedy Alien Nation. The script was co-written by a Charles S. Kaufman, Larry B. William, Steve Long Mitchell and Craig M. Van Sickle. Is this "our" Charlie Kaufman? Hard to say for sure, but the timing's right, as is the middle initial, and Alien Nation was a Fox show; "our" Charlie did work for Fox around this period. Interestingly, the script contains a character named Kaufman... early hints of the self-referential humour that would later become Kaufman's trademark?

A TV pilot written in the early 1990s, this script attracted interest from HBO, though it was never picked up. Some TV executives remember it as being too dark and strange to be put to air.

Pilot script for a TV series. The pilot was filmed, but FX passed on it, and whatever was filmed has never seen the light of day.

Written in the early 1990s, this pilot for a comedy series displays all the Kaufman trademarks evident in his film work. It also displays the loopy humour that are signatures in Charlie's early work, perhaps influenced by his early writing partnership with Paul Proch.