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Trailer has arrived! "How To Shoot A Ghost" will premiere in Venice in September.

The visuals give me Eternal Sunshine vibes, but I don't anticipate the short film will be much like Eternal.

We're 1/4 through this century(!!) so everyone's doing lists, and the latest comes via The Ringer with The 101 Best Movie Performances of the 21st Century. Two performances come by way of Charlie's films.

81 Jim Carrey as Joel Barish, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Ace Ventura has never gotten his Oscar, alas; he has settled instead for being Two-Time Golden Globe Winner Jim Carrey. Did he deserve one for playing Andy Kaufman? Maybe. Did he deserve one for playing Truman Burbank? Probably. But Lord Jim did his best-ever work in Michel Gondry’s bleak, whimsical, chaotic, and heartrending 2004 tragi-romantic fantasia, precisely because the funniest (arguably) and hardest-working (inarguably) comedy superstar of his era doesn’t try to match either the whimsy or the bleakness.

Carrey doesn’t overact, and he doesn’t overact by underacting the way most prestige-hunting comedians do. Instead, as Joel—the soft-spoken introvert, the nice guy, the red-flag-waving “nice guy,” the heartbreaker, the heartbroken—our man plays everything masterfully straight, affable, and potentially lethal, with his most devastating (and romantic!) lines delivered as casual asides. “I remember that speech really well,” he whispers; “OK!” he concludes, with a shattering, tossed-off charm that wins over both Kate Winslet and several subsequent generations of hopeless (and devastated!) romantics. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s high concept and higher melodrama would’ve swallowed up both lesser and harder actors; Jim Carrey, here and maybe only here, delivers an absolute masterpiece of perfect balance and total control. Against your better judgment (and possibly his), you will fall for him again, every time. —Harvilla

35 Nicolas Cage as Charlie and Donald Kaufman, Adaptation (2002)

One of the weirdest, most ambitious movies of the past 25 years requires not one, but two of its weirdest, most ambitious performances. Adaptation begins, literally, with the creation of all life. It culminates in Cage playing the legendary screenwriter Charlie Kaufman—in a film written by Kaufman—and his fictional twin brother, Donald, who are less foils than the two ends of a snake eating its own tail. To call the whole thing self-reflexive doesn’t even begin to cover it. Cage observed and interviewed Kaufman extensively to play the part, after which Kaufman would watch a nervous Cage perform him. Round and round they went, until all of that layering self-consciousness rendered one of the most prolific actors of his generation unrecognizable. 

Cage’s Charlie is more neurosis than man. Cage’s Donald, by contrast, is either too dumb or too smart to get in his own way. Together, the two performances uncork one of the best movies ever made about the creative process, in all its high-flying self-importance and low-hanging hackery. Watching it feels like a miracle. Adaptation shouldn’t work, and in the hands of just about any other actor, it couldn’t work. Yet Cage manages to double sell a movie about failing to write a movie, stepping over every potential pitfall to show how the truth makes it through to the other side. It’s beautiful. It’s unwieldy. It’s Cage. —Mahoney

#1 goes to Naomi Watts as Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn, Mulholland Drive (2001).

Thanks to Tim!

It's so weird to think Adaptation is 23 years old and came out a few months after I launched BCK.

Similarly to the New York Times, Rolling Stone have put out a feature on their 100 best films of the 21st century so far. Also like the Times' list, Charlie is in there.

17. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Would you scrub an ex-lover from your thoughts? Mild-mannered Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) — glum, shy, rooted in a lifetime of minor humiliations — is devastated after splitting with wild child Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), a restless motor-mouth with rainbow of rotating hair dyes. Luckily, there’s a radical cure for heartache: selective memory eradication (and a slight case of permanent brain damage), courtesy of the eraser guys at gonzo medical outfit Lacuna Inc. Then a regretful Joel changes his mind and decides to resist the treatment and cling to the withering past. Music video director Michel Gondry applies his virtuoso surrealism to this giddy tale of human sadness, enlisting Hollywood’s favorite absurdist romantic Charlie Kaufman to pen his wise, Oscar-winning screenplay about the futility of a world-forgetting peace of mind. —S.G. (Source)

It sits between ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ (2013) at #18 and ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood’ (2019) at #16. ‘There Will Be Blood’ (2007) topped the list.

Thanks to Tim!

Short interview with Charlie and Eva @ Hollywood Reporter, in anticipation of "How To Shoot A Ghost" debuting at Venice. Click through for the whole thing, but here are some spoiler-free quotes:

Kaufman met [Eva] while working on a novel at the MacDowell Artist Residency in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

“I wasn’t even aware of his background in film,” she says via Zoom in a joint interview with Kaufman. “I thought Charlie was a budding novelist.”

“There’s that sort of saying, ‘I’ll rest when I’m dead,’ ” Kaufman says. “But I’m not really sure it’s a rest. My sense is that it’s nothing — not rest. Because rest is something, and it implies consciousness.”

The film served as New Yorker Kaufman’s introduction to Athens — “a place I wasn’t familiar with and where I don’t speak the language. It was exciting for me to engage with it that way.” Eva spent her childhood there but now lives in Brooklyn and often finds herself longing to revisit. “So if I can trick people into making films there, all the better,” she says. “And that’s exactly what happened in this case,” adds Kaufman.

“One of the advantages of making short films,” Kaufman says, “is that you can experiment with the form. You don’t have the obligation to make money for the people who financed it, and no one’s expecting that you will.”

Looking forward to this one!

Antkind is coming to Japan on 27 August! Translated by Yoshihiko Kihara, Charlie's novel will be published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha. Founded in 1886, the company has a great history and they publish primarily literary works.

Check it out:

Publisher's link, some publicity blurby goodness.

Thanks to editor Ito Kodai for the news!

How To Shoot A Ghost, the upcoming short film written by Eva HD and direct by Charlie, is headed for streaming service Kanopy after it debuts at Venice. Via indieWIRE:

IndieWire can exclusively reveal that Kanopy — the ad-free streaming service free for many library cardholders to use — has signed on as a producer and the exclusive library and educational distributor of the film.

Here's the official synopsis:

[...] “two newly dead young people meet in the streets of Athens, amid the pulsing cityscape and the ghosts of history. One a translator, the other a photographer, they were outsiders in life; in death they struggle with the residue of their longings and mistakes. They wander the city together, finding consolation in the difficult beauty of existence and its aftermath.” Josef Akiki and Jessie Buckley star.

And a word from CK on the Kanopy deal:

“Given the crisis of education in this country, it remains as important as ever for citizens to continue to have barrier-free access to the wealth of free resources that libraries have always offered,” Kaufman said in a statement. “Kanopy’s partnership with university and public libraries ensures that a rich digital archive of cinematic work from all over the world — from the newest documentaries to the collected adventures of Buster Keaton — will be available to a new generation of cinephiles.” (Source)

Interesting approach. Hopefully it'll be available in all countries.

Producer Isabelle Deluce on Instagram has shared a first image from the CK-directed short film How To Shoot A Ghost:

There's a list of credits in the caption, too, confirming Kaufman as director and Eva HD as the writer. Seems like they have quite the creative partnership going on.

HOW TO SHOOT A GHOST will have its World Premiere at @labiennale 👻

Thank you Charlie and Eva for trusting me with your vision. It feels impossible to put into words what this film means to me. And you two are categorically better with words than I am, so I’ll keep it brief.

I love this film. I love the beautiful people who made it (lawd, so many people made it). Extra special shoutout to my producing partner @mccannlesser — girl… what was THAT??? I love you, you’re an absolute force.

This movie is stunning and crushing and strange and true — I can’t wait for you to see it. Venice?! What the actual f***.

Okayyyyy, let’s go!!!

—
CAST
Jessie Buckley
@josef.akiki
@57fiver

CREW
Director – Charlie Kaufman
Writer – @57fiver
Producers – @isadeluce & @mccannlesser
EPs – @iamhalsey, @anthonyli , @jogia, Afroditi Panagiotakou, Nathan Mardis, Matt Hartley, @tyfoid, Fil Ieropoulos, @elli.papadiamenti, Kyle Mann, @franklinlaviola, Nicholas Laviola, @jhhinkel, Andrew Ostapchenko
Co-EPs – Jared Ian Goldman, Zola Elgart Glassman
Co-Producers – Simos Manganis, @danlugo
DP – @m_dymek
Editors – @rfraz234, @bkboarder
Original Music by – @ellavanderwoude
Production Design – Kim Jennings
Costume Design – @chloekarmin
Casting – Kleopatra Ampatzoglou
1st AD – @danlugo
APs – @the_sphoenix, @ellisjfox
2nd Unit DP – @yorgos_koutsaliaris
Stills – @agata_grzybowska
Gaffer – @sol_train
Post Sound – @parabolic_ny
Sound Supervisor / Re-Recording Mixer – Lew Goldstein
Color – @company_3
Colorist – @josephbicknell

+ many, many more.

Via u/pavingmomentum!

News today via Variety that a Charlie-directed short film, How To Shoot A Ghost, will premiere out of competition at the  Venice Film Festival.

The listing over here looks like so:

How to Shoot a Ghost
Address: Charlie Kaufman
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Josef Akiki
USA, Greece / 27th.

Composer Ella van der Woude has the film listed as a credit on her site.

So this appears to have been shot recently in Greece. No idea what it's about, also no idea if Charlie is the writer of the film.

[Edit, 2 Sept '25: a recent comment from Charlie makes it sound like this film is still happening.]

Later The War was a surprise anouncement earlier this year--a project nobody had ever heard of, written and directed by Charlie and headed into production. World of Reel broke the news, and Deadline confirmed it.

Merely 3 months later, World of Reel reported that production had shut down. That was in May... and still nobody has confirmed that report. 

So. Just a little update to say I haven't forgotten this little episode, but I have no further info on it.

Who knows?

New York Times polled readers and filmmakers for their top films of the 21st Century so far, and Charlie pops up on both lists, hooray!

In the Filmmakers' list, Charlie appears twice: Adaptation at #27 (between The Dark Knight at #28--hoo boy, I'll bet it's a thrill for Charlie to sit beside Nolan's work, HA!-- and Anatomy of a Fall at #26), meanwhile Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind came in at #7 (between Get Out at #8 and No Country For Old Men at #6).

In the Readers' poll, Eternal Sunshine came in 9th (between Spirited Away at #8 and The Social Network at #10). Synecdoche, New York popped up at #101, Adaptation at #135, I'm Thinking of Ending Things at #494. I'm surprised Synecdoche was higher than Adaptation!

Here's the Filmmakers' Top 20: (via No Film School)

 1. Parasite (Bong Joon Ho)
2. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
3. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
4. In the Mood For Love (Wong Kar Wai)
5. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
6. No Country For Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen)
7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
8. Get Out (Jordan Peele)
9. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)
10. The Social Network (David Fincher)
11. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
12. The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
13. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron)
14. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
15. City of God (Fernando Meirelles)
16. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
17. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
18. Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alfonso Cuaron)
19. Zodiac (David Fincher)
20. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)

Readers' Top 20: (via No Film School)

1. Parasite
2. Mulholland Drive
3. No Country for Old Men
4. There Will Be Blood
5. Interstellar
6. The Dark Knight
7. Mad Max: Fury Road
8. Spirited Away
9. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
10. The Social Network
11. Inglourious Basterds
12. In the Mood for Love
13. Everything Everywhere All at Once
14. The LotR: The Fellowship of the Ring
15. The LotR: The Return of the King
16. La La Land
17. Get Out
18. Moonlight
19. Whiplash
20. Arrival