Charlie Kaufman

We have a fundamental problem with the new trailer for Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York: it makes the movie look about as much fun as a funeral. Good golly this is depressing stuff!

Phillip Seymour Hoffman stars as a 40-year-old theater director who, with his life collapsing around him, decides to stage a massive theater production in upstate New York by recreating all of Manhattan in a warehouse. No, it doesn't make sense, but hey, what do you want? It's Charlie Kaufman we're talking about here. The dude made an entire movie about going into John Malkovich's head.  read more »

How do you outdo Hollywood's master of mind-bending meta plots? If you're Wired and you're profiling Synecdoche, New York writer-director Charlie Kaufman, you create a blog that reveals the process of how the story was conceived, pitched, written, and edited. The profile and the blog are written by Jason Tanz. (This comes via Kottke.org.)

Mr. Kaufman, who previously wrote Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, seems to inspire journalists to look inside—or inside-out—to match his inventiveness. Then again, some just come at him straight on or use him as an  read more »

Comedy Central has greenlit a new show, Michael and Michael Have Issues, starring pals and vets of The State and Stella, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black, reports the Hollywood Reporter. It will be a kind of sketch show within a show, focusing on the two Michaels, their problems with the world, themselves and each other. Josh Pais, soon to be seen in Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York will also star.

Charlie Kaufman, the famously private writer of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, promises that he's not a recluse. But he was being a little spooky in this interview with The Hollywood Reporter about his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, which will have a big premiere at the Cannes Films Festival this week. "I'm not here cowering in a corner," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "I don't have a veil over my head. I don't say 'I vant to be alone.'"  read more »