Charlie Kaufman
Charlie Kaufman
Charles Stuart "Charlie" Kaufmanis an American screenwriter, producer, director, and lyricist. He wrote the films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He made his directorial debut with Synecdoche, New York, which was also well-received; film critic Roger Ebert named it "the best movie of the decade" in 2009. It was followed by Anomalisa...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth19 November 1958
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Charlie Kaufman quotes about
You and I share the same DNA. Is there anything more lonely than that?
I want to do my own thing, and I'm trying to get closer to realizing that as a filmmaker.
The conventional wisdom is - people say this all the time - you should only write something when you're far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that's not true. That's a story that you're telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It's the only truth that we ever know. And I'm interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out.
The passionate ones, the ones who go after what they want, may not get what they want, but they remain vital, in touch with themselves, and when they lie on their deathbeds, they have few regrets.
Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write.
I'm interested in art, and I think about the process of making art. It's part of my personality, my experience of the world, so it ends up in the movies. It's where my head is.
We're all subjective beings and trapped in our own realities and our own biographical stories and physical bodies and our histories - and that's the only way we can experience the world.
I do like escapism. I like going to the movies on a Friday night and seeing something fun.
We're all one thing, like cells in a body. 'Cept we can't see the body. The way fish can't see the ocean. And so we envy each other. Hurt each other. Hate each other. How silly is that? A heart cell hating a lung cell.
There's a point I can get to where I start writing character and then through the dialogue, after all of this preparation, the thing starts to feel like it's a character developing through the dialogue. A lot of character traits do come from writing dialogue, but I have to be ready to do it.
Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true.
I'm in my mind a lot. I live there.
It occurred to me that every work of art is a synecdoche, there's no way around it. Every creative work that someone does can only represent an aspect of the whole of something. I can't think of an exception to that.
There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.