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DOS & DON'TS
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ALSO BY EDDY MORETTI
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 CHARLIE KAUFMANINTERVIEW BY EDDY MORETTI, PORTRAITS BY FOUR FORENSIC ARTISTS BECAUSE KAUFMAN DIDN’T WANT TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED 
Here’s an interview with the guy who wrote all those movies that you like. Vice: How have the screenings of Synecdoche, New York been going? Do you generally like to sit through those things? Charlie Kaufman: No, I don’t sit through them. I mean, I did at Cannes, but usually when you go to film festivals you just come back to the theater right before the movie ends. You screened at the festival in Sarajevo. How was that? I don’t really know how it went. I think the movie has a lot of varied reactions. Do you get both extreme emotional interest and disinterest? I guess so. But if there are going to be extreme reactions, then I hope that they really are extremes. Sometimes I think people just shut off. Well, I think there’s a point at which you have to be willing to let this film take you somewhere. I was telling myself things like, “OK, this is not entirely my worldview but I’ll just go with it.” And then I was totally devastated at the end of the film—I was blubbering. And you were by yourself when you saw it? Oh yeah, by myself. It’s the kind of film that I think people should go to alone and then they should tell a friend to go alone and they should meet up afterward. They shouldn’t really see it together. And you’re a well-known writer, so this isn’t a film that’s going to sneak in under the radar and only go to the fests. People are going to see it. I was curious to know what you think its chances are out there. I don’t know, but I’ve done a lot of soul-searching about the idea of appealing to a mass market. You have to be like, “How do you sell this thing? And why should you have to?” Well, you have to because it costs so much money and that’s got to be paid back and all that stuff. But when people look at a painting or read a book, it’s a more individual and personal experience, and I think that’s really the only way that you can... You need to work with that single viewer’s personal experience in mind. You can’t have “How do I appeal to the most people?” in your head when you’re making a movie if you want something that’s real and true. Because then you’re going to make all sorts of compromises—you’re going to pander. But then, thinking about how to appeal to the most people, it’s almost built into the situation of filmmaking because of the expense. It has to be marketed, and that’s repellent to me. I guess the answer to your question is: Not only do I not know how I’m going to sell this, but I also don’t know if I want to sell it. I don’t want to figure out a way to trick people into seeing this movie. If it’s not your thing, you shouldn’t see it. It’s not going to be for all people—that’s what I’m learning. There are people who are not going to respond to it. And that’s fine. I don’t want to trick them. Early on in its development, wasn’t Synecdoche being described as a horror film? Yeah, that was the initial thing when Spike Jonze and I went to Amy Pascal from Sony Pictures with it. She wanted a horror film from us. So there are elements of what’s scary in the world in the movie, but it’s not really a horror film. Horror is a genre and that means there are certain devices and expectations and certain ways of cutting it and certain music and there are cats jumping out to scare you and shit. There’s nothing like that in this movie. It’s ponderous and it’s weird and it’s emotional, but it’s not a horror movie and I didn’t want it to be. As soon as I sat down to write it I thought, “I’m not going to write that kind of movie. I don’t have any interest in doing that. I want to do something that feels real to me—about what’s scary about being alive, about being a person. And what’s scary about being a person to me is loneliness and illness and mortality and guilt.” So that’s what I put in the movie. Those are things that I think are really scary—along with regret and aging and time passing. During the first 20 minutes of the film I was waiting for some kind of genre device to drop in so that everything clicked. But you didn’t do that. No, I didn’t. In my past movies there’s always sort of been a conceit or a gimmick or something that you can hang on to. I think people are going to expect that in this one, but I didn’t want to do that this time because it makes people feel very safe, and I didn’t want them to feel safe. Synecdoche is not going to give you anything like, “Oh, it’s a dream or it’s a portal into John Malkovich or it’s a secret memory-erasing drug or whatever the hell it is.” It’s not going to happen. This guy’s life is going to play out and you’re going to watch him age and you’re going to watch him not succeed at what he wants to do and have lousy relationships and you’re going to watch him die. That’s what the movie is. I felt strongly that I wanted to do it this way this time. That might have been a terrible mistake in terms of marketing the movie but... It probably is a terrible commercial mistake, but it’s an incredible artistic triumph. I think it’s your best work and I think it was overwhelming. I understand the themes of regret and aging and loss and the sense of reconstituting it all through art. The film doesn’t give you any cute way out. But I think that a sunnier outlook is also completely valid. I don’t think that I subscribe only to the outlook in Synecdoche. That’s just this movie. I don’t know exactly how to articulate this but I don’t... the idea that I’m just morose and miserable is not... It’s wrong. I will explore other things in other movies, but in this movie I wanted to be truthful about this sort of feeling in the world, which is a real feeling. But it’s not the only feeling in the world and it’s not the only valid feeling in the world. You totally succeeded. How happy are you with what you’ve done here? It’s hard. I’m afraid of the movie failing in the marketplace for a bunch of reasons: because my feelings are going to be hurt, because I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to do this kind of work again if this movie doesn’t get an audience, all sorts of basic reasons. If people are bored with the movie it upsets me. I wish it didn’t but you know, I’m a sensitive, nervous person, I guess. But I’m trying to answer your question and I guess the answer is: If I can watch it by myself, which is the way you said people should watch it, I kind of like it. I think it’s good. I think there are a lot of good things about the movie. We didn’t compromise. The acting is great. I think the music is great. We did what we set out to do without being scared of the possibility of commercial failure. And that’s good. So I think I decided that I need to watch the movie by myself, and unfortunately I can’t because I’m going to like 25 film fests. I think there are a lot of things that you did incredibly well, like the way you did a lot of short scenes and managed to cover a lot of distance. There are over 200 scenes in the movie, which is about twice as many scenes as a film its length would normally have. It’s way more than a conventional film. It was a production nightmare—many, many, many locations, and we only had 45 days to shoot so we were really constrained by that in terms of how and where we could travel. And makeup time was a disaster. It was a real trial by fire to make this movie. Did you start out intending to direct Synecdoche from the get-go? No, Spike was going to direct it. We went in and pitched it together to Amy Pascal—at least the initial idea—and then I took a very long time to write it, as I usually do. By the time I had a draft, Spike was doing Where the Wild Things Are and couldn’t set a date to do this one. I really didn’t want to wait. I felt like it would be another five years and I didn’t want that. I needed something to come out. It would have been a very long time between movies for me, which would be a bad thing professionally. Then I felt like it was a personal thing that I wanted to do, and I felt like I could do it. So I asked Spike if he was willing to step aside, and he thought about it and very nicely agreed to. CONTINUED CHARLIE KAUFMAN | 1 | 2 | >
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