A few words with divergent
'Eternal Sunshine' writer Charlie Kaufman
by Anthony Kusich
the Hollywood version, built around celebrity brand names and big budgets and special effects
and opening weekends and profit participation and little thought into the deeper aspects of the
craft. Then there's the indie brand -- almost the complete opposite -- that finds auteurs writing
and directing their own material, getting their films sold at festivals (if it all), and often
appealing to just a microscopic fraction of the entire cinema audience.
Then there's Charlie Kaufman, an anomaly within both systems.
He's written words spoken by some of the most famous actors in the business: Jim Carrey,
George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Cameron Diaz, Meryl Streep, and Nicolas Cage,
for starters. Yet to a certain, albeit small, segment of the moviegoing population, he's every
bit as big of a brand name as the performers listed above. He's the closest we've come in a
long time (ever?) to a screenwriter being a household name, which is no doubt due to the fact
that one of his greater successes was a film about him writing...that film.
His movies aren't easy sells. They're metaphysical headtrips. They demand repeat viewings.
They're intricately layered. They're open to multiple interpretations and applications. They're
worth seeing. So basically, everything that the typical film from Column A steers clear from.
I recently spoke to Mr. Kaufman about his success -- now that "Eternal Sunshine" has become
his highest-grossing release -- and merely began chipping away at his take on the craft.
Terse, guarded, modest, and slightly defensive, here's what he had to say:
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." The film has
passed the $30 million mark at the box office, making it
Kaufman's highest-grossing film to date.
romance between Joel and Clementine. Was it difficult to make it so palpable?
CK: Well the goal of the film was to make it about the relationship. It's not a romance. I
don't like to use that word. I see a lot of movies that don't bear anything true to what I see as
romance. I'm not pandering or trying to be cute. And as much as I contributed, Jim Carrey
and Kate Winslet bring enormous layers to it. So did the editor, Valdis Oskarsdottir. And the
director. I didn't create the relationship on my own.
AK: How much of you is in Joel? He's a unique subject for sure, but one can't help but
notice the similarities between him and John Cusack's character in "Being John Malkovich"
and Nicolas Cage's character in "Adaptation."
CK: I get asked that question a lot. Everything you do as a writer is autobiographical. I
definitely understand that type of character. But the implication is that I can write only one
type of character. I mean, I wrote the whole screenplay. I wrote the character of
Clementine who is decidedly not like me.
AK: That's true. Let me run a comment by you. When I was leaving the theater on the
opening night of "Eternal Sunshine," I overheard a man saying, "That's the type of movie you
say is brilliant even though you didn't understand it because you don't want to sound like an
idiot." What's your reaction to people who just don't "get" your films?
CK: "Eternal Sunshine" definitely works differently on a second viewing. You understand
things in retrospect that you couldn't possibly know at the beginning. That was part of the
design of the film. But I try to stay away from telling people how to react. The person who
makes a comment like that is trying to say that the emperor has no clothing, and I never said
I was the emperor.
AK: Do you think "Eternal Sunshine" is the most successful page-to-screen adaptation
among your five films?
CK: Well, I'm so involved in all of my movies during the entire process that they all pretty
much came out how I thought they would. Everything's a joint decision.
times in "Eternal Sunshine."
