The Kaufman Kronicles

An old interview that I have on iTunes got placed on my iPod by accident. It was a 2 hour interview for Wired magazine and has Charlie Kaufman in a restaurant with this interviewer. It's a great listen and got me thinking about Kaufman's films...so I decided to watch all his screenwriting and directed films in order with the exception of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind...since he feels it's not really the script he wrote.

1st. I think it was Frank...but I want to say that I turned him on to "Get A Life"..I saw it from day one and missed only one episode, "The Gang Episode"...this show was brilliant and it was the most fun Kaufman ever had from his TV show writing days...form The Mighty Wildebeast, to Wallet Boy , to Time Juice...Charlie Kaufman had a role in the maturity of my comedic youth.

As I watched his first screenwriting film, Being John Malkovich, come to life I was finding myself laughing out loud again and finding the sadness and "wackiness" of this film...Kaufman takes literary jumps and originality to a whole new level with each film..in this one I forgot how hot and sexy Cathrine Keener was, how ugly Cameron Diaz was...how pathetic John Cusack was, and how sad it was to see John Malkovich have 1 second where he was back to himself before Mr. Lester and crew enter his body...I also watched this film to prepare myself for the 1999 write up for best film..I am dreading that one. Apparently, Francis Ford Coppola was sent the script by Kaufman and thats how Spike Jonze got the script..it's all "strange loops" when it comes to Kaufman...once you start reading stories and how things change ...like the original plot involving Satan and Malkovich did not want to star in it...and actually Kaufman had the script for like 5 years before anything happened with it...it all goes loopy...just like a Kaufman script....see the old scripts at the link above....

Next I will watch the Underappreciated Human Nature

Playlist: Cold Souls

There's a difference between the opinion of some random Internet nobody and a professional reviewer from a major media outlet (he writes unironically). Or at least there should be. Case in point, this movie. According to respected long-time Rolling Stone reviewer Peter Travers, Cold Souls will cause you to "laugh till it hurts." Really? Wow, sounds painful, but worth it. But, wait, I could use a second opinion. What does the Old Grey Lady herself have to say? That Cold Souls is "flat-out funny"? Hey, if you can't trust The New York Times, who can you trust?

And really, what's the point of movie reviews, of any form of criticism, if you can't trust them? If you can't use them as a guide? Cold Souls was not funny. Some of Paul Giamatti's reactions are comical--ok, funny--but I didn't even get the sense that the film was trying to be comedic. That's the thing that's throwing me. It's definitely surreal--Giamatti as himself having his soul removed because it was hurting his acting--but in a slow existential European way. Basically,  Being John Malkovich not written by Charlie Kaufman, which makes it decidedly not Being John Malkovich. French (see!) writer/director Sophie Barthes has made an interesting movie and I'd like to see what she does next. But if she wanted to not make a comedy, why not just cast Jim Carrey and avoid all the confusion.