Zitat des Tages von Charlie Kaufman:
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.
I really don't have any solutions and I don't like movies that do.
I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.
I graduated from college in 1980.
There's this inherent screenplay structure that everyone seems to be stuck on, this three-act thing. It doesn't really interest me. To me, it's kind of like saying, 'Well, when you do a painting, you always need to have sky here, the person here and the ground here.' Well, you don't.
I do like escapism. I like going to the movies on a Friday night and seeing something fun.
I think that people have expectations of themselves and other people that are based on these fictions that are presented to them as the way human life and relationships could be, in some sort of weird, ideal world, but they never are. So you're constantly being shown this garbage and you can't get there.
I want to try it to see what it's like and see what my stuff looks like when I take it from inception to completion.
I try to make things interesting and thought-provoking.
There's theater in life, obviously, and there's life in theater.
I think I've had pretty good experiences for the most part with the people who have directed my screenplays.
I do have, at different times, a certain kind of self-consciousness in the world, an insecurity.
I can talk endlessly about characters, or why someone did this or that, and what that dynamic and interaction is. I really love it, and I think that actors really respond positively to the fact that I like to talk about that stuff, because I'm not sure that all directors do.
As a writer, or as a filmmaker, you have to present yourself, and part of what yourself is is what you're interested in, or what you think is funny, or what you think is sad, or what you think is horrible.
I think you just assume that your memory is just sort of a video playback of your experience, but it's nothing like that at all. It's a complete refabrication of an event and a lot of it is made up, because you're filling in spaces.
I have a personality that tends to be somewhat compulsive, and I do tend to think in a circular way. I dwell on the same things over and over and I try to figure out different ways of looking at the same issue.
I tend to not only read reviews, but also every little stupid thing online. It's a very bad idea, and there's a lot of angry people in the world. And it's weird to absorb all that weirdness.
I like actors - I used to be one.
I have ideas written down some places, but usually I can't find them. I'm not very organized.
There's no way to approach anything in an objective way. We're completely subjective; our view of the world is completely controlled by who we are as human beings, as men or women, by our age, our history, our profession, by the state of the world.
I think if I've worked anything through with screenwriting it's that I'm not going to be able to work anything through.
I've had to deal, a lot, with my own sense of intimidation at meeting famous people - especially actors, but really any famous people.
I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it.
I think if something resonates, even if it's surreal, it's because it is relatable and I think that that's a core issue for me.
We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.
I studied acting at Boston University. I was in the theater department there. Somewhere in there I decided that wasn't what I was going to do and I went to the B.F.A. film program at N.Y.U.
Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.
I've kind of come to the conclusion that what passes for realism in movies has nothing to do with reality and that my stuff is more realistic than that.
I'm old enough, by a long shot, to remember going to the library and spending days researching. If I was looking for a line from a poem or something else I needed, that would be the trip I would have to take.
I think generally I'm kind of interested in subjective experience, what goes on inside someone's head, that being all they really know of the world.
I'm not into extreme sports or something. I just live a quiet life.
The only honest and generous thing for me to do is to give people myself. That's all I've got as an artist, so I want to do that in an unflinching way.
Sometimes I don't like the books that I'm reading.
So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.
I don't think screenwriting is therapeutic. It's actually really, really hard for me. It's not an enjoyable process.
I do have some theatrical background. I've written plays and seen plays and read plays. But I also read novels. One thing I don't read is screenplays.