With his massive debut novel, Charlie Kaufman disappears up his own ass
Image: Graphic: Karl Gustafson Aux Features Book Review
An odd moment occurs near the end of a recent New York Times interview with the acclaimed screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman. The piece’s author, Jon Mooallem, is discussing how the writer of films like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind would like to see his work reviewed. “[Kaufman] would prefer,” Mooallem explains, “if film critics prefaced their negative reviews by disclosing that they’d just had a fight with their spouse, or: ‘I don’t like this guy because I don’t like the way he looks.’ Because those things are true, he said.”
This is funny for two reasons. One is that it makes it sound like Kaufman thinks any critic who writes a negative review had some unrelated real-life unpleasantness or petty personal grudge that caused them to dislike his work, rather than finding the film itself bad. Two, Kaufman’s debut novel, Antkind, is a satire whose main character is a buffoonish film critic with precisely the kinds of childish personal vendettas and public embarrassments that Kaufman suggests define their output—which is an awfully on-the-nose blending of art and lived expectations.
So let’s mea this culpa: I have not had a fight with my significant other recently. This pandemic is certainly taking its toll, but I can honestly say I’ve managed to settle into a tolerable routine. I have no idea what Charlie Kaufman looks like, so I couldn’t tell you if I like his appearance or not. I can say that I find his filmography to be tremendously impressive (and, in my opinion, he’s batting almost 1.000 when it comes to the results of those films). Hopefully that provides some context for the fact that I have spent the past two months patiently reading all 720 pages of Antkind. And after giving it a good amount of thought, my strongest belief is that despite the book’s various likable qualities, Charlie Kaufman has disappeared up his own ass with this novel. Given the overwhelmingly meta elements at work, I should probably make clear I’m being metaphorical with that statement.
If there’s one thing you will take away from B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, the pompous and cartoonish main character of this book, it’s that he hates the oeuvre of Charlie Kaufman. Early on, Rosenberg mocks Kaufman’s “novel” idea of having an actor play himself; some time later, he calls Synecdoche, New York an “irredeemable, torturous, tortuous yawn.” Later he delivers a lecture entitled “I Vote With My Feet When It Comes To Charlie Kaufman,” bemoaning the filmmaker’s latest “turgid, overhyped foray into Kaufman’s self-referential, self-congratulatory psyche.” Et cetera. This serves as a kind of microcosm of the novel itself: a parodic barrage of metafictional conceits that keep returning to the same obsessive themes.
That last indictment that Rosenberg levels against “Kaufman” is in response to the filmmaker’s new project, Dreams Of Absent-Minded Transgression, purportedly about the “lulling of our contemporary world into a semiconscious dream state in which, by degree, we accept an ever-increasing surrealism in our daily lives.” (This also defines the structure of Antkind.) Rosenberg, feeling unappreciated and marginalized in his chosen profession as an author and professor of film criticism, stumbles upon what he believes will be a career-making find: A hundred-years-plus-old man named Ingo Cutbirth has spent his entire life single-handedly making a stop-motion animated film—and the movie is three months long.
Rosenberg plans to use this brilliant work of outsider art as a means of finally making his name in the world, but immediately confronts tragedy: Cutbirth dies midway through screening the film for Rosenberg, and before the critic can return to New York with the print, it burns up in a fire, leaving only a single frame of celluloid and Rosenberg’s memory as proof it ever existed. What to do? Rosenberg’s plan is straightforward enough: Dive into his memory with the help of a hypnotist, in order to reconstruct the entire thing from beginning to end.
It’s a compelling hook, the kind of thing you’d expect to see in one of Kaufman’s films. Unfortunately, the unfolding of the narrative suggests there’s a reason Kaufman has found such success in cinema: With only two hours or so of running time to play with, there’s a firm structure in place that mitigates the desire for excess. But here, Kaufman’s talent for the absurd refuses to bend to any structure whatsoever, stretching on to what feels ad infinitum at points. It gradually becomes enervating, a novel simultaneously overstuffed and plodding. Given free rein to dump the contents of his mind into prose, Kaufman crams into Antkind as many one-joke premises, surrealist curlicues, superficial lampoons, and Pynchon-esque reworkings of his premise. The result is bloated and frustrating—less an embarrassment of riches than a dearth of restraint. The experience of reading about a very silly man’s Kafka-esque descent into suffering becomes a Kafka-esque process in itself.
The examples of Kaufman’s ill-considered excess are as plentiful as the Job-like punishments he visits upon his self-important character. One recurring gag is Rosenberg’s over-the-top and self-serving embrace of leftist identity politics, which runs the gamut from repeatedly mansplaining how feminism works to his insistence on affixing anyone and everyone with his self-invented gender-bending pronoun, “thon.” As satire, it feels outdated and clumsy. As insight into Rosenberg’s character, it reads as caricature. Similarly, continual dives into Rosenberg’s “memory” of the Cutbirth film keep returning to the same basic scenarios, such as competing vaudeville comedy duos and the efforts to assassinate them by a vindictive Abbott and dimwitted Costello. These are amusing at first, but in trying to inject pathos by showing the characters making the wrong choices again and again or misunderstanding their place in the world, it all loses its potency. This accumulating effect of disenchantment and spinning one’s wheels may be intentional, but it doesn’t make the book any more fun to read.
It’s possible to see glimpses of the more impactful book that might’ve been. As anyone who has seen his films or read his screenplays can attest, the writer is capable of some truly arresting passages, and here, when he finds just the right impressions for a feeling or an image, the Pynchon comparisons are apt. It’s there in his description of a film beginning—“a birth, silent of course, the death-rattle chatter of sprockets, shutter spinning like that madman in Washington Square, the inevitable, relentless background noise of this clockwork universe to which we have found ourselves exiled.” It’s there in the rich allegory of his central conceit—Cutbirth’s film contains an entire world of unseen characters, built simply to exist around the events he captured on camera, yet with their own never-to-be-filmed narratives. And it’s there in the many moments of comedy that succeed by virtue of Kaufman’s warped sensibilities, often deployed with a daffy, Vonnegut-like gusto—as in the section where Rosenberg can’t stop falling down manholes.
Rosenberg does, eventually, evolve as a character. But it feels unearned, too abrupt a shift on the heels of all the farcical flailings and absurdist turns that came before. And it’s weighed down with so much winking; Kaufman feels the need to jump in and remind you that all of this is painfully self-aware and distanced to a degree that would make Bertold Brecht envious. Nearing the end, Rosenberg makes this all too obvious:
I am glad there is a logical explanation for the ridiculousness of my existence. But the horrifying reality is that I am under the thumb of a third-rate talent who no doubt despises me as much as I do him, likely because I have called him out on his pathetic attempts at screenage. He holds all the cards in the ill-conceived, irrational world in which I find myself unjustly imprisoned.
There is gilding the lily, and then there’s shoving the lily under someone’s nose while revealing you’ve replaced it with a squirting joke flower, at the exact moment you unleash a blast of water into someone’s face. The messiness and sprawl and insecurity about every aspect of Rosenberg’s life—of life, full stop—is the point, and there are moments when the tragicomedy feels pure, and true. In one scene, a character identifies humor as the key framing device for existence: “If performed properly, it transforms a painful experience into a tolerable one.” Were it not for the flashes of insight, wedded to some oft-excellent prose, the narrative bloat and insecure-white-guy tropes would have remained painful. Thanks to Kaufman’s talents, they are instead tolerable. But fidelity to Kaufman’s theory of honesty dictates I allow the possibility that I had a plate of bad sushi halfway through reading his book; maybe that’s why I ended up disliking so much of it.
Author photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
148 Comments
I’m shocked. Shocked, I tells ya! C’mon, this was obvious from the summary posted the other day.That being said, his G.I. Joe beard is on fucking point.
Read the book or you don’t have a worthwhile thing to say about it. All you’ve done is read one review by someone. You have literally done zero to warrant having a constructive thing to write about it
Oof.One thing that confuses me is that the book is 720 pages, but the unabridged audiobook is only nine hours long (and not out until next month for some reason).
Is this one of those books with lots of blank pages or something?
Once he disappears up his own ass, there are several hundred pages with just a big asterisk in the middle.It’s just a twenty-minute fart in the audiobook.
does the tapeworm from Filth make an appearance?
The audiobook is read by John Moschitta.
Can we have Jamie Kennedy and Danny Pudi read it in character as Randy and Abed respectively?
Or how about we just have Michael Peña as Luis summarize it?
Or all three? Have Rob Schneider read the funny bits in a racist voice so we know what to laugh at.
[Bongos start playing]
On his relationship with critics, Kaufman is one of the only people I can think of who had a genuinely contentious interview on Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s radio show, when he was on to promote Anomalisa. In the decade-plus I’ve been listening, they’ve rarely had interviews with guests that weren’t just pleasant chats, but Kaufman and Johnson were definitely one of their most uncomfortable.
Not super familliar with Mark Kermode, but never been a huge fan from what I’ve seen.
I watched it just now. I think both Kaufman and Johnson seemed perhaps uncomfortable but it didn’t strike me as contentious. I think they’re probably just more socially reserved.
Could be that he doesn’t particularly like Kermode. Somewhere in the book, the main character, B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, says this in his never ending monologue:“It (a monograph) was the first sewer-centric film study since Mark Kermode’s 1993 essay on C.H.U.D. series, which I believe was entitled “I, Mark Kermode, Am an Asshole”. I cannot be certain though; several of his essays have been similarly titled.”
It didn’t come across as that uncomfortable to me.
I like Kermode and Mayo well enough, but thought it was an awful line of questioning to start off the interview. Sure, it’s easy from the outside to think that losing an Oscar shouldn’t be a big deal to someone – but why bring that up? especially to start off a conversation?
“He holds all the cards in the ill-conceived, irrational world in which I find myself unjustly imprisoned.”Ah, so Kaufman is writing Johnny the Homicidal Maniac now?
I’d watch a Charlie Kaufman-written Happy Noodle Boy movie.
…his insistence on affixing anyone and everyone with his self-invented gender-bending pronoun, “thon.”
I rolled my eyes pretty hard at the “Screenwriter writes a book about a strawman film critic who actively hates the author’s films in particular” stuff, but this little detail made me laugh.
Basically, Charlie Kaufman has become Amanda M. Ros.
wth is going on here
I have no idea what Charlie Kaufman looks like Really?? I mean…huh, ok, if you say so.
I didn’t know what he looked like either, but that sentence was funny coming right above a picture of him
I swear by all that’s holy that was added after I submitted this review.
I believe you Alex.
I don’t believe you, Alex. Have you just had a fight with the ol’ ball and chain?
I always assumed he looked like this:
As someone who has liked all of Kaufman’s film’s, this sounds dreadful. Reading critics can’t be fun when you’re a filmmaker, but it’s not like critics have it out for Charlie Kaufman. He’s probably more well liked by critics than the general public.
I interpret his use of “film critic” as a way to represent the inner critic inside Kaufman, as a way to make fun of his overlycritical negative side. Another of his self-referential protagonists.
and starring Bob Balaban in The Lady in the Water
Yeah it’s hard to do sometimes, but one has to remember critics are doing their jobs. My new film is on Amazon Prime, and the reviewers are split. Half love it, and half hate it. Like, really hate it. It hurts to read their comments, but more because I’m always disappointed when someone doesn’t like something I’ve done. I want everyone to get something out of it. But I can’t begrudge someone because they didn’t like it. I just thank them for taking the time to watch my film.
That sounds tough, but do remember online reviews on sites like Amazon or Yelp tend to be love or hate it, as the people who thought “that was pretty good” or “not bad” usually don’t bother to right a review.
Hey pal, the fact that you got a silent hentai remake of citizen kane starring Corey Feldman on Prime is an accomplishment in and of itself. It’s all about knowing what Daddy Bezos likey.
I just wished Disney hadn’t been so violently opposed to my erotic take Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. It’s called homage, people!
well you named all of the dwarves “Pokey” so it was hard to tell them apart. I mean, other than by girth, bend, uneven hang, etc.
I know what you mean. Our movie is loved by a small group of people, hated by a small group, and widely WIDELY ignored by the rest of the world. We have to remind ourselves we meticulously crafted it to appeal to that first small group, we pulled it off, and anyone else who even remotely smiles or laughs at it is just extra cream on top.
What’s your film called?
When I Last Saw Jesse
what if you get those negative reviews that are like “i had buffering issues, 1 star.” You know, like those DVD reviews that go “packaging sucks, 1 star”
Well luckily I’ve not had to deal with issues like that since my release is strictly streaming only. It’s definitely a risk as you can only quality check so many discs before they ship (on previous productions where there was a DVD release, the standard practice was to select ten discs out of every hundred at random for bugs.
seriously the harshest criticism of him i can think of comes from shirley
That’s exactly what I just said before reading your comment. I totally agree.
Yeah, the conceit was understandable in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Lady in the Water” because having a pompous film critic who hates everything made sense because that movie was made after the critics turned against Shyamalan for “The Village” after praising his earlier works, but as far as I know there hasn’t been such a turnaround for Kaufman.
Regardless of the quote in the first paragraph, I can’t imagine Kaufman actually thinks critics are out to get him. Considering most Kaufman protagonists are sides of his personality, I’d think this critic character is more a representation of Kaufman’s self-hate and self-critical side, especially since the character specifically hates Kaufman films.
I read the New York Times interview, and I really think Kaufman’s comments about negative criticism are being misrepresented here. It seemed to me he was speaking broadly about negative reviews in general, rather than his own work, and it seemed to me less like a dismissal of negative reviews and more like an interest in seeing a more honest insertion of the critic into their writing, rather than trying to write anything as though what they’re writing can possibly be separated from their own life and experience. His comment in the interview was specifically mentioned in the context of how Kaufman was trying to help the interviewer figure out how to structure and present the interview by suggesting he put his own uneasiness about how to present it at the forefront. It’s worth a read to anyone that’s interested.
Just now?
…as a corollary to “your pilot does not need 90 minutes,” your debut novel does not need 700 pages.
Right? Mine was only 500 pages!
Yeah, I and ran out of crayons by page 250. Thanks, Steinbeck.
Mine’s a short story collection of vignettes which you can read in a hour or so. Because I don’t know if I’m good enough to write 700 pages. That’s why I decided to write every short story during one (1) train ride. (As in a vignette per train ride.)
I would argue that no novel needs 700 pages.
By the time you’re that many pages into it, it’s not really novel any more.
Really? What’s the agreed upon definitive number of pages allowed in a novel? I’d like to know so that I can teach my children that if they want to become novelists, they should understand the physical restrictions that bind stories to the correct framework. This will help me to restrict and control their imaginations and ambitions.
>—- JOKE —->….YOU
I think you may have misinterpreted a bit of wordplay there. “novel”
“2666″ might disagree with you. Though I think Bolano could probably have cut out 100 pages in the middle and it would have been a lot more palatable given the subject matter (and it still would have been over 700 by a good margin).
If a book can’t make you forget about your marital issues or other unhappiness in your life, then what the fuck is the point of reading it? The best books could make you forget that your house is on fire.
Except maybe House on Fire.
‘B Rosenberger Rosenberg’? ‘Inigo Cutbirth’?!?!? I have time for Thomas Pynchon (at least early Thomas Pynchon) but by god he uncorked of a whole tide of (let’s face it) middle aged white dudes who think whimsical and occasionally violent things happening to people with silly names for nearly a thousand pages is what the Great American Novel looks like.
I feel like Joseph Heller also deserves some blame, as does Joyce.
Don’t forget Dickens. And maybe Irving.
Fuck Joyce.
Not sure Joyce is fair (I do really like him though, so might be a bit biased). I mean, almost everyone in Ulysses who isn’t Bloom or Dedalus (which was his sort of alter-ego anyway) has various standard Irish names/nicknames. Paddy Dignam, Blazes Boylan etc.
Yeah, but it’s still a collection of whimsical and occasionally violent things happening to a motley crew of characters, and Heller added quite a few goofy names to that formula. Pynchon was the one who kicked the ball but Joyce and Heller were holding it for him.I’m also inclined to say that Joyce went ahead with the goofy name trope for Finnegans Wake, but I’m not convinced it’s possible to make a definitive statement about anything in Finnegans Wake outside of “popular fiction trends almost certainly had nothing to do with whatever was happening in Finnegans Wake.”
Huh. Yeah, I hadn’t seen it but I suppose ‘the desire to be Joycean’, minus (in most cases) anything like the talent to actually do that, is proably a tributary to this particular kind of novel product. You could make a case for the funny names being an attempt to go Dickensian, for that matter.
Both, however, did something substantial with the idea. A lot of what happened after is more in the way of a cargo-cult imitation.
Why is page count relevant?
thank you
Middle aged white dudes? check Not reading something and feeling like you can criticize it? checkRealizing you are an idiot helping to destruct original thought? sadly not check
I’m criticizing a trope, not the novel. And I have read (or in the end tried to read, I think I ended up just hurling whatever William H.Gass I ended up having a go at into the nearest volcano 100 pages in) enough of that trope to (a) feel justified in being somewhat jaded about it when it looks like someone else has decided to have a go at it and (b) notice simply as a matter of data analysis that there is a certain homogeneity in cultural and social background among its practitioners.
You really should stop insulting the intelligence of strangers and maybe put away the shrine to Kaufman.
You’re probably some white dude. Shut the fuck up and stop calling everyone dude like it’s some insult and not you parroting Twitter verifieds blindly because you can’t construct and original thought numale
kill yourself
I feel like this thing is going to be the new Infinite Jest, kept on bookshelves for the cool factor, never completed, shining like a warning beacon to potential romantic partners.
He’ll be lucky if this one is used to prop up an old couch.
A few months ago, I finally made it through Pale King on my third attempt, and in the afterglow I considered re-reading Infinite Jest, which I loved but found a real struggle. But I have not yet acted on that impulse, and never may.
Oh, and with all that said, I have no real interest in attempting this Charlie Kaufman book.
It’s probably not apt to reference Pale King, as Wallace didn’t complete it. Similarly, a posthumous novel such as Juneteenth (Ellison) can’t be held to the same scrutiny. Jest on the other hand, well that is a good piece of work. Definitely worth a re-read from an aged perspective.
Oh, I only mentioned Pale King as context for my recent reconsideration of re-reading Jest, as a way to express my lack of interest in this Charlie Kaufman joint. To wit, I know Infinite Jest is worth the considerable effort, but I don’t trust Kaufman to deliver the same return on investment.
IJ may be worth a reread someday; I enjoyed reading it with an understanding of where it was going. Pale King was punishing, however. I can’t see myself picking that one up again.
I knew I’d never finish The Pale King based on not finishing Infinite Jest, so I never even started it :). I did finish and like The Broom of the System, but I really prefer his short stories.
yeah you should definitely avoid people who buy famous books but never read them
On the other hand, the late Umberto Eco had a personal library of thousands of books and when asked if he’d read them all said that he had only read a small fraction of them but the joy was in the potential of future reading. Sort of an inverted Marie Kondo viewpoint.
yeah but he died and didn’t read them
TBF, I had a bunch of stuff I’ve never read because it was gifted. When I went digital I purged it all, but my FIL is a determined man. I try to explain to him I have 50K books on my Calibre and I’m not getting any younger .
Or maybe it’s the fifth “Gravity’s Rainbow.”
“Having Infinite Jest on your bookshelf means you haven’t read it and just want people to think you’re smart and interesting” is the Infinite Jest of the hot takes bookshelf.
I know a lot of people who own the Infinite Jest hardcover (myself included), but I don’t know anyone who’s finished it (myself included). One of the other people definitely bought it as decor though, he flat out told me!
I feel like having your personality being entering reviews about things you have no interest in and being sarcastically dismissing of art makes you less interesting than those guys
Well, I never claimed to be interesting and I actually AM one of those guys – I have Infinite Jest sitting on my bookshelf, started and unfinished many times. By all metrics I should get rid of the thing and make room for something else, but there it sits. I love DFW and I love Charlie Kaufman too! Mostly I was thinking of t when I posted, but I guess I now have to live with flopper thinking I suck. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Charlie Kaufman disappears up his own ass” is literally every ridiculously overrated Charlie Kaufman movie.
I’m realizing Being John Malkovich could be and probably was replaced with Being Charlie Kaufman in his head
Came to the comments desperately hoping to find a comment that said this. I feel like I’m being gaslit when critics and pop culture writers slobber all over his movies.
Recently I had an argument with some chode about people misusing the term “gaslight”. I insisted that it’s not misused all that much.And yet here we are.Semantic grumbling aside, he has a fantastic talent that is best put to use by a director who can curb his more (jerkoff mime motion) tendencies. I love Kaufman *as directed by*. Anything he himself has directed I’ve found so motherfucking twee and precious I wanted to slit my wrists with a ukulele.
not a ukulele STRING, but the actual ukulele. You sir/madam, are fucking hardcore.
And wristS. Plural. No small task.
I think you nailed the issue here—he needs active collaborators (not just editor/agent) to enhance his talent and mitigate his worst tendencies.
Anything he himself has directed I’ve found so motherfucking twee and precious I wanted to slit my wrists with a ukulele.Hard to take seriously the artistic criticisms of anyone that would write such an annoying sentence.
oh no. you dont take me seriously. what shall i do?
You’re a conceited nobody who hasn’t created a single worthwhile thing in your pointless life. Your only option is criticizing in a vacuum of your own empty existence online
I have creative arts awards that suggest otherwise. But shine on you crazy diamond!
kill yourself
You probably accuse everyone you meet of gaslighting you because you’re an insufferable nobody
kill yourself
The same thing flashed through my mind, but I thought it was a bit too critical because at least he’s sometimes fun. I get the impulse, though.
Being Johm Malkovich is great. I honestly don’t think I’ve seen anything else by him though
New marvel movie in disneyplus is up, you can go write about that review
Deeply unnecessary. Why is the go-to for some people “Try (insert facile comparison) instead.”? I see it all the time with the cheap Michael Bay insert. Having criticism for artists whose work is generally considered “elevated” does not imply an inability to grasp that work or lack of appreciation for artists of the same caliber. It doesn’t imply *anything*. Stuff that elitist trope.
Deeply unnecesary is speaking with such contempt about a independent writer without even reading the book.Saying someone is overrated is not criticism, titling a review “disappears into his own ass” is not criticism, its disgusting and proves the point that those who cant do are critics.
You want to stan for Kaufman go ahead. But don’t be surprised when your trash defense is called out.And that article title? C’mon, friend. That’s just how these things are written to catch clicks. Welcome to the internet ffs.And you’re conflating the dogshit “Those who can’t do, teach” saying with the dogshit Teddy Roosevelt grouse about critics.
Im not surprised just wanted to give balance to a comment section full of people that havent read the book and yet somehow feel obliged to give their opinions on how the author sucksJust because its the “internet” doesnt make it right, sucks that the reviewer can only make a living by writing catchy titles
A) There’s no saying the article writer DID write the title. This site does have editorial staff. (You may reasonably be sarcastically surprised to know.)B) “full”? Jebus Christmas, it’s like mayyybe 6 people. Take a pill.C) Nobody is badmouthing the book in the comments. They’re badmouthing the filmmaker. You’d be correct to take umbrage with their film complaints in the context of this NOT film, but you didn’t. Instead you suggested that they read a review of a Marvel movie. Now I’m perfectly capable of reading between those lines. You’ve taken an intellectually elitist dig at Marvel films and the taste of these Kaufman haters. I can’t say I’m wholly in disagreement about the MCU and I am a fan of *some* Kaufman output, so I’m mildly on your side in certain respects. But you’re still being an elitist dink. Dislike of Kaufman does not inherently mean a critical limitation of predictable, populist popcorn action fluff. And the MCU is no more ridiculous than an actor with a secret portal to his brain being controlled by a puppeteer. Again: take a pill.
One recurring gag is Rosenberg’s over-the-top and self-serving embrace of leftist identity politics, which runs the gamut from repeatedly mansplaining how feminism works to his insistence on affixing anyone and everyone with his self-invented gender-bending pronoun, “thon.”Where do you get “self-invented” from? Thon originated in 1858 as a portmanteau of “that” and “one.” Neither Kaufman nor his character invented it. More details here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thon. Fix, please.
I don’t know, I’ve read it and I loved it, but I’m not a critic, so what do I know?It was a 25 hours read over a long week, not an easy read, but it helped me get out of the low mood I was having. There were so many good moments in that book, so many laughs and moments of brilliance, that I don’t mind that at some point Charlie was too meta down his ass.English is not my native language, so it was even more of a tough read than usual due to the excessive and pompous vocabulary used by the main character.
Hopefully his new film this autumn is better (though I think he always fared better with someone else directing his scripts, like with Sorkin)
I’m not imagining Aaron Sorkin directing a Kaufman screenplay.
Good point. Molly’s Game ought to be re-titled Sorkin’s Shame. But hey, let’s give him some time; perhaps he can learn the craft as he goes.
I’d pay good money to see this film for real.https://www.somethingawful.com/awful-movie-database/charlie-kaufman-recursion/
>Charlie Kaufman has disappeared up his own ass with this novelIsn’t that his thing though? Like IDK what else you would expect from a screenwriter who when hired to adapt a novel just threw out the source material and instead wrote a screenplay entirely about himself.
It sounds like Kaufman would like something along the lines of the following:Full disclosure: two years ago at a conference, John Chapman and I had a little too much tequila and ended up shagging like minks for three glorious nights. I still get a little misty-eyed every time I walk into a new hotel room and see those little mints on the pillow. Neither my husband nor his wife were aware of this little interlude. I mean, until I announced it publicly here.Full disclosure: I met Malcolm at Harvard, where I used to cheat off of him in calculus exams. Now I have to invite him to my annual Christmas party, have dinner with him and his appalling wife three times a year, and say nice things about all his books. Kids, let this be a lesson to you.Full disclosure: Andrea was my boss at the Brookings Institution, and I’ve always had my eye on her husband. Frankly, now that their marriage is on the rocks, I’m hoping that he will come to me for consolation during the inevitable messy divorce.Full disclosure: George Donaldson is the head of the alumni admissions committee for the Dalton School, where my little Katie will be applying next year.Full disclosure: Having seen Jennifer Schaeffer vomit the remains of the Cato annual dinner out her nose at the after party, I’ve never been able to take her work seriously.Full disclosure: Egon and I went to Yale together, where we were both members of the crew team. Every time I hear him talking about drugs, I flash back to the time we made the mistake of putting “Big E” in charge of the ganja fund. I ask you: how can a man claim to be an expert on the subject when the one time he was actually given responsibility for drug policy, he came back with three pounds of grass clippings laced with oregano?Full disclosure: James is a man who doesn’t take “no” for an answer. He asked me out 138 times when we were interns at the CSPI, even after I told him that I had to wash my hair, attend a funeral for my aunt’s dog, and had taken a vow of celibacy. The only way I could find to get him to stop was to get engaged to a former Big 10 fullback. You can assume that he was similarly persistent in demanding that I introduce his speech.Full disclosure: Emily is one of those people that I really want to like, but I can’t get over the fact that she is prettier than me, and also, makes more money. I have channeled all of my poisonous envy into this interview.Full disclosure: I am unable to remember my opening remarks because I am hypnotized by the excessively vibrant green-and-pink plaid of Madison’s suit. I had no idea you could buy clothes made out of upholstery fabric.Full disclosure: Andrew Heller is a vicious human being whose superficial charm fools only those who have never met him before, or heard about him from someone who has. After one junior journalist wrote that his work was “Interesting, but a little too shrill for my taste”, Mr Heller spent three years ceaselessly campaigning for her destruction. She was found three weeks ago in her car with empty bottles of SoCo and Valium, and a note that just said “It’s just not worth the hassle.” I would rather have all my teeth extracted without anaesthesia than say something that might offend him.Full disclosure: I am hoping some day to overthrow Ming Lee in a bloodless coup. The best way to do this is to be superficially loyal in all public venues until she lets her guard down.Full disclosure: I had to call Hubert for a quote, because he is a senior fellow at the think tank where I am currently interviewing on the sly.Full disclosure: Sometimes, late at night, I fantasize about what it would be like if Sarah dressed up like a cafeteria lady, only a naughty cafeteria lady who would come into my bedroom and make me eat all my peas.Full disclosure: I am being excessively nice about Al’s book in order to cover up my discomfort and guilt for finding him completely physically repulsive.Full disclosure: though Gordon and I are ostensibly on the same side, I’ve decided that his book would make a good “Sister Souljah” moment for me to launch my career as a transgressive freethinker who can’t be tied down by the received wisdom of her political peers.Full disclosure: I’ve never really gotten over the fact that when we were at Georgetown Law together, Hilary borrowed $200 off of me for car repairs and then “forgot” to pay me back. Also, she cheats at golf.Full disclosure: I am a credulous fool who is easily wowed by any book written by a PhD, government official, or journalist who dresses better than I do. And I shop at Today’s Man.
It will be surprising if anybody reads that entire post, let alone Kaufman’s book.
So *this* is whatever became of the “Frank or Francis” project, in which Jack Black was to star as the obsessive film critic. Love Kaufman, but it always sounded dire.
Not quite, after I finished reading Antkind, I moved on to the Frank or Francis script, because 700+ pages of Kaufman wasn’t enough.The novel has nothing to do with the script. I enjoyed it, but that’s because my country (Romania) was like a full character in it: suicidal has-been hollywood actor singing the Romanian national anthem, literally photo-bombing (with the accent on bombing) the Oscar ceremony.I enjoyed the novel (Antkind) so much more, it’s another beast altogether from your regular film Kaufman.
Actually that script is completed and its great, if you “loved” kaufman you wouldnt be dismissing while never actually reading it
By saying that the few deets that leaked at the time made it sound particularly self-obsessed and depressing, *even* for him? *That’s* what earns the scare quotes? Not reading an unproduced script? Jesus.In any event, I’ll find a d/l when I have some time to read it.(BTW, you really should have used “actually” again, for impact. Demonstrates a real ease with language.)
English is my second language but im sure that you can write as well as I write in english in a foreign language(I wrote language twice, hope you can forgive that)
I actually can, actually. And thanks for actually – and quite obviously – avoiding the actual point.(Feel free to respond further – but I’m actually done with you.)
This is still part of the book, right?He wrote this too.
Philip Roth’s tragic satire novels about misunderstood academicians tend to be mercifully short. If you’re not Tolstoy you probably should be draconian about editing down your ponderous first novel. Heck, even Tolstoy could have used more editing. Writing-wise he was no Turgenev.
I’m honestly astonished that Kaufman would care enough about critics to write a book like this! First of all, he’s been hailed pretty roundly, all things considered. Secondly, he’s so experimental, he has to expect that some people aren’t going to go for his screenplays, which is their right- I’m not a huge fan, but I respect him, and he’s got balls. I’m really surprised by this. It seems weird to me, but not “Charlie Kaufman weird.” Just odd.
It sounds more like the literary output of Sean Penn than the work of someone who’s actually been lauded for his writing in the past.
The main character’s name — “B. Rosenberger Rosenberg” was enough to turn me off the novel. Immediately gave me the impression of a poorly aged comedy from 1964, or a knock off of A Confederacy of Dunces. What a silly name, I’ll laugh every time I read it!…not.
Remember when Living With Yourself came out and The AV Club gave it a negative rating because Paul Rudd wasn’t Charlie Kaufman in disguise?Also how do I get publishers to read my book without me spending thousands of pounds?
While we are on the subject, Synechode, New York was pretty terrible.
I think slowly falling off the Charlie Kaufman wagon was a decades-long process for me… When they came out, I readily would have listed Being John Malkovich and Adaptation as among my favorite movies; Synecdoche, NY felt overstuffed, meandering, and a bit full of itself, but it was anchored together by a larger sense of scope and control, by the hyper-intellectual, yet genuinely bruised humanism that Kaufman is capable of reaching, and—of course—by one of Philip Seymour Hoffmann’s best performances.And then Anomolisa just completely turned me off to Kaufman. I think it was the combination of the “Everyone Else is the Same Person” conceit, which played like an angsty high-schooler version of depth, the painfully prolonged and not particularly funny running gag about the archaic Japanese sex toy, and the sex scene that, while being one of the more emotionally affecting scenes in the film, really seemed to be trying way to hard to be “that one thing” that everyone going to the film would talk about, which seemed weirdly like entrapment: like making puppets have graphic sex was a trick to get us talking about puppet sex so that we can all be revealed to be shallow, tacky people invulnerable to the emotional realism so patently on display. But the biggest thing was how the film portrayed Lisa, as if it were constantly patting itself on the back for depicting a perfectly normal, non-hyper-intellectual person as worthy of love. But in Kaufman World, a perfectly normal, non-hyper-intellectual person is basically an idiot. So we kept getting these gags (“It’s like ‘anomaly’, but with my name!”), as if the film is daring us to ridicule her so that it can then point out what miserable, shallow creatures we are for doing so, because (surprise!) she actually possesses complex human emotions. Robert Altman’s movies sometimes do this miserable game, too (think of Shelly Duvall and those Cheez Wiz appetizers in 3 Women…) but somehow usually seem to survive this tricky balance better…So, yeah, this book. Not on my list. And this is coming from a person who actually likes Thomas Pynchon…
I absolutely hated Being John Malkovich, thought Adaptation was okay and really liked Eternal Sunshine. I’ll be skipping this since it definitely leans into Kaufman’s obnoxious pretentiousness.
I liked Adaptation well enough on its own. Then I worked in the Story Dept at Sony Pictures and got to hear first-hand accounts of dealing with Kaufman on adapting The Orchid Thief. And like turned to love.
Being John Malkovich is one of only two films I actively hate, to the point where I have to consciously restrain myself when someone I know say they like it. (The other was that Willem Dafoe/Ethan Hawke vampire movie Daybreakers from like ten years ago, but that one doesn’t come up very much)
That’s how I feel about Signs. I understand the message the movie is trying to get across, I just think it’s done in the absolute dumbest way possible.Also I Am Legend.I enjoyed Daybreakers, but I wouldn’t fault someone for disliking it because it was a dumb movie.
I WAS SAVING THAT BACON
It’s unusual to hate Daybreakers. I mean, I can see mildly disliking it or mildly liking it, but it seems like too slight a work to actively hate.
Eh, I just remember hating it when I saw it in the theater and I’ve never bothered to reassess.
Kaufman’s usage of Rosenberg reminds me of how in pro wrestling, at least the WWE, Vince McMahon takes any criticism of the way he runs business, or contrasting personal/political views, from fans, marks, and “smarks” and puts the words right into the dialogue of ineffectual, mealy-mouth, cowardly heels. Like “oh you’re a fan of liberal politics, environmentalism, technical wrestling, and against bombing Syrian civilians, do tell.” and then that character is staging 3-1 attacks, can’t win a match to save their lives, and gets thrown in actual dumpsters etc. Anyone who would dare critique Vince or Kaufman gets “taught a lesson” in the form of being portrayed poorly in a medium over which they have total control such as WWE scripting or a novel respectively.
Also, both these guys have a tendency to overbook, it appears.
Very weird that a writer with such a critically acclaimed career would be angry enough about the few negative reviews he received to write a 700-pages novel about them. He should talk to Stephenie Meyer…
Ill probably check this out because his films have always been so brilliant. I’ll just go in with low expectations.
AV Club comment section reaction to 720 page book most will never read: Fuck this! AV Club comment section reaction to announcement that newest Game of Thrones novel is 2200 pages:
1. His remark about full disclosure was not aimed at critics of his own work, but rather critics in general. It seems ingenious to misrepresent it in this way.2. “thon” is not an invention by B. nor Kaufman. Look it up.I can’t be bothered to find more mistakes, I have big books to read.
Shirley Bennett’s review
Why would you let some dork who loves a Marvel TV show review literary fiction? AV Club, give me one shot at an article and I’ll write donuts around this squid. Go watch Bones in your Dunder Mifflin crewneck you glass of white wine.