Charlie Kaufman on authenticity and offering yourself to the world, his advice on screenwriting, and how failure is a badge of honour.
A brief overview of Charlie Kaufman before delving into his own words:
| Who (Identity) | Charlie Kaufman, an American screenwriter, director, and producer, known for his distinctive and innovative contributions to cinema. Kaufman is celebrated for his thought-provoking and often surreal storytelling. |
| What (Contributions) | Kaufman is acclaimed for writing screenplays for films like “Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” and “Synecdoche, New York.” His work often explores themes of identity, existentialism, and the complexities of human relationships. |
| When (Period of Influence) | Kaufman’s influence on filmmaking and screenwriting began in the late 1990s and continues into the 21st century. His unique narrative style has earned him critical acclaim and a dedicated following. |
| Where (Geographic Focus) | Born in New York City, USA, Kaufman’s work often reflects American culture and society, though his narratives frequently venture into surreal and introspective realms. |
| Why (Artistic Philosophy) | Kaufman’s artistic philosophy is marked by a fascination with the human psyche, the nature of reality, and the struggle to find meaning in the world. He believes in the power of storytelling to explore the inner workings of the mind and the human condition. |
| How (Technique and Style) | Known for his unconventional and mind-bending narratives, Kaufman’s storytelling style is characterized by its intricate plot structures, self-reflection, and exploration of the human subconscious. He often blurs the line between reality and fantasy, creating works that challenge conventional storytelling norms. |
This post is a collection of selected quotes and excerpts from secondary sources used for educational purposes, with citations found at the end of the article.
Dreams
Your dreams are very well written. I know this, without knowing any of you. People turn anxieties, crises and longing, love, regret and guilt into beautiful rich stories in their dreams. What is it that allows us the creative freedom in our dreams that we don’t have in our waking lives?
I don’t know, but I suspect part of it is that in our dreams we are not constricted by worry about how we will appear to others. It’s a private conversation with ourselves, and if we’re worried about it, this becomes part of the dream. I think if we were better able to approach our work this way, the results would be different. 1
Vulnerability
I wanted to do something that I don’t know how to do, and offer you the experience of watching someone fumble, because I think maybe that’s what art should offer. An opportunity to recognise our common humanity and vulnerability.
I think we try to be experts because we’re scared; we don’t want to feel foolish or worthless; we want power because power is a great disguise. 1
Authenticity & Offering Yourself To The World
Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won’t be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. It can’t help but be that.
But more importantly, if you’re honest about who you are, you’ll help that person be less lonely in their world because that person will recognise him or herself in you and that will give them hope. It’s done so for me and I have to keep rediscovering it. It has profound importance in my life.
Give that to the world, rather than selling something to the world. Don’t allow yourself to be tricked into thinking that the way things are is the way the world must work and that in the end selling is what everyone must do. Try not to.
This is from E. E. Cummings: ‘To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.’
The world needs you. It doesn’t need you at a party having read a book about how to appear smart at parties – these books exist, and they’re tempting – but resist falling into that trap. The world needs you at the party starting real conversations, saying, ‘I don’t know,’ and being kind.
Do you. It isn’t easy but it’s essential. It’s not easy because there’s a lot in the way. In many cases a major obstacle is your deeply seated belief that you are not interesting. And since convincing yourself that you are interesting is probably not going to happen, take it off the table.
Think, ‘Perhaps I’m not interesting but I am the only thing I have to offer, and I want to offer something. And by offering myself in a true way I am doing a great service to the world, because it is rare and it will help.’
I can’t tell anyone how to write a screenplay because the truth is that anything of value you might do comes from you. The way I work is not the way that you work, and the whole point of any creative act is that. What I have to offer is me, what you have to offer is you, and if you offer yourself with authenticity and generosity I will be moved.
I do believe you have a wound too. I do believe it is both specific to you and common to everyone. I do believe it is the thing about you that must be hidden and protected, it is the thing that must be tap danced over five shows a day, it is the thing that won’t be interesting to other people if revealed. It is the thing that makes you weak and pathetic. It is the thing that truly, truly, truly makes loving you impossible. It is your secret, even from yourself. But it is the thing that wants to live.
It is the thing from which your art, your painting, your dance, your composition, your philosophical treatise, your screenplay is born. If you don’t acknowledge this you will come up here when it is your time and you will give your speech and you will talk about the business of screenwriting.
You will say that as a screenwriter you are a cog in a business machine, you will say it is not an art form. You will say, ‘Here, this is what a screenplay looks like.’ You will discuss character arcs, how to make likeable characters. You will talk about box office. This is what you will do, this is who you will be and after you are done I will feel lonely and empty and hopeless. And I will ask you for my two hours back. 1
I have no interest in copying anybody’s work. It would never occur to me to want a movie to look like someone else’s thing. People ask me all the time, “What are your influences? Are you trying to do Beckett?” It’s like, “No, I’m trying to do me.” Whatever that is. I don’t know what that is, but that’s the basis. I’m trying to be true and I’m trying to be honest. Does it feel like a good idea? If it does, then I do it. The result is the result. 2
On Directing
It’s a lot of management, it really is. It’s managing people, a lot of people. And the big thing about that I feel, and I feel like I discovered, is that there’s not one way to do that. You have to get to know the people you’re working with and figure out what they need from you and figure out how to give that to them. That goes for the actors and all the crew people as well. And the other thing about it is that I can’t be moody and sulky the way I normally can be as a writer. 3
Advice On Screenwriting
Allow yourself the freedom to change as you discover, allow your screenplay to grow and change as you work on it. You will discover things as you work. You must not put these things aside, even if they’re inconvenient. Let’s not disregard all the little voices in order to simplify. Do not simplify. Don’t compartmentalise to make things simpler than they are, and don’t work towards results.
Allow yourself time, let things brew. You’re thinking about it, whether you realise it or not. Letting the unconscious take over brings in freedom and surprise and removes judgement. At every single moment, every single person wants something. Often many things, often conflicting things. Understand this about your characters and yourself.
Storytelling is inherently dangerous. If you consider a traumatic event in your life, consider it as you experienced it. Now think about how you told it to someone a year later. Now think about how you told it for the one hundredth time. It’s not the same thing. A few components enter into the change.
One is perspective. Most people think perspective is a good thing to have in a story. You can figure out characters arcs, you can apply a moral, you can tell it from a distance with understanding and context. The problem is that this perspective is a misrepresentation of the incident; it’s a reconstruction with meaning and as such bears very little resemblance to the event.
With a screenplay you’re creating a world; consider everything, every character, every room, every juxtaposition, every increment of time as an embodiment of that world. Look at all of this through that filter and make sure it is all consistent. As in a painting, every element is part of one whole composition, just as there is nothing separate in the actual world there should be nothing separate in the world you create.
Think about your reaction to me, think past it. Why do you have that reaction? Why do you react a certain way to certain things? What does your reaction have to do with your wants? How does it correlate? How would your reaction to what I’m saying change if I were older? Younger? Female? A different race? British? What does it mean about you, that it would change? What does it mean about the subjectivity of your opinions? What if I was me but had a different demeanour? What if I was more confident? Less confident? What if I was more effeminate? What if I was less effeminate? What if I was drunk? What if I was on the verge of tears?
Think about all the assessments, all the interpretations that occur with each interaction. Think about all that you bring to each encounter. Multiply that by all the people here. How much is going on in this room and how do we weave that into a movie? The challenge of multiple points of view forces us to come up with solutions, to throw away conventional approaches. 1
If you’ve got a thing that you are exploring, explore it truthfully. Continue to try and find your voice, which is an ongoing, lifelong process. I’m still trying to do that you know, I don’t feel like I’ve arrived anywhere. Just be diligent and somewhat courageous in your attempts to do your stuff in the world. 4
Failure
Failure is a badge of honour; it means you risked failure. If you don’t risk failure you’re never going to do anything that’s different than what you’ve already done, or what somebody else has done. 1
Ambiguity In Art
When you have an artistic piece of work, what I like is when there’s an opportunity for people to interact with it rather than just be shown. I like projective tests, like the Rorschach or a thematic apperception test, which is another version of a projective test involving an image that’s somewhat ambiguous.
You’ll see a painting of a woman with her head in her hands and a man standing off to the side, and they’ll ask “What does it mean?” They’re evocative and emotionally rich, but open to interpretation. They allow someone to come in and bring their life into it.
And there’s a framework here and a story [referencing his film Synecdoche New York] that’s universal in the way that it follows a human life to its end, which is something we’re all aware we’re moving toward.
But at the same time, if you leave it open enough and take away the objective of trying to manipulate people toward a certain end, which I don’t try to do, you leave it open to the experience of the viewer. I try not to manipulate people or draw them to my conclusions.
I’m trying to say that this is what I’m thinking about. Perhaps you want to think about it or perhaps you don’t, but there’s a trust that I have that the work is sincere and that I’m doing something. I don’t want to create a product. 2
I don’t like to talk about the themes of anything that I write and the reason is because you do something and when you’re done with it, when you make a film or a piece of art, it’s then an interaction between the person who’s viewing it and the piece.
To not allow that process to take place by saying what this thing is, it limits that possibility of interaction. I specifically write things so that hopefully it’s layered enough that people can come away with separate and individual reactions to it. 5
The Problem With TV
I actually think the problem with television is that the people who run that business need a show to run for 100 episodes, because they make their money in syndication. So if you write a funny pilot that everybody seems to love, they’ll say, “But, can this sustain for 5 years?” so what happens is that everything gets bland and bland and bland. So I think there’s more money at stake for producing 100 episodes of a television show or losing money for the first two years. 6
Perspective When Writing, Directing or Editing
When you’re deeply embedded in writing, directing, and editing, does it become hard to step back and get perspective on whether the movie is working?
It’s a problem and it’s not a problem. I think it’s always a problem on every movie I’ve worked on—and I’ve been involved in all of them in post-production and editing—to have the same perspective as an audience member who hasn’t seen the movie. Which is why you have screenings. It’s the only reason we’ve ever done it, and it’s one thing that we’ve taken from working with Spike and Michel.
It’s like, “We want [the audience] to understand this, but they don’t.” Sometimes you don’t care, or you don’t want them to. But this is important to us—sometimes when [viewers] have questions, we ask ourselves, “How do we clarify that kind of thing?” You can never have the same perspective, except maybe a few years later when you catch it on TV and see it in a different way. I don’t think it’s possible, otherwise, for anybody.
But I also think perspective is overrated and not what I’m going for. When I’m writing, I’m trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that’s how life is lived, you know? Life is not lived 10 years ahead of itself—there’s a lie to that.
The conventional wisdom is—people say this all the time—you should only write something when you’re far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that’s not true. That’s a story that you’re telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It’s the only truth that we ever know.
And I’m interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out. So if my movies don’t have perspective and they’re created in that “now,” then I’m kind of okay with that. It’s desirable. 2
How He Got Started In The Entertainment Business
I spent a lot of years, not knowing anything and thinking about how to get in the business and how it worked. I’d write scripts and send them to friends who might be in the business, or might know someone in the business or send a script to some director who I got the address off of a Rolodex. Those things were invariably either sent back or ignored, or there was a letter saying, “We can’t read this for legal reasons” or whatever they say.
I was also all over the place; I was sending short stories to magazines, writing screenplays. Finally, I said okay, and I just started to see names of people that I’d known crop up on credits of TV shows, and thought ‘Okay, so what do I do to get on a TV show? At least, I won’t be working answering phones,’ which is what I did a lot. And so I did it. And still, I didn’t feel like I sold out. I wrote a very odd spec television show. And it got me in — it got me my first job. 6
On Making Films Hold Up On Repeated Viewings
I think that film is in a way a dead medium, and in that, with theater you’ve got accidents that can happen. You’ve got performances that change. But this {film} is a recording. And so what I try to sort of do is infuse my screenplays with enough information so that upon repeated viewings, you can have a different experience, rather than the movie goes linearly to one thing and at the end it tells you what the movie is about. It’s sort of — I try to keep it kind of like a conversation with the audience. I guess that’s what I try to do. 3
What I would like to try to offer people is the ability to watch this movie [Synecdoche New York] now, and watch it in five years and have a different experience because you’re a different person, or because there are things you missed the first time. 7
Being Well Known
Being well known doesn’t solve any of your problems, and I didn’t know that. I thought that it would and I had fantasies about having that. It solved certain problems practically, like I have a better chance of getting a movie made than somebody who doesn’t have a reputation, that kind of thing. Not a great chance now, but better.
My own personal problems, the things that make me me, I’ve still got them. It’s a good thing to know, and I don’t know if you can know that without having it happen and realising it. 1
Staying Curious
It’s weird to be a human. We get to think about things, we get to wonder. It seems like quite a privileged position in the universe. And I wouldn’t give it up for certainty because when you’re certain you stop being curious. And here’s the one thing I know about the thing you’re certain about; you’re wrong.
It’s always a mistake to settle on any explanation for anything, because whatever you settle on you will be wrong, even if you’re right. Everything is ephemeral; everything is in a constant state of flux. Thinking past any conclusion you’ve drawn will reward you with a more complex insight and a more compassionate world view. This is something I’m constantly trying to learn and re-learn. 1
Disregarding Form & Preconceived Notions
There’s no template for a screenplay, or there shouldn’t be. There are at least as many screenplay possibilities as there are people who write them. We’ve been conned into thinking there is a pre-established form. Like any big business, the film business believes in mass production. It’s cheaper and more efficient as a business model.
Don’t let anyone tell you what a story is, what it needs to include or what form it must take. As an experiment, go out of your way to write a non-story. It will still be a story, but it will have a chance of being a different story. Our brains make stories. It is as basic to us as breathing; we cannot do otherwise.
Free yourself – and by extension the rest of us – with your efforts. If you give yourself too specific an assignment you will keep yourself locked away from your work. Go where it takes you. If you say you want to write about homeless people, and in the end reveal their humanity, you’ll end up with something illustrative and perhaps instructive.
If you say, ‘There aren’t words to put this moan I feel in me, but I’m going to swim in it and see what happens,’ you’ll end up with something real. But you’ll have to throw away any predetermined notion of what real is. It doesn’t mean you’ll end up with a million dollar screenplay or that critics will love it. You can write to that if that’s your goal. In the process you might lose track of who you are but that’s okay. They’ll assign you an identity. 1
You don’t seem like the sort of writer who has a set of note cards and knows what’s going to happen in every scene, but your movies are very intricately constructed. How do you pull that off?
I take a very long time to write them. By doing that, I can allow myself to be expansive. As ideas come in, I can include them and then go back and figure out how to introduce them. So it’s an ongoing process of back and forth and back and forth until I have a script.
In this case, that took two years. So by the end, I’m pretty clear on it. I don’t need cards to know where things are, and I start to understand relationships not only between people, but between parts of the movie, in new ways, and that’s exciting for me. It keeps me excited about the process, and it allows for a certain amount of complexity in the construction.
You know, it’s weird: If you set up something early on as a structure or a goal, then that’s what you write toward, and there’s no opportunity to allow other stuff in. So you end up saying, “I can’t do this, because this movie goes here.” That doesn’t interest me, and it doesn’t feel exciting to work that way. So I don’t. 2
Influences
Some writers and directors Kaufman has named as favorites of his, or as influences, are Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Stanisław Lem, Flannery O’Connor, Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick, Patricia Highsmith, Italo Svevo, David Lynch, Lars von Trier, Woody Allen and The Coen Brothers.
Are there people who you think do that successfully — whose work is stylistically distinct but also emotionally affecting?
David Lynch. I love David Lynch. He’s really important to me. Also, {Lars von Trier’s} Breaking the Waves has some sense of artifice in it to me, but the performances are extraordinary, and felt. I really like the Coen Brothers. I think Barton Fink does that in spades. It’s got really funny stuff in it, really over-the-top characters, but I feel things in that movie, too. And there’s a Swedish director I really admire, Roy Andersson. 8
Intentions
I think intention is at the bottom of everything. My intentions are shifting and complex and often at odds with each other. And if I know what they are, and watch them closely as they slip and slide all over the place, I have a better chance of putting something honest into the world and this is my goal. 1
The Danger of Craft
The danger of craft is that it needs to be in second position to what it is that you’re doing. It’s seductive to put it in first position, often because what you’re doing is meaningless or worthless, or just more of the same. So you can distinguish yourself by being very, very good at it.
I think you need to be willing to be naked when you do anything creatively in film or any other form, that’s really what you have to do because otherwise it’s very hard to separate it from marketing. I think that it just sort of becomes what it’s about. 1
Get access to a FREE cheatsheet for this post which includes:
Concise summary of the most powerful advice and ideas.- 3 creative challenges inspired by the artists’ methodologies.
Next up: Louis CK on his advice for comedians.
References and Related Resources
- Inspirational Writing Advice From Charlie Kaufman | On Writing, BAFTA Guru.
- Charlie Kaufman Interview – The AV Club.
- Filmmaker Charlie Kaufman and actor Philip Seymour Hoffman share their film, “Synecdoche”, Charlie Rose. 10/22/2008.
- Charlie Kaufman on his latest film & why “movies are dead”, WGA West.
- Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson on Anomalisa, q on cbc.
- INTERVIEW: Charlie Kaufman, the Man behind “Malkovich”, Indiewire. 1999.
- Charlie Kaufman on his latest film & why “movies are dead”, WGA West.
- Charlie Kaufman, Vulture. 2015.