Charlie Kaufman’s first movie star crush: “I fell in love”
The screenplays of Charlie Kaufman are among the most highly regarded works in the past 25 years of cinema. Films like Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I’m Thinking of Ending Things have pushed boundaries with their ambition and originality, offering audiences unique, thought-provoking narratives that challenge conventional storytelling.
The theatrical aspect and intricacies of Kaufman’s screenplays, such as Adaptation, point to a background in drama and musical theatre. The 65-year-old’s childhood passions seemed to lie on stage rather than in cinema, which perhaps explains the first film he saw at the cinema.
“I think The Sound of Music was the first movie I saw in a theatre in Long Island,” Kaufman told the Criterion Collection. “I fell in love with Julie Andrews, and she was my first big crush. Especially for a little kid, there’s something very maternal about her.”
This enchantment with the signing voice of Andrews and with her Maria von Trapp character in The Sound of Music suggests Kaufman had an ability for stage and film to interact from an early age. “I liked movies, and I went often, but I’m not like Quentin Tarantino,” he said. “I’m not that person. I gravitated more toward theatre and acting, and film was kind of an offshoot of that, as it had acting and theatre in it. I also made a lot of movies when I was a little kid.”
It was a natural progression for Kaufman to move into directing later in his career. His directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, was followed by three more films for which he both wrote the screenplay and directed the film. This includes the 2020 release of I’m Thinking of Ending Things, a psychological thriller that received critical acclaim. Kaufman seemed to adjust seamlessly to the role of directing despite admitting it was a big learning process.
“The difference is that, once I began directing, I started thinking, how am I going to do this?” he said. “Practically, how am I going to make this happen on film, which is something I had never thought about. When I’m on my own, there is this feeling of, well, am I going to know how to shoot this scene? Am I going to be able to afford to shoot this scene? That’s the difference.”
Moving into a director’s role seems to have made Kaufman evaluate his writing process. His prolific career would suggest a person who can write scripts at breakneck speed, but Kaufman revealed that it depends on the specific project. “Sometimes it can take me a few years,” he said. ‘”It’s not an efficient way to work. I do like the idea that sometimes I come to a new thing, six months into writing it, and that changes everything. Adaptation is an example of that. It was a struggle for me in the first six months, until I came up with the idea of putting myself in, and then suddenly I knew how to write it. If I had forced myself to write any more, it wouldn’t have been the same, and I don’t think it would have been as good.”
