Synecdoche, New York scene

In the opening scene of “Being John Malkovich,” John Cusack is a street puppeteer controlling the interaction of his creations. Spike Jonze may have directed, but the film’s screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, makes clear from the get-go that he is the master of the enterprise. The screenwriter as auteur. We see that again in “Adaptation,” also directed by Jonze, but the complex doubling of character is pure Kaufman. The non-linear narrative of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” in which people can have memories erased from their minds, is Kaufman, not Michel Gondry.

With “Synecdoche, New York,” Kaufman’s directing debut, he gets away from his usual humor and becomes more serious. It’s not quite Woody Allen doing Ingmar Bergman, but it has the feel of a very old person philosophizing about life and death. Kaufman does it with a Russian-doll-like quality, layers upon layers of actors playing real persons playing actors. It is the story of playwrite Caden Cotard (Phil ip Seymour Hoffman), who suffers from several diseases, and it follows him from middle age to death. After moving from Schenectady to Manhattan, Caden attempts to organize his life issues as one huge theater piece, with New York City itself as a massive stage. An exceptionally difficult film to deconstruct, “Synecdoche, New York” is dense and powerful, a profound meditation on existence, and the art of existence.

indieWIRE: You say that you are moving in a more personal direction with “Synecdoche, New York.” I think of “Synecdoche” as a film by someone not so young. It’s mature in that sense, moving toward death.

Charlie Kaufman: When you approach middle age, lots of stuff happens. Your body is aging, you’re watching people around you get sick, you’re watching people die, your mortality becomes very present at that point in your life. I’ve always been fearful of things like that, but as you get older, you have to deal with it more.

iW: “Synecdoche, New York” deals with the synthesis of theater and film. “Adaptation” is a film about a novelist and screenwriter. “Being John Malkovich” begins with a marionette performance. There appears to be a mixture of all the arts.in your films. Are yuou interested in a lot of arts, or does it just come out that way?

CK: Both. I’m interested in art, and I think about the process of making art. It’s part of my personality, my experience of the world, so it ends up in the movies. It’s where my head is.

iW: The characters age several decades. I get the impression the shoot was rather intense.

CK: It was very hard. It was very hot. We shot in the summer in New York in an armory, in Bedford-Stuyvesant during a heat wave. There were times when the prosthetics guy had to come in and poke pin holes in Phil’s costume cause it was bubbling, because the sweat had nowhere to go. It was awful. Samantha [Morton] also had to contend with it.

iW: You have used Catherine Keener more than any other actor.

CK: She’s in three movies, one just a cameo, in “Adaptation.” I myself didn’t cast her in “Being John Malkovich.” I told her during “Synecdoche” (in which she plays Haden’s wife, Adele,who abandons him) that I want to put her in every movie. She’s real, she’s very truthful, she’s very present when she’s performing. It feeds the actors that she’s working with. If you’re really in a scene, you are by definition generous. Phil loves her, he loves working with her. It was really helpful to him to work with her. She’s fun and lovely.

iW: What is it that distinguishes Hoffman?

CK: He can’t do anything that isn’t truthful. He won’t allow himself. He works really hard. His commitment is complete. If he doesn’t understand something, he won’t do it. When he’s crying in a scene, which he does a lot in this movie, it’s like he’s going through it, and of course the camera records that. It hurts. And that’s what I needed for this character, and I got it.

iW: Wasn’t Spike Jonze originally scheduled to direct the film?

CK: Spike was making another movie, and we could not wait for him. Moving from screenwriting to directing was stressful, but I enjoyed it. We shot most of it in 45 days. A scene from Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York.” Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Read the rest of the interview here

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