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Charlie Kaufman admits the film didn’t do his career any favors

Charlie Kaufman admits the film didn’t do his career any favors

(Source: Far Out / Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival)

It’s an age-old story that critical success doesn’t necessarily mean good box office returns in Hollywood. There is a gulf between the two, and that gulf is swallowing up talented directors and screenwriters who feel like darlings of critics but are unable to finance their ideas. So it is with Charlie Kaufman, the visionary screenwriter behind films like To be John Malkovich, Adjustment And Eternal sunshine of the flawless mindwho turned to projects such as directing Synecdoche, New YorkAnd I’m thinking about ending things.

While he is the mastermind behind some popular films, some of his own directorial efforts have caused polarization among critics. However, it was Kaufman’s entry into the world of animation that garnered the most positive acclaim – and somehow it is the film that he says did the most damage to his career.

The film in question is from 2015 Anomalisaa stop-motion story about a man who suffers from the lonely peculiarity of seeing everyone else in the world as an identical figure, narrated by Tom Noonan. David Thewlis’ deeply lonely protagonist meets the titular Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh) – a person who miraculously has her own unique face and voice. It’s a detailed treatise on the extreme limits of loneliness, supported by eerie animation and well-directed performances. But when it was released in theaters, it lost more than $4 million in the United States on a budget of $8 million.

In conversation with The playlist In 2016, Kaufman was honest about his feelings about this outcome and what it meant for his career: “You know, I’m disappointed that it got these great reviews and didn’t do any business.” That doesn’t make me want the film don’t like. I still really like the movie and I’m still glad we made it, but when Paramount picked it up I thought, “Okay, okay, I’ll make some money with this and it’ll help my career.” I don’t think so “It hurt my career, but I don’t think it made me say, ‘Okay, this guy is viable.’ We can make a movie and people will go and see it.”

The result surprised him, especially because the critical response was unanimously positive compared to his previous directorial work, Labyrinth Synecdoche, New Yorka film that can be perceived as both captivating and alienating.

Kaufman said opinion on the Philip Seymour Hoffman-led metadrama was divided: “There were great reviews and then [other] People hated it. You could kind of understand why people wouldn’t go there because of that. It was like, ‘Why this time?’ And I don’t know the answer, and I never will, but it’s frustrating for me in that regard.”

After AnomalisaKaufman turned his attention to writing novels and wrote an epic entitled Antikind about filming an “unfilmable” stop-motion film. This book finally came out in the middle of the pandemic along with his next directorial film, I’m thinking about ending thingsin which David Thewlis became part of Kaufman’s recurring cast.

Reviews for the latter film were generally positive, although a quick release on Netflix would have hurt its box office returns, which might have given it a chance to spread its wings on its next project.

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