People either love or hate Charlie Kaufman. When he appeared a few weeks ago at the Harvard Square Theatre to present Synecdoche, New York, the crowd loved him. Maybe because they felt they knew him, or even were him — and who's to say they weren't? Those who praise his films and those who condemn them agree that they're self-reflective to the point of solipsism. Synecdoche, the first feature he's directed (his screenplays include Adaptation and Being John Malkovich), won't change any minds. Theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) gets a MacArthur fellowship to put on a play and then spends the rest of his life trying to re-create his life in New York City as a stage production, an endeavor that involves re-creating his re-creating of his life as a stage production, and so on."I'll be here to answer questions after the screening," Kaufman told the crowd before the film started. "If anyone is here." He needn't have worried.
Althought some audience members got testy when you didn't interpret the movie for them, basically they worshipped you.
The worshipping part, I don't know what it means, exactly. The thing that the guy said at the end last night [something to the effect that Kaufman was God] — it was nice. Especially because I was really depressed last night, and I was not looking forward to doing that thing. It's hard for me to be traveling by myself, doing this for a month, and I'm exhausted. The reaction to the movie has been — I never know what people will say, whether they will be angry with me or if they'll be responsive like that guy.
Sometimes it's the same person.
No, that hasn't happened, not that I've been aware of. I've heard that people can sometimes hate the movie and then can't get it out of their head. I've heard people say that, or they see it again, these are the critics who have seen it at festivals, and then they start to feel something about it that they didn't before.
There's a lot to take in just with the set design. First of all, I want to say that that Caden really knew how to budget a $100,000 grant.
I read this one review where this guy hated the movie and he said — and it was actually addressed to me, which I shouldn't even acknowledge because it's what he wants — "By the way, Charlie," he writes, "I've known people who have won MacArthur grants, and Caden, based on his work, could never win one. This is an impossible production that he's mounting, and you also can't build a full-size replica of New York City in a warehouse." Yes, I know that.
This was on the Internet that you read this?
Yeah. Everything's on the Internet. That's where I read things. I shouldn't read these things, but I do.
Has anyone brought up the "M" word with regards to the women in the movie?
The "M" word?
Misogyny.
God, I mean, you know, the one place I've heard that is this guy who interviewed me for Vice magazine who said that he saw it with a friend who felt that it was misogynistic, and I was really surprised. The response that I seem to get when people respond to the movie is kind of the opposite of that; people appreciate that I've written characters for women to play, as opposed to eye candy.
The women all seemed to be some kind of negative portrait.
I don't agree with that, but second of all, I don't think that portraying somebody with characteristics that aren't necessarily ideal is misogyny. I mean, I do that with male characters, too. I'm trying to write human beings, so why is that misogynistic?
Good point. Do you record your dreams?
No. I often think I should and often get a book and never do it. The idea of dreams was a basis for a lot of the imagery and the logic in the movie. But they didn't come directly from dreams. So I don't know . . . I'm still stuck on the misogyny. It's just a weird thing. I think people maybe confuse misogyny with I don't know what . . .
Mybe we should move on to another topic. A lot of people point to it as a signature moment when Caden is examining his stools.
Yeah. It's weird, the stuff that you don't really think about and then everyone is saying, like he's examining his stools means his head's up his ass, or whatever it is that they're saying. But there's a lot of illness in the movie, and that's one of the things people talk about when you've got health issues, and it's one of the things you watch. And I wanted to show it because everyone has feces, and probably a lot of people look at them. Maybe people don't poke them apart with bathroom brushes.
I think everyone has done that at one time in his or her life.
I wasn't going to make any assumptions.
Present company excluded.
