Adaptation: Salute to Charlie Kaufman
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Adaptation: Salute to Charlie Kaufman
For some reason, I think I am cursed. I am still very much looking for Memento and Amores Perros, and all the man at the HMV counter could tell me was "Sold out". When asked about when the stocks would come in, he told me something about three to four weeks. "You told me that three to four weeks ago." He was silent for a while, until I left him at the counter, bewildered.
The truth is, DVD rental never came across my mind under yesterday night at Serangoon Gardens when I thought to myself," Why not?" So there it was, sitting amongst the other movies: Adaptation. I was overjoyed, and along with it I borrowed Brick, 28 Days Later and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
Anyway, imagine yourself tasked as a screenwriter to adapt a book about flowers. Not an animation about talking flowers, or man-eating flowers from the amazonian jungles. A movie very simply about flowers, orchids to be exact. You are supposed to tell the audience everything they need to know about flowers in two hours, and about the men who steal flowers from nature reserves, and that's it. No, this is not supposed to be a documentary, but a motion picture. What if you are in Charlie Kaufman's shoes, what are you going to do? What are you going to do, when you know that even geniuses fail?
I have always idolized Charlie Kaufman as a writer. It is a pity that he doesn't write books, or I would've bought everything. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, two brilliant pieces of screenplays and storytelling, all by the hands of Charlie Kaufman. Ever since I saw his movie for the first time, I was desperate to know just how he crafted his stories, and how originality in Hollywood is synonymous with this man's name. Adaptation was the only movie of his I haven't saw, and I was desperate to find it.
Like I said, adapting a book about flowers, how is that even possible? The level of difficulty might not be the same as adapting the whole Bible into a two hour movie, or adapting the dictionary or thesaurus. There is no way that you can film a movie about flowers, and expect it to sell at the theaters. You can always argue that cinema is not all about the money and the glamor, but your movies - or art - still has to appeal, right?
Charlie Kaufman - the screenwriter - fell into what we writers call a Writer's Block. He was desperate to adapt the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean - which is a real book by the way - because he loved the book. But like I said, adapting a book about flowers without adding in car chases, nudity, explosions and the whole Hollywood shebang, that's impossible. So this is where Charlie Kaufman's genius sets in.
He decided to write a story about the difficulties he faced while adapting this book into a screenplay. So instead of adapting the book itself, he wrote a screenplay about how he wasn't able to ADAPT the book into a screenplay. To add on to his brilliance, he made up a fantastical twin brother of himself in the movie and called him Donald Kaufman, and then showed how they adapted the story together.
To make this movie even more amazing, the screenplay was nominated for an Oscar with both Charlie and Donald Kaufman when Donald Kaufman doesn't even exist. Do you guys understand what I am talking about here? This is storytelling at it's very best, this is artistry at it's peak and most of all, this is the definition of brilliance.
Awe-struck, dumbfounded, are just some of the words I managed to describe myself while watching the movie. This man actually wrote himself into the script and created a fictional ending with a non-fictional beginning. How is that even humanly possible? But that's Charlie Kaufman's genius, this is what he did with the screenplay of Adaptation, and the beauty is that this movie is about so much more than just the process of him adapting a book.
It was an insight to a writer's life, an insight to Charlie's own life and the way he self-depreciates(Like all writers), and about flowers, sadness, depression and hope. All of those written into a one hundred odd page screenplay, and this is screenwriting at best. Charlie Kaufman is exactly why I want to be a writer, and a writer I aspire to be. Of course, I'm probably not going to tell myself that I am old, fat, ugly and bald anytime soon like himself, but in terms of originality, this man has whatever it takes, to blow the minds of every person in the theater.
And the whole chunk above, is merely about how great the screenplay is. I'm not even at the other aspects yet. I'm not sure why The Pianist won the Best Adapted Screenplay for that year's Oscars, since the second half of the movie didn't have much words to begin with. But still, I think Charlie Kaufman's the genius in writing of our time. Count on him for utter brilliance and originality. This man is disgustingly brilliant, it makes me sick - in a good way.
For some reason, I think I am cursed. I am still very much looking for Memento and Amores Perros, and all the man at the HMV counter could tell me was "Sold out". When asked about when the stocks would come in, he told me something about three to four weeks. "You told me that three to four weeks ago." He was silent for a while, until I left him at the counter, bewildered.
The truth is, DVD rental never came across my mind under yesterday night at Serangoon Gardens when I thought to myself," Why not?" So there it was, sitting amongst the other movies: Adaptation. I was overjoyed, and along with it I borrowed Brick, 28 Days Later and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
Anyway, imagine yourself tasked as a screenwriter to adapt a book about flowers. Not an animation about talking flowers, or man-eating flowers from the amazonian jungles. A movie very simply about flowers, orchids to be exact. You are supposed to tell the audience everything they need to know about flowers in two hours, and about the men who steal flowers from nature reserves, and that's it. No, this is not supposed to be a documentary, but a motion picture. What if you are in Charlie Kaufman's shoes, what are you going to do? What are you going to do, when you know that even geniuses fail?
I have always idolized Charlie Kaufman as a writer. It is a pity that he doesn't write books, or I would've bought everything. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, two brilliant pieces of screenplays and storytelling, all by the hands of Charlie Kaufman. Ever since I saw his movie for the first time, I was desperate to know just how he crafted his stories, and how originality in Hollywood is synonymous with this man's name. Adaptation was the only movie of his I haven't saw, and I was desperate to find it.
Like I said, adapting a book about flowers, how is that even possible? The level of difficulty might not be the same as adapting the whole Bible into a two hour movie, or adapting the dictionary or thesaurus. There is no way that you can film a movie about flowers, and expect it to sell at the theaters. You can always argue that cinema is not all about the money and the glamor, but your movies - or art - still has to appeal, right?
Charlie Kaufman - the screenwriter - fell into what we writers call a Writer's Block. He was desperate to adapt the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean - which is a real book by the way - because he loved the book. But like I said, adapting a book about flowers without adding in car chases, nudity, explosions and the whole Hollywood shebang, that's impossible. So this is where Charlie Kaufman's genius sets in.
He decided to write a story about the difficulties he faced while adapting this book into a screenplay. So instead of adapting the book itself, he wrote a screenplay about how he wasn't able to ADAPT the book into a screenplay. To add on to his brilliance, he made up a fantastical twin brother of himself in the movie and called him Donald Kaufman, and then showed how they adapted the story together.
To make this movie even more amazing, the screenplay was nominated for an Oscar with both Charlie and Donald Kaufman when Donald Kaufman doesn't even exist. Do you guys understand what I am talking about here? This is storytelling at it's very best, this is artistry at it's peak and most of all, this is the definition of brilliance.
Awe-struck, dumbfounded, are just some of the words I managed to describe myself while watching the movie. This man actually wrote himself into the script and created a fictional ending with a non-fictional beginning. How is that even humanly possible? But that's Charlie Kaufman's genius, this is what he did with the screenplay of Adaptation, and the beauty is that this movie is about so much more than just the process of him adapting a book.
It was an insight to a writer's life, an insight to Charlie's own life and the way he self-depreciates(Like all writers), and about flowers, sadness, depression and hope. All of those written into a one hundred odd page screenplay, and this is screenwriting at best. Charlie Kaufman is exactly why I want to be a writer, and a writer I aspire to be. Of course, I'm probably not going to tell myself that I am old, fat, ugly and bald anytime soon like himself, but in terms of originality, this man has whatever it takes, to blow the minds of every person in the theater.
And the whole chunk above, is merely about how great the screenplay is. I'm not even at the other aspects yet. I'm not sure why The Pianist won the Best Adapted Screenplay for that year's Oscars, since the second half of the movie didn't have much words to begin with. But still, I think Charlie Kaufman's the genius in writing of our time. Count on him for utter brilliance and originality. This man is disgustingly brilliant, it makes me sick - in a good way.
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on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 1:16 AM.
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