I have to admit, I don't even know the subject of this latest personal inspiration that well, but then again, nobody does. Charlie Kaufman, the screen writer most famous for creating some of the strangest movies of our time, has a well-earned reputation for being reclusive, letting almost nothing of his private life to be known. But that's okay, because I'm not an admirer of him for his wild parties or anything. I admire him because of his writing.
Wikipedia tells me that Mr. Kaufman started his career in television, as writers are wont to do, but he started the relevant parts of his career with Being John Malcovich, a hilarious and surreal movie about a group of people who discover a portal into the mind of, well, the actor John Malcovich, letting them experience reality itself from a new perspective. He followed through with a number of other films, but he only really made two other movies his own. The second was Adaptation, where he tried to adapt an incredibly difficult novel about a flower smuggler. He eventually did so by making the movie about himself making the adaptation while dealing with his own personal demons as manifested by his nonexistent twin brother. The film's meta-concept went completely off the rails when he decided to be less faithful with his adaptation (in the movie,) and suddenly he (as in the actor in the movie, who was playing the writer of the same movie,) learned the flower smuggler involved a drug ring and he had to fight off gun-toting maniacs and alligators.
The above was possibly his most surreal movie, but the one with the most heart was still his most recent, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In this one, a hapless protagonist breaks up with his girlfriend, and soon both decide to use a science fiction memory erasing procedure so they could forget about each other. But midway through it, the hero decides he doesn't want the memories erased, so he lucidly travels through his own memories, talking with the projection of his ex-girlfriend as he remembers her and trying futilely to fight off the effects of the procedure as it happens to him.
It may not be surprising that there's at least one seen of drug use in each of these movies. But I don't think that necessarily relates. I just think Mr. Kaufman, the strange man that he is, is simply capable of imagining these worlds with an ease normally unheard of. That he can do so and then fill those worlds with real, human characters takes more than brilliance, it takes a kind of grace I only hope to have some day.
And I think it's a combination of the world he makes and the personality behind them that makes a personal hero. Charlie Kaufman, as I mentioned before, is notoriously shy and introverted. For example, when he won his first and so far only Academy Award for Eternal Sunshine, he barely could stammer a response. Someone in the audience told him, "Take your time," and he replied, "I don't want to take my time. I want to get off the stage." Presumably, he did.
Part of me imagines that if I suddenly got rich and famous, I would happily enjoy my brief moments in the spotlight to a crazy level, but for now, I think of myself in very similar terms. In my very first post, I mentioned the whole "don't speak the moon language you people call love," thing, and that's pretty much the same way my mind acts in other circumstances. My social skills are shoddy at best, and I often don't really get how people think, how relationships form, or even some basic elements of small talk. But in my head, universes are born, entire species propagate them, and heroes and other individuals come to life and their destiny. At least in the recesses of my brain, they seem to act human from my perspective; it's that reasoning that makes me want to become a designer.
This isn't to say his works are negligible, regardless of the mind behind them. I gave such detailed explanations of them because there are only a few samples of his work I know well, but also because there are such strange, wonderful concepts behind them that they require such explanations. Of course, I can't say how much they altered my life and development, as the first came out less than a decade ago, so I only knew him as an adult. But it is good to know that his work exists, and it serves a model to the kind of artist I hope to one day become.
Okay, now I want to get off the stage.
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