Charlie Kaufman movies that don't involve Charlie Kaufman

When you saw the trailer for Dream Scenario, your first thought may have been "Oh, this must be Charlie Kaufman's latest." The presence of Nicolas Cage, star of the Kaufman-written Adaptation, might have cemented that impression.

Of course, if you follow Kaufman with any degree of closeness, you'd know that Dream Scenario could only represent an earlier incarnation of the writer-turned-director. His 2020 film I'm Thinking of Ending Things -- which was my #1 of that year -- certainly indicates that he's on to much less accessible fare.

In his film about a man who suddenly starts entering everyone's dreams, even the people who don't know him, Dream Scenario director Kristoffer Borgli is certainly successful in the homage he's paying to this earlier version of Kaufman. If you want to know how successfully, you'll have to wait until my rankings are up on January 23rd. (Or, wait a few days until I write my review, which will be linked to the right.)

What I can write about today, without spoiling my impression of the film, is that it reminded me that we have a whole subgenre of films that seem as though they should have been written or directed (or both) by Kaufman -- and that Dream Scenario feels like the first we've gotten in a while. Just as soon as I venture the idea that these sorts of mindbinders might be approaching extinction, though, I think of a second one from this very year, in addition to Dream Scenario.

Here are the ones that immediately came to mind, in no particular order. In order to narrow things down a bit, I'll limit this to the time period Kaufman was actually working. 

Stranger Than Fiction (2006, Marc Forster) - Will Ferrell can hear the woman who is narrating his life as she speaks. An existential conceit straight out of the Kaufman playbook, released during the peak period of Kaufman's influence on popular films.

Cold Souls (2009, Sophie Barthes) - Is it possible Paul Giamatti has never actually appeared in a Kaufman film? He's Kaufman's perfect schlub. Here he plays an actor trying to disentangle his emotions from the emotions of his characters, who pays for a service to have his soul placed in cold storage. I can only remember this being a bit disappointing. Anyway, shades of Synecdoche, New York all over this. 

Fingernails (2023, Christos Nikou) - Here's that one from this year. People in relationships have the ability to test whether they love each other by having a fingernail torn out and analyzed. The low-fi analog technology in this film is very reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as is the theme of star-crossed romance.

Vanilla Sky (2001, Cameron Crowe) - I think the cold storage of Cold Souls got me thinking about the ending of this film, which I won't spoil even though the movie is now 23 years old. It's just the sort of intricate script with high concept elements about identity that Kaufman would have dreamed up, though I actually have this ranked higher than any Kaufman film on my Flickchart, so kudos to Crowe for that.

The Truman Show (1998, Peter Weir) - This is a bit of a cheat in that it came out a year before Being John Malkovich. Kaufman was working in television but he had not yet made a movie. But the premise is similar to Dream Scenario in that the world revolves around a single ordinary man, so if Dream Scenario is like a Kaufman film, so is this. 

Click (2006, Frank Coraci) - If it were someone other than Adam Sandler in the title role here, I think this story about a man who literally fast forwards through his life would strike us as more of a Kaufman high concept mindbender. As is even with Sandler, it's pretty poignant and potent at certain parts.

Vivarium (2019, Lorcan Finnegan) - Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots are trapped in an apparently empty neighborhood of identical houses from which there is no escape. The title suggests they are being watched for their reaction. Very Kaufman, and Eisenberg is another who should play a Kaufman surrogate at some point.

Her (2013, Spike Jonze) - It feels like a technicality that Kaufman is not actually involved with this. Jonze directed two of Kaufman's films, so this is sort of a cheat. And while we're cheating anyway ...

The Science of Sleep (2006, Michel Gondry) - If I'm going to list the future work of one Kaufman collaborator, I should list the future work of another. 

Swiss Army Man (2016, Daniel Scheinert & Daniel Kwan) - A buddy comedy between a suicidal man and the talking corpse that helps him find a reason to live? Yep, Kaufman could have written this.

Ruby Sparks (2012, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris) - While we're already on Paul Dano, this is another one in the Stranger Than Fiction/Adaptation neighborhood, where a written character comes to life and tries to make a Kaufman-like schlub with writer's block happy. 

Moon (2009, Duncan Jones) - I'll let this stand in for a whole category of films featuring clones, as a clone gets at the existential concepts in which Kaufman always dabbles. 

It's becoming clear I could go on for quite a while listing films that narrowly qualify, with diminishing returns. But instead I'll wrap it up with the thought "You get the idea."

One thing I'll say, though, is that even when they fail, they fail in interesting ways. If someone wants to try to make a Charlie Kaufman movie, I'm always game for it -- and I don't want us collectively to forget how to do it, especially now that Kaufman himself doesn't want to be quite so on brand as to have a whole genre unto himself. 

Fingernails and toenails

I am about to lose a toenail.

Thought I would hit you with that right up top without any trigger warning. Hope you weren't eating breakfast.

I'm the type of person who would require this sort of trigger warning. It's not so much that I can't watch images of people losing nails -- in fact, I pride myself on having no trigger warnings when it comes to movie content. (Except maybe Minions.) 

No, the issue I experience is on a physical level, and it comes whenever I even consider the issue of trauma to the toes. Even imagining someone stubbing their toe hard causes my testicles to involuntarily shrivel. I don't know why my testicles have such an empathetic relationship with my toes, but they do.

I'm hitting you with all sorts of fun content today, aren't I.

My own toe trauma originates, I am almost 100% positive, from kicking a soccer ball with my son in the back yard. I understand that toe injuries are common for soccer players, especially younger soccer players, but maybe not for the reason you think. I would have thought there'd be a greater risk of getting stepped on, and there probably is that, but the hard shell of your typical soccer cleat likely serves as good protection from that sort of injury. That same hard shell only makes a different injury worse, which is the jamming of the toe against the tip of the shoe, especially when kicking a ball that might be a tad overinflated. 

And I wasn't even wearing cleats when I took one of many shots on our broken down backyard goal, whose net has only about three points of connection with the frame, and which has recently been bolstered by duct tape. I discovered I also like kicking with my off foot, my left foot, though my left foot does not feel the same about the experience.

I initially didn't connect the black blood blister growing under my left big toe with soccer. In fact, I didn't even realize at first that a blood blister was what it was. I'd guessed it was a bruise, which shows you just how often this sort of thing happens to me.

I figured I had to have stubbed it hard enough to cause this but not hard enough to remember it as that time I stubbed my toe real bad. The toenail was black for what seemed like several months, and then on our trip to Broome in mid-September, I noticed it had suddenly turned white -- so white, in fact, that it emitted a slight glow in the dark.

I thought this was healing. Not so much.

Soon afterward, I started to notice that my toenail was no longer fully anchored to the toe. You could wiggle it like a loose tooth. It was then I realized I was going to lose it, and it was then I attributed this to a soccer injury.

Since then the nail has been steadily freeing itself from the rest of the body, and I have been holding it in place with an ever-changing series of bandaids. It's not that I think I am going to save the nail, that its connections to the rest of my foot will suddenly revive themselves into full health. It's that I want it to disconnect at its own speed, and not suddenly as a result of putting on a sock too quickly. (And when I put on socks these days, I look like an old man possibly doing it for the last time.)

At this very moment, it has the slimmest possible connection to the toe, in the lower left corner. I tried tugging it a little bit but it wouldn't let go. Hanging on for dear life, that toenail.

When it does finally go, don't worry, it will grow back. I'm sure you knew that but I had to reassure myself. But it could take up to a year.

I tell you all this because I watched a perfectly timed movie on Sunday about the removal of nails, this time of the finger variety.

Despite a title that you could easily imagine being a horror movie, Fingernails is actually a romantic drama with a sci-fi twist. At least that's how I described it in my review. It does have something that's right out of body horror, though. In this not-so-distant future full of retro technology, there's a test that proves the existence of love between two people, which helps them decide whether their current relationship is worthy of investment. However, it requires tearing out a fingernail and having it tested alongside the fingernail of your partner.

You'd think this would be played for at least a small amount of black comedy, but that small amount is closer to minuscule. Director Christos Nikou may prefer subtle satire, or he may be more interested in an earnest exploration of the film's underlying question: If there were a scientific test that helped determine the likelihood of success of a relationship, would you take it? 

Me, I was just focused on the fingernails.

As I watched the characters played by Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed use pliers to tear out the nails of happy young couples -- who are trying to figure out if their happiness is real -- I kept thinking that I wouldn't need even a fraction of the determination these people show, nor would it create the same sort of trauma at the wound site. In fact, my situation might be a lot closer to the brief pain of tearing off a bandage, if that.

But I don't know, I haven't progressed to that point yet. The stuff I've read online talks about when the nail eventually falls off, and of course it will do that. Each time enough showers force a change of bandaid, I have a new opportunity to assess what I'm dealing with.

Until then, I am hanging on to as much of myself as I can.