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. 

Who?

I started to watch Her on Friday night for only the second time. My first time was in the theater, of course, on the last day of my ranking year in 2013 (so it was January of 2014). Three years later, I've never given it the chance to prove that I was wrong when I gave it a reluctant four stars (out of five) and ranked it "only" 21st for the year. I suspect I might have ranked it lower if I'd had more time to think about it and if I weren't so shocked that what I pegged as a contender for my #1 movie kind of disappointed me.

The second chance didn't come Friday night either, even though I was fresh off the Black Mirror episode "San Junipero," which put me in the mood for another technology-enabled love story set in the future. When my wife saw me starting it at the time when she would normally peel off to go to bed, she showed unmistakable signs of interest -- you know, the kind that says "I'm not going to stop you from watching this right now but I am kind of interested in watching this too." Her own first experience was inevitably underwhelming as she saw it in the company of our infant son at one of those "Mums and Bubs" sessions (they call them "Babes in Arms" in the U.S.). When I put the question to her directly, she did indeed say she'd watch it with me soon. As such, it remains a possible option for our Valentine's Day viewing tonight.

Which is how I came across this image above, perusing the choices on Netflix for Valentine's Day.

And what a strange image this is indeed.

If there's going to be a single person pictured in an advertisement for Her, you'd figure it would be Joaquin Phoenix, right? After all, the most common advertising image from the movie is this one:

Same color scheme. Same font for the title.

Not the same actor.

That's not only not Joaquin Phoenix, it's also not Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Chris Pratt or Olivia Wilde.

It's not even the disembodied voice of Scarlett Johansson.

It's not even the disembodied voice of Kristen Wiig as "Sexy Kitten Voice" or Bill Hader as "Chat Room Friend #2."

No, it's an actor named Matt Letscher, who plays "Charles." And as I watch this movie again, you better bet I'm going to pay intention to just what exactly he does in this movie that warrants making him the face of it on Netflix.

Matt Letscher did look a little familiar to me, but not from Her. No, it turns out he played ambassador Chris Stevens in Michael Bay's 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. And though he was certainly good enough in it -- good enough to make me really consider his character's passing to be tragic -- I wouldn't consider him one of the first half-dozen faces to promote that movie either, even though he plays a far more central role there.

I have to think this is some weird failure of Netflix's Australian wing. I mean, you wouldn't get something like this in the U.S., would you? I think not.

Career-wise, Letscher is no slouch. IMDB shows him as incredibly busy. But he's appearing mostly in TV shows that, while acclaimed, are shows I happen not to be watching. Shows like The Flash, Boardwalk Empire, Scandal, Castle and The Carrie Diaries. Well, maybe not all acclaimed.

I would almost understand it if Letscher were an Australian actor and this were just some kind of provincial attempt to big-up the homegrown talent. But no, Letscher was born in Grosse Point, Michigan. Since he seems a little bland to me ... would it be too mean to refer to him as a Grosse Point blank?

Is it some kind of rights issue? Does Netflix own the right to stream the movie, but not to feature the likeness of any of its half-dozen most prominent stars? Stars who, almost without exception, are up to incredibly big things in the movies these days?

Letscher may get there, but it should not be on the back of Her.

Especially as it inspires people like me to write incredulous posts like this one.

Check back tomorrow, probably, to determine what we did end up choosing for Valentine's Day. And a happy Valentine's Day to you, wherever you are.

Scarlett Johansson can't relate to human beings

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have written a story along these lines ... but I didn't steal the idea from anyone else either.

The idea being that Scarlett Johansson has become typecast as an alien.

Oh, not always a literal alien, but sometimes that too (Under the Skin). In her other two most recent roles -- if you ignore Captain America: The Winter Soldier, that is -- she plays someone (or something) alienated from humanity. (If I am not counting Captain America, I'm definitely not counting her bit part in Chef.)

Having finally caught up with Lucy on Sunday night, I see with clarity the nature of her recent trajectory as an actress. There's a line of dialogue in the movie about how the title character -- having overdosed on a new synthetic drug surgically implanted in her stomach, mule-style, which ruptures through its protective bag after a few swift kicks to the gut -- can no longer empathize with human beings. This is what happens, quite logically, when you are using in excess of 40% of your brain's capacity. (And counting.)

In Her, as a self-aware operating system, she's also involved in an evolution of her being that eventually leaves little old human being Theodore Twombley no real competition for her attentions. Not when there are thousands of other self-aware operating systems with whom she can commune, at a pace Theodore can't manage.

This observation is rather obvious, so let's take it to a place that's not so obvious: In a way, she is having the career that Angelina Jolie should be having.

I don't mean that Jolie deserves Johansson's career. I mean that it would be a much more symbolic career for her than it is for Johansson.

See, Jolie -- as a person, not an actress -- truly has evolved to the point where she seems like an alien. One might argue that this is the logical endpoint for any celebrity who is so unfathomably beautiful that she has entirely lost touch with the quotidian. She has been pedestalized within an inch of her own humanity. This bleeds over into her abilities as an actress, which are not insignificant. The upshot is that I can no longer believe her in any role she plays.

The same threat exists for ScarJo, as she is as worshipped by men as Jolie at her height, if not more so. Except Johansson is "keeping it real." She still seems like a regular person, almost consciously lampooning her own potential disconnect from the human race -- which is precisely the evidence that she remains a grounded human being.

Jolie could not do this. She labors under the misapprehension that she is still a "regular person," when indeed she is not. The role of Maleficent in this summer's eponymous movie is about as close as she has come to admitting there is something otherworldly about her. However, crucially, the movie that bears her character's name is so entirely fixated on humanizing the character, that instead of seeming like a knowing nod to her own public persona, it reveals the depth of her own failure to understand herself.

Johansson, on the other hand, has been actively inviting these roles of "other," these roles where she is so alienated from her origins that she is either robotic, or actually a robot. But, it's not fooling us. In each of the three films we're mentioning here, Johansson's characters' removal from the flesh is offset by at least one scene where we feel her humanity in excessive quantities. In Lucy, it's the opening, where she makes her fear of being killed by Chinese gangsters a physical force. I don't know that I've seen someone as afraid in a movie in 2014 as Johansson in the opening scenes of Lucy. In Under the Skin, it's an almost unbearable confusion and sadness when she starts to empathize with these humans she's come to dispassionately study. There's a fragility there that is also unequaled in 2014 films. And then of course Her, where Johansson actually won an award at the Venice Film Festival for breathing unmistakable life into artificial intelligence -- and just doing it with her voice.

I've already spent some time praising Johansson this year (see here), and at this point you may think I'm in danger of crossing over into idolatry of a woman who has never been praised for her actual talent until just the past year or two. But it's warranted. And that's the beauty of a blog -- when you've got something to say, just say it.

As for Angelina Jolie, well ... let's see if making a movie about an Olympic athlete who survives a World War II plane crash and Japanese POW camps can give us a glimpse of her elusive cinematic humanity.

You never go full happy

You may recall a certain Ben Stiller-directed movie from a couple years ago about a certain war movie being filmed somewhere in Southeast Asia and a certain British actor wearing blackface (played by a certain popular American actor who usually has iron over his face) who has a certain controversial line of dialogue about going "full retard." His advice is that you should never do it, if you want to win an Oscar.

Similarly, if you want to avoid your movie being accused of having too happy of an ending, you should never go "full happy."

Powder Blue, an overstretched little Los Angeles hyperlink movie from 2009, may seem like a strange example to use of this phenomenon, but it just so happens that watching it is when these thoughts about "fully happy" occurred to me.

Although I hardly think it important not to spoil the ending of a movie whose main claim to fame is that Jessica Biel goes topless (twice), I'll remain vague for those of you out there who might care.

The movie ends with two characters sitting on benches about 100 yards from each other, noticing the other and smiling. These are the two characters who the story means to end up together from about its halfway point (after one of the characters has been missing from the plot for a good half-hour). It's pretty clear that this will ultimately happen, and in that moment where they notice each other on the benches (one is a bus stop), I thought "Okay, this is a good place to end this movie." Didn't mean it would suddenly become a great movie, but it held the possibility of ending things in a graceful manner.

Uh uh. The characters have to cross to each other and have one of those epic kisses, one that's so epic that the camera's only option is to pull out to about a thousand feet away before going to the credits.

See? "Full happy."

What struck me about this is that it seems kind of unusual these days, at least in movies that are trying to be independent and thought-provoking. Powder Blue is definitely trying to do both, and mostly failing.

Movies that want to have it both ways -- shoot for realism, but also leave the viewer feeling happy -- have figured out plenty of ways to suggest a happy ending without turning that ending into a 100% certainty. Let's take a prominent example from this past year: Her. I'm sorry if you haven't seen Her yet, and I'm sorry if you thought that the ending would be depressing or bleak. You can consider this a spoiler alert if you fit into either category.

Her, another Los Angeles story, ends with its intended new lovebirds (played by Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams) sitting together on a rooftop, looking out contemplatively over the city. Each has recently become available, and the story has made it clear that the two have been inching towards each other for some time, ready to finally find a fully satisfying relationship in each others' arms. (Because, you know, an operating system tends not to have arms.)

Spike Jonze doesn't have to have Phoenix and Adams lean in for a kiss to indicate that there will probably be kisses in their future. It's enough to know that they have found each other, on this rooftop, and that we can trust them to take it from here.

This is of course just one example, not nearly the best nor most prominent (though probably one of the most recent). It's a happy ending without being a HAPPY ENDING.

A shrewd filmmaker should trust us enough to leave us merely with hope. Hope leaves that kiss up to our imagination. It also leaves us with the possibility that it won't work out, if we want to read the ending that way. Few movies have it both ways better than the ending of a movie that bears some high-concept romantic similarities to Her, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Of course, neither is Powder Blue the most prominent example of a "full happy" ending, though it's definitely the most recent, at least for me, as I just saw it last night. Ending with just an exchange of smiles and knowing glances from benches across the street would not have made Powder Blue a good movie, but it would have made it a better one.

I suppose my real reason for writing this post is that I promised I would write a review of every new movie I'm seeing until the end of April, and since I can't really write two posts about a movie as insignificant as Powder Blue, this post lets me off the hook for writing that review. You see, one of the problems about this "review everything" approach to blogging is that if I allow myself to become imprisoned by my self-imposed guidelines, I stop writing posts about movie phenomena that are inspired by the things I see, because they don't fit neatly into the type of package that reviews force them into. I thought about the "full happy" ending while watching Powder Blue, so I want Powder Blue to by my news peg for writing that post, gosh darn it.

And that, my friends, is my own little happy ending for today.

A busy January 16th

Remember that post from three weeks ago when I bemoaned that I wouldn't get to see Her before my deadline for ranking 2013 movies? Which is the morning the Oscar nominations are announced on January 16th?

Fortunately, that's January 16th American time.

The Oscar nominations will actually be a little bit after midnight on January 17th, Australian time. Which is important, because that Thursday the 16th -- Wednesday in the U.S. -- brings another new release date in Australia. Movies come out on Thursdays here, and I don't know what's magical about that particular Thursday, but it will give me the chance to squeeze in two biggies right before the deadline.

That's right, thanks to being 19 hours ahead of Los Angeles, I'll be in position to take down not only Her, but also Inside Llewyn Davis, both of which open that day.

I've known about the Her opportunity for about a week, but only just learned about the chance to see the Coens' latest as well.

Nebraska, 12 Years a Slave, The Wolf of Wall Street and some others will still have to wait, but at least these two heavyweights -- which could both be contenders for my favorite movie of the year, if the critical buzz is to be believed -- can indeed have a crack at my year-end list.

That is, assuming I can see even one movie, let alone two, on one of my new son or daughter's first handful of days on the planet.

Did I mention it might be a busy January 16th?

At this point it seems pretty clear that I won't be working, at least. Although I would have loved one of the jobs I've applied for to bear fruit by then, the closer we get to Christmas, the less likely that seems to happen. 

What's exceedingly unlikely, however, is that I won't have my second child by then. He or she has an official due date of January 10th, but it's most likely that my wife will be induced sometime between Christmas and New Year's. Sorry, little Vance or Vancette, your mother and I really should have skipped that particular fertility window so you birthday won't be forever overshadowed by the holidays. Our bad.

On the plus side, a December 27th or December 28th birthday means that we'll have over two weeks to prioritize our little one's every need before January 16th asks me to place my priorities elsewhere. The other bit of good news is that January 16th is my existing son's first day back at preschool, after the (gulp) three-week closure of the school starting on December 23rd. Glad I've left such movies as Epic, The Croods and Monsters University unwatched so far, because we'll be leaning heavily on those crutches by the end of those three weeks.

So assuming I can somehow squeeze in both movies on the 16th, even if it requires separate $19 admissions, then the issue becomes to digest them both in time for me to finalize my list by midnight that night. Every year, some poor sucker has to be the last movie I see before I close my list, but I purposefully try to make it something middling, something that doesn't have a real shot at my top 10. I won't have that luxury this year. With a special spotlight shown on these two films, I'll have to consider very quickly which of my other favorites of the year -- ones I've been savoring for many months in some cases -- they have any business ousting.

It's a good problem to have, at least. Fate has thrown me a bone on these two films, whose absence from my list would make it an even less credible version of the thing I try so hard each year to amass: a truly representative selection of the movies released in the year just finished. I may not have the latest film by Alexander Payne, the latest film by Steve McQueen or the latest film by Martin Scorsese, but at least Spike Jonze's latest and the Coen brothers' latest could be mine, if I play my cards right.

And if I don't play my cards right ... well, having a new son or daughter will be a nice consolation prize.

That's three I won't be ranking this year

I haven't been worrying myself too much about Australia's new release latency. You know, that delay, sometimes lasting as long as three to five months, for some movies to open here. Until now, it hasn't had much practical impact on me, except forcing me to practice something I hate: being patient.

Until -- sob -- now.

Yesterday I discovered the third high-profile autumn release that I won't be seeing before my list closes on January 16th, with many, many more to come. If I'd been poking around more on the late-December release scheduled in the U.S., I'd probably already be aware of a number of other titles that will be denied me.

I was going to see Enough Said -- whose November 14th release date was delayed a modest two months from the U.S. -- when I saw an advertisement for Alexander Payne's new film Nebraska.

Then the release date:

February 20, 2014.

Sigh.

February 20th is more than a month after I close my rankings for 2013, which will be on January 16th this year. That's the morning the Oscar nominations are announced, which is my traditional deadline for finalizing the previous year's rankings.

Other victims of me being in Australia: 12 Years a Slave, which releases on something like January 30th, and Spike Jonze's new movie Her, which doesn't even get its U.S. wide release until mid-January. If I were in L.A., though, I would have been able to find Her open for a week for awards considerations, I'm sure of it.

This is significant, as Spike Jonze's most recent two films -- Where the Wild Things Are and Adaptation -- were my #2 of 2009 and my #1 of 2002. Let's just say I like the guy.

I knew there would be plenty of changes to accept by moving to Australia, many of which would relate to movies. But now that it's coming to brass tacks, I'm finding it very hard to accept that my 2013 film rankings won't be a thorough representation of the films released in the United States in 2013. And it won't get better in 2014, unless industry conditions suddenly take a major turn that causes the collapse of this three-month delay. Not anytime soon, I'm betting.

At least my whole holiday prestige picture season isn't going to be killed. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and August, Osage County are three counterexamples of films that will be released here within a week of their American release.

They'll be competing with Joe Swanberg's Drinking Buddies, which was released in the U.S. on August 23rd. Here? December 26th.

Australia ... it's a mixed bag. One I'm committed to at least until sometime in 2015. 

The challenge, then, is just to not worry about it. If I want to change my list so that it incorporates films released where I am in 2014, I can rank Nebraska or 12 Years a Slave or Her next year. Can't I? Can't I?

I can. Do I want to? No. May I someday want to? Maybe.

I want to do apples to apples comparisons with other friends and critics ranking this same year, and I'm not likely to want to give that up very soon. Maybe if I read some Australian critics I'd feel differently, but so far, I don't.

I still remember, at the end of 1995, talking with a friend's girlfriend about her favorite films of the previous year. She listed Pulp Fiction as her favorite film of that year, because she'd seen it in 1995 after its October 1994 release. I vowed never to subject myself to such imprecise and arbitrary criteria for making year-end lists.

Even the Australians got Pulp Fiction by November 24th of '94. So I guess there's some hope looking forward that more of the movies I want to see will be The Secret Life of Walter Mitty than Nebraska.

For now, though, I mourn Nebraska and its brethren ... who will just increase in number the deeper we get into the end of this year.