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. 

What's enough of a bargain?

I think I made a big step forward today on the difference between whether you can afford something, and whether you should afford it.

On my lunch hour, I was at a low-end Kmart-type store we have out here in Los Angeles called Big Lots, looking for those little paper sleeves you stuff coins in. I've been a fan of the CoinStar machines for awhile, mostly because I like spilling in the coins and watching the machine count them up. (It's the little things.) But in my push to save money, I've decided I no longer want to donate 8.9% of those coins to the nice people at CoinStar, but keep the total amount for myself. This is where the decision to start stuffing coins into coin sleeves and taking them to the bank came in.

I didn't find the coin sleeves, but I was, naturally, lured over to the display of extremely cheap DVDs. Big Lots was selling a bunch of DVDs -- not popular movies, mind you, but not terrible ones either -- for $3 apiece. Even if I don't plan to buy, I'm always attracted to such displays. I'm always curious about what they have, knowing in the back of my mind that if the price is right, there's a chance I'll buy. The price is not usually right, or not usually right enough, so I usually escape the gravitational pull of these movies without taking one with me.

Today I almost caved. Almost.

They had Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep for $3. New, still in its package.

And The Science of Sleep was a movie I liked quite a bit. It was no Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Gondry's masterpiece, but it did enough of what Eternal Sunshine did right that I felt a reasonable fondness toward it, some notable third-act problems notwithstanding.

In the past I might not have hesitated here. I spend three dollars on things with a lot less value than The Science of Sleep all the time. It wouldn't have required a second thought to take it to the checkout stand, bring it home, and insert it between two other DVDs on my DVD shelf.

But it's not the past anymore, and I'm starting to think that just because you can buy something, doesn't mean you should. And I decided right then and there that it was not worth three dollars for me to own The Science of Sleep.

Then the question was, how much would I have paid for it? Would I have bought it for $2? How about at the 99 Cent Store, which was my next stop, where I also did not find the coin sleeves?

I had to tell myself that I probably did not like The Science of Sleep quite enough to buy it at any cost. If I plan to see it even one more time in my life, it might have been worth that $3. But I don't know when I plan to watch it, and do not feel specifically compelled at any time in the near future. Considering that scenario, those three dollars may be better served remaining in my pocket, ready to be spent on an actual necessity. I'll probably watch The Science of Sleep again at some point, but until then, it'll be just one more piece of clutter in my house. And there's an intangible value in avoiding that scenario as well.

Wow, I'm really starting to sound like an adult.

Shit, maybe I should have bought it.

What would you have done?