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Mind’s eye
Charlie Kaufman reflects on his new Eternal Sunshine
BY PETER KEOUGH

He may be one of the most self-indulgent filmmakers around, but he’s also one of the most selfless. Charlie Kaufman’s screenplays have bounced against the mirror of the soul in such mind-bending and Oscar-nominated farces as Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002), both directed by Spike Jonze. The latter had as its heroes a screenwriter named Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald, both played by Nicolas Cage (who is, by the way, about half a foot taller than the actual Kaufman). Both characters are completely fictitious. Of this most solipsistic of filmmakers, we know almost nothing.

Or do we?

"No, people know about me," insists Kaufman. "I mean, I don’t lie about myself, maybe with the exception of Donald, but Charlie and Donald in that movie are not me. Neither one of them is me; they’re just characters. I mean, Charlie’s based on me, but it’s not me, and I never pretended that it was. The process was true, but I feel that’s true of any character I write. Any character I write in any movie has elements of me, and I borrow from myself because that’s what I have to do. Adaptation was a more conspicuous example."

To find Kaufman in his films, maybe you just have to know where to look. Take his new Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is directed by Michel Gondry, who also directed Kaufman’s Human Nature (one of his least self-reflexive and least successful screenplays). Joel (Jim Carrey) learns that his girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet), wants to erase his memory from her mind through a Philip K. Dick–like agency called Lacuna. The film’s title comes from an Alexander Pope poem that a young Lacuna employee (Kirsten Dunst) uses to show off to the company’s founder (Tom Wilkinson). "Eloisa to Abelard" draws on actual letters between the two tragically cloistered (and in the case of Abelard, castrated) mediæval lovers. "I wanted this character to be someone who read through Bartlett’s looking for things to impress her boss, and I came upon this and liked it. Then I saw it was Héloïse, and I have a thing for her as I put her in Being John Malkovich, too. There’s a scene in the beginning where a puppet show that Craig is doing has the characters reading their letters to each other. I thought it was a serendipitous thing, so I used it.

"The letters are so completely modern. I just like that she was so in love and so eloquent and so unapologetic about it. And I found her letters really heartbreaking because she was begging him to acknowledge what they had and he wouldn’t do it."

Definitely a romantic at heart. Perhaps with castration anxiety. And that brings to mind one of Eternal Sunshine’s most romantic, anxious scenes, when Clementine drags a terrified Joel out onto the frozen Charles River (actually a lake in New York) to lie on the ice. Did Kaufman ever do this?

"I did," says the former Boston University student. "It was scary, and then exhilarating. I did it with a friend. She coaxed me out, and I was scared, and we went to the center of the river and looked out at the skyline and bridges, and it was beautiful."

Then Kaufman’s nostalgia turns, on a dime, to concern. "Do you think this is my version of Jackass? You’re from here; is it something that people do? My friend said I was safe. And you know, she was out there, I had to go out there, and I did. But please put it in your article that people shouldn’t try that."

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind opens next Friday, March 19, at theaters to be announced.


Issue Date: March 12 - 18, 2004
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