Creating those 'thinking situations'

“When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know?” – Charlie Kaufman

Born in November 1958, Kaufman is a screenwriter, producer, director, and lyricist who wrote the films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and (one of my faves) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for which he won an Academy Award.   Those three scripts appear in the Writers Guild of America’s list of the 101 greatest movie screenplays ever written.

“I want to create situations that give people something to think about,” Kaufman said about his works.  His works explore such universal themes as identity crisis, mortality, and the meaning of life through a parapsychological framework, putting him fairly firmly in the “surrealist” category for his writing.  

                                                      A native of New York – and graduate of NYU – Kaufman currently lives in California where he said his writing is pretty “cut and dried.”

                     “When I write characters and situations and relationships,” he said, “I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.”

Share A Writers Moment with a friend by clicking the g+1 button below