Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter behind Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is without doubt one of the smartest and most authentic writers in Hollywood. Humor author Tom Gerencer remembers being very impressed with Kaufman’s 1999 debut movie Being John Malkovich.

“I remember being completely blown away by it and absolutely loving it,” Gerencer says in Episode 549 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “It’s absolutely my style of humor. I love this weird, off-the-wall, surrealist, really funny and really tied-to-real-life stuff.”

Kaufman’s current initiatives haven’t been as common with audiences as his early work. TV author Andrea Kail thinks that Kaufman’s more and more bleak outlook, epitomized by movies resembling I’m Thinking of Ending Things, could also be alienating some viewers. “What is missing from this movie, and this section of his creative life, is the humor that is in Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” she says. “Those are funny movies. There is nothing funny about this. It’s like a mirror into his middle-aged depression, and it’s painful to watch.”

Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley sees similarities between Charlie Kaufman and George Lucas, who each appear to have benefited from constraints on their creativity. “[Kaufman] is someone who’s a visionary, and his early work took that vision and filtered it through collaborators who were more normal and could make it something the audience could relate to more,” Kirtley says. “And once he got enough power to completely make it his vision, the audience for the most part is like, ‘Eh, I kind of liked the earlier stuff better.’”

Science fiction writer Matthew Kressel hopes that Kaufman will create extra movies which have the identical form of stability his earlier motion pictures did. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is exactly the sort of experience I’m going for,” he says. “It’s reflecting back to me, the viewer, what it’s like to be a human being, with both the beautiful things and the horrible things, both the joy and the suffering, and being OK with both sides of that. That’s why I think the movie is so beautiful.”

Listen to the entire interview with Tom Gerencer, Andrea Kail, and Matthew Kressel in Episode 549 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And try some highlights from the dialogue under.

Tom Gerencer on Being John Malkovich:

The film is all about how folks have issues we need, we have now issues we would like, and the way far we’re keen to go to get what we would like, by way of simply utterly screwing another person over and never even trying again. John Cusack‘s character goes, “Wow! There are so many implications about this,” and you think he’s going to begin speaking about one thing profound, and he even says, “There are really profound implications.” And he goes, “For example, I went in there with a piece of wood in my hand. Where is the wood now? Is it still in Malkovich?” That’s all he can give you.

Matthew Kressel on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:

I’ve heard folks criticize this film, “Oh, she’s the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” And should you have a look at it in a superficial means, you possibly can say, “Oh yeah, she’s got the dyed hair, and she’s spontaneous and impulsive, and she crashes the car, and she likes to drink and go out all night.” But should you have a look at it actually, I imagine it destroys that trope. And the explanation why is, she doesn’t save him. She’s not the one which comes and saves his life and makes all his desires come true. She’s simply as flawed as he’s, and when he comes to acknowledge that—that she’s not going to save lots of him and never going to unravel all his issues—and nonetheless accepts her anyway, that’s the fantastic thing about the second.

Andrea Kail on I’m Thinking of Ending Things:

It’s constructed as a horror film. You’re strolling via that barn, and also you’re simply ready, and then you definately’re going into that basement, and also you’re ready. You’re simply ready for the blood to begin pouring out of the partitions or one thing, and it by no means occurs, however that’s form of once I realized that it’s a horror film, however it’s an inside horror film. It’s the horror of being trapped in your recollections and regretting life … These are all of the horrible issues that occur to you in center age—mother and father dying, realizing your life’s half over and also you’re a janitor in a highschool. So that’s the place I feel that every one comes from.

David Barr Kirtley on mortality:

I noticed Charlie Kaufman say in interviews that everybody’s going to die, you’re going to die, you’re going to lose every little thing, and that’s how life finally ends and he needs to be trustworthy about that. And all of that’s true clearly, but in addition all of us are extremely fortunate to ever have been born in any respect, when you concentrate on how statistically unlikely it’s that any of us would ever have been born and been alive to expertise grass and oceans and sunsets and every little thing. So I really feel like fixating on the damaging will not be essentially being trustworthy. It is form of shading issues in a selected path that you just don’t must do.

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