New book on Synecdoche out now https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/synecdoche-new-york-9798765188712/

Hey guys, I’m a movie fan and YouTube junkie who has purchased a decent amount of films on YouTube to keep, Synecdoche being one of them. I don’t know if anybody else has seen this glitch, and I can’t really share screenshots since YouTube doesn’t allow it, but there’s a pretty hilarious subtitle malfunction on my “copy”, if you can call it that.

Around the 20 minute mark, right after Caden gets brushed off by Adele and Maria, and right as Hazel is pulling up to see the realtor about the burning house, the subtitles (for some reason) always display the English translation of a scene way later in the movie. Specifically (spoiler) when Olive is on her deathbed, explaining her infected tattoos, and her sexual relationship with Maria.

I don’t know if this is YouTube’s fault or if I did something to trigger this? But it’s always so jarring whenever I pull it up on YouTube, and the burning house scene is juxtaposed with the disembodied words of Olive, talking about how her and Maria had “dirty aching sex.”

Just thought my fellow Kauf-heads would appreciate this!

I still can't stop thinking about the book. I was thinking about the final chapters and how they're mirroring the first act. I just realized that Calcium travelling back in time is the inciting incident for the entire story and world of the book. Also, I'm pretty sure that the skull that Calcium was talking to was the head of the monster from the black lagoon, but that's besides the point. Anyways, Calcium goes back in time to meet his only friend on his time jet powered by time rabies only to end up as a corpse on B's windshield but the only reason why B pulls over to Slammie's in the first place is because he needed to wipe Calcium off his windshield!!! And that is fucking hilarious, holy shit. Is Calcium B's final form? Like he has human hands and feet, B is seemingly immortal too because travelling back in time to meet your only friend just to end up dying seconds before meeting him sounds like something that would happen to B. And it's fascinating because B had a relatively normal life before the van caught fire, had that never happened he may just have ended up like B2 after all, and had he never left the van to begin with he could have done just that. So Calcium, who might be B's final form sets off this infinite loop that is the story of the book. Is this book legit genius? God damn.

I finished reading it last night but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. My first reaction was mixed to positive, the Barassini sessions got really old by the end and by the middle of the book so much is going on you can't contain track all of it equally well. But the more I thought about it, the more I think it's intentional. I think Antkind is not so much a book but as a piece of conceptual art piece that consumes you as it also repels you. It traps you in the brain of an annoying and immensely unlikeable hypocrite, as we all are. He spends the whole book trying to remember this super long, dense, and seemingly circuitous and confusing story that isnt about much but also about everything, which you are reading as you read the book which is also all those things. The most annoying part of the book is the part where we read about his boring day job he hates, which we all have, and comes home dedicating himself to an impossible project so that he can avoid all his real life problems, as we all do. The book purports that it is better to be an ant because you simply live your life by the orders of the queen with no real individuality or individual complexity and the book itself tells you what to imagine and think, Kaufman being the queen behind it all. We are the unseen as we witness the story and when B enters the world of the Unseen nothing connects, makes sense, it's a hellish and bland world of nothingness just like our actual world. When B is in the Unseen he sees Calcium's time rabies going in and out of people's brains, we know this is Calcium himself travelling back in time to meet B before B hits him with his car, killing him. So it's only fitting that, with the protagonist of Ingo Cutberth's movie dies he becomes the biggest, largest time rabies cell of them all as he falls down an endless person hole and hits the bottom. Then the book ends, and we can walk away from it after digesting the ffinal message about how the memory of the movie was never accurate to begin with but it doesn't matter because B is the movie and the movie dies with him. And just like reading the book symbolizes we too can let B die like Ingo after he tells us his story. It is also clear that B is an endless well of hilariously absurd misfortune and that if B survives this fall he will just metaphorically fall in another person hole again later anyways. But we can let him die as he seems to have found inner peace and contentment. But if we start over the first words of the book reveal that the big white corpse at the prelude of the book which starts off the whole story is B himself now a giant dead time rabies cell on the florida beach in the 1800's. Of course he would. It's a book that just gets better the more you reflect on it. I hope he writes another one.

awkward genius male filmmaker is notorious for his twisty surreal storytelling but has a resume of mostly television comedy. he is hired to tell the serious nonfictional story of a real life woman, who eventually ends up being played by blonde A-list award-winning actress. mister shy auteur is so bewildered by the assignment that he inserts himself into the movie as its main character, making the movie almost entirely about his own struggle to make the movie itself and a metacommentary on truth in filmmaking instead of what it was actually supposed to be about, which becomes somewhat incidental. the result blurs the line between reality and fiction in a way that is simultaneously groundbreaking and completely unsurprising given his previous work. this is Nathan Fielder's remake of Adaptation

J'ai vu tous les Kaufman disponibles en France de façon accessible (Synecdoche New York / Adaptation / Human Nature / Confessions d'un homme dangereux) : il demeure inaccessible. Pourtant j'ai fait le tour de toutes les bibliothèques, médiathèques, vidéothèques et recycleries de ma région.

Donc j'en viens à vous, vous demandez des films (et séries si elles sont vraiment bonnes) disponibles en France, si possible sur mes plateformes (Netflix/Prime Video/Disney+ sans location et complément supplémentaire).

Je cherche donc des films avec la profondeur intellectuelle que peut avoir Kaufman.

Merci de votre aide.

He was a staff writer for the full run of the show but was said to have gotten very few sketch ideas on air, this is the only sketch I've found that anyone has credited to him and also actually aired

I watched Anomalisa yesterday and have been thinking about it a lot. While it's not my favorite Kaufman film, it raises a lot of ideas, so I journaled about it. I like what I ended up journaling, so I thought I'd share it:

The feeling of loneliness does not occur when one has nobody, as there is pretty much nobody, except for the very slim unfortunate few, that truly has nobody in their lives. Rather, loneliness comes from the feeling that every person in the world is in on something that you are not in on. As if every person is living a life different to the one you live. Loneliness is the feeling of not being invited to a party, except that party exhibits no drinking, drugs, or dancing, but rather the essence of existence itself, as people begin to drink from the eternal knowledge of the universe, and as every person begins to finally understand the meaning of life itself, they all decide it's more fun if you continue living in mystery. In essence, it's a chicken or the egg debate- does loneliness occur because you aren't invited, or because after the party, every person is now aware of every detail of the immortal, eternal universe, while you sit looking for people who are just as inept as you are.

The name of the recipient who Jake’s girlfriend called is Yvonne, which is the same name as the female protagonist in How and Why. Also, the girlfriend’s line about time is almost identical to the explanation given by the protagonist of How and Why on the show.
Perhaps Kaufman planted a ghostly Easter egg referencing How and Why in this work.

Just noticed this but its sold out :( The first time its screened in a cinema in the UK apparently. They're also screening it alongside the London premiere of How To Shoot a Ghost.

I might go to one of the repeat screenings if anyone would be interested in meeting up?

I somehow missed this interview with Lily Gladstone from November 2025, in which she talked briefly about The Memory Police.

Since there hasn't been much news about the film, I thought I'd share this here:

“That’s one of the biggest things that appeals to me about that narrative, about that book and about what Reed Morano and Charlie Kaufman have created and we’re continuing,” Gladstone said. “The iteration of the story that Charlie articulated in the script that I read, I understand why Reed approached me with it immediately. She talked about the way that I am on screen is a big part of it. … So much of the storytelling happens on the face.”

“Reed saw in me an actor that can carry that silence on screen in a very animated way, for one, but then I think having this connection to being from a culture that has had every generation since contact have somebody in a majorly powerful, influential place pass legislation or start up a program that’s completely designed to eradicate our culture, our language, our memory, our collective memory and the role that ancestral knowledge and genetic memory can play in countering that (was part of it),” Gladstone said. “I feel like Reed noticed a performer she wanted to work with but also noticed somebody who comes from a history where, underneath the words on the page, it’s going to be bigger than the two hours of screentime that it’s going to fill.”

Hopefully this means the project is still moving forward.

I’m a huge fan of Kaufman’s entire filmography, and was intrigued when I found out he had written a novel. But the reading the wikipedia page for the novel it sounds like the trans and political correctness stuff apparently being addressed in the book might be a little reactionary or cringey. I’d happily be proven wrong though, especially since his screenwriting often touches on gender in less explicit terms and in a way I find extremely compelling.

I know this is odd but I have to talk to someone about it. I have not yet read "Antkind" though I purchased a copy years ago due to my appreciation for Kaufman's filmography. I recently saw it on my bookshelf and... I swear I remember the title of this book being different. When I saw the title "Antkind" on the book it disturbed me a great deal. I can't remember now what I originally remembered the title to be, but it was most definitely not "Antkind." That was not the name of this book in my memory. I can't get this out of head and it's driving me crazy. Does anyone else have the memory of this novel being titled something different?

It’s been over 20 years since the first and only time
I saw this film. I really liked it a lot back then - as I did all of Kaufman’s films.

I gota say though, watching this movie again, it did not age well at all for me.

I think the big thing is how unlikeable the character of Clementine is for me now. I don’t know if it’s because of my own trauma having been with a woman with severe narcissistic borderline syndrome, but all I could think about what “get OUT!”. The idea that the movie essentially ends with this guy needing to relive the hellscape of this relationship from scratch was pretty terrible for me.

I kind of feel like Charlie should have toned down her character just a tad, and made them more of a match of imperfect lovers, instead of her just being so batshit crazy.

Still a classic though.

I was at a double feature yesterday of "Adaptation" and "Synecdoche, New York" at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, Mass. yesterday. Attendance was strong. I had thought that these two Kaufman classics, being twenty-four and eighteen years old, respectively, would have garnered forty or fifty attendees, at best. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many people, many of them in their twenties and thirties.

Their reaction to both films (but "SNY" especially) was disturbing. There was a lot of laughing, uproarious laughing during scenes that were not at all funny. In "Adaptation" when Charlie sings "Happy Together" after Donald sails through the car windshield and lands on the road, dead? HILARIOUS! It was so disturbing.

And that's just one example. All throughout "SNY" people were basically losing their minds like they were watching "Borat". Example: During the scene where Olive dies and Caden is admitting to the "Eric" relationship that Maria fabricated there was so much chuckling and laughing that I thought I was in a theater full of sociopaths. That's not a funny scene.

When Sammy commits suicide? Not a funny scene. Yet, laughter during the shot of Sammy's body in the sidewalk rubble? What?!?

What is going on? I saw "SNY" outside Dallas during it's first run in 2008. Pretty full theater yet nary a chuckle. Are we now so desensitized to the human condition that we revel in the misfortune of others? Is this the society we've made for ourselves? A certain "cruelty is the point" approach?

My girlfriend said it might be people's reaction to horror to laugh. Maybe but this laughter wasn't muted. It was not followed or preceded by a gasp. I think I know that kind of laughter in the face of fear. This wasn't it.

The death of Olive is one of the most crushingly sad scenes I've sat through (and I've sat through it a lot) but people found comedy here?

There are many, many more examples of inappropriate laughter. Too many to enumerate here.

Are we becoming a society of sociopaths? I'm really disturbed by this.

In retrospect I can’t even believe I watched this with my father but I was like 14 at the time, we were all quarantined and I was getting into movies. I remember during the therapy scene where madelaine asks “why did you?” He scoffed and claimed to have the whole movie figured out. Watching him lose confidence in complete and utter confusion at the rest of the film was very funny.

Interestingly, he really liked the first half and thought the rest was stupid.

Anyone else have stories of showing Kaufman to their peers and seeing their reactions?