Monotreme
10-05-2007, 12:56 PM
Amongst all these threads and complaints about how Hollywood needs to start producing more original features and stop with the re-makes/sequels, the most common comment is that it's lucky we have writers like Charlie Kaufman to look to for constant originality. He has become a brand screenwriting name since Being John Malkovich, probably the ONLY screenwriter whose name can draw a crowd. Well now he's foraying into directing with Synecdoche, New York, his upcoming film, which sounds great and has a STELLAR cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman stars but we've also got Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Hope Davis, and some other lovely leading ladies. The plot:
Theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful production of Death of a Salesman, he has traded in the suburban blue-hairs and regional theater of Schenectady for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway. Armed with a MacArthur grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan's theater district. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mockup of the city outside. As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden's own life veers wildly off the tracks. The shadow of his ex-wife Adele (Catherine Keener), a celebrated painter who left him years ago for Germany's art scene, sneers at him from every corner. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend, Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh). He's helplessly driving his marriage to actress Claire (Michelle Williams) into the ground. Sammy Barnathan (Tom Noonan), the actor Caden has hired to play himself within the play, is a bit too perfect for the part, and is making it difficult for Caden to revive his relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel (Samantha Morton). Meanwhile, his therapist, Madeline Gravis (Hope Davis), is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counseling him. His is second daughter, Ariel, is retarded. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one. As the years rapidly pass, Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece. Populating the cast and crew with doppelgangers, he steadily blurs the line between the world of the play and that of his own deteriorating reality. As he pushes the limits of his relationships, both personally and professionally, a change in creative direction arrives in Millicent Weems, a celebrated theater actress who may offer Caden the break he needs. By seamlessly blending together subjective point-of-views with traditional narrative structures, writer/director Charlie Kaufman has created a world of superbly unsteady footing. His richly developed cast of characters flutter between moments of warm intimacy and frightful insecurity, creating a script that brings to life all the complex and beautiful nuances of shared life and artistic creation. Synecdoche, New York is as its definition states: a part of the whole or the whole used for the part, the general for the specific, the specific for the general.
Sounds indescribably complex, and Philip Seymour Hoffman will pretty much be carrying the show, which is great for him. That said, I can't help but have some initial doubts regarding Kaufman directing. Had he simply given this to someone like Spike Jonze, we know it would come out a masterpiece. But fact of the matter is, I have no idea how Kaufman will be at directing: from interviews and such he seems like the quiet, shy, reclusive type so I'm not sure how he will fare working with a bunch of actors and generally conducting the action. Also, I fear that his also writing the screenplay will actually harm the movie - I always loved how Jonze, Gondry and Clooney (the only three directors he's worked with, if you think about it) managed to find their own points of interest in the film and ENHANCED Kaufman's already brilliant script.
Another more practical question is this: It says on IMDb that filming wrapped in August this year. Does that mean we can hope for a Winter 2007 release, or are we going to have to wait until next year to see this opus?
Anyone else as stoked about this as I am?
http://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/synechocheposter.jpg
Theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful production of Death of a Salesman, he has traded in the suburban blue-hairs and regional theater of Schenectady for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway. Armed with a MacArthur grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan's theater district. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mockup of the city outside. As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden's own life veers wildly off the tracks. The shadow of his ex-wife Adele (Catherine Keener), a celebrated painter who left him years ago for Germany's art scene, sneers at him from every corner. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend, Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh). He's helplessly driving his marriage to actress Claire (Michelle Williams) into the ground. Sammy Barnathan (Tom Noonan), the actor Caden has hired to play himself within the play, is a bit too perfect for the part, and is making it difficult for Caden to revive his relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel (Samantha Morton). Meanwhile, his therapist, Madeline Gravis (Hope Davis), is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counseling him. His is second daughter, Ariel, is retarded. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one. As the years rapidly pass, Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece. Populating the cast and crew with doppelgangers, he steadily blurs the line between the world of the play and that of his own deteriorating reality. As he pushes the limits of his relationships, both personally and professionally, a change in creative direction arrives in Millicent Weems, a celebrated theater actress who may offer Caden the break he needs. By seamlessly blending together subjective point-of-views with traditional narrative structures, writer/director Charlie Kaufman has created a world of superbly unsteady footing. His richly developed cast of characters flutter between moments of warm intimacy and frightful insecurity, creating a script that brings to life all the complex and beautiful nuances of shared life and artistic creation. Synecdoche, New York is as its definition states: a part of the whole or the whole used for the part, the general for the specific, the specific for the general.
Sounds indescribably complex, and Philip Seymour Hoffman will pretty much be carrying the show, which is great for him. That said, I can't help but have some initial doubts regarding Kaufman directing. Had he simply given this to someone like Spike Jonze, we know it would come out a masterpiece. But fact of the matter is, I have no idea how Kaufman will be at directing: from interviews and such he seems like the quiet, shy, reclusive type so I'm not sure how he will fare working with a bunch of actors and generally conducting the action. Also, I fear that his also writing the screenplay will actually harm the movie - I always loved how Jonze, Gondry and Clooney (the only three directors he's worked with, if you think about it) managed to find their own points of interest in the film and ENHANCED Kaufman's already brilliant script.
Another more practical question is this: It says on IMDb that filming wrapped in August this year. Does that mean we can hope for a Winter 2007 release, or are we going to have to wait until next year to see this opus?
Anyone else as stoked about this as I am?
http://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/synechocheposter.jpg