Charlie Kaufman Meets Some Pretty People

I can't say that I ever thought I'd be announcing this cast for a Charlie Kaufman movie, but Deadline's reporting that Channing Tatum and Tessa Thompson, two of our most gorgeous movie stars, have just signed on to star in Later the War, an adaptation of the short story "Debby’s Dream House’ by the author Iddo Gefen. Not to slight any of the extremely talented actors who've led Charlie's movies but I don't think of "gorgeous movie stars" first when I think of "Charlie Kaufman leads"... I suppose there's always Cameron Diaz in that Malkovich fright wig. But here's how they describe the story:

"The original story follows a man who manufactures dreams and nightmares for others, including for his own wife. In Kaufman’s version, Tatum plays Peekman, a wildly popular actor-director, famous for blockbuster physical comedies in which he stars with his wife Kiki (Thompson). "

So the casting makes sense with Tessa since she's playing a movie star -- and I'd say the casting of Channing makes sense when you consider that 1) this has to be a person that the otherworldly gorgeous Tessa Thompson would marry (and I don't know that you can cast a Phillip Seymour Hoffman type for that anymore -- the age of Woody Allen types romancing Mariel Heimingway is thankfully behind us) and then 2) Charlie Kaufman is probably tired of having a hard time making movies. So sure, let's hire some gorgeous movie stars, and make it a little easier. I am fine with that. Because this isn't to say Chan & Tess aren't extremely talented people! Their gorgeousness is a bonus -- heck I would've nominated Thompson for an Oscar for Hedda last year, and hell I might have voted for her to win too. And Chan's always been extremely under-appreciated as a performer. Anyway this extremely non-Kaufman-esque band of actors aside -- NEW CHARLIE KAUFMAN MOVIE ALERT!!!! Fuck yeah!! 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Sammy: I've watched you forever, Caden, but you've never really looked at anyone other than yourself. So watch me. Watch my heart break. Watch me jump. Watch me learn that after death there's nothing. There's no more watching. There's no more following. No love. Say goodbye to Hazel for me. And say it to yourself, too. None of us has much time.

RIP to the great Tom Noonan, who gave multiple performances of note across his long and varied career -- Manhunter is one of the few Michael Mann movies I can tolerate and it's thanks to him -- but nevertheless will always be Sammy, sweet sweet Sammy, the man who breaks my heart every single time in Charlie Kaufman's masterpiece. The elliptical way that Kaufman structures the character of Caden's life-long best friend who's always being edged out, always forced to the sidelines, is as brilliant as anything else in the script -- the way Noonan is seen peering out from behind things before Caden's even "met" him, because of course the way a self-centered narcissist would remember his own story would shove someone that isn't himself or one of his temporary love interests into the margins -- is moving in itself. But the way that Noonan plays Sammy, the love and the heartbreak that he channels into that role? It's tremendous, and if anybody had known how to react to Synecdoche in its moment as it demanded and deserved then Noonan would have been, should have been, a Best Supporting Actor contender. It moves me more with every re-watch. Brilliant subtle work. (The way he sort of shrugs as he jumps? My god.)

Tom Noonan should have gotten an Oscar nomination for his performance in Charlie Kaufman’s SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK #ripking

[image or embed]

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 11:52 PM

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Anomalisa (2015)

Michael: Always remember the customer is an individual. Just like you. Each person you speak to has had a day. Some of the days have been good, some bad, but they've all had one. Each person you speak to has had a childhood. Each has a body. Each body has aches. What is it to be human? What is it to ache? What is it to be alive? I don't know. What is it to ache? I don't know. What is it to be alive? I don't know... Uh, yes. "How do I talk to a customer?" How do I talk to a customer? These are the important questions for a customer service representative. What do I say? Do I smile while I'm on the phone? Well, they can tell, if you're smiling, even if they can't see you. Did you know that? Try it as an experiment on the phone with a friend. Try it. Go ahead. Watch. I'm lost. See I was smiling when I said that? I've lost my love. She's an unmoored ship and she's drifting off to sea. I have no one to talk to. I have no one to talk to. I have no one to talk to. I'm sorry. I don't mean to burden you with that, I just don't know what else to do because I have no one to talk to... Be friendly to the customer. Think of the customer as a friend...

It's the 67th birthday of Charlie Kaufman! Not only that but I just realized this Anomalisa is turning 10 in a few weeks! So this post is what we in the biz call a "two-fer" then. I didn't realize it was Charlie's birthday when I did today's "Five Frames" post (which spoiler alert was for Being John Malkovich) but now that I do realize it's his birthday let's give the man some affection. I re-watched I'm Thinking of Ending Things a few weeks ago for the bazillionth time (which is probably why I brought up Pauline Kael talking about Gena Rowlands earlier this week) and it remains a perfect sparkling diamond in my eye, but I certainly do understand why some people find Charlie's work difficult or off-putting. All the more for me! That said I haven't gone back and re-watched Anomalisa in several years so I'm gonna do that this weekend to celebrate my beloved meloncholy genius. 

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 2008

Now that the festival rush of Fall 2025 is behind me I've been feeling the nagging sensation to check back into our long long too-long running series of "Siri Says" posts -- the last one I did was back in January! These posts have gotten increasingly sporadic as the remaining years have dwindled -- when I checked what's left this morning I saw there were only five years out of one hundred left for us to do. Do what, you ask since it's been so long since I've done one? Well the idea is that I had my phone choose a random number between 1 and 100 and then I picked my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds. Once we got down to the teens the process changed a little because it took too long for Siri to get to a number I hadn't already done, so I wrote the remaining years on slips of paper and picked one with my eyes shut. And that's how we ended up with the year 2008 today.

It's the last year of the Aughts we had left to do -- another decade crossed off! And this is another year when I was actively blogging here at MNPP so there's documentation of my thoughts on 2008's movies already -- click here to see what my favorite movies were at that moment. My list now, seventeen years later, has changed a little! Not entirely, but some. So let's get to it. I give you...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 2008

Synecdoche, New York

(dir. Charlie Kaufman)

-- released on October 24th 2008 --

Let the Right One In 

(dir. Tomas Alfredson)

-- released on December 12th 2008 --

In Bruges

(dir. Martin McDonagh) 

-- released on February 29th 2008 --

The Fall 

(dir. Tarsem Singh) 

-- released on May 30th 2008

Lake Mungo 

(dir. Joel Anderson) 

-- released on June 18th 2008 --

-----------------------------------------

Runners-up: Wall*E (dir. Andrew Snanton), The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky), Wendy & Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt), Mister Lonely (dir. Harmony Korine), Funny Games U.S. (dir. Michael Haneke), The Chaser (dir. Na Hong-jin), Timecrimes (dir. Nacho Vigalondo), Happy-Go-Lucky (dir. Mike Leigh), [REC] (dir. Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza)...

...  Teeth (dir. Mitchell Lichtenstein), Encounters at the End of the World (dir. Werner Herzog), The House Bunny (dir. Fred Wolf), The Ruins (dir. Carter Smith), Doomsday (dir. Neil Marshall), Cloverfield (dir. Matt Reeves), Hunger (dir. Steve McQueen), Reprise (dir. Joachim Trier)

What are your favorite movies of 2008?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

Young Woman: Everything has to die. That's the truth. One likes to think that there is always hope, that you can live above death. And it's a uniquely human fantasy that things will get better, born perhaps of the uniquely human understanding that things will not. There's no way to know for certain. But I suspect humans are the only animals that know the inevitability of their own deaths. Other animals live in the present. Humans cannot. So they invented hope.

Kaufman @ Kanopy

The photos you see here of Lebanese performance artist Josef Akiki (via) are not from the movie I'm about to talk about. But since the dude looks hot in these pictures I said to myself, "Hey, be yourself, post those shirtless pictures of the actor that you found." And if there's anything writer-director Charlie Kaufman's taught me it's to walk to the beat of my own drummer, and since it's Charlie we're here to actually talk about I'm gonna listen! Aaaaaanyway point being IndieWire is reporting that the once-in-a-generation genius behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche New York has a new short film called "How To Shoot a Ghost" premiering in Venice! The film stars Jessie Buckley (who gave a rapturous performance in Kaufman's last film I'm Thinking of Ending Things) alongside SEXY Mr. Akiki seen in these photos, it's 27 minutes long, it was co-written by the poet Eva H.D (whose book of poetry is featured prominently in ITOET), and here is what it is about:

"[The film] follows two newly deceased young people who meet in the streets of Athens, amid the pulsing cityscape and the ghosts of its history. One is a translator, the other a photographer; they were outsiders in life, and in death, they struggle with the residue of their longings and mistakes. They wander the city together, finding consolation in the rugged beauty of existence and its aftermath."

All of that's awesome obviously -- any new Charlie Kaufman work is cause to bang pots out our windows and to run naked down our streets. But the real gem of news here is that the film's been produced by the public library streaming service Kanopy and it will distributed by them. Once upon a time I would've been angry about this news because Kanopy stopped being available in the NYC public libraries after a very brief test that collapsed the system like a decade ago. But then about six months ago I registered at the small library in my hometown in upstate New York so now I have Kanopy and I don't have to be annoyed! Please clap.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Being John Malkovich (1999)

Craig: There is truth, and there are lies, and 

art always tells the truth. Even when it's lying.

Happy 25 to one of the many many 1999 masterpieces, and one of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's many masterpieces. Doesn't that single line from the film feel like a nice distillation of Charlie Kaufman's ethos? He's always uncovering the deepest truths about humanity through artifice and deception, boxes within boxes, pulling back the telescopic lens on us again and again until he spirals our brains into something like Herzog's ecstatic truth. And this movie is where our journey with that genius began (no The Dana Carvey Show does not count) and I haven't regretted a single second since. Anyway did you see the news that Jonze had apparently been working on a big sci-fi series for Netflix that's just been shelved? Boo, I say -- we need Spike back already! It's been ages and ages. Come back to us! On camera, too -- I like to look at you.

Tom Mercier Takes Tribeca (Me Too)

The 2024 edition of the Tribeca Film Festival kicked off last night and runs through next Sunday the 16th -- you can check out the entire line-up and such right here. One of my most anticipated movies at the festival is called Darkest Miriam and yes, it stars our boy Tom Mercier (of Synonyms and We Are Who We Are fame) as a cab driver who romances a librarian in Toronto -- Tom would be enough to get me to watch the movie but the big reveal is this was produced by no less than Charlie Kaufman! Now we're talking. I really have no idea what to expect from it since they use words like "unclassifiable" to describe it, but I can't wait.

Anyway I've been steeped deep in Tribeca screeners for the past couple of weeks and have actually already watched over twenty films! You can as always keep track of what I am watching via my Letterboxd, although I tend to just log movies without writing anything out on them, especially when they're movies not out yet. My "Tribeca 2024" specific list can be found right here. 

Tis that time of year again! #tribeca pic.twitter.com/oT9nCwZnDC

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) June 6, 2024

But to get to my point over the next couple of weeks I'll be pounding out reviews of some of these movies and I'll be going to lots of in-person screenings, so it might be a lot of very little other than that until the fest is over. I'm a busy busy bee, yo. I will try to update you with posts on each thing as it happens, but there will probably be some lag -- as always it's best to stay tuned to my socials for more immediate updating. Especially Twitter. Elon be damned I still never shut up on Twitter. In summation -- right now I am gonna go work on some of those reviews, so don't expect much else today. Here's one more exciting thing though -- I will be attending the premiere of Jake Gyllenhaal's Presumed Innocent series on Sunday night! Jake will be there for a Q&A! So keep an eye on my Instagram since I'll obviously post pictures from that if possible. 

5 Off My Head: Toni My Queen

It's Toni Collette's 51st birthday today and you could knock me over with a feather upon the just-now-made realization that I have never done a list of my favorite Toni performances before. Not even for her 50th last year? What the hell was I thinking? Well there's no time like the present. I don't think this list will surprise anybody with my choices given what a vocal supporter of her I've been since I saw Muriel's Wedding way back in '96 and it became basically my number one favorite movie of all time...

... I think the only thing that will surprise is that I didn't up the number to ten or fifteen performances! Because I coulda! And I purposefully decided to leave T.V. performances off because that coulda doubled it again (but seriously, The United States of Tara forever). The fact that I got to hang out with her for a couple of drinks while she was doing press for Hereditary will probably always remain the greatest perk this gig has ever gifted me. That brag aside, here's my list!

My 5 Fave Toni Collette Movie Performances

Sandy, Japanese Story

"To say goodbye."

Annie, Hereditary

"I never wanted to be your mother."

Muriel, Muriel's Wedding

"Why can't it be me? Why can't I be the one?"

Lynn, The Sixth Sense

"Do I make her proud?"

Mandy, Velvet Goldmine

"It's funny how beautiful people look

 when they're walking out the door."

Runners-up: In Her Shoes, The Hours, Knives Out, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Velvet Buzzsaw, Krampus, Little Miss Sunshine, About a Boy, Clockwatchers, Emma... and all the rest!

-----------------------------------------

What are your favorite Toni Collette performances?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Mary: Adults are, like, this mess of sadness and phobias.

This masterpiece was released 19 years ago this Sunday!

Try not to turn to dust realizing it's almost 20 - too late for me.

I am dust, typing this out with my dust fingers.
Well here's this gif to cheer us up:

Congrats Charlie

They say you should write for yourself when you're writing, and pray that somebody else wants to read what you want to read and will follow along -- well I take that advice to heart every second of every day here on this site, posting whatever the hell I want to see, and it's served me fine. Okay adequately. I am poor, but that was inevitable. At least I am entertained! Anyway all of that is my way of saying that this post here is entirely one hundred percent for me, but if somebody else wants to watch Charlie Kaufman's speech at the WGA Awards last night (he wont their Lifetime Achievement thing called the Laurel) here it is. I am just reminding myself to watch this tonight when I get home. Congrats to the greatest living screenwriter!

Charlie's Jackals

I haven't watched this yet myself since I just got to work and immediately got the heads-up on it -- but what a glorious way to start a Monday morning! Charlie Kaufman, director of I'm Thinking of Ending Things and Synecdoche New York (two of the great masterpieces of the past twenty years) and writer of Eternal Sunshine and Adaptation and Being John Malkovich and so on with the masterpieces, has made a short film! It's called Jackals & Fireflies and it's based on a poem by the poet Eva H.D. who also stars in the short -- if you were as big a nerd for Charlie's last movie (Ending Things) as I was then you might recognize the poet's name from that movie, as it was a poem of hers that Jessie Buckley recites at one point, and we see also one of her books in Jesse Plemons' childhood bedroom. She's apparently a great friend of Charlie's. Lucky goil. Anyway here's the short film, I will be watching it now myself as well -- ohh, let us watch it together!

Beau Ain't the Only One

I have entirely lost track of time -- which seems fitting having just watched this trailer! -- because last Thursday I'd posted the poster for Ari Aster's new film Beau is Afraid starring Joaquin Phoenix and I said at the time that they were promising the trailer would be dropped the following Tuesday. Well when the trailer did indeed drop this morning my brain entirely short-wired realizing that five days had somehow passed since I'd said that? How? How, I ask you? Retitle this bitch Jason is Afraid because facts.

Anyway yes the trailer is here and I know I'm not the only one getting Charlie Kaufman vibes (which I mentioned last week -- last week! -- with the poster as well) because I saw people saying as much on Twitter. It's screaming Synecdoche New York meets I'm Thinking of Ending Things at me. And I like it, I like it! Anyway watch and decide for yourself:



Listen if there's anyone that everyone should be aping it's Charlie Kaufman, so you'll hear no complaints around these parts. It's a fact that when it's a year that Charlie Kaufman puts out a movie the number one slot on my "favorite films of the year" list is always accounted for, and has been every damned time. But one of my other favorite filmmakers riffing on Kaufman? Sign me the fuck up, and that's before we even get to the glimpse of Parker Posey...

Beau is Afraid is out on April 21st!

Not soon enough! Bring it the fuck on!

No Disappointment Here

I apologize in advance because I can already tell I'm having one of those days where my brain is all over the map -- I think most people call these "manic episodes" but I ain't most people! Anyway have any of you ever been to Cape Disappointment in Washington state? My boyfriend and I were traversing that area on a trip around the Northwest a decade or so ago and ended up there and were delighted by the name, and (to finally get to my point) I thought about that place whenever I read the title of Ari Aster's next movie was Disappointment Blvd., and that made me happy. Fond memories! But Disappointment Blvd. was not to be -- talk about asking the critics to start licking their poison pens to pun themselves unto unconsciousness -- and so they changed the title to Beau Is Afraid, and today we have the first poster seen above. A24 says they'll drop the trailer on Tuesday. We know very little about what the movie's about -- or at least I do because I purposefully stopped paying attention since I don't need to be sold on an Ari Aster movie at this point. I'm there. I probably won't even watch the trailer. What we do know for sure is that Beau stars an astonishing cast, including Joaquin Phoenix -- several of him, judging by that poster! -- and Parkey Posey and Amy Ryan and Richard Kind and Nathan Lane and Patti Lupone and Denis Ménochet, among others. It's a weird cast and it looks like a weird movie and obviously we cannot f'ing wait. And the poster says April! So we don't have to wait too long! In summation...

Anyone else immediately think of this looking at the #BeauIsAfraid poster or am only I Charlie Kaufman Nerd enough to go right there pic.twitter.com/fizn5WVJ6K

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 5, 2023

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Synecdoche New York (2008)

Claire: Knowing that you don't know is the first

and most essential step to knowing, you know?

(This movie is getting a 4K release in November, whoo!)
A very happy 42 to the great Michelle Williams today!

I ask this question knowing very few people have seen

the movie yet (it screens this weekend at TIFF)
but do we think she might finally win an Oscar for
her role as "Sorta Spielberg's Mom" in The Fabelmans?

Speaking of here's the poster they just dropped this week:

My Babies Be Hitting 4K!

On November 22nd, just in time for them there holidays, Sony Pictures Classics will be releasing a great big fancy boxed-set of eleven movies in 4K UHD, many of them exclusives meaning only available this way in this boxed-set, and the list of titles included has got me running around the room making crazy person noises. Top of tops there's Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name, first and foremost. But there's also Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, there's also Pedro Almodovar's Volver, there's also Orlando and Run Lola Run and The Devil's Backbone and The Celluloid Closet and City of Lost Children and there is also Charlie Kaufman's mf-ing Synecdoche New York! Have I been leaving my body at night to float into another person's body who works at Sony in order to choose this selection myself or what? Is that why I am always so tired? I have a secret flip life making blu-ray boxed-sets??? You can pre-order the set at this link -- for more specifics head over to the fine folks at High Def Disc News, where I found this info first.

Quote of the Day

"A true story: In the late 90’s screenwriting GOAT Charlie Kaufman pitched a movie version of Gilligan’s Island where the islanders, starving & desperate, started killing & eating each other. Warner Bros wanted to do it - but Sherwood Schwartz, the creator, said no way... After Guardians I tried to resurrect the idea & wanted to direct. It seemed Warners & Charlie were interested but, this time, the estate of the late Sherwood Schwartz nixed it. Anyway, if the Schwartz estate changes their mind, I’m here."

Although it's weird to think it I think this might be the first time my "Quote of the Day" comes from a Twitter thread? I'm probably wrong about that, my brain is full of holes, but anyway this is Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad director James Gunn giving us a window into a better world where he and Charlie Kaufman made Ginger eat the Skipper's face off. I wanna be in that timeline! See the Twitter thread below:

Pitch a movie with two pictures, no caption. https://t.co/siUuPbozqU pic.twitter.com/tg4ZpRp8kH

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) October 13, 2021

A Person Sat in a Theater Reflecting on Existence

I'm still trying to gauge how comfortable I am going to movie theaters. I happily went to a movie last week (see below) but I also knew beforehand it'd be uncrowded -- am I ready to go see a movie with an actual crowd? I don't know if I am. I have a press screening next week which will probably have more of an audience so that will be a test. Anyway we're all working at our own pace -- I'm not pressuring anybody at this point to go or to not go. Everybody do what you feel's right for you... as long as you're kind and respectful and responsible of course. 

Anyway that's my long lead-in to sharing the news that if you're here in NYC the great Film Forum has just announced that they're going to be screening Being a Human Person, the new documentary about one of my favorite filmmakers, Swedish Genius Roy Andersson, premiering there on July 2nd. The film watches Andersson while he works on his latest (and possibly final) masterpiece About Endlessness, which I reviewed back in April -- the thought of getting to see how Roy's sausages are made with those elaborate stagings and sets, is getting me positively giddy.

Film Forum will also be screening three of Andersson's other masterpieces -- and I hope you'll believe me when I say that every single film Roy Andersson has made is a masterpiece, because they reall and truly all are -- alongside the doc; they'll be showing Songs From the Second Floor, You the Living, and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence; the only one of these that I have seen in the theater is the latter and if you've seen an Andersson film then you know they were built for that big-screen experience. This is an unmissable series, is what I am saying. Just like Charlie Kaufman at The Paris was! NYC is really forcing my hand with this whole "Let's go back to the movies!" thing...

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams)

The Actor To End All Actors

This post mostly exists as an excuse to share a photo of Ryan Gosling -- and for me to get a chance to google pictures of Ryan Gosling, which also paid off on Twitter a minute ago (see below) -- but this is interesting news on his next project, too! Not his immediate next project which is I think the Wolfman movie he's doing with Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell. And not the next one after that which is the CIA thriller The Grey Man with the Russo Brothers (starring opposite Chris Evans and Ana de Armas and Billy Bob Thornton and Regé-Jean Page and Alfre freakin' Woodward). But the next next next one, which is called The Actor, descibed thus:

"Oscar-nominee Gosling will play actor Paul Cole who becomes stranded in 1950s Ohio after a brutal attack. Suffering from severe memory loss, he struggles to find his way back to his life in New York and reclaim what he has lost."

Now on to why I actually care: The Actor is being directed by Duke Johnson, the dude who brought us the brilliant stop-motion animation of Anomolisa alongside Charlie Kaufman. Annnnd speaking of the great and powerful Kaufman, he's just come onboard the film as an Executive Producer. Get some sweet sweet cashola, Charlie, so you can deliver unto us another directorial masterpiece this decade. 

Ryan Gosling photographed by Tony Duran in 2001 pic.twitter.com/u1Ta88iFgm

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 14, 2021

Josh O'Connor Four Times

Back in February I told y'all that the National Theater in London are putting on a performance of Romeo & Juliet starring Josh O'Connor & Jessie Buckley in April -- well it's April! And we will all be able to watch this performance on April 23rd on PBS. Set your DVRs and order your hugging pillows off of Amazon accordingly. Flaunt magazine must have been listening because they feature the duo on their cover this month, along with a photo-shoot and interview which you can see and read over there. Lord knows I love me some Jessie Buckley -- she gave my favorite female performance of the year in Charlie Kaufman's I'm Thinking of Ending Things, after all -- but for our purposes here at MNPP I just snatched up the Josh snaps, and I have them after the jump...