Episode 671 - Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson

Alright, let's do this. How are you, what-the-fuckers? What-the-fuck buddies? What-the-fucksters?

What-the-fucking-ears? What-the-fuckadelics? Hi, I'm Mark Maron. This is WTF.

Welcome to the show. Oh, my God. Good show today. Well, you know, it's sort of like one of those rare bird shows.

And I never thought I'd talk to Charlie Kaufman. I just never thought it would happen. But today, Charlie Kaufman is going to be on this show. Charlie Kaufman is the writer of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

He directed Synectic in New York and wrote it. Duke Johnson is going to be with him. He worked on the show Moral, Oral, and Community. They worked together, co-directing Charlie's script, Anamalisa, which is now in theaters.

And I tell you, there's... I just haven't... You know, the word genius gets used a lot. It gets thrown around a lot.

I don't know if I'm a good judge of what a genius is necessarily. I certainly have misused the word myself. A genius in its purest form. I don't even know what that means.

But I know I've been in the presence of maybe a couple. Maybe a couple geniuses on this show. I will explore this in a moment. I do want to tell you that, again, I'm very excited that so many people are watching my series, Marin, on Netflix.

I do have to finish a script. I'm writing the finale of the fourth season of Marin. I've got to get that in. Reviews to do this week.

We've got to concept meetings for the show. Got to get that script written so the other guys can sit down with it and me and put it together and make it right. Don't love it. I don't love writing scripts.

Writing in general is a bit of a chore. Once I'm in it, it's great, but it becomes a puzzle. When I write, I tend to eat a lot of brownies, Kit Kats I eat, cereal, whatever's in the fucking house. I will clean the house.

I will do whatever it takes to avoid actually doing the writing. I'll write a bit and then I've got to eat. I've got to work on some stuff. But that's just my process.

It's a long process. I don't have that kind of time this time. Scripts coming along fine. It's driving me crazy.

Point being, thank you again for watching Marin on Netflix or however you watch it. It's nice to know that you do work and people appreciate it. Now let's move on to what I was talking about, about genius. Charlie Kaufman is a genius.

Not that many geniuses. I've maybe had two geniuses in this room. Oddly they know each other and oddly they're both involved in the anomalies. I think Dan Harmon is also a genius.

And it's not necessarily about output. Both of those guys creatively are completely original and amazing sort of like fluidity to their imagination. And imagination, I think in the creative fields around genius is where you really, you feel it. You know, you watch something like Community and whether you like the show or not, you're like, holy shit, where does this come from?

And with someone like Charlie Kaufman, you watch all his movies. The first time that you see Bing John Malkovich or Adaptation, you're sitting there in the movie theater and you're like, where does this come from? Because it's not like sketch. You know, sketch can be weird and just be open-ended.

And just, you know, sort of like, you know, well that was fucking, well that was weird, am I supposed to understand something? No, it's sketch. You can just do weird shit without a button, without a close, without any point for complete absurdism. Sometimes absurdism is a tremendous crutch.

It's a crutch that people with a good imagination can sometimes get away with not having a fluidity of imagination that seeks meaning. Absurdism is an easy out sometimes. But if you watch something like Bing John Malkovich, where there's like devices upon devices upon layers upon layers of visual and lyrically written content that moves through a complete vision, it's an astounding experience. And that's the same with Adaptation.

Same thing on some level, Eternal Sunshine, The Spotless Mind, the way that was executed. I mean, Synecdoche, New York, which is Kaufman's directorial debut and also his script that was very personal, it's just mind-bending to the point where you walk out and you're like, I'm fucking exhausted, I think I missed something, I gotta go do that again. Because you're in the hands of a fucking genius. And this new movie, Anomalisa, is genius for a lot of reasons.

With Duke Johnson, who oversaw and directed and brought the animated stop-action stuff to life with Charlie. This was written as a radio play originally. But they do something with stop-action animation that cannot be achieved with real actors. There's a humanity to the movie that is sort of brain-bending in its depth.

And there are moments in it that are so human. Because you watch some Kaufman movies, and there's obviously a tremendous amount of humanity in them, but sometimes the flights of imagination take you to places where the landscape is completely surreal. But with this, with the stop-action of Anomalisa, there's a depth of humanity and pathos and humility that I don't think it could have been achieved with real people. They were more real than real people.

It's just astounding. But genius, you know, genius. I got a story about a genius. I got a story about a genius.

When I was a kid, I heard about this genius. Yeah, you know, I understand everybody else, but there was a genius in my family. My father's cousin Brent was supposedly a genius. My father would talk about this kid, Brent.

He's a genius. He's in Mensa. He was a genius. A lot of expectations on the genius.

Like, the genius in families, it's a horrible position to be put in, to test well. And have those expectations. We have a genius in the room. Well, what does the genius do?

Is he a dancing monkey? Well, Brent was this guy I heard about. And when I was a kid, it must have been about 1970, 1971, so I was about eight or nine, living in New Mexico. And Brent, the genius, was traveling across country from Jersey, where my father grew up.

And he was going to stop over for the night with his girlfriend. And I just kept hearing about, like, you know, I just had this in my mind. What does a genius do? Am I going to know that he's a genius?

Is it going to be like seeing a wizard or an alien of some kind, the genius? And I just remember that the backstory on Brent was, like, he was a genius, but he kind of dropped out. I mean, this is, you know, the 70s, early 70s. He was working as a grill cook or something.

And I guess he was not sharing his genius with the world. But I was fascinated with this guy. A genius that would not use his powers, that refused to use his powers. For good or bad, the genius checked out.

He's working in the kitchen. And I remember he came over, and he was kind of, like, quiet and, you know, a little hippie-ish. And his girlfriend was kind of hippie-ish. And they stayed in, you know, my room down in the basement.

We had to sleep upstairs, and I think they smoked some weed. And I just, like, you know, I didn't really get to spend that much time with the genius. I think I just kept looking at him. I was waiting for something, you know.

But that was the first time, you know, I met a genius when Brent came over. And, you know, it was mystifying in a way, and a little disappointing. But I do have to say that the morning he left, you know, he cooked everyone breakfast. And, you know, I got to tell you, to this day, probably the best eggs I ever had.

So, genius manifests itself in different ways. And, you know, they weren't even that complicated. Just scrambled, and it's just, you know, genius eggs. That's all I'm saying.

Genius. But now I'm going to talk to Charlie Kaufman. And I'm going to bring in Duke Johnson towards the end, spend a little time with both of them to talk about Anomalisa. And that was a real pleasure.

So here are the three of us eventually. Do you want to pull that mic into your face? Sure. Can I turn this down?

Sure. The first knob, I think, is you. How's that? Better?

Yeah? That's better, yeah. There was too much of me? It was a little loud.

Yeah, I hear that complaint a lot. I am excited to talk to you, Charlie Kaufman. Thank you. And later, Duke Johnson is going to chime in.

But I wanted to have a conversation about the earlier Charlie Kaufman. Did you say Kaufman or Kaufman? I used to say Kaufman. Yeah.

But then people didn't understand what I was saying, so I changed it to what they thought it was. I'd spell it. They'd say, what, what, what? And then I'd spell it, and they'd go, oh, Kaufman.

So I'd say Kaufman, yeah. You actually changed to accommodate, yeah. There's the story of my real life. We got it.

We're done. All right, Duke, you're in. No, because the reason that I was excited to talk to you among being a big fan of your work is that you were always just, this almost mythological presence in comedy, in comedy writing. You always heard about this guy, Charlie Kaufman, because I've been doing it for a while.

I have friends that you've worked with. And then when I was out here, I guess maybe in the 80s, I remember there was this talk of like this mysterious pilot script. Was it Depressed Roomies? Was that what it was called?

Yeah, 90s. I wasn't out here until 91. What happened with that? Nothing.

A story of my life, yeah. Really? Yeah. And what was it about?

Because I remember it was about Depressed Roomies, yeah, together in a small apartment in New York, and they, um, nothing. Nothing was about it. Well, I mean, no, there's a story for the first episode. Was there some weird stage direction?

It wasn't supposed to all be done with an echo or something peculiar about it? No. I never thought of it. There was somebody who moved upstairs who had a wooden leg, and they were trying to figure out how to get him carpeting.

And one of them had a cousin who was in the carpet business, and they thought if they could seduce this man, then they could get carpeting for free. Right. He wasn't gay, and neither of them are gay, but it actually worked. And he moved in next door, and the guy had to go ahead and date him for a while.

We did a staged performance of it to sort of, like, try to sell it, and I had a good cast. Jay Johnston played the guy upstairs, and Sarah Silverman played the grocery clerk they were in love with, and... Oh, you know who else was in it? Who?

Jennifer Coolidge. Oh, she's in it. She played the wife of the carpet guy. The carpet guy was played by a guy whose name I forgot now.

And was that a reading for studio people? Yeah, it was trying to sort of interest people. But did you have a deal, or you didn't have a deal, or was it just something you wrote? At that point, it was something I owned.

And I had written it as part of a development deal for Disney. I had a development deal there early on, which... Nothing I did. I wrote a bunch of shit for them, and nothing got made, so...

Did you... Well, where did you... Like, how does it start? Where did it start?

Where did you grow up? I grew up in Massapequa, Long Island. Okay. And then we moved to Connecticut when I was about 12.

So you're an East Coast guy? I'm an East Coast guy. And where'd you go to college? I went to Boston University.

Me too. I'm sorry to say that. Okay, for sure. I went to Boston University.

When did you graduate? I didn't graduate. I transferred to NYU. I was an acting student at Boston University, and I transferred to the film school at NYU after my freshman year.

You were an SFA at BU? Is that what it was called? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What were you in?

I was a liberal arts guy. What years? I was there from... I transferred out of Curry.

So I guess I was there 82 to 87, maybe? Okay, I was there 76. Okay. So you're a little older than me, probably.

Well, yeah. You look competitive. Unless you just got left back a lot. It was not right.

I had motivation problems. I just couldn't keep up. So you wanted to be an actor initially? Yeah, since third grade.

Childhood fantasy. Well, it wasn't fantasy. I just discovered it in third grade, and I was in love with my teacher, who did these plays, and I got up there, and I played a rooster in a play called The Chicken Doose, which was... I basically ran the hen house, and I was this lustry kind of asshole, which, you know, I got a lot of laughs, and I was a shy kid, and it was like, holy crap, this is what I want to do, and that was just like my trajectory to Boston University, and then I just dropped it.

So you acted through high school and everything else? I acted through high school. I did Summerstock. You did Summerstock?

I did Summerstock at Green Mountain Guild in Vermont. What big plays? I was in the children's theater company, so we did children's plays. There was this guy named David Marshall Grant, who was in my company, who went on to become an actor, and did a bunch of stuff on Broadway, but other than that, it was nobody really...

But apparently Meryl Streep was in this company, not when I was there, but years before. So you really put the work in. You did, you know... Yeah, I mean, I did a lot of community theater, yeah.

And what... Did you write any plays at that time? Yeah, I wrote plays, and I did short movies. I directed these great films, and...

When is that film festival, the Charlie Kaufman? I don't think they exist anymore. Gone. My parents had a lot of flooding in their house in Connecticut, and everything got ruined, so...

Are you the only artist in the family? My father is a painter. He's an engineer by profession, but he paints a lot. He has shows now.

He's in his 80s. What's his style? I'm trying to think how you characterize it, or if there's somebody you could liken it to. It's sort of political, and it's sort of intense and angry and funny.

I would say he's very skilled, but his stuff is primitive. He's interested in... Oh, okay. He likes Basquiat.

Oh, yeah, sure. Or like Dubuffet, or like maybe... Yeah, Dubuffet, sure. Sure.

So you grew up in an arty household, in a way. Yeah, my father was kind of eccentric. And a little lefty? Definitely, yeah.

There's a lot of, like, in Jewish, too, for the most part? Yeah, for the whole part. Well, I mean, I'm trying to... I'm not trying to...

Because there was a type of kind of a Jewish lefty that doesn't quite exist anymore. That I think existed... What, my one's socialist summer camp thing? Yeah, yeah.

I didn't go to... But I thought your parents... Because I had a great aunt who was a communist, and there was definitely this... There was a very aggressive and very sort of ideologically pointed crew of Jews at some time, and I don't know them.

My parents were liberal, but they weren't that. They weren't that. Yeah, my dad was an engineer, and it was kind of like... They were definitely left-wing, they were definitely Democrats, but I would say more towards the center.

Sure. And your mom, was she an artist as well? My mom was a social worker. She gave that up to raise us, and then she went and worked in...

After we grew up, she worked in some offices and... Good-hearted people. They were good-hearted. And brothers and sisters.

I have a sister who's older, and she's an artist. Really? She was a painter, and she does all sorts of creative stuff now. I just like knowing that, a lot of people I talk to, it's nice when you talk to people who are creative that grew up in supportive environments.

Most people I found that I talk to who have a job in creativity did have that. There was a very few people I've talked to that were like, you're not going to... They were always supported by that. They were supportive, and they kept their mouth shut.

Apparently, my father told me recently that he was terrified that I was going to go down the road of wanting to be an actor, and not because it was bad, but because he thought it was going to be disastrous. How are you going to make a living? Yeah, and then when I went to film school and I graduated, and I didn't get a job working in anything in entertainment until I was 32. So there were a lot of years, a lot of bad jobs, a lot of borrowing money, and they kept their mouth shut.

And I think then they were really thrilled and surprised that something happened, which was just kind of luck. What was the first thing? I worked on a show called Get a Life. I came out to LA trying to get work, and I didn't get any work.

And then I was heading home. I was living in Minnesota at the time, and I got a call to meet with this guy named David Merkin, and I was packed. And he said, don't leave. I was going to go home to Minnesota.

But I had been offered a job working on a show that Fred Willard was doing there, which was some sort of cable access candid camera show. And I thought, well, it's a writing job. So I didn't have a writing job. But had I done that, had I left, that would have been it.

It would have been middle management in Minnesota. How long did you win in Minnesota? We moved. My girlfriend and I, who's now my wife, moved to Wisconsin.

I'd given up trying. I was moving to study neurophysiology at UW, and that didn't happen. And then we couldn't get work there. So after a year, we moved to Minneapolis, where I just had a bunch of shit jobs for four and a half years.

And then I decided, well, I'll try to get in TV, which isn't really what I wanted to do. But I kind of saw there was a path. You write a spec script. You know, you don't really have to have any experience.

And I wrote a bunch of specs. I got sort of an agent to, I guess what they call, hip pocket me. That's why I was hip pocketed most of my career. Yeah.

And then. And, you know, he said, you have to move out. So I moved out with, like, my 1945 Jetta, which was completely rushed out because it's from Minnesota. And, like, I was out here for, like, three months during hiring season.

And then as I was leaving, I got this offer. So I worked on that show with Chris and with Adam Resnick. Who I had in here, both of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I heard that Adam did. I didn't know Chris did it. And who else was on that? That was intense, man.

Yeah. And that was a great show. People love that show. I love that show.

It was like, I couldn't believe my luck, but that was the show I was going to get. And then it was all downhill after that. And that show got canceled. I was on a bunch of shit shows.

You were staffed, though, for a few things, right? Yeah, I worked for, like, seven years in TV. Well, let me just ask you real quick. Because it's so, you know, after you went to NYU film school.

Yeah. Graduated and then kicked around New York for a few years. Yes. And then, you know, at some point, when you'd hit some sort of bottom, you decided neurophysiology was the path.

Yes. I thought, fuck this. I'm going to do something that's sort of, like, important and fascinating. And I kind of, they screwed me when I got there.

I was supposed to be sort of, like, a non-matriculating student. And I couldn't, because of that, I was the last person to be able to register for courses. I had to do a whole bunch of undergraduate stuff before I could get into a graduate program, because I have a BFA, which I don't have any credits. So, but I was closed out of every course I needed to take, because the matriculating students got there first.

And then I just, like, so then I just gave up. And then I worked in a Christian bakery. Christian bakery? The job I could get.

Yeah, it was Live and Bread, it was called. What makes it Christian? They play Christian music, and it was called Live and Bread. And I guess the idea, I don't know.

There was a bit of a lot of cupcakes. They weren't Jesus cupcakes. No, no, but they were, like, I don't know, it was sort of a sense. It wasn't, like, right-wing Christian.

It was more like hippie Christian, but they played Christian music. And the weird thing is, my wife, who's not Jewish, got a job at a Chabad house doing child care. She had a teaching certificate, so she was working with little kids, and so we had those sort of weird jobs, and then we left. So the Get a Life, I imagine that being your first job, there was a certain amount of creative freedom that you, after that closed down, I mean, I imagine entering writing for just shit television was kind of diminishing and horrible.

I was still making more money on these jobs than I'd ever made before. Just entry-level, going on Get a Life. I mean, I was making $5 an hour working at an art museum in Minnesota right before I got this job. After the Christian bakery.

Right, while in Minnesota, yeah. I mean, I actually left that job to come out here, and, you know, I mean, it wasn't Freedom, Get a Life, because I was terrified. I was, I couldn't open my mouth for, like, the first six weeks there. I could not say anything in the room, and I just thought I was going to get fired every day.

But the tone of that, but, you know, the way Chris Elliott's sense of humor works, and the way Adam Resnick, too, that they do push a boundary, and they do... Yeah, no, I love the ideas on the show, I love writing the scripts, but I was terrified. Right. I was really shy.

And how long did it take you to move through that? Were you able to move through it during that job, or did that happen? I mean, what happened was I got a script assignment, and it came out okay. And it was a relief, and then I felt more confident.

And then, like, these other jobs, like The Edge, and The Trouble with Larry, that these were job jobs, right? Well, some of them were just horrible shows. I mean, The Trouble with Larry was Bronson Pinchot, and What's Her Face, from Friends, Courtney Cox, and, yeah, it was just like, it was a terrible show, and it didn't even, I think maybe it aired once. Right.

Yeah, so. And that was it. That was it, yeah. It was sort of one of those reliefs, you know, well, I'm not going to make money, but thank God, that didn't go on for 10 years.

No, it wasn't, yeah, I guess so. I guess so, yeah. I don't know what the relief was. I just liked getting paid, and, you know, when the shows were canceled, I would write screenplays and hope that I could, you know, interest somebody in hiring me for assignment work.

Right. Well, I'm just trying to track, there's some moment where, I'm assuming, you know, because I knew, you know, I was friends with Louie when the Dana Carvey show happened, those guys that came out of Conan, that group of writers, I guess it was Smigel and Dino and Louie, and who else was on that, the Dana Carvey show? Robert Carlock, who works with Tina Fey at 30 Rock, and Jimmy Schmidt, and John Glazer. Right, John, yeah.

Yeah, of course, Corral and Colbert are both on the show. They're like a group of people. I just remember, you know, talking to Louie. I remember Louie having that opportunity.

Was he the head writer or was Smigel? He was the head writer, and, you know, and Robert Smigel was, like, the executive producer. There was, like, because I just remember there was a bit, and I don't know who was responsible for it, where, you know, Clinton came out with all the nipples. It was either Smigel or Louie or Dino.

Right. Nobody else got anything on that show. Oh, really? So, yeah, I mean, well, you know, like, Colbert and Corral kind of did stuff that they'd done at Second City.

Yeah. You know, bits that they did, like, waiters who were nauseous, that kind of thing. Right. I mean, in terms of, like, writer-writers, there was no group think on it either?

You couldn't get anything on. I mean, it was disastrous for me. I really, it was a really frustrating experience, because I moved to New York to do it. They kind of, you know, they met with me, and they really wanted me.

Based on what? Based on my sketch packet from The Edge. Yeah. I wasn't anybody at the time.

I mean, I wasn't, you know, I was really flattered that they wanted me. I wasn't in that group. Right. I couldn't get on Simpsons.

I couldn't get on Signed Out. I couldn't get on any show that I thought might be fun. And you tried? I tried, yeah.

I tried to get on Larry Sanders. I couldn't get on that show. Why do you think that I worked on? Why do you think that was?

I assumed because I sucked. Really? Well, I don't know. I don't know.

I just, like, I was really frustrated. Maybe I wasn't, maybe I wasn't, well, for like Simpsons, I didn't even get a meeting. So it wasn't like how I was in the room. I don't know.

Because I thought, like, mistakenly, obviously, it was obviously the first time you worked with, you know, who you still have a relationship with because of the new film. That would have been the moment where, because when I look at being John Malkovich's adaptation or any of your movies, the imagination engaged and the possibilities you create with writing and ultimately with film is, I've never seen it before. And I don't think anyone has. I think that, you know, the respect and credit you get for being one of the most imaginative writers out there is, you know, obviously deserved.

So here I am in my mind. I'm like, well, it must have been some comedy event. It must have happened where your brain just broke open and gave you the freedom to do that kind of stuff. No.

No, I just was writing. I was trying to write something that I thought was funny. Being John Malkovich was the first spec script I wrote. And I was, you know, I wasn't expecting anyone to make it, but I thought, I'll write this and if it's funny, then maybe I'll get, you know, polished work or something.

Really? Yeah. And, you know, for a while, nobody, I mean, people liked it. It got kind of a reputation like the press roomies, but everyone said it would never get made.

Also, Odenkirk and Cross worked on Carvey for a while, too. So I also knew them and didn't get on Mr. Show. Oh, really?

No. You know, now I like you more than I did before. Well, good. I've got a lot of sad sack stories.

So what was the story of being John Malkovich? Why did that get made? Spike Jones read it and Spike at the time was, you know, famous and he wanted to make it and he had a relationship with Steve Bolin at Propaganda and Steve supported it and got made sort of under the radar for like $8 million, maybe, which is what I'm going to cost. And it's just like, and when you, like, I guess these are hard questions to answer because I don't know, you know, when you follow the rules of sitcom, even when you're breaking them, there's a format there, there's a three-act structure usually, there's, you know, there's a way to write that shit, right?

Yeah. And it's just seen that with John Malkovich, obviously, you know, there's an act structure on some level, but when you are, you know, creating a story of being inside John Malkovich and having these different environments and these, I mean, the way you visualize it, how do you write that? Were you just sort of like fucking around in a way or did you see it as a full picture from the beginning? I mean, I figured it out as I went along.

Right. I didn't know where it was going. And the third act or whatever, whatever that is, was very different than the original script. But Spike didn't want to do that.

But do you work with a storyboard? No. I just write and I find things as I go. More like a novelist.

Yeah, definitely. Right. What I try to do with everything I write in. You know, that's funny.

I like that. That's funny. And I don't care. You know, I'm going to do, this isn't for anybody.

It's not an assignment. I'm going to do what I think is funny and then, you know, see what happens. And Spike got it. Yeah, Spike got it.

Yeah. And how close did you work with him during the film? Very close. Yeah.

I was fortunate because it's not the experience that most writers have. Where did Human Nature come from? Human Nature was the second script I wrote. It was just another script I wrote.

And it had like a sort of weird history of people being interested in it. Steven Soderbergh was going to do it. And it was after he left Hollywood and made Schetsopolis. And he came upon it.

He wanted to make it. And I started meeting with him. And then out of sight got offered to him or something. And he just, out of the door.

So, and then what happened was I went out and pitched this idea for Eternal Sunshine with Michel Gondry. And I had to write something else first. I don't remember what. Was it Confessions?

Maybe. I can't remember. But I had to write something else. And Michel didn't want to wait.

He wanted to do a movie. He said, can I do Human Nature? And I said, well, okay. You know.

And so he did Human Nature. What was your experience working with him? Because I think he became a better director after that. I think Michel's really smart and really talented.

And, you know, I was a producer on that movie. Spike was a producer on that as well. And, you know, Spike introduced me to Michel saying, Michel is my favorite director. And I can see that.

I really like Michel. I think he's great. I think that, I don't know. We gave him freedom.

The idea was, let Michel make the movie he wants to make. And I think there were really good things in that movie. And, you know, it didn't do very well. And it hurt everybody.

Career-wise or just personally, your heart. No, it didn't hurt my heart that much, actually. But, you know, it was after Malkovich. So you're sort of kind of like expecting something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Next big thing. You know, so that happened. And then Adaptation happened, which is a fucking masterpiece.

Yeah, that was, I was offered the job of writing an adaptation of The Orchid Thief by Jonathan Demme and Ed Saxon. And I couldn't figure out how to do it. And I think that's what I was writing at the time. Because I remember Spike was shooting Malkovich.

And I was just wake up every morning with this intense depression. Like, I cannot fucking face this again. I can't face it again. I can't face it again.

The Adaptation. Oh, well, what am I thinking about now? Let me write about the thing that I'm most fascinated with now. And the thing that I was most fascinated with now was with being stuck with my own problems.

So I thought, well, what if I write about me being stuck? And I remember telling Spike, I remember going to the set where they were shooting the, what he called, swamp scene. I remember telling Spike about it. And he said, yeah, you should definitely do that.

And I think that kind of gave me the courage to go ahead and do it. Because I didn't tell them that I was doing it. Because I was terrified they'd say, no, you can't do that. I had nothing else.

So I wrote it. And then I turned it in without telling them. I turned it in with my name and the name of my brother on the script. And they were really pissed off because they thought I had sort of farmed out the script to this other person.

And it wasn't what they signed up for. But then they liked it. And then Jonathan decided not to direct it. And Spike asked if he could.

Thank God. I mean, I like Jonathan Demme's movies a lot. But I can't imagine that movie not being directed by Spike. Yeah.

And so was that as autobiographical as you've gotten in any form? I mean, everything is autobiographical to a greater or lesser extent. And that one's sort of more literally autobiographical. And I really was stuck.

I really did have a meeting with that executive that went almost like that scene. With Phyllis Linton. Oh, okay. Yeah.

And what about the other executive? Wasn't there another agent in there who played by that good-looking guy? Oh, what's his name? Oh, yeah.

That was my agent. That was Marty Bowen at UTA. And who played him again? Ron Livingston.

Yeah, he was great. Yeah, Marty said stuff like that to me. I love Marty. Marty's like the polar opposite of me as a human being.

But he really gets my stuff. And he's been so supportive over the years. And he's like always the person who laughs the most at the first screenings. Right.

I love him for that. That's great. Yeah. So the device of a twin brother, though, was that sort of the other voice in your head?

No, it was more like, okay, how interesting is it to have a writer sitting alone in a room typing? Well, what if there's somebody else he could talk to? And then it kind of developed into what it developed. I thought it was funny.

I thought it was funny that the brother had back problems and was always lying on the floor in the house. It was great. Nick Cage was great. He was great.

And Spike is cooperative on that one as the other one? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Spike's great to work with. And Michelle is a girl.

Yeah, I like them both. When you were sort of developing your sensibilities, I mean, who were you a fan of? Who were your guys when you were growing up in terms of comedy? Woody Allen.

Yeah. Marty Python. National Lampoon. Right.

The magazine or the radio show. The magazine and the radio show. Early SNL. I mean, just anything that felt sort of anarchic.

Mark's Brothers. Ernie Kovacs? I didn't really learn about Ernie Kovacs until I was older, but it was amazing. Yeah, yeah.

Things weren't available. Right. It was easily. Yeah, yeah.

So Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, were you hired to do that? I was hired to adapt. I thought it was kind of, I mean, I was asked to adapt. And it was interesting to me because I thought, this guy is lying, but he's acting like he's not lying.

And I thought that was interesting as a character study. Right. I thought it was a good movie. Did you like it?

No. No, I didn't like it. That was a movie in which I was not consulted. I mean, George Clooney changed the script.

He didn't talk to me during production. We kind of didn't get off. Now, when that happens, are you angry? I mean, do you defend your work?

I try to, yeah. I mean, he actually showed me. I was invited to see the movie after. He was pretty much done.

Yeah. And I wrote a bunch of notes. I took a bunch of notes and gave them to him. And I guess it was offensive to him.

So he... Shut up. Well, the movie's already done. But it's like, well, you're asking me my opinion.

And, you know, this is what I think. And so... Did you have words? There were words.

There were a lot of words that were in the form of emails, which I kind of wish I saved Yeah, just see, there's guys. They can track them. Put a great email account. They're out there.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was a beautiful movie. Thank you. Are you happy with the way that came out? Yeah.

Yeah, I'm happy with that. And, you know, Michelle and I worked very closely on that. And that was a good experience. Whose idea was it to have the landscapes actually dissolve it?

The landscapes dissolve it? Well, I mean, like, when, as his memory was going, you know, buildings were falling down, you know... Oh, you're like in Montauk? Yeah, in Montauk, yeah.

But when he was, like, running and... We had a lot of conversations about... I mean, that was in the script. Yeah.

You know, to a great extent, how it was going to be done was sort of up for grabs what it was going to look like. It was sort of more fanciful. At first, I was trying to push for it to be more realistic. And then Michelle, who was brilliant at, like, practical types of things, designed all of these sort of in-camera effects and on-set effects that are just gorgeous.

It did seem realistic, though. Yeah, we were trying for that. We were trying for it not to be like, you know, there's some movies that take place in the mind that sort of feel like you're, you know, sort of this magical sort of weirdness, and it doesn't really feel like anything to me. So we were working against that.

Right, because there's no rules to it, so it just looks stupid. And it isn't what it looks like in your brain. Right. You know, they don't have things floating around in your brain when you think of things, you know?

It is. So you've got to really kind of put some thought into that, because what it looks like, what does it look like when you have a memory? That's all I thought about, yeah. It looks like a picture.

What does it look like when you have a memory? What does it sound like when you think? Yes. I've spent years trying to figure that out, because it doesn't sound like anything, but you hear it.

Yeah, yeah. And I still haven't quite done it. With Synecdoche, I decided there would be no voiceover, and everything that he thought would be projected onto the world outside of him. So that's why it's got this sort of dream-like quality to it, because that's sort of what I was trying for.

Like in a real dream, where things happen and they're metaphorical, and they make perfect sense in the dream, but they don't really make rational sense. Yeah, that movie was mind-blowing. Like, it was a little exhausting in a good way. Yeah, that's what I go for.

Like, when I went to see it, I was like, this is going to be... It was one of those movies, and I had this... I talked to who I talked to recently, Todd Haynes, too. Well, you know, I experienced it.

I witnessed it, but I walked out feeling like, you know, I'm going to have to go back to that one. Like, there was no way for me to wrap my brain around it. Well, that's what I wanted. That was my plan.

That was my idea. With anything I write, my idea is that you have to watch it a second time to get all of it. But I think with Synecdoche, when people didn't like the movie, they weren't interested in watching it again. You know, some people loved the movie, and they weren't interested in watching it again, but the people didn't.

It's like, well, why am I going to go back and watch it again? My experience with those kind of movies, especially in that one in particular, was like, you know, you're obviously in the hands of somebody who's got a creative vision that you put a lot of time into. This is meticulous. You know, there was...

And hearing you say what you said about trying to figure out how you express the sound of the mind, that I knew I had to reckon with the movie, and I had to... Because you put a lot of work into it, and you're not a slouch. So I'm like, I'm going to go, and I'm going to do it again, and I'm going to get what I can get, and no one's going to be able to go like, you know what, I understand exactly what you were trying to do, because there was so much in it. But I felt satisfied with it as a piece of art.

Is that okay? No, it's okay. great and I appreciate it I think a lot of people don't want to do that or they're mad at me or they're mad at what do you think they're mad at oh man I don't know what people are mad at I mean I can sort of you know do a laundry list yeah I don't know I think people are I don't know what people are mad at I think that people are like when people were mad at that movie they were mad that it was bullshit and it was pretentious and um it's self-indulgent and fuck you and fuck you and fuck you and fuck you and fuck you and you know they're not gonna watch the movie again you know so um they want to I don't know what they're so mad about so this was that was your first directing right uh it was my first other than stuff I did as a kid yeah we're in film school and is that something when you went to NYU film school that you wanted to do yeah I was gonna be a director and how was the experience for you at NYU no I mean oh directing yeah um I love it I love it because it's like an antidote to writing you know and first also I love actors and acting so it's like a great thing for me but it's like not sitting alone in a room for three years right you know you've got all this stuff going on you got to solve things right away and it's exciting and it's this sort of social environment which is not easy for me but it's forced on me and I have to do it I have to get over things I had to think a lot about how I interacted with people you know I realized I couldn't be the selling writer yeah you know yeah because everyone's looking to you you're the captain there's no room for it right oh yeah you have to take care of people you have to figure out what people need and take care of it and that's a great discipline for me you know and you had a clear vision for the most part I think I did yeah I think I did you know what you're looking for and you had these great actors and I had great I had a great production designer great cinematographer and great actors yeah I mean you know I was like you know worked with a lot of really good people Philip Seymour Hoffman and Philip Seymour Hoffman of course yeah yeah and that was uh how was that experience for you he's amazing you know he's amazing and um he was in virtually every shot of that movie yeah and it was just a marathon for him and it was you know we were shooting up in top of warehouses it was a heat wave it was 105 degrees it was covered in prosthetics you know the prosthetics were bubbling oh my god it was filling with sweat you had to come in with pins and puncture holes so it could drip out and you know but he was very serious he was always there and then when you go into editing like and you start piecing it together I saw things that I never saw like he understood who this character was in sequence that made it beautifully nuanced and you know really yeah so in his mind he don't know what he knew but I saw he knew something like this works it's not like oh fuck there's like tonal shifts and and this doesn't work next to this it was all like beautiful emotional continuity yes and throughout the movie and he held the movie together obviously because he's the thing in the movie that's fascinating yeah because that's like as a guy who's not really an actor but has had to do it you know going like having that in your head on top of the scene like wait this happened after before yeah or this is right after I did that thing and bringing that to the next thing so in a sense emotionally probably he anchored the movie in a way you didn't know it was even possible I think so yeah I'd say that definitely he anchored the movie and and I was um and I was surprised by it you know um by the subtlety of it yeah it's sad he's gone yeah so now you guys let's let's bring duke in here because now we're we're we're coming towards uh let me make sure I got you on the mic how do you sound check check check there he is that was great I really enjoyed that whole back and forth now this movie and I'm a Lisa which um I have some personal uh my problems with it are because uh it was too close as a as a guy who spends time on the road and reckons I'm using that word a lot deals with the the the type of horrible loneliness that you can't really explain of just a hotel room of the freedom of it and then not even knowing why like when you're in a hotel in another city especially if it's not near anything there's a thing sort of like I'm dead I'm lost I don't know how who I am is really what it comes down to but before we get into the film itself I didn't realize until uh until I talked to you at the screening that you had worked on moral oral with um with Dino not really I mean it's not really true what happened was I had an idea that I thought might be good for moral oral and I suggested it to Dino he liked it and then he wrote it are you and Dino friends yeah we're friends and and and and then he gave me credit I didn't ask for credit but I saw it on my IMDb that I have story credit there but is that how you met duke because you do moral oral right that's your thing that you did the animation on I did I did one episode of moral oral just one yeah in the third season that's that's what I started doing I've been friends with you know for a long time since back when he lived in New York and you're still alive and that's great you apparently don't try to keep up with Dino that's right but you started where because you're uh you do a very specific type of animation well yeah I kind of just fell into it actually because that's what Dino does um he's got it's something there's something nostalgic and retro about stop action animation right yeah and there's like I noticed like with moral oral if you're of a certain age it triggers something very odd from your childhood well that's kind of a specific reference to Davey and Goliath right right yeah I don't know Davey yeah yeah yeah and but uh where did you learn how to do that well uh I went to undergraduate film school in New York at NYU and then I became friends with Dino in New York he left for when 9-11 hit and then I moved to LA to go to grad school at AFI and I invited Dino to my thesis film premiere my AFI thesis film he saw it and he was like hey do you want to direct an episode of my tv show moral oral yeah and I was like yeah I'm just out of film school I want to direct anything I can obviously and so he said okay it's the second season if it's the third season you can direct an episode and so I went to the studio like every day in the afternoon just hung out with Dino and kind of watched the process and so you're not a hands-on animator necessarily well over the years I sort of I mean I animated one shot in Anomalisa for example I'm not an animator um no but I'm a director I'm a director so who do you bring in to do like what do you call the specific type of animation that was used in Anomalisa it's stop motion animation and that's just what it's called so those dolls well there's all different yeah there's like you know people are very familiar with with claymation sure which is you know which is made out of clay and they sculpt clay um and then stop motion is you know any variation of an object that exists in real space it can be flat it can be paper cutouts right wire things okay and just you know moving them by hand one frame at time um it's stop motion so this is I mean we use this type of animation called replacement animation where the faces are 3d printed and they're all swapped out oh really yeah so they're like little green screens on the faces no no they're um they're okay so we had the maquettes and they're sculpted and they were scanned the computer right and then the facial expressions they're it's split the eyes yeah there's brow pieces in a mouth section the mouths are sculpted for all the different possible phenomes and mouth shapes yeah and then there's like 150 different ones and the brows are sculpted as well for all the you know expressions worried and angry and surprised and there's about 150 of those and then those are printed on a 3d printer so they're actual physical objects and um they are literally replaced every frame by the animator you know live on the director you were like we gotta get a guy that does this this this this type of animation and how'd you find that guy well the animator i mean you find sort of like the fabricators that can do this sort of thing like you find zbrush sculptors that can change the faces in the computer and you find somebody who knows how to use a 3d printer but the animator stop motion animators are stop motion animators they can do whatever ones you want they can make a ball roll across a table or they can sculpt something out of clay i mean certainly they have specialties yeah right i just use the same animators that we had used before and then you know we couldn't get enough animators they were doing other stuff and we had to scour the earth you know there's not many of these kind of animators in the world so you got a crew together though yeah now charlie how long did you have that script what was that script doing before you got uh you met duke i'd done it as a radio stage radio play in 2005 was that the intention yes it was written to be that um with the same actors at royce hall who were those actors again david thules jennifer jason lee and tom noonan and um we had a foley artist on stage we had carter burwell conducting his music with maybe seven or eight musicians and that was the thing the actors were reading and the idea was that the imagery would be created in the minds of the audience that was the conceit that's what it was designed to do we did two performances of it 2005 and it was over um i wasn't gonna do anything with it it wasn't a movie it wasn't anything else and uh but dino happened to be in the audience and do that well he didn't happen to be he came to see it yeah and um and dan harman as well and they and dino really liked it and i eventually gave him a copy of the script and then he had this animation studio called starburns and they approached me in 2011 to do it and so they said we want to do this as an animation which is what they do you know they do animations right i said well okay you can raise the money you know i wasn't expecting them to it's it's interesting as to me because like as a fan of your work and dino's and everybody's involved dan's a genius and you did a great job as well first time meeting you is that um somehow or another it's it's the most um human work that that that any of you guys have done in a way that the story you know when people ask me what's about i'm like it's about a night out of town and a guy hooks up with a girl that's what it's about but somehow or another the emotions conveyed with the animation and with a script that you didn't intend to be shot is really the most compact compactly human experience script that i've seen you do in a way is that possible because it was so stripped down that it was it was very simple but the emotions were were profound and very and were allowed to to sort of settle in a way that i've never i've never experienced in movies really well i mean my initial challenge was to create this um on stage with just voices so by necessity it was stripped down because that's what i was doing it was a radio play um and that's what we brought to this so it's different than a screenplay that i would write which would have a lot of scenes and a lot of characters right and this was kind of a simplified thing um but it had to work as the radio play so i tried to make it work as that and i think we just carried over to the work we did on this visually well what was the inspiration charlie where did this where did even as a radio play so you decide you're gonna write a radio play or you wrote the script first i was i was doing radio plays i wrote one the coen's wrote one carter did the music and we we did them in new york and in england and london and then i wanted to go to los angeles and the coen's couldn't so i had to write a second place i wrote an amalisa i was trying to figure out how to use three actors we have very little rehearsal time um and i thought i'd like to use one actor to play many characters because i could do that because it's a radio play and i'd like the idea that people would see as one actor doing all these voices which was tom noonan and you were challenging yourself with the form i'm trying to use the form i'm always trying to use the form right always right so that's what i was trying to do here and it was it was exciting for me and i read about something called the fragility delusion which is a belief that every other person in the world is the same person so it's a kind of organic brain damage syndrome um and i thought that was fascinating as a sort of a metaphor for this character and because it's voices i thought i'll do it with voices everyone sounds the same right and it speaks to disconnection and inability to see people and loneliness and narcissism and perhaps narcissism yeah um i try very much not to judge the characters i write you know at least not from the outside unless they judge themselves okay you know um when i'm writing michael i write as i think michael would think of things you know when i'm writing in this case it's michael's perspective the whole thing except for the very end um so i'm writing as michael and if i'm sort of saying you know well he's a narcissist and uh that's a bad thing to be you know unless he thinks that it shouldn't be there right why judge him because it's only going to diminish it's like it's like it goes back to to when i wanted to be an actor right i mean that's what actors have to do they have to find the character they have to think what the character thinks they have to understand the world that way and everything i do is always subjective because i don't think there's any other way to see the world so i try to write from the point of view of the characters that i'm writing from so perhaps he's a narcissist that's not for me to say i guess is what i'm saying right he's caused a lot of damage in this world you know and will continue to do so um in a very specific and intimate way yeah yeah yeah he's not hitler yeah i read someone the other day say that on twitter that she'd been anomalized and i thought oh my god that's like you know because everyone's been anomalized and everyone's anomalized yeah that's true sure and and you know but what a lot of us don't necessarily think in the same light as knowing that this character is completely self-involved to the point where he he can't tell the difference between himself and others he just needs to get his needs met at that moment whatever they may be is that there is an assumption with that type of character that you know you've done i don't know about the conscience of michael but there is a sense that you've done something horribly wrong but that sort of undermines other people's ability to move through experiences and contextualize them do you know what i mean that a lot of times you may think like oh what i do to that person and that person could be like anomalies yes exactly and that you know there is a sort of letting off the hook in that way as an audience and also there's a certain narcissism and assuming you are this powerful man like bella's experience yeah you know did not it was not all hinging on him but it's true and and that is another thing that i think it's important to consider is that people have different ways to approach other people's dismissal or other people's hatred or other people's rejection and justification and whatever you you know i find that i go through periods where you know i'll read stuff that people have written about me and i cannot i cannot take it i'm so horrified and hurt and then other times it's like well it's kind of funny that's kind of funny i don't care right and i like myself better the latter way you know right if i can do that that's healthy emotional growth yes and it's not consistent i mean it's an emotional peak that goes back into the valley um immediately but i mean those moments like well that is that is what i'm allowing this person to do this to me i don't have to you know i think the reason that happens from my observation is that there's a part of you that is very me that's you know always going to be hard on myself and my wiring is to be self-judgmental and assume that i fucked up so if anybody depending on the day honors that narrative i'm like fuck you know fuck that you know but on another they're right they're right oh my god they're right that's always where it goes that's why you're so angry yeah if they hit that one button yeah but somebody like michael is you know it becomes it's again i'm going to use the word relentless in whatever cycle he's in because he knows exactly what's happening and then we had a brief conversation at the screening and both of you sort of chimed in on the decision because when you look at what you write there's only one departure from a very grounded and human experience narrative and that's that dream sequence and uh we discussed briefly the decision that you told me that sometimes in using this animation they cover the face line where the pieces where you can see where the piece that is the brow and the piece that is the mouth uh you can see where they're inserted that you told me that like a lot of times they take those lines out and you guys choose to leave them in which i thought had a lot more meaning i don't know if when you made that decision that you realized that it did have some poetic meaning to it that these parts were could be taken off and then they're taken off during the dream sequence but also like it has something to do with identity and who we are in my mind obviously i'm reading into it and if you agree with it that's fine but i don't know what your intention was well i mean i think you know you can see the evidence of it in the fact that those seams and the style of replacement animation became integrated into the story i mean we added those moments where you know he becomes uh partially self-aware or you know uh we show the audience right that we're aware that this is happening um and that came about as we sort of were designing the puppets and we wanted as emotional possibility as to go as far in the emotional experience as we could with the range of expressions and we discovered the style of animation and then we like the way they looked and people do typically paint that stuff out with computers and we didn't we didn't want to have that sort of uh ambiguous polished what is this kind of thing the organic nature of what we were doing and of stop motion in general we liked the the being able to feel the impact of the animators interacting with these things and and seeing that they were hand created and having flaws and having you know cracks literal fractured you know elements to them um and then yeah immediately that sort of paralleled some of the thematic kind of emotional things that were happening with characters in the story and we just built off that it was astounding to me that that by showing those those um those cracks and those faults within the style of animation actually made the film which is already pretty fucking human even more human like there's an element of like i guess you know french new wave where where you know you're made aware that you're watching a movie and that's sort of almost a play on that because you're dealing with this animated movie that turns out to be more human than most regular movies or non-animated movies and you're showing the flaws of the animation characters you're showing the flaws of the animation characters in their animation which adds to the humanity of the movie now I'm just tripping out that makes sense? yeah I mean when I first read the script the first thing that I connected to aside from relating to Michael's emotional experience was that thinking of it in animation and reading that speech that final speech which didn't change he didn't rewrite it for animation it already existed like this and him saying what is it to be human what is it to be alive what is it to ache to me there was an immediate connection to the form yeah and what blew me away we can talk about it before there's a couple other things I want to talk about but the sex scene this movie is about a one night stand on some level on a basic pitch and the sex scene was profoundly disturbing not because they were puppets because it was the most human sex scene I've ever seen in a movie in some weird way and I don't know what the hell you've lived through Charlie but in no no just in the sense that for me being a guy I've been single a long time and I've been a guy who's been out on the road and I'm a guy that has certain emotional needs and whatever I'm a flawed character but the weird thing to me though because you wrote this and from what I can gather from your life this is not the life you live but just the guy's choice to go down on her first was very decisive and very fucking weird to me not weird in a bad way just sort of like that guy understood this character because to do that that's not a passive all this stuff was animated so these are deliberate script points that's right the puppets weren't improvised but what did you struggle with in the sex scene as a writer when you wrote that this guy's going to go down on her first on this woman where did honoring that impulse come from?

I'm not sure again I wrote this in 2005 and it was non-visualized so I wanted to I think I wanted to maybe just a kind of not very interesting answer but I think I wanted to have something that was clearly suggested that was happening in their conversation but it wasn't really ever specified and that seemed like a thing that could blow up watching someone's mind yes I'm a little shy about that that kind of thing and that's all it was in the play and then I think we all knew that's what it was so we animated that and that's how it started what was interesting to me is that for a guy that no matter what he wants to do for that other person there's an almost pathological disrespect for personal boundaries and to do that in a charming way would be to have him take that action and then stand behind it no no no we're going to do this but not in an aggressive way because that's almost like it appears to be selfless right? so that was me getting passionate about something that I'm not quite understanding why I'm passionate about but to begin that sex scene like that was something I'd never seen before and then to sort of follow through with the sex scene and all its awkwardness with their bodies and her bodies which she's ashamed of and her own personal flaws was beautiful but painfully human and I don't want to give away too much because I think people should see the film because I've never seen a film like it in terms of what you've done in your career Charlie where does this fit in how do you feel about this in terms of accomplishment and creative vision? I mean we had nobody watching over us making this thing I loved the experience it was really difficult you know we had no money many times we didn't think we were going to finish it but I think the fact that we finished it and we did it outside of any sort of studio system and now people are watching it I'm enormously proud of it and I love the movie I watch this movie every once in a while with audiences and I still have reactions to it which is not common for me when I've seen something a thousand times and there are things that I still sort of see that I love moments that I love like human moments that I love and I marvel at and I think I marvel at them more maybe because I know that they're puppets and I know that they're inanimate and there's a freedom to that well it's just I mean it's beautifully done and you know I don't take credit for the animation you know I mean we were there to sort of direct but these animators are extraordinarily talented and sensitive and what are your feelings about it as it enters the world and people are seeing it you know how do you feel about the experience of watching it with an audience and what you've done do you see flaws in what you've done or are you like Charlie and are sort of surprised by you know the more you learn from watching it yeah I'm extraordinarily proud I did see flaws you know that's but I've always everything that I've ever done or been a part of I see the flaws and then over time that sort of goes away and I think it started to go away earliest on this project than anything else I've ever worked on because the experience of seeing it with audiences and you can feel that energy of watching something with the audience you can feel when they're engaged I mean I've been moved to see that other people are having the emotional experience it stays with you that was what I couldn't get over because I think it profoundly disturbed my girlfriend to the point where she was like that was great but like you know I don't feel good yeah you know and I of course like you know but I'm a guy like I watched you know Allman Shortcuts and I think it's a celebration of the human spirit like I thought it was a very honest movie and I couldn't shake some of it and when we're talking about it now I still can't shake the depth of the type of emotions maybe because you know I relate to things that are uncomfortable but um but I've seen The Revenants and I've seen a lot of movies that are out for Oscars now and uh they don't stick with me I mean I can't get your fucking movie out of my head and I'm not saying that aggressively I think it's amazing how are other people responding to it what's the general sense that you're getting you know the things that you've said the realism of the sex scene and some of the authenticity of some of the interactions I think you know one thing that I one major people ask me a lot like what did I learn from this experience because it's my first feature film you want me to ask you that like an interviewer hey Duke what did you learn from this experience as being you know your first experience directing a feature film well I think the thing for me that works best about the movie is something I learned from Charlie and we didn't hold on it for shock value or for a joke or something like that it's just because this is happening to these characters and it's happening right now and it's in the moment and we're going to get in there and hold there and you have to experience this and you could because you didn't have to go can we get a clear check we've got nudity you can hold it as long as you want because you didn't have to be codependent with actors who were sitting there naked exactly but it also goes for the other side it also goes for Michael alone in the hotel room too just the mundanity of that experience and the loneliness of that moment and staying there it's hard to make that clear because it's not everybody's life but it's something very specific that's somebody who travels for a living we've had a lot of people come up to us and say they've been in that hotel room yeah it's a weird thing that I've never seen explored which is that the desolation of a hotel room in a major city it's a bizarre phenomenon yeah it is now I know you were tweeting today about piracy what's going on? yeah apparently this is a thing I guess it happens for every movie now I didn't know that because this is again my first movie but yeah you know the movie got released somehow online you know through screeners or something we're not 100% sure I didn't get a screener why did you not get a screener?

because somebody stole it and put it on the screener oh okay I guess maybe the snack one you should have gotten for the snack yeah yeah oh damn it yeah we're not up for any awards because we did it outside of you know those I don't know why I didn't get it that upsets me yeah we'll get you one you will? yeah of course okay good or you can just it's a little online but nobody should nobody should get it online because well like what you were saying to me before in the house is that you know when you make a movie like this that you know the budget was tight almost non-existent and you jumped through all the hoops and spent the money to make it that you know a movie at this scale if somebody is chipping away at the possibility for it to earn money it damages the possibility of films at this level to be made it also damages the possibility for you guys to get what you worked for and it ain't right well yeah I mean it's exactly that I think it just reduces the likelihood that investors will put up money to make a movie like this in the future or that a studio will pick it up and distribute it because if nobody makes money off of it then nobody's going to do that and then we all just have to deal with what William Freak can call spandex movies everything will be spandex movies and how did you fund this movie? well we started with Kickstarter that's how we got the initial funding like Charlie said we met with him and asked if we could if we could do this and he said and he said do you need some more money and we were like yeah and it kind of started like that and it came piecemeal over the years how long did it take? three years from start to finish two years of production every day and how long did it take to shoot a minute of stop action?

a week a minute per week yeah and people are just stealing that time shame on them well you guys made a great movie it's a unique movie there's nothing that has ever existed like it and it was great talking to you thank you so much thank you go see Anomalisa it is a profoundly moving movie if you let it and I think if you let it there is a little relief at the end go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs feel free to watch Marin oh boy I'll play Wokitar Boomer Lives