With his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York due next month, the notoriously press shy Charlie Kaufman has reluctantly decided that a little publicity is in order, especially given the movie’s pre-release rep as, shall we say, an esoteric experience. Kaufman agreed to sit down with a writer from geek culture magazine Wired for a profile in an upcoming issue. Ah, but what form should this profile take? It can’t be just a run-of-the-mill celebrity puff piece, because this is the guy behind such mind-twisters as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It has to be meta in some way. And so a blog was born.
Storyboard is described as “a profile of a profile of Charlie Kaufman.” The idea is to provide “an almost-real-time, behind-the-scenes look at the assigning, writing, editing, and designing of a Wired feature….This is a one-time experiment, tied solely to the Charlie Kaufman profile scheduled to run in our November 08 issue.” The blog consists of internal emails, surveillance video from the Wired offices, and as of yesterday, the rough draft of writer Jason Tanz’s Kaufman profile.
It’s an interesting peek behind the curtain, but I’m not sure that Storyboard is really equivalent to what Kaufman does in his work. It’s more like a collection of DVD extras, but it’s still well worth checking out. For instance, there’s this September 5th entry collecting emails concerning Kaufman’s refusal to sit for a photo shoot. “I thought this was part of the negotiation, that he had never sat for an interview/shoot.,” writes creative director Scott Dadich. “This gives me serious reservations about doing the piece…. can we do a silhouette? something not showing his face?” Stay tuned for the resolution to this development, as well as promised full audio from the three-hour interview.
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