Charlie Kaufman

Charles Stuart Kaufman (born November 19, 1958) is an American screenwriter, film director, and novelist.

Kaufman was born in New York City to a Jewish family on November 19, 1958, the son of Helen and Myron Kaufman.

He grew up in Massapequa, New York, before moving to West Hartford, Connecticut, where he graduated from high school.

In high school, Kaufman was in the drama club, performing in numerous productions before landing the lead role in a production of Play It Again, Sam during his senior year.

After high school graduation, Kaufman attended Boston University before transferring to New York University, where he studied film.

While attending NYU, Kaufman met Paul Proch, with whom he wrote many unproduced scripts and plays.

During the late 1980s, Kaufman lived and worked in Minneapolis, answering calls about missing newspapers at the Star Tribune.

Between 1983 and 1984, Kaufman and Proch wrote comedic articles and spoofs for National Lampoon.

His work included parodies of Kurt Vonnegut and the X-Men.

Kaufman and Proch tried to get their screenplays produced, sending them to many people in the film industry.

The only response the two ever received was a supportive letter from Alan Arkin about their screenplay Purely Coincidental.

In hope of finding a talent agent, he wrote a portfolio of spec scripts based on television series such as Married... with Children, Newhart, It's Garry Shandling's Show and The Simpsons.

While pursuing his writing career, he began working odd jobs in customer service to support himself and his wife, Denise.

In 1991, one of Kaufman's spec scripts finally got attention, and he gained a talent agent.

The agent suggested Kaufman move from Minneapolis to Los Angeles in search of more job prospects.

He moved to Los Angeles alone for two months, interviewing for a variety of different television writing jobs.

The only offer he got was a Comedy Central series titled Access America, hosted by actor Fred Willard, which coincidentally was being filmed in Minneapolis.

Kaufman was prepared to accept the job and move back to Minneapolis until he was offered a job by David Mirkin, writing for the second season of his and Chris Elliott's sitcom Get a Life, starring Elliott.

He wrote two episodes of Get a Life before its cancellation in 1992.

At first, Kaufman found the experience of working on a writing staff nerve-wracking and did not speak in the writer's room for the first few weeks.

After his work was well received by other members of the staff, Kaufman overcame his timidity and became more amenable to showing others his work.

After Get a Life's cancellation, Kaufman tried to get work on series such as Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show, The Simpsons and Mr. Show, but was not hired by any of them.

He continued to work on other comedic series: Fox's sketch comedy show The Edge, The Trouble with Larry and Ned and Stacey, the last of which he also produced.

The most notable series he worked on in this period was The Dana Carvey Show, which featured writers and performers such as Louis C.K., Robert Smigel, Greg Daniels, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell.

On all these series, Kaufman struggled to keep his material from being adulterated or not produced at all, because of his unconventional writing and his quiet nature.

Kaufman also wrote some pilot scripts of his own, but none of them was produced.

These included two pilots for Disney, Depressed Roomies and Rambling Pants (the former a surrealist take on the "buddy sitcom" and the latter focused on the adventures of a time-travelling poet named Pants) and a pilot for HBO, In Limbo, a naturalistic look at a romantic relationship devoid of the usual tropes of romantic films.

Before Being John Malkovich was released, he was hired to pitch and write scripts for film projects that were never produced.

These unproduced projects included a script for an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel A Scanner Darkly, a pitch for a star vehicle for Don Rickles and Rodney Dangerfield in which they would play a washed-up, murderous comedy duo (an idea Kaufman used in Antkind), and a pitch for a R-rated version of the TV series Gilligan's Island.

Kaufman first came to mainstream notice as the writer of Being John Malkovich, directed by Spike Jonze, earning an Academy Award nomination for his effort and winning a BAFTA.

He wrote the script on spec in 1994, sending it to many companies and studios, all of which turned it down.

The script eventually reached Francis Ford Coppola, who passed it on to his then-son-in-law Jonze, who agreed to direct the film.

After the success of Being John Malkovich, another of Kaufman's screenplays was produced: Human Nature, which was directed by Michel Gondry and produced by Kaufman and Jonze.

Kaufman and Jonze reunited yet again as the screenwriter and director of Adaptation, which earned him another Academy Award nomination and his second BAFTA.

He wrote the films Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

He both wrote and directed the films Synecdoche, New York (2008), Anomalisa (2015), and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020).

Film critic Roger Ebert called Synecdoche, New York "the best movie of the decade" in 2009.

Three of Kaufman's scripts appear in the Writers Guild of America's list of the 101 greatest movie screenplays ever written.

In 2020, Kaufman released his first novel, Antkind.

One of the most celebrated screenwriters of his era, Kaufman has received an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Independent Spirit Awards, and a Writers Guild of America Award.