http://slyoyster.com

Never got around to posting this when the site was down for all of last week. Can you tell I’m still bitter about it? Anyway, this is the latest brain-f*ck from Charlie Kaufman. I’ve been digging Wired’s Kaufmenesque profile about the making of the magazine profile. Still, this one looks like it could be great.

Kaufman wrote the films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Human Nature, Confessions of a Dangerous mind and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A.O. Scott liked it at Cannes. The film will be out in limited release (NY & LA?) on Oct 24.

Big Rob’s last post got us thinking about Charlie Kaufman’s latest movie, which he wrote and directed. We started to wonder how this thing has flown under the radar all year, but I guess that’s just the way that his movies tend to fly. We just wanted to find some information on it and though not much is out for Synecdoche, New York there’s enough to get us truly excited.

For starters there’s Kaufman’s involvement, but he’s rounded up a terribly impressive cast. Among them are Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Hope Davis.

For seconds there’s the plot, which according to LA Times writer Jay Fernandez, “will make “Adaptation” and “Eternal Sunshine” look like instructional industrial films. No one has ever written a screenplay like this. It’s questionable whether cinema is even capable of handling the thematic, tonal and narrative weight of a story this ambitious.”

He goes on to say that:

For one thing, the marketers are going to have to borrow from the P.T. Anderson “Magnolia” poster campaign, in which the title was broken out syllabically, just to get people to pronounce the film properly. (It’s sin-neck-duh-key, emphasis on the neck.)

For all those who aren’t AP English professors, a “synecdoche,” other than a clever play on Schenectady, where some of the film takes place, is a figure of speech in which a part is used to describe the whole or the whole is used to describe a part (think “threads” for clothes, or “the law” for a police officer). It’s representative shorthand.

Yes, I had to look it up. Several times. And this is far from the only reference or play on words in Kaufman’s story that rewards a closer look.

“Synecdoche” nominally concerns a theater director who thinks he’s dying, and how that shapes his interactions with the world, his art and the women in his life. But it is really a wrenching, searching, metaphysical epic that somehow manages to be universal in an extremely personal way. It’s about death and sex and the vomit-, poop-, urine- and blood-smeared mess that life becomes physiologically, emotionally and spiritually (Page 1 features a 4-year-old girl having her butt wiped). It reliably contains Kaufman’s wondrous visual inventions, complicated characters, idiosyncratic conversations and delightful plot designs, but its collective impact will kick the wind out of you.

Wow… sounds good but intellectually taxing. And this is the first poster.

Synecdoche, New York hits theaters on March 21, 2008.

Yesterday, I suggested ?collecting? writers, as opposed to actors or directors, as a good method for deciding which films to see. We started with five; here is the remainder of the top ten.

Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel

Geniuses at comedy which still manages to tug the proverbial heart strings. Occasionally farcical, melancholy but never maudlin, these guys are true masters of their craft. If Wilde was right, that dying is easy but comedy’s hard, than they may be the hardest working duo in filmdom.

They hit the big time with their first feature out of the gate It made Darryl Hannah and John Candy into stars, and catapulted Tom Hanks straight on to the A list. Then they followed with a string of comedic gold by churning out Gung Ho, the first of three of their screenplays each of which were vastly improved by the casting of Michael Keaton (Night Shift and Multiplicity); then the vastly underrated comedy/drama Parenthood and finally, the superior A League of their Own, again with Hanks.

Billy Crystal was a four-time lead in their movies; he starred in City Slickers and he also them co-write City Slickers II, Mr. Saturday Night and the rom-com Forget Paris, with Debra Winger.

More recently, they wrote EdTV, Where the Heart Is and Fever Pitch; the last being a singular achievement in that it is the only movie in which Jimmy Fallon has ever been funny.

Ganz and Mandel are, about as mainstream as it gets. You say you like your writing a little more edgy, a little bit out there?

Charlie Kaufman

I’d say Charlie Kaufman is your man. The film that lift him out of the obscure world of episodic television was Being John Malkovich, followed by the Michel Gondry-directed Human Nature.

Then came Adaptation, in which he wrote about a fictional version of himself and his twin-brother trying to overcome the problems inherent in adapting Susan Orleans “The Orchid Thief” which then morphs into the screenplay for the film audiences watch. He and his brother are co-credited with the screenplay, for which they both won Academy Awards. Kaufman does not have a twin-brother, let alone any brother. It was a bit heady for some, but for others it was the sort of quirky meta-storytelling that felt so right in so many ways. An adaptation and a satire of Hollywood all rolled into one.

Next, for George Clooney’s directorial debut, Kaufman adapted the autobiography of Chuck Barris, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. The masterpiece, of sorts, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind needs no introduction since it has become practically everyone’s favorite movie is you’re between the ages of 25-30.

His current project, in post-production, which will also mark Kaufman’s directorial debut is Synechdoche, New York, which if you look up the word synechdoche, you get a definition what makes you think, huh? And you weren’t even close to pronouncing it right. If you can figure out the plot then you’ll be our best friend.

John Milius

John Milius isn’t quite so big on metaphor and linguistic twists and turns. He wrote the serious bombs, Red Dawn and 1941. But, he did write the equally ridiculous?but much more entertaining?Conan the Barbarian. And, don’t forget that 1941 had a crapload of talented people attached including Belushi, Zemeckis and director Steven Spielberg; so, it may be unfair to lay the blame at Milius’s feet.

He is considered the man’s man writer, because he wrote the iconic first two Dirty Harry movies. He is capable of subtlety, however, as in the top-notch The Wind and the Lion and Coppola’s epic Apocalypse Now.

Thematically, he has written about war and combat numerous times, but the reason he makes my list is for a movie about a man who has had enough of war, just about enough of humans in general, and decides to go be a mountain man. One of my top five films of all time, the flawless Jeremiah Johnson. I can’t imagine that there is anyone who has not seen it, but if not, PLEASE do yourself a favor and go rent this movie. I won’t waste words and ruin the pleasure of it for you.

Paul Haggis

Paul Haggis is a fascinating case, a man who is a multiple Oscar winner for screenplays with complex, interweaving stories, whose early career showed none of that potential. He started out as co-creator and writer on Walker: Texas Ranger. Yeah, okay, it’s not like the show was completely unwatchable, but I don’t think William Goldman was losing any sleep at night thinking about Paul Haggis. Several trite sitcoms later - Different Strokes, Facts of Life and Who’s the Boss all appear on his resume, although he also had episodes of L.A. Law and the criminally underwatched Due South.

And then, all of a sudden in 2004, Clint Eastwood directs Million Dollar Baby from Paul’s first draft of the screenplay; it wins for Oscars including Best Picture and Best Screenplay. Next year, same story with Crash, except he is also the director. He has gone on to write Flags of Our Fathers, co-wrote Letters From Iwo Jima with first-time screenwriter Iris Yamashita, and co-wrote Casino Royale, which has revitalized the Bond franchise. He wrote and directed the recent In the Valley of Elah, and has the new Bond film currently in production. Let’s hear it for late bloomers!!

Steve Zaillian

When the phrase ?prestigious screenwriter? is used, Steve Zaillian is often the guy in question. He had already written the heartbreaking Awakenings (Robin Williams’ best on-screen work until the creepyOne Hour Photo), The Falcon and the Snowman and the little seen for no known reason, Searching for Bobby Fischer. The movie about a young chess prodigy also pushed actor Chaz Palmentieri into some of the best work of his career and that’s saying something. When Steven Spielberg fingered him to adapt Thomas Keneally’s book, Schindler’s List the two of them produced, arguably, one of the finest benchmarks in cinema history. He worked with Milius on Clear and Present Danger and wrote the first Mission Impossible.

We then have the perfectly adequate A Civil Action and Hannibal, followed by the more ambitious Gangs of New York under the hand of Scorsese. In many respects, that movie not helped reestablish Scorsese into a period of creativity that has yet to cease, but it also shepherded Leo DiCaprio into the second phase of his career by allowing him to portray a conflicted young man. 2005 produced the underrated The Interpreter and this year, the excellent American Gangster. He doesn’t escape the unwritten rule that sometimes the best writers produce the biggest bombs. In his case: the horrible mess that was 2006’s All the King’s Men remake.