Charlie Kaufman Quotes

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Charlie Kaufman

Profession : Screenwriter

Birth : November 19, 1958

I think if something resonates, even if it's surreal, it's because it is relatable and I think that that's a core issue for me.

Charlie Kaufman

I don't write genre stuff in any form. I'm not interested in it. I always try to do the opposite of that.

Charlie Kaufman

I do like escapism. I like going to the movies on a Friday night and seeing something fun.

Charlie Kaufman

If you create something that is asking for people to respond as they're going to respond, you have to allow them to respond as they're going to respond. Some of the people are going to be uninterested and some people are going to be mad for some reason, which is their business. That's just the way the world is.

Charlie Kaufman

I think generally I'm kind of interested in subjective experience, what goes on inside someone's head, that being all they really know of the world.

Charlie Kaufman

So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.

Charlie Kaufman

I do have some theatrical background. I've written plays and seen plays and read plays. But I also read novels. One thing I don't read is screenplays.

Charlie Kaufman

We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.

Charlie Kaufman

There's this inherent screenplay structure that everyone seems to be stuck on, this three-act thing. It doesn't really interest me. To me, it's kind of like saying, 'Well, when you do a painting, you always need to have sky here, the person here and the ground here.' Well, you don't.

Charlie Kaufman

I'm old enough, by a long shot, to remember going to the library and spending days researching. If I was looking for a line from a poem or something else I needed, that would be the trip I would have to take.

Charlie Kaufman

I graduated from college in 1980.

Charlie Kaufman

I'm not a celebrity. I'm intentionally and defiantly not a celebrity. I don't have any interest in it. I don't have any talent for it. I keep my personal life out of my public life as cleanly as I can.

Charlie Kaufman

I do throw out a lot of ideas, and I forget completely about them.

Charlie Kaufman

I can talk endlessly about characters, or why someone did this or that, and what that dynamic and interaction is. I really love it, and I think that actors really respond positively to the fact that I like to talk about that stuff, because I'm not sure that all directors do.

Charlie Kaufman

I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.

Charlie Kaufman

I've kind of come to the conclusion that what passes for realism in movies has nothing to do with reality and that my stuff is more realistic than that.

Charlie Kaufman

There's no way to approach anything in an objective way. We're completely subjective; our view of the world is completely controlled by who we are as human beings, as men or women, by our age, our history, our profession, by the state of the world.

Charlie Kaufman

I'm trying to tell a story and do it truthfully.

Charlie Kaufman

I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it.

Charlie Kaufman

In a lot of movies, especially big studio ones, they're not constructed in any other way than to get people to like them and then tell their friends. It's a product.

Charlie Kaufman