Writing Frightens Charlie Kaufman

On Thursday, American screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman chatted with Marek Eben on the "At the Pool" talk show. His slightly ironic responses took us back to the beginnings of his career and work on his breakthrough film, Being John Malkovich. He also presented his new film, Anomalisa.

After completing his studies, Kaufman spent the next eleven years in a range of jobs that included working in a warehouse and answering telephone calls. "I never ever expected to have any sort of career. Nonetheless, I also took something away with me from that time - my work sometimes reflects how helpless I felt then," laughed Kaufman, who is also an experienced television writer. "I tried writing sitcoms for about seven years and it was horrible: you have to share a room with several other writers."

Kaufman's work is very often eccentric and unusually complex, frequently making the viewer rack his brains to find the inspiration behind it. "When I'm writing I usually deal with something that I myself want to explore in depth. This then gives me the right foundation to develop something else that's preternatural," added Kaufman, who originally began writing with a view to directing. Writing often gets him into a precarious situation: "Writing is scary. It's especially scary when you get writer's block, you've already been paid for the work, and you no longer have that money but you still have to return it to them somehow. That happens to me quite a lot."

Kaufman originally wrote Anomalisa as a radio play. "I couldn't imagine it having a visual element, so at first I didn't agree entirely with the idea of making it into a film. Moreover, the fact that we filmed it as a puppet show made it very tedious. Some scenes even took us as long as six months."