Charlie Kaufman: Screenwriters Lecture. Download Charlie's lecture as a .pdf. Charlie Kaufman: Thank you very much. I’m actually really happy to be here; at least that’s what I’m telling myself. I’ve never delivered a speech before, which is why I decided to do this tonight. I wanted to do something that I don’t know how to do, and offer you the experience of watching someone fumble, because I think maybe that’s what art should offer.
An opportunity to recognise our common humanity and vulnerability. So rather than being up here pretending I’m an expert in anything, or presenting myself in a way that will reinforce the odd, ritualised lecturer-lecturee model, I’m just telling you off the bat that I don’t know anything. And if there’s one thing that characterises my writing it’s that I always start from that realisation and I do what I can to keep reminding myself of that during the process. I even feel odd calling myself a writer or a screenwriter. I’m a person who does this and I struggle with it. What can be done? Such a Beautiful Day: On the Works of Don Hertzfeldt.
Don Hertzfeldt is, in my not-so-humble opinion, one of the most talented filmmakers working today. That statement may sound hyperbolic, but only until you consider that all of his movies are about stick figures, and that their combined lengths barely adds up to the running time of an average feature film. Then it sounds really hyperbolic. Despite this, I can think of no writer-director alive who demonstrates more ambition or obsessive commitment to his work, or who speaks in such a distinctive and (seemingly) personal voice. Hertzfeldt is truly one-of-a-kind: an auteur in the truest sense of the word, whose simple cartoons pose profound and sometimes frightening questions about life, love, and our place in an unpredictable universe, while at the same time using the ordinariness of human existence as a source of both great tragedy and enormous joy. He’s also responsible for this: Here’s the above clip again, in…I guess you’d call it context: I can sense that you’re still skeptical.