:: now that is scary

i like movies with a good story. i've said it a ton of times. explosions are great; cgi can be cool; but you've got to have a good story to get my attention. i've come to admire movies by a good crop of directors, like michel gondry, wes anderson, noah baumbach, the coen brothers, spike jonze, david fincher, and m. night shyamalan, because i think they hold the same view. it was while watching what is now one of my all-time favorite movies, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (which was directed by gondry) that i was introduced to screenwriter charlie kaufman. kaufman is a brilliant writer. he goes about the concept of writing and story in a totally different way. i posted an interview that kaufman did with charlie rose a while ago, i might post it again, because it just shows you the mind of this masterful writer. he doesn't just drop characters into a situation and follow conventional, and all too predictable wa thinking. since watching eternal sunshine, i watched other great movies that he had written. movies like being john malkovich and adaptation (into which he writes himself in as the main character in both a very real characterization of himself and a very fictions one as well) and really enjoyed those as well. 

so, when i heard that kaufman was both writing and directing a movie, entitled synecdoche, new york, and had cast phillip seymour hoffman as the lead, i was more than intrigued. then i read this article, and was even more intrigued. in it, rotten tomatoes talks to kaufman about the concept of the movie. kaufman reveals ::

spike jonze and i were approached by sony to do a horro movie. we talked about things that were really scary in the world, as opposed to horror movie conventions. we talked about things like mortality and illness and time passing and loneliness and regret. we kinda went in with that, and we got assigned to go off and write it, and i spent a couple years trying to explore those notions, and that's what the movie is.

in another interview i heard, kaufman said that this movie was scary in that it dealt with a fear that we're "hurling towards death" and that it's something we all know is coming and are powerless to do anything about.

see what i mean. who would take the order to write a horror movie and turn it into something so complex and nothing like what i'm sure the studio intended, and yet make it exactly what the studio intended. that is a really scary thought. we're all going to die. time will pass no matter what we do to attempt the contrary. we will get sick. the people around us will get sick. chances are that they will die and we will be left alone. just picturing that future for myself is more frightening than any trailer for saw v.  

here is a trailer for synecdoche, new york ::

things essentially come down to this. i'm going to beg you. if you're going to go see a scary movie this holloween season, go see this one. don't go see another mindless scare-fest. this movie will have both a great, well written story and a great, and truly frightening premise. it will be the only "horror" movie i'll be seeing this fall (this is assuming that they'll show it here in starkville or in slidell). 

what do you think about charlie kaufman and/or his movies? what do you think about the concept behind the movie synecdoche, new york? what do you think about the importance of story? what are some of your favorite movies/directors/stories? 

the above in not a list of rhetorical questions...

more to come...