Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

Being a fan of Charlie Kaufman's early screenplays - Adaptation, Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - I sat down last night to watch the film he recently wrote and directed, Synodoche, New York. I had high expectations I guess - perhaps too high. I had assumed that Kaufman's quirkiness came from a need to be original. Alas, the film betrayed his true fascination - in a line from the movie, he even says, "I realize now that nobody's interested in my misery." And why should they be? Kaufman's universe is a bleak one. Our lives are seedy and pointless and become all the more complex, or rather painfully complicated, as we strive to examine and make sense of them. There's no joy in Synodoche, only angst, regret and loneliness. No love, only misunderstanding, lack of connection and fear - and the ever present specter of death. The only line I found uplifting in an otherwise dire waste of screen time was: "There are no ...

A lot of people ask me how I manage to get so much done. I often wonder myself. I was lucky. When I'd done schooling, I decided I didn't want to work for a living. Of course I had to - for a while. I did some pretty horrible jobs, gravitating from factory to office work because I noticed that the office workers seemed to get an easier time of things - and got paid more. Of course I could have done the life journey properly and got a nice cushy career type job in a bank or a corporate company. It's not as if I wasn't bright enough. I was even offered a few positions like that. But, much to the chagrin of my mother, I chose not to take them - mainly because it seemed like a cop out. The easy option. I deliberately chose the hard way - because I wanted to loathe the 9 to 5 I suppose. I'd watched my Dad living a life of quiet desperation for twenty years and I believed there had to be a better way to exist. Actually, I guess that's a kind of adolescent way...