How many times have you gone to see a movie only to see it resolve in some cheap or cliché way? Maybe everything was just a dream, maybe everything miraculous comes together at the end or maybe all of the characters get exactly what they want.
Annoying, right?
Sure, it’s kind of what people want to see. Not many people enjoy going to the movies to see a depressing ending. That’s what life gives them. Life gives them reality. What people want to see when they go to the movies is fantasy – something that wouldn’t happen but leaves them feeling better about themselves and the world.
But does that mean that scripts have to be boring?
Nope. Just look at what Charlie Kaufman has written. He’s written six movies (four of which I’ve seen – Being John Malkovich; Adaptation.; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; and Synechdoche, New York) and each are wonderfully unique. It’s not even that his story or characters alone are great – he creates this entire world for these people to exist in that I haven’t seen anywhere else.
In Being John Malkovich, the characters find a hole where, if you go through it, you end up inside Malkovich’s brain, seeing what he sees, for like ten minutes. Eternal Sunshine takes place in a time where a company is able to wipe memories from a person’s head, so much of the movie is spent literally within Jim Carrey’s mind. Synechdoche follows Philip Seymour Hoffman as he reconstructs his life in a life-size replica of New York City. (Adaptation. doesn't have anything unique about the world, but it does have Nic Cage (in his best role!) playing two brothers).
Some of what he includes has been done elsewhere, undoubtedly. There’s no way that he could have purely original ideas when you consider how many movies have been made over the years. However, not only does he take these ideas to another level but he also does them better than they’ve been done in the past. There’s a clear evolution of the storyline, which makes perfect sense and unfolds perfectly in each film.
If only more people followed Kaufman’s lead, Hollywood wouldn’t be such a boring place after all.
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