Early comedy work (1983–1997) Between 1983 and 1984, Kaufman and Proch wrote comedic articles and spoofs for
National Lampoon. His work included parodies of
Kurt Vonnegut and the
X-Men. Kaufman and Proch tried to get their screenplays produced, sending them to many people in the film industry. The only response the two ever received was a supportive letter from
Alan Arkin about their screenplay
Purely Coincidental. In hope of finding a
talent agent, he wrote a portfolio of
spec scripts based on television series such as
Married... with Children,
Newhart, ''
It's Garry Shandling's Show and The Simpsons. While pursuing his writing career, he began working odd jobs in customer service to support himself and his wife, Denise. During the late 1980s, Kaufman lived and worked in Minneapolis, working at the Star Tribune'' circulation department for four and a half years, as well as the
Minneapolis Institute of Art. After the success of
Being John Malkovich, another of Kaufman's screenplays was produced:
Human Nature, which was directed by
Michel Gondry and produced by Kaufman and Jonze. Kaufman and Jonze reunited yet again as the screenwriter and director of
Adaptation, which earned him another Academy Award nomination and his second BAFTA.
Adaptation featured a fictionalized version of Kaufman and his fictional twin brother, Donald, who is credited as writer of the film along with Kaufman. The idea came to Kaufman while attempting to adapt
Susan Orlean's book
The Orchid Thief into film. Struggling with
writer's block, Kaufman turned the script into an exaggerated account of his struggles with adapting the screenplay. Kaufman wrote the screenplay for
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, a biopic based on the "unauthorized autobiography" of
Chuck Barris, the creator of such popular game shows as
The Dating Game and host of
The Gong Show. The film focuses on Barris's claim to have been a
CIA hit man. It was
George Clooney's directorial debut. Kaufman criticized Clooney for making drastic alterations to the script without consulting him (instead, Clooney consulted Barris). Kaufman said in an interview with William Arnold: "The usual thing for a writer is to deliver a script and then disappear. That's not for me. I want to be involved from beginning to end. And these directors [Gondry and Jonze] know that, and respect it."
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, released in 2004, was Kaufman's second pairing with director
Michel Gondry. Kaufman won his first
Academy Award for
Best Original Screenplay and third BAFTA for the film together with Gondry and French artist
Pierre Bismuth. The trio also received the prestigious
PEN American Center 2005 prize for screenplay for the film.
David Edelstein described the film in
Slate as "
The Awful Truth turned inside-out by
Philip K. Dick, with nods to
Samuel Beckett,
Chris Marker,
John Guare—the greatest dramatists of our modern fractured consciousness. But the weave is pure Kaufman."
Directorial debuts and career struggles (2005–2014) After agreeing to participate in
Carter Burwell's
Theater of the New Ear, a double bill "sound play", Kaufman wrote and directed the audio play
Hope Leaves the Theater, while the other play in the production,
Sawbones, was written and directed by the
Coen Brothers.
Hope Leaves the Theater follows a middle-aged woman, dissatisfied with her life and relationships, watching a play-within-the-play, and featured performances by
Hope Davis,
Peter Dinklage and
Meryl Streep.
Theater of the New Ear debuted in April 2005 at
St. Ann's Warehouse in
Brooklyn, New York. Due to scheduling conflicts, later productions of
Theater of the New Ear did not feature the Coens' play, replacing it with
Anomalisa, which Kaufman wrote under the pseudonym "'Francis Fregoli".
Anomalisa centers on a man (
David Thewlis) who perceives everyone in the world to be the same person (
Tom Noonan) until he meets an exception (
Jennifer Jason Leigh). Kaufman made his directorial film debut with the
postmodern film
Synecdoche, New York, starring an ensemble cast led by
Philip Seymour Hoffman. It premiered at the
Cannes Film Festival in 2008. The idea for the film came when Kaufman and Spike Jonze were approached to direct a
horror film. Rather than make a conventional horror film, the two agreed to have the film deal with things they found frightening, such as mortality and life's brevity. Kaufman decided to direct the film after Jonze left the project to direct
Where the Wild Things Are instead. The film premiered at the
2008 Cannes Film Festival where it split critics, with some calling it the best film of the year and others finding it pretentious. In the years since its release, it has appeared on multiple lists ranking the best films of the 21st century. The film's poor box office resulted in Kaufman finding it difficult to gain funding for scripts to which he has attached himself as director. Kaufman was slated to write and direct a film with the working title
Frank or Francis. Few details have been confirmed about the plot, except that it is a
musical comedy about
internet anger culture and was set to star
Jack Black, Nicolas Cage, Steve Carell,
Kevin Kline, Catherine Keener,
Paul Reubens,
Jacki Weaver and
Elizabeth Banks. In July 2012, Black said that funding for the project had fallen through, as the studio was unsure about its chances for success after the financial failure of
Synecdoche, New York. Although the future of the project is not certain, Kaufman says "It could still happen. It would have to be reinvented, though. We had a whole cast and we were headed into pre-production. So, I'd have to get people back and who knows if they would be interested anymore. But at this point, we don't have any money, so that's a secondary concern." While struggling to get his directorial work made, Kaufman continued to work as a writer for hire, writing numerous unproduced screenplays. These included a satire set on a planet inhabited by everyone who ever lived, to be directed by Spike Jonze; an adaptation of
George Saunders's book
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, to be directed by
Ben Stiller; and an adaptation of
Arthur Herzog's novel
IQ 83, starring Steve Carell. He later attempted to develop his
IQ 83 screenplay into a limited series for
HBO, to no avail. He also did uncredited rewrites on films such as
Kung Fu Panda 2 and
Ad Astra.
Continued film work and debut novel (2015–present) accepting the
Grand Jury Prize for
Anomalisa at the
Venice Film Festival in 2015.
Dino Stamatopoulos, a former colleague of Kaufman's from
The Dana Carvey Show, became interested in adapting Kaufman's
Anomalisa play script into a
stop motion animated film. With Kaufman's permission, Stamatopoulos turned to the
crowd-funding website
Kickstarter to fund the film. The Kickstarter page was set up in August 2012 and by the time funding had ended $406,237 was pledged. The rest of the $8 million budget was funded by the film's production company, Starburns Industries. Kaufman co-directed the film with
Duke Johnson, who had previous experience in stop motion filmmaking, and the original cast of the play production returned to reprise their roles. It had its world premiere at the
Telluride Film Festival on September 4, 2015, receiving universal acclaim from critics. The film went on to win the
Grand Jury Prize at the
Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an
Academy Award for
Best Animated Feature, but like
Synecdoche, it did poorly at the box office. Kaufman's
debut novel,
Antkind, was released in July 2020. Kaufman said in 2016 that the novel was being written so as to be unfilmable, and is itself about "an
impossible movie". In
Antkind, film critic B. Rosenberg attempts to recall a three-month long stop-motion animation film that perished in a fire. Believing the film to be his last chance at achieving the respect and admiration of his peers, B. embarks on an absurdist journey that explores
comedy,
film theory,
philosophy, and
social commentary across
Antkind's 706 pages. In January 2018, it was announced that Kaufman was working on writing and directing
an adaptation of
Iain Reid's 2016 novel ''
I'm Thinking of Ending Things''. In December 2018, it was announced that
Brie Larson and
Jesse Plemons were signed to co-star as the leads; the film was described as "the story of a woman's trip to a family farm that leads to an unexpected detour leaving her stranded, [and] a twisted mix of palpable tension, psychological frailty and sheer terror ensues." The project began filming in March 2019, with
Jessie Buckley having replaced Larson, and
Toni Collette and
David Thewlis joining the cast, and was released on Netflix in September 2020 to positive reviews. In 2023, Kaufman directed his first short film,
Jackals & Fireflies. Based on a poem by Eva H.D., who also portrays the lead character, the film was shot entirely on a
Samsung Galaxy S22 smartphone by cinematographer Chayse Irvin. Kaufman has written a script about dreams for
Ryan Gosling's production company and an adaptation of the novel
The Memory Police that
Reed Morano is slated to direct. In 2025, the script centered on dreams was revealed to be titled
Later the War, based on Iddo Gefen's short story "Debby’s Dream House".
Eddie Redmayne,
Tessa Thompson, and
Patsy Ferran are slated to star, with Kaufman directing. ==Themes and influences==