Charlie Kaufman BAFTA lecture [Part 1]

On September 30, 2011, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman gave a lecture at a British Academy of Film and Television Arts event. I thought his presentation offered such wonderful insights not only into Kaufman’s world view, but also the very act of creativity that we should go through the entire thing on GITS. Today: Part 1.

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 think we try to be experts because we’re scared; we don’t want to feel foolish or worthless; we want power because power is a great disguise.

I even feel odd calling myself a writer or a screenwriter. I do when I have to — I put it on my income tax form — but I feel like it’s a lie, even though it’s technically true. I write screenplays for a living but it’s not what I am. When I was young I really wanted that label. I wanted to be something. I wanted to be a writer. There was this movie Serpico. Al Pacino is a cop with an artist girlfriend, and there’s a party scene with all these different artist types. They’re saying, ‘I’m a painter but I work in a restaurant,’ ‘I’m an actor but I work in an office,’ and this goes on for a while. Then Al Pacino says ‘I’m a cop and I work for the police department.’ But there’s that feeling when you want to say you’re something, and you have nothing to back it up because everyone says they’re a writer, or everybody says they’re this or that — this is what I felt — and everyone else thinks it’s bullshit. It’s funny now that I don’t want to call myself that but at the time I did. I think that it was necessary at the time, but now it doesn’t feel necessary because I think the thing I realise is: I’m not those things.
I’m a person who does this and I struggle with it. I think it was Thomas Mann who said, ‘A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people,’ which I thought was pretty cool. I think that’s sort of it; if you take it seriously it’s a struggle. And it’s interesting to me that I’ve been struggling with this speech for a long time. I told them that I would do this months and months ago, and this has been my job in a way. I sit at my desk and I don’t know what to do.

It is very much like when I have a job writing a screenplay. I think I wanted to do something true and I wanted to do something helpful. What complicates it, in addition to the fact that that’s a hard thing to figure out, is that I also struggle with wanting you to like me. In my fantasy I leave here and people are saying, ‘Great speech!’ you know, and, ‘Not only is he a great writer but boy, I really learned something tonight, he really brought it!’ So as much as I know that this neediness of mine exists, I also have a difficult time extricating myself from it, or even fully recognising it when it’s happening.
It’s a tricky thing; no-one wants to come up here and bomb. It’s really, literally the stuff of nightmares. I’ve had that nightmare a lot of times, and I know you want to be entertained, so for me to calculatedly not entertain you in order to be true seems sort of selfish. So I find myself in this push-pull relationship with my opposing desires, which I think is a big part of what characters are and what characters do in real life — people in real life, characters in movies.

But I’ve gone through a lot of different versions of what this evening would be. And some have been really crazy. You know, I was going to do a play, Tricia [event producer] can attest to that. They were very excited about it, so I was like, ‘Holy shit, now I have to do a play!’ because I wanted Tricia to like me, you know? But really, I ultimately decided that I need to come up here and be honest and not do a song and dance. So I’ve purposely kept it up in the air, I’ve taken notes but I’ve kept it up in the air and it’s increased my anxiety a thousand fold because I have notes here and I honestly don’t know if this speech is five minutes or three hours. I don’t know, I haven’t timed it; I just have no way of knowing.

To watch the video of Kaufman’s presentation, go here.

To subscribe to the BAFTA newsletter, go here.

To the best fansite dedicated to Charlie Kaufman, go to Being Charlie Kaufman.

HT to @Brentwgraham for the link.

Comment Archive