IN DREAMS: A CONVERSATION WITH CHARLIE KAUFMAN

There are no useful maps or reference guides when it comes to exploring the treacherous terrain generated by the ruthlessly talented, LA-born screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman. You just have to dash off in a direction of your choosing and see where it takes you. He entered the cinematic fray with awesome style, receiving an Oscar for his Being John Malkovich (1999) screenplay, and then produced something even more layered and surprising in its 2002 follow-up, Adaptation. With the Michel Gondrydirected Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind released in 2004, his name become synonymous with a kind of must-see indie event movie. And then came his move to directing, with 2008’s melancholic disquisition on the difficulty of making meaningful art, S, and 2015’s emotional stop-motion opus on the nature of individuality, . Since then, he has written a madcap doorstop novel, ‘Antkind’, about a film critic who sees and then accidentally destroys a newly-discovered masterpiece which runs at three months. His new directorial work is a loosey-goosey adaptation of Ian Reid’s 2016 psychological horror novel, ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’, in which Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons take a long drive through a blizzard to visit his parents while reality frays at the seams around them.