The film ‘Adaptation’, by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman had a lot of trouble adapting a certain book into a film… And so the film is about Charlie Kaufman having difficulty turning the book into a film.
I’ve seen obvious knockoffs of reality and other pseudoautobiographical material done well. There’s lots of those. But explicitly having the characters talking to the author, without any pretense, tends strongly towards ham-fistedness. And having the characters inside any other form of nested reality would simply be bizarre.
It’s still a fun theory, but I will be greatly surprised to see it, largely because I don’t think it can be made good enough to make EY think it’s worth printing. Maybe a standalone story with that premise, but not as a tacked-on bit at the end.
Although only tangentially related,
The film ‘Adaptation’, by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman had a lot of trouble adapting a certain book into a film… And so the film is about Charlie Kaufman having difficulty turning the book into a film.
I’ve seen obvious knockoffs of reality and other pseudoautobiographical material done well. There’s lots of those. But explicitly having the characters talking to the author, without any pretense, tends strongly towards ham-fistedness. And having the characters inside any other form of nested reality would simply be bizarre.
It’s still a fun theory, but I will be greatly surprised to see it, largely because I don’t think it can be made good enough to make EY think it’s worth printing. Maybe a standalone story with that premise, but not as a tacked-on bit at the end.