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I think you just assume that your memory is just sort of a video playback of your experience, but it's nothing like that at all. It's a complete refabrication of an event and a lot of it is made up, because you're filling in spaces.

Charlie Kaufman

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Charlie Kaufman
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: November 1
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Thinking
Events
Spaces
Like
Memories
Filling
Sort
Assume
Space
Event
Experience
Assuming
Nothing
Video
Made
Complete
Think
Memory
Playback

More quotes by Charlie Kaufman

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I don't write genre stuff in any form. I'm not interested in it. I always try to do the opposite of that.
Charlie Kaufman
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Clementine: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon. Joel: I know. Clementine: What do we do? Joel: Enjoy it.
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Do not simplify. Do not worry about failure. Failure is a badge of honour. It means you risked failure.
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I'm not into extreme sports or something. I just live a quiet life.
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I do throw out a lot of ideas, and I forget completely about them.
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I want to do my own thing, and I'm trying to get closer to realizing that as a filmmaker.
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I try when I'm writing to leave enough space for people to have their own interpretation, and not to direct it toward one conclusion. Then the audience would not be reacting, because they are being preached to or lectured at. I don't have that much to say that I think people should listen to me.
Charlie Kaufman
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You spend most of your time as a director trying to move forward with the movie. It happens on a daily basis, if not more than once a day, that you are struggling with budgetary constraints. Whereas when you're writing, the limitation that you have is your imagination. So it's decidedly non-pragmatic.
Charlie Kaufman
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Failure is a badge of honor. It means you risked failure. And if you don’t risk failure, you’re never going to do anything that’s different from what you’ve already done or what somebody else has done.
Charlie Kaufman
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I want to create situations that give people something to think about.
Charlie Kaufman
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I think if something resonates, even if it's surreal, it's because it is relatable and I think that that's a core issue for me.
Charlie Kaufman
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I think if I've worked anything through with screenwriting it's that I'm not going to be able to work anything through.
Charlie Kaufman
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If I were doing somebody else's script or I adapted a book by Philip Roth, on set there could be a million different interpretations of the material and people could argue with me. Certainly on Synecdoche, New York we had discussions and arguments, but I felt like I had authority because I'm a writer.
Charlie Kaufman
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I like titles that are a little difficult, because it's kind of counterintuitive.
Charlie Kaufman
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Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating.
Charlie Kaufman
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Story ideas, but it's also musing on stuff that I'm thinking about. This leads me to this and this leads me to this. They're kind of random and haphazard. Often I can't find anything. Somehow, by doing that, even though I don't necessarily refer to them in a specific way, I have some sort of architecture in my head.
Charlie Kaufman
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As a writer, or as a filmmaker, you have to present yourself, and part of what yourself is is what you're interested in, or what you think is funny, or what you think is sad, or what you think is horrible.
Charlie Kaufman
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I try to present something that is true so I don't further destroy the world with my contribution to it.
Charlie Kaufman
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I think everything I do is based on my experience in the world in one way or another.
Charlie Kaufman
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I do a lot of things intuitively. I'm not often consciously aware of what I'm doing. It's like in a dream: There's something going on that's powerful but you don't know exactly why.
Charlie Kaufman