Charlie Kaufman Turns To Kickstarter
Image by Getty Images
This week the Shmooze brings you yet another story about a filmmaker striking out on his own to finance a project.
But this time our enterprising artist isn’t a struggling young film student. It’s a pair of well-established Hollywood successfuls, Charlie Kaufman and Dan Harmon. They have turned to Kickstarter to fund a stop-action movie called “Anomalisa,” about “a man crippled by the mundanity of his life.”
In the promotional video on their Kickstarter page, a bearded old claymation fellow asks, “Can you imagine the unique world of Charlie Kaufman, realized in stop-motion, without the influence of the Hollywood studio system?”
While it might seem strange that two heavy hitters like Kaufman and Harmon are offering hand-crafted set props and personalized Twitter thank yous in order to entice people to back “Anomalisa,” their vision seems remarkably simple: “We just want to make something ourselves. Something pure. Something beautiful.”
And it could be just that. Then again, Kaufman, known for off-beat but beloved projects like “Adaptation” and “Being John Malkovich,” has recently faced some difficulties in getting his projects to the public. His latest movie was written and casted, yet fell apart before it could get shot. Last spring, Harmon was also famously fired from his show, “Community.”
Though the Shmooze is sympathetic to the personal setbacks of these men, we’re also pleased that something genuinely innovative can come from their frustration with the system. It feels like a truly American act; a little exercise in for the people, by the people. They’ve already raised $140,589 of their $200,000 goal, and with 59 days to go, it’s likely they’ll get this film off the ground and onto our screens — we wish them the best.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
