Word: spiked
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...unfortunate amount of what you are about to read is true. It used to be a lot of fun to interview Spike Jonze because he would just make up stuff, but this time he doesn't utter a single lie for me. In the past he has pretended to be his own assistant, canceling an interview with a reporter over and over again; he has acted like a Corvette-driving loudmouth for the BBC; he has staged a fight in a fast-food restaurant for Spin magazine; he has refused to admit he was the intentionally bad choreographer...
...decided she didn't want her real name in the movie because halfway through the film, Kaufman gives up trying to write an unorthodox screenplay and goes conventional, which means the movie's Orlean sleeps around, gets homicidal and deals drugs. But after meeting with Jonze, she was onboard. "Spike seems really earnest and sincere. He's not trying to be postironic ironic. I got this feeling that this was a very human effort and not an effort to be cool," she says. "You feel like, 'What a nice young man.'" Now the only thing she's upset about...
...only did he get Amy Pascal, vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment to green-light the film, but he also persuaded her to allow him to use her as a character in the movie. "Nothing Spike does is a parody," she says. "It's always real, and he always celebrates humanity." Robert McKee, the screenwriting teacher whose classes are mocked in the movie, gave Jonze permission to use his name...
...life. So Jonze had to be the adult in dealing with the studio and the people depicted in the film. Jonze first got in touch with Kaufman after he read the Malkovich script, and Kaufman chose Jonze to direct it because no one else was interested. "When I heard Spike Jonze was interested in me, I thought it was the son of the bandleader who is also a producer out here. I didn't really watch videos," Kaufman says. He came up with the idea of inserting himself into Adaptation when he was stuck trying to write a film version...
Whether audiences will be amused or annoyed by the final product is an open question. Director Spike Jonze is a Seinfeldian surrealist, and it's fun, especially if you happen to be a writer, to see Charlie trying to concentrate on his script while visions of coffee and a banana-nut muffin dance distractingly in his head...