Genre: Comedy
Premise: When a failing TV writer sees his friend, Charlie Kaufman, become a screenwriting mega-star after his indie hit, “Being John Malkovich,” he decides to kill him.
About: While there have been rumors that Charlie Kaufman wrote Killing Charlie Kaufman under the pseudonym “Wrick Cunningham,” those rumors have been confirmed to be false, as Charlie Kaufman’s people themselves wrote to tell me that that’s not the case. As for what that means on who did write “Killing,” who knows? It could be anyone who’s a Charlie Kaufman fan.
Writer: Wrick Cunningham
Details: 112 pages – March 5, 2002 draft (1st draft)
Rick Cunningham is on suicide patrol – for himself. He’s got a wife he doesn’t really like. Kids he can’t support. He’s a writer but his agent barely talks to him. Therefore he’s decided life isn’t worth living anymore. That is before he gets a surprise phone call that he’s been invited to work on the Donny Most show, a sitcom centered around a comedian named Donny Most.
The staff is a little surprised to find out Rick’s never actually worked on a TV show before. In fact, Rick doesn’t even WATCH TV. But gosh golly gee they sure do like making fun of his name (Richie Cunningham?). People like to ask him how the Fonz his doing. If he’s talked to Ralph Malph lately. It drives Rick nuts. But at least he’s getting paid to write.
That is until an unfortunate accident. While pulling out from a parking space after work, Rick accidentally RUNS OVER Donny Most, the star of the show! The injuries are enough to put Donny in the hospital for months, which means the show is cancelled! Which means all those writers are out of jobs. Which means they all HATE Rick.
Well, all except for one. Another writer on the show named Charlie Kaufman can’t thank Rick enough. He HATED working on Donny Most and the cancellation has given him new life. In fact, it means he can finish this passion project of his, a feature script called, “Being John Malkovich.” Rick thinks the idea is way too bizarre but encourages Charlie to stick with it. Who knows, it might make a great writing sample someday.
Meanwhile, Rick’s career starts tanking even more spectacularly than before. Everyone in town thinks that he killed Donny Most (even though he’s fine – just injured) and therefore won’t hire him for anything. On top of that, Rick gets word that his old friend Charlie sold that crazy John Malkovich script. And even more surprisingly, Malkovich, the actor, is doing it! Hmm, he figures, that’s nice. Too bad it will only make 10 bucks at the box office.
Malkovich ends up making more than 10 bucks at the box office. In fact, the success of the film launches Kaufman into the screenwriting stratosphere. Everyone wants to be in the Charlie Kaufman business. For some reason this devastates Rick, who ends up joining a “We Hate Charlie Kaufman” support group, made up of people who have known Kaufman at one point or another and now want to kill him. In fact, the focus of the group is offering up dream scenarios in which they kill Charlie is bizarre and violent ways.
Pretty soon, Rick wants to kill Charlie too. He’s convinced that Charlie’s responsible for his dying career. So he goes and buys a gun and starts prepping for the murder. In the meantime, a new pill comes out that allows you to feel exactly like a Charlie Kaufman movie – both happy but also a little bittersweet. People in the group start taking the pill and find happiness in being able to feel like Charlie.
Rick gets distracted when an updated “Happy Days” show gets ordered and they want him to work on it. They think it’s hilarious that a writer named Rick Cunningham would be on the writing team. Rick finds his way back to a good place and decides to re-distribute his anger into writing a script about how he wants to kill Charlie Kaufman. Once finished, he sends it to Charlie, who loves it! He wants to make it. Which would be great except Rick falls into a coma (after getting shot by Donny Most, who was pissed off that Rick ruined his career)!
Then (of course) after he awakes, he falls into ANOTHER coma! And when he awakes, he finds out he’s been taking the Charlie Kaufman pill, which has made him believe he’s Charlie Kaufman. Which means that it wasn’t Rick who wrote “Killing Charlie Kaufman.” It was Kaufman himself! Kaufman tries to explain all this to Rick (or is he explaining it to himself?) as Killing Charlie Kaufman becomes a giant hit starring Tom Cruise as Charlie Kaufman. Uhhh, confused yet? Yeah, me too. Then again, would it be a Charlie Kaufman script if you weren’t?
Okay, lots to say about this one. Let’s start with the first act. Rick Cunningham starts off miserable. He’s already in a bad place. He already wants to kill himself. Therefore, when Charlie starts doing well and Rick becomes miserable, I had a hard time accepting that he’d pin all this on Charlie. He was no worse than he was a few months ago. I thought the script would’ve worked better if it had started out with Rick at the top of his career. He was kicking ass in the TV world. He was on his way to becoming one of the top writers in the business. Maybe the Donny Most Show was actually his first show-runner job. Things were looking up.
Then Charlie Kaufman ruined this somehow and went on to become famous. Actually, that was another beef I had. I couldn’t figure out why Rick was so upset with Charlie. The two were friends. Rick encouraged Charlie to pursue the Being John Malkovich script. Why would he want to kill him after he became successful with it? It wasn’t like Charlie screwed him over or was a dick to him. He simply became successful.
The script probably needed Charlie to be more of an asshole or screw Rick over in some way. There needed to be a moment where Rick could’ve submitted his weird quirky script to one of the producers of the show, but decided against it cause he felt it would go nowhere. Charlie then did instead, which led to his career skyrocketing. In other words, Rick could’ve had this life himself, and he feels Charlie stole it from him. Then it would sort of make sense why he’d become obsessed with killing him. As it stands, I didn’t understand the hate.
Then, when we get into the Charlie Kaufman drug and the producing of Killing Charlie Kaufman, things start to get weird. Like, really weird. It’s always tricky when you have a screenplay mostly grounded in reality then try to throw in a dose of fantasy – such as the Charlie Kaufman pill. If there’s anyone who can pull it off, it’s Kaufman, but I had trouble wrapping my brain around the pill and what was going on with it. It felt a bit too “out there.”
And of course I hate wrapping major plot points around murky story elements. At first the pill appears to be a joke, something to talk about during the group therapy sessions. But then it becomes an essential part of the story, with Rick starting to believe he’s Charlie (or something) and writing a script under Charlie’s name, which is actually under Rick’s name, which is actually a pseudonym for Charlie, which is actually written in real life by “Wrick Cunningham,” who is of course Charlie Kaufman.
When you’re trying to pull shit like that off, you have to make sure the edges are as sharp as can be. And they weren’t, often leaving me wondering what the heck was going on. You could read me the section where Kaufman explains to Rick how Rick thought he was Charlie when he wrote the script a million times over and I still wouldn’t get it.
You know, I originally wrote this review thinking it was written by Charlie Kaufman. I don’t know what to make of it now being written by some other completely random person. I mean, it would’ve been pretty cool if Kaufman orchestrated the whole facade and a totally Kaufman like thing to do. But I guess we’re just left with a really big fan of Kaufman who sorta kinda sounds like him and has too much time on his hands. Regardless of who wrote it, it didn’t really click. This one wasn’t for me.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Avoid wrapping major plot points around confusing or murky story elements. We’re not really sure what these “Charlie Kaufman pills” are or how they work. So when the final act consists of our protag “becoming” Charlie Kaufman and “sorta” writing this script as Kaufman since he was on the pills, we’re just confused.
