Interview (Written): Charlie Kaufman and Ian Reid

A conversation between filmmaker Charlie Kaufman, writer-director of the movie I’m Thinking About Ending Things and Ian Reid, the author of the book upon which the film is based.

Charlie Kaufman is best known as a screenwriter with such writing credits as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but he is also a writer-director of the movies Synecdoche, New York, Anomalisa, and his latest film I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

Plot summary via Netflix: Despite second thoughts about their relationship, a young woman (Jessie Buckley) takes a road trip with her new boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to his family farm. Trapped at the farm during a snowstorm with Jake’s mother (Toni Collette) and father (David Thewlis), the young woman begins to question the nature of everything she knew or understood about her boyfriend, herself, and the world. An exploration of regret, longing and the fragility of the human spirit, I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS is directed and written by Academy Award® winner Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Inspired by Iain Reid’s bestselling namesake novel.

Here is an excerpt from a conversation between Kaufman and Reid.

CK: If you move into a genre, there are conventions that you have to attend to, and I didn’t think that was going to serve the material.

IR: Exactly. Like jump scares and gore — you and I talked about how for us, even as viewers, that’s less appealing. Stuff that truly makes me unsettled or makes me think about my own life — that is interesting. I’ve always thought of the book as being about questions more than anything, and not really about any particular answers.

CK: You said that you felt it was a philosophical book, not a horror book.

IR: Yeah, which is why there’s so much dialogue, especially at the beginning. People talking about the end of the book have sometimes said, “Oh, I figured out the twist halfway through.” In my mind, I’m like, What do you mean, the twist? That’s not how I set out to write it. If the end is surprising to a reader, I like that. But again, this isn’t a psychological thriller with a twist ending. It’s just a book, and it tries to tell a story in a way that’s a little bit more unusual. I feel like the film also does that. It’s not necessarily about the end; it’s about everything that’s happening and the questions that arise.

CK: I wanted to address that concern of the twist ending by not making it a twist ending. Movies are different, in my estimation, than books, in that you’re taking something that can be enigmatic on a page, and you’re making it concrete: Now you’ve got actors and a set, and you’re saying, “This is what it looks like.”

IR: It’s now solidified.

CK: It’s funny, people don’t get the ending of your book sometimes. I’ve read things online where it’s like, “Well, what happened? I don’t understand.” It’s curious.

IR: I always say — and again, I think this is something that you and I are similarly aligned on — that people can interpret it however they want. They have as much authority as I do to say what it’s about. People have been quite emotional with me about what the ending means to them, and they want to know what it means to me. Sometimes they almost want to argue with me: “This is what it has to mean.” And I think, Well, it does for you, and that’s valid, but for me, it means something very specific, and that’s O.K. That probably is the same with the film.

CK: I feel like any work of art, any creative work, exists as an interaction between the person who created it and the person who’s experiencing it. They bring to it what resonates with them based on their life experiences. If you spoon-feed stuff to people, then you don’t allow for that process; therefore, it’s a lesser experience.

Here is a trailer for I’m Thinking of Ending Things:

For the rest of the conversation between Kaufman and Reid, go here.

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