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KARLOVY VARY — In theory, Charlie Kaufman should be feeling like a million bucks. Over the past 12 months, “Anomalisa,” the film he wrote and co-directed with Duke Johnson, won a special prize at the Venice Film Festival, became one of the most critically acclaimed films of the decade, and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature Film. Now, a little over four months since the movie lost the Oscar to “Inside Out,” Kaufman is being honored with the President’s Award at the 51st Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. As we sat down for a quick interview at the festival it immediately became apparent that Kaufman wasn’t necessarily optimistic about getting another movie made anytime soon.

First thing’s first, however. Kaufman says overall he’s really proud of the whole “Anamolisa” experience remarking, “We did this thing completely outside of everybody’s system because I couldn’t get anything made and I got this thing [into production] and no one knew it was happening. We weren’t doing it by secret or choice, just because no one gave a shit.”

After Venice, and in something of a surprise, Paramount Pictures came on board to distribute. Kaufman says at the time he felt they were “vindicated” for the two years of hard work it took to get the stop-animation film finished. Johnson might have been a successful animator, but no one involved had made a feature-length animated film before.

READ MORE: Doug Liman Replaces Robert Zemeckis On Charlie Kaufman-Scripted YA Movie ‘Chaos Walking’

After playing at some of the world’s biggest festivals, earning a ton of individual kudos and being the subject of an intense publicity campaign, Paramount released “Anamolisa” in limited release on Dec. 30, 2015. It eventually expanded to 573 theaters but when all was said and done it grossed only $3.75 million in the U.S. The reported production budget was $8 million. Kaufman was blunt about the results.

“Y’know, I’m disappointed it got these great reviews and it didn’t do any business,” Kaufman says. “It doesn’t make me dislike the movie. I still really like the movie and I’m still glad we made it, but I was thinking when Paramount took it on I thought, ‘Well, O.K., this is gonna make some money and this is gonna help my career.’ I don’t think it hurt my career, but I don’t think it gave it that thing where it’s like, ‘O.K., this guy is viable. We can make a movie and people will go and see it.’ And I think especially because the reviews were so extraordinarily good, because with ‘Synecdoche[, New York] ’ it was divided. There were great reviews and then [other] people hated it. It’s like you could sort of see why people wouldn’t go to it because of that. This was like, ‘Why this time?’ And I don’t know the answer and I never will, but it’s frustrating to me in that regard.”

Kaufman laughed after he said “Why this time?” but he is clearly frustrated. Even with the critical acclaim of his classic work on “Being John Malkovich,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” or “Anomalisa” he’s been unable to get independent financing for his script “Frank or Francis.” A project he’s been trying to get funded for the past six years. He notes, “I think if ‘Anamolisa’ made money and it had a modest budget for an animated film and it made $20 million it would be a different thing.”

Things are not necessarily dire, however. Kaufman recently finished a screenplay for Paramount and Steve Carell that he began working on before they acquired “Anomalisa.” He’s waiting to hear if they are going to move forward with it although he didn’t sound that optimistic about its chances. (It should be noted that Paramount’s inaction on this particular project could have much more to do with the current battle over parent company Viacom’s future, a corporate war currently playing out in a court, than anything else.)

But if you’re scratching your head wondering why this visionary talent isn’t more prolific, it isn’t for lack of trying. At worst, in this age of Peak TV it should be a slam dunk for Kaufman to land a series on Netflix or Amazon, right? Well, perhaps he really is just a victim of bad luck.

There was the FX pilot for “How and Why” starring John Hawkes, Michael Cera, Catherine Keener and Sally Hawkins that didn’t get a series greenlight, and more recently, another idea for a series that Showtime, HBO and FX bid on.

“I went to HBO for a variety of reasons. I knew somebody there. I felt confident about going there,” Kaufman says. “Once they put it in turnaround, which they did in a legitimate way, nobody wanted it anymore. I felt like it was the same idea. The scripts were good, but it was tainted somehow because nobody wanted it. We went everywhere. We went to Showtime. We went back to FX. We went to Netflix we went to whoever else, I don’t remember. AMC maybe.”

And before you ask, no one has came calling to revive the series after the initial critical success of “Anomalisa.”

Looking for a silver lining for the future — this was meant to be a celebratory occasion, remember — I asked Kaufman if he took solace in the fact so many fans were still so passionate about his work. He admitted he did and even loved when his last live action film, “Synecdoche, New York,” found a divisive reaction from audiences and reviewers alike. But after 25 years in the film and TV business Kaufman sounds like he’s trying to be philosophical about it all.

“It’s been so difficult and demoralizing to try and get stuff made. Especially after I had this period where it was easy to get things made,” Kaufman says. “I had this period where it was hard to get things made and then I had this period after ‘Malkovich’ where I wasn’t the director, but my scripts were getting made. It was a different time and so it felt like that was the way [the creative side] was going. It was a momentum. You lose momentum really fast in this business I think. People forget you and more people kind of crowd in to where you were and it’s been hard.”

He adds, “I need to be able to make a living in addition to all this other stuff, but the great reviews or people who write these thoughtful things about my movies where they are expressing something intellectually or emotionally that they experienced in it means everything to me.”

Click here for our full coverage from the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.