To Be Open to What It's Going to Be

"The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive. I tried to approach the directing in the same way. We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring."

"I'm interested in dreams and the way we tell ourselves stories in a dream. Let me make it clear that this film isn't a dream, but it does have a dreamlike logic. In a dream, you may start to fly and it doesn't seem unusual to you. Your reaction is not at all like the one you'd have if you were awake in the normal world. You have to accept everything that happens in the film the way it comes. Of course it's something that wouldn't happen in real life – we're in a film!"

~ Charlie Kaufmann, speaking at Cannes this week about his latest film and directorial debut, Synecdoche