I've got a new strangest film: Adaptation, which is the story, written by Charlie Kaufman, about how Charlie Kaufman tried to adapt a book about flowers into a movie and ended up writing a movie about his attempt to adapt the book. The scene where he decides that he's writing about himself is so bizarre I can hardly believe it:
Kaufman, making notes into a tape recorder: "We open on Charlie Kaufman, fat, bald, sweating, talking into his tape recorder. He says, "We open on Charlie Kaufman, fat, bald, sweating, talking into his tape recorder. He says, "We open on Charlie Kaufman, fat, bald, sweating..."
(That's not an exact quote, I don't have the movie in front of me, but it's close.)
Fortunately at that point the movie cuts away.
A couple of interesting notes about this movie:
Kaufman invented a fictional twin brother for this movie, named Donald, to represent the side of himself that desired to sell out and make more profitable, mainstream movies, and gave his fictional twin co-writing credit for the screenplay. The Oscar nomination was for both Kaufman brothers, and was the first time a fictional character received an Academy Award nomination. The Academy made it known that if they won, the quote-unquote brothers would have to share a single statue. 🙂
Also, interestingly, Nicholas Cage, who played Kaufman, said in an interview that he went against every acting instinct he possesses and played the character exactly the way the director suggested, earning himself an Oscar nod in the process.
Also Maggie Gyllenhaal gets briefly tickled in the movie 😉