Antkind

by Charlie Kaufman

Sym​bio​psy​cho​tax​ipl​asm.

Starbucks is the smart coffee for dumb people. It’s the Christopher Nolan of coffee. Dunkin’ Donuts is lowbrow, authentic. It is the simple, real pleasure of a Judd Apatow movie. Not showing off. Actual. Human. Don’t compete with me, Christopher Nolan. You will always lose. I know who you are, and I know I am the smarter of us.

In any event (I’ll stop nattering), I view all worthwhile films this way, as well as once with the monitor upside down, which forces me to not take gravity for granted as a force in the film.

theater and literature, the mother and father of film, respectively.”

But as of now, I am simply a celebrator of geniuses, an apologist for great men who are anti-Semites and racists, for brilliant artists who abuse women.

I know this because I wrote an exceedingly long monograph—of record-breaking length in tribute—on long films called Shoah ’Nuff: The Undervaluation of Lengthy Films in Our Current Fast Food Film Culture. Perhaps you read it?”

Some filmmakers don’t consider gravity any more than the average American does, but in a precious few cases—Apatow!—we get to witness a filmmaker grappling with gravity in every frame. Had I not watched This Is 40 upside down—by the way, it is no accident that upside down it is This Is 04. Children having children! Right?—I never would have caught the deeper meaning of Paul Rudd sitting on the toilet while talking to Leslie Mann. He is literally keeping his shit from flying all over the room. One can see he has been directed by Apatow to pretend to be sitting casually on the toilet, and there is the surface humor of a couple who have been married so long there is no mystery left; they talk without embarrassment while they shit. But watch it upside down and suddenly Paul Rudd is struggling mightily to keep the feces from spilling out all over his life.