Charlie Kaufman isn’t exactly an impersonal writer. His attempts to adapt The Orchid Thief turned into Adaptation., a movie about a painfully self-aware screenwriter named “Charlie Kaufman†falling apart while attempting to adapt The Orchid Thief. It’s a struggle to imagine Kaufman, either fictionalized or IRL, thriving in the anonymous and often abrasive environment of a sitcom writer’s room. So it’s surprising that, before breaking into screenwriting, Kaufman worked in television for almost a decade, staffing on sketch shows like The Dana Carvey Show and The Edge and sitcoms like Get A Life and Ned & Stacey.
There’s evidence to support the idea that Kaufman might not have thrived in collaborative settings. In this oral history of The Dana Carvey Show, the writers describe him in the same way surprised neighbors describe convicted serial killers, mentioning that he was “really quiet,†“extremely shy and awkward,†and “kept to himself.†Considering how poorly suited Kaufman seems for the job of sitcom writing, I wanted to take a look at his episodes of Get A Life and Ned & Stacey and see if there was any evidence of the man who would go on to write, among other things, the definitive film about a freelance puppeteer possessing a major film actor.
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via The Awl http://splitsider.com/2012/06/a-look-back-at-charlie-kaufmans-sitcom-work/