Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script Series)

Rating:
Summary: A Good Resource with some flaws
Review: "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is the best movie that I have seen to date in my life. As a result, I have spent a lot of time pondering both the movie's characteristics and the story line.

This book is undeniably a good resource for fans of ESOTSM. The interviews in the back are fairly enlightening about how it was made.

I have, however, two complaints:

1. I was very disappointed by the fact that the book did not have a selection of color photographic stills from the movie. ESOTSM was not just a very compelling story. Many of its images were visually very striking. Therefore, I felt shortchanged by the low-quality black and white photographs that were included at the end. I find myself wondering why this book could not have had color photographs like the elaborate book that was released on "the Passion." The fact that there are no such photographs is inexcusable to me.

2. It was interesting to read the shooting script. But the shooting script was significantly (albeit not radically) changed for the movie. Large amounts of dialog got the chop in the movie, and one major scene was moved from near the end to the beginning of the film. My feeling is that the shooting script is in fact inferior to that which appeared in the movie. I find myself wondering why a script that reflected the story as was seen in the movie was not also provided in this book. Again, I find it hard to understand.

But these flaws don't detract from the fact that ESOTSM is a truly great movie that I plan to watch again and again once I get the DVD.

Rating:
Summary: Provides the reader with a 165-page shooting script in book
Review: A Hollywood film script book from Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (whose previous credits include "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation"), for the very highly acclaimed film "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind", this provides the reader with a 165-page shooting script in book form and will prove to be a welcome addition to the growing library of Hollywood film scripts and "must" reading for aspiring film students. Enhanced with a Q&A with Kaufman, black/white movie stills with commentary, and complete cast and crew credits, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind will also prove of great interest to the legions of Jim Carrey fans who enjoyed his performance as Joel, a young man who wants to have the painful memories of his girlfriend Clementine (played by Kate Winslet) erased from his mind.

Rating:
Summary: Provides the reader with a 165-page shooting script in book
Review: A Hollywood film script book from Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (whose previous credits include "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation"), for the very highly acclaimed film "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind", this provides the reader with a 165-page shooting script in book form and will prove to be a welcome addition to the growing library of Hollywood film scripts and "must" reading for aspiring film students. Enhanced with a Q&A with Kaufman, black/white movie stills with commentary, and complete cast and crew credits, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind will also prove of great interest to the legions of Jim Carrey fans who enjoyed his performance as Joel, a young man who wants to have the painful memories of his girlfriend Clementine (played by Kate Winslet) erased from his mind.

Rating:
Summary: Eternal Intrigue of the Spotless Screenwriter
Review: By fusing his already proven intellectual prowess with a warm, beating heart, Kaufman has devised his most affecting work yet.

On its own terms, this is a lovely read - a rare screenplay that attains the readability of great fiction, rich as it is with deeply flawed, loveable characters. When compared to the Michel Gondry film it spawned, this truly reveals itself as a catch. The opportunity to study two media, two auteurs at the top of their game, and one heartbreaking story told in two strikingly different but profoundly similar ways is one rarely afforded to the movie lover; take it while you can.

If the box office is any indication, it may soon be but a memory...

Rating:
Summary: A script worth owning
Review: Charlie Kaufman has proved himself to far more than a screenwriter by now--a geniune auteur. ETERNAL SUNSHINE has all of the cerebral acrobatics of his earlier works, but far more heart. Beneath all of the inventiveness and camera tricks, there's one of the more real and honest love stories written in the past twenty years. Audiences don't BUY love stories easily nowadays, and Kaufman manages to pen two truly eccentric, difficult, and lovable people, and make us understand and accept the sacrifices they make in order to be together. I can't say enough about his work, and the great irony is that mainstream HOLLYWOOD movies are the medium for the most inventive writer in America today.

Rating:
Summary: A script worth owning
Review: Charlie Kaufman has proved himself to far more than a screenwriter by now--a geniune auteur. ETERNAL SUNSHINE has all of the cerebral acrobatics of his earlier works, but far more heart. Beneath all of the inventiveness and camera tricks, there's one of the more real and honest love stories written in the past twenty years. Audiences don't BUY love stories easily nowadays, and Kaufman manages to pen two truly eccentric, difficult, and lovable people, and make us understand and accept the sacrifices they make in order to be together. I can't say enough about his work, and the great irony is that mainstream HOLLYWOOD movies are the medium for the most inventive writer in America today.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful imagination of the spotless mind
Review: Charlie Kaufmen has done it again with his new phenominal film eternal sunshine of the spotless mind a must have for CK or MG fans

Rating:
Summary: memories are to be remembered
Review: this is a brilliant affecting screenplay..like much of kaufman's work it combines inventivness and originality with the creation of well drawn poignant complex characters trying to make sense of and live as best they can in this world we live in. amidst all the craziness and surreal aspects of his work there's a real humanism that shines through...i once read in an interview charlie did that he consider's himself primarily a book person not a film person..i loved that...the world needs more screenwriters who look at themselves as primarily book people particularly when they can team up with such visual artists as michel gondry or spike jonz..no wonder these collaboratons produce such great films..these artists perfectley complement each other..nonetheless this screenplay stands on it's own as a work of art..

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking and truly original
Review: This was a movie I didn't expect to like. I hadn't heard that much about it and wasn't all that enthusiastic about seeing another Jim Carey movie. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised.

First of all, this movie is truly original. That's rare these days. It revolves around the premise that you can erase someone from your memories. In this case, the "someone" to be erased is Kate Winslet's character of Clementine. She is wacky and artsy, and plays against Carey's straightlaced character Joel perfectly. I had just seen an interview with Winslet before this movie and was amazed at her accurate American accent. Very well done.

And Carey is brilliant. His toned down, not over the top portrayal of Joel was delightful and wonderful. This is the first time I actually thought of Carey as a very good actor. Both Carey and Winslet deserve an Oscar for this film.

In addition, the film is beautifully shot as well. This could have been a very goofy movie, with a premise that was hard to actually get into and believe, but this film worked perfectly on all accounts: writing, cinematography, acting. I would recommend this film to anyone that wants to see a thoroughly enjoyable, funny, sweet, interesting, wonderful film that is unlike any you've seen before.

From the author of The Difference Now, A New Dish, and At the Coffee Shop. (www.thedifferencenow.com).

Rating:
Summary: Resonant
Review: Walking out of the theater left me feeling a bit like the characters in the movie -- longing to hold onto a piece of this thing that I didn't understand but that just stunned and awed me -- and I carried that feeling around for a while, while thinking through the plot and themes in the movie, seeking to placate this longing by getting a hold of this screenplay. Of course, reading the script didn't placate anything... it only made me feel more bound and enthralled.

This is a shooting script, so it differs in certain (sometimes interesting) ways from the film: it contains a few scenes that were edited out from the film (e.g. Joel's prior and rekindled relationship with his ex Naomi, Joel and Clementine's first date) and some that were moved to different parts of the film, while missing certain dialogue or scenes that were inserted subsequently into the film (much of which came from Jim Carrey, suggesting that his approach to acting added creatively to the film). There is also a short interview with Charlie Kaufman at end of the script that discusses the circumstances under which he wrote it, his thoughts on the structure of the story and the reasoning behind certain differences between earlier versions of the script, this version, and the film.

You can see the script as standing freely on its own as a work of art -- the arc of the script is subtlely different (e.g. more open about leading you to feel guarded about whether Joel and Clementine are "meant" for each other) -- but the pleasure I took from reading it come from how it interacts with the film: illuminating parts that were a little unclear or incongruous in the film (from the big, e.g. Clementine's complaints about Joel, to the small, e.g. why Joel couldn't remember Huckleberry Hound in the beginning of the movie), inviting you to think about the directorial and editorial choices that go into making a film (and coming to appreciate many of them), and just giving you an opportunity, like a low-budget DVD, to play the film back in your mind (in your memory... so that "watching" imperfect memories of a film about imperfect memories... haha) to relish it all over again.