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Charlie Kaufman: Screenwriters' Lecture

BAFTA / BFI Screenwriters' Lecture Series
Charlie Kaufman ·2011 ·1h 10m Watch / Read Source
“The only thing you have to offer is yourself.”
Say who you are. The Oscar-winning writer of Eternal Sunshine, Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation delivers an anti-lecture on screenwriting — rejecting templates, formulas, and the desire to be liked in favor of radical authenticity, vulnerability as artistic purpose, and the terrifying freedom of not knowing what you're doing.
Challenges how you think about writing
Won't help with: any specific craft skill
Topics themecraftprocess
Key Insights
4 takeaways from this resource — click to expand
💡 If craft is the first thing driving your screenplay, the audience will sense there's nothing behind it. ›
Kaufman argues that craft knowledge becomes dangerous when it occupies first position — when the writer's primary orientation is 'am I executing the technique correctly?' rather than 'am I saying something true?' Craft in first position produces screenplays that hit every structural beat, deploy every character arc tool, and feel completely hollow. The beats land, but nothing resonates. Craft in second position means the writer starts with something they genuinely need to explore or express, and then uses technique to serve that exploration. The screenplay might break rules in the process, but it has a living center the audience can feel.
Check Your Script
Look at your current screenplay's structural choices — act breaks, midpoint, character arc. For each one, ask: did I make this choice because the technique called for it, or because what I'm trying to say required it? If you can't connect a structural choice to something you're genuinely exploring, craft may be leading.
💡 The parts of yourself you're most afraid to put on the page are the only parts that can't be written by someone else. ›
Kaufman's central challenge to writers isn't about technique — it's about honesty. Most writers unconsciously curate what they put on the page, selecting for competence, cleverness, or likability. The result is work that is technically sound but interchangeable — it could have been written by any skilled writer. What makes work irreplaceable is the specific texture of one person's genuine inner life: their particular confusions, their specific fears, their exact way of not understanding the world. This isn't a call for autobiography. It's a call for writing from the place where you actually live rather than from the place where you'd like to be seen living.
Check Your Script
Read through your current draft and identify the moment that feels most personally exposing — the one you'd be most uncomfortable having someone you know read. If no such moment exists, consider whether you're writing from genuine inner territory or from a carefully constructed version of yourself.
💡 Robert McKee says master the craft and you'll write with power. Charlie Kaufman says if craft leads, you'll produce something hollow. They're both describing real dangers. ›
Robert Robert McKee's position: writers who don't understand story principles produce work that fails structurally, no matter how personally meaningful the material. Craft knowledge is liberation, not constraint. Charlie Charlie Kaufman's position: writers whose primary orientation is 'am I executing the technique correctly?' produce technically proficient work that has nothing at its center — the audience can feel the emptiness. Each is identifying a real failure mode. Under-crafted personal vision produces formless, self-indulgent work. Over-crafted technical execution produces soulless, forgettable work. The writer's challenge is holding both: personal truth driving the work, craft in service of that truth.
Check Your Script
If your screenplay feels formless or self-indulgent despite personally meaningful material, you need more McKee — tighter craft to serve the vision. If it feels technically competent but hollow, you need more Kaufman — something genuine underneath the technique.
💡 John Truby says genres have required beats your audience is waiting for. Charlie Kaufman says templates are creative death. The answer is: learn the beats, then decide which ones to break. ›
John John Truby's position: genres are inherited story systems refined over centuries. Each has specific beats audiences expect — miss them and the audience feels something is wrong, even if they can't articulate what. Charlie Charlie Kaufman's position: templates produce formulaic work. Exploration, not execution of pre-existing patterns, is where originality lives. Both are right about different failure modes. A writer who ignores genre expectations confuses the audience. A writer who follows genre conventions without question produces work that feels like everything else. The synthesis: know the genre system completely — then make conscious choices about which beats to deliver, which to subvert, and which to discard, understanding what you're sacrificing with each choice.
Check Your Script
Can you list the specific beats your genre requires? If not, you can't subvert them intelligently — you're just ignoring conventions you don't know exist. If you can list them but followed every one without variation, ask which beats could be twisted or omitted to serve your specific story.
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Summary
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How It Teaches

Encoding fingerprint and cognitive approach

Theory
Examples ›
Pure axiom/philosophy. Kaufman barely references specific films — the lecture is almost entirely philosophical assertion about what writing should be and what the writer's relationship to their work must be. When he mentions his own films, it's not to illustrate technique but to confess vulnerability.
Mechanism
Heuristic ›
Pure mechanism — but not craft mechanism. Kaufman explains WHY authenticity matters (because it connects to the audience's humanity, reduces loneliness, creates art rather than product) and WHY formulas fail (because they're mass production, not personal expression). No heuristics, no shortcuts — the whole point is that there are no shortcuts.
Diagnostic
Prescriptive ›
Paradoxically prescriptive: the prescription is 'reject prescriptions.' Kaufman tells you what to DO — be authentic, embrace failure, reject templates, say who you are, do not simplify — but the doing is about creative stance, not craft execution. More manifesto than diagnostic.
Global
Local ›
Entirely meta — about the writer's relationship to writing itself. Not whole-story, not scene-level, but creative-identity level. The most zoomed-out resource possible: before you write anything, who are you, and are you willing to put that on the page?
Cognitive Mode
Fi + Ne
Teaches entirely from personal conviction about what art should be (Fi) — authenticity, vulnerability, the refusal to sell rather than give. Then embraces open-ended exploration as the creative method (Ne) — the screenplay as a step into the abyss, an undetermined secret even from you, with no template. Actively hostile to Te systems (formulas, templates, character arcs, the business of screenwriting) and to Fe conformity (the desire to be liked, selling disguised as giving). This is the purest Fi resource in the collection.
The Fi+Ne combination means Kaufman teaches you to START from personal truth (who are you, what do you have to offer) and then EXPLORE without a map (the screenplay as abyss, discovery through process). This is the inverse of every structural resource in the collection. For writers who have learned formulas and feel trapped by them, this is liberation. For writers who need formulas to function, this may feel like being thrown into the ocean without a life raft. Both responses tell you something important about yourself.

What It Teaches

Central thesis and key premises

Anything of value you might write comes from you — not from formulas, templates, character arcs, or the conventions of the screenplay industry. Say who you are, really say it, in your life and in your work. Your writing will be a record of your time. If you're honest about who you are, you'll help someone be less lonely in their world, because that person will recognize themselves in you. That is what art should do. Not sell. Not entertain. Connect. And the only way to connect authentically is to risk failure, embrace not-knowing, and refuse to simplify.
Teaching Modality
Manifesto
Approach
Not a mentor sharing technique, not an analyst reverse-engineering structure, not a system with rules. A manifesto delivered as a performance of its own principles — Kaufman opens by admitting he's never given a speech before, doesn't know what he's doing, and wants to offer the audience the experience of watching someone fumble. The lecture IS the philosophy: vulnerability, not-knowing, authenticity in real time.
Process
Say Who You Are
Say who you are, really say it in your life and in your work. Tell someone out there who is lost, someone not yet born, someone who won't be born for 500 years. Your writing will be a record of your time. If you're honest about who you are, you'll help that person be less lonely in their world, because that person will recognize themselves in you and that will give them hope. Give that to the world rather than selling something to the world.
Craft
There Is No Template
A screenplay is an exploration. It's about the thing you don't know. It's a step into the abyss. It necessarily starts somewhere, anywhere; there is a starting point but the rest is undetermined. It is a secret, even from you. There's no template for a screenplay, or there shouldn't be. There are at least as many screenplay possibilities as there are people who write them. We've been conned into thinking there is a pre-established form.
Process
I Don't Know Anything
I don't know anything. And if there's one thing that characterizes my writing it's that I always start from that realization and I do what I can to keep reminding myself of that during the process. We try to be experts because we're scared; we don't want to feel foolish or worthless; we want power because power is a great disguise.
Theme
Vulnerability as Art's Purpose
I wanted to do something that I don't know how to do, and offer you the experience of watching someone fumble, because I think maybe that's what art should offer. An opportunity to recognize our common humanity and vulnerability. Rather than pretending I'm an expert in anything, or presenting myself in a way that will reinforce the odd, ritualised lecturer-lecturee model, I'm just telling you that I don't know anything.
Process
You Are the Only Thing You Have to Offer
In many cases a major obstacle is your deeply seated belief that you are not interesting. And since convincing yourself that you are interesting is probably not going to happen, take it off the table. Think: perhaps I'm not interesting, but I am the only thing I have to offer, and I want to offer something. And by offering myself in a true way I am doing a great service to the world, because it is rare and it will help.
Process
Failure Is a Badge of Honor
Failure is a badge of honor. It means you risked failure. And if you don't risk failure, you're never going to do anything that's different from what you've already done or what somebody else has done. Just know that that's the choice you're making when you won't put yourself at jeopardy like that.
Craft
Do Not Simplify
Allow yourself the freedom to change as you discover, allow your screenplay to grow and change as you work on it. You will discover things as you work. You must not put these things aside, even if they're inconvenient. Let's not disregard all the little voices in order to simplify. Do not simplify. Let's not worry about what it looks like, let's not worry about failure.
Craft
Craft in Second Position
The danger of craft is that it needs to be in second position to what it is that you're doing. If craft is in first position, you produce work that is well-made but lacks the thing that makes it matter — the personal, the vulnerable, the authentically you. Craft serves expression. When expression serves craft, you get product, not art.
Process
The Desire to Be Liked
The desire to be liked drives so much of what we do and it is a creative trap. If you know that people will like you when you are a certain way, and they'll like your work when you do it a certain way, then your desire to be liked might lead to you losing yourself. The business of screenwriting is the same business that politicians and corporations are in — selling something important to them by disguising it as something important to you.
Process
Dreams as Model for Creative Freedom
Your dreams are very well written. People turn anxieties, crises, longing, love, regret, and guilt into beautiful rich stories in their dreams. What allows us the creative freedom in our dreams that we don't have in our waking lives? I suspect part of it is that in our dreams we are not constricted by worry about how we will appear to others. It's a private conversation with ourselves. If we were better able to approach our work this way, the results would be different.
Theme
Acknowledge the Wound
If you don't acknowledge the wound — the vulnerability, the fear, the loneliness that drives you — you'll become a cynic. You'll turn yourself into a cog in the machine. You might master technique and craft, but you'll never create true art. You might entertain audiences but not make them feel something deeply. The wound is the source. The wound is what makes art necessary.

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