Age: 67
male
Charles Stuart Kaufman (born November 19, 1958) is an American filmmaker and novelist. He wrote the films Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). He both wrote and directed the films Synecdoche, New York (2008), Anomalisa (2015), and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020). In 2020, Kaufman made his literary debut with the release of his first novel, Antkind. One of the most celebrated screenwriters of his era, Kaufman has received an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Independent Spirit Awards, and a Writers Guild of America Award. Film critic Roger Ebert called Synecdoche, New York "the best movie of the decade" in 2009. Three of Kaufman's scripts appear in the Writers Guild of America's list of the 101 greatest movie screenplays ever written.
Charlie Sinclair, a British screenwriter, is tasked with writing the new James Bond film. But as he develops the script, the events he imagines begin to come to life. A new global threat emerges: Solomon Drake, a former spy turned terrorist, who seems to know MI6’s every move in advance. When Sinclair discovers he’s being followed and spied on, he begins to suspect that his film might not be fiction after all: it could be a covert war strategy. As the line between reality and narrative blurs, Sinclair finds himself caught in a real espionage mission, teamed up with Kate Dawson, an agent who might protect him... or manipulate him. Meanwhile, the new 007, Alex Mercer, is on Drake’s trail, but he, too, starts to question his own existence: is he a man, or just a character written by someone else? In the final climax, Sinclair realizes that he’s not just writing Bond’s story—he’s rewriting reality itself. The question is: who’s pulling the strings? And more importantly, if the world is just a script, who wrote it in the first place?
