Charlie Kaufman can never be accused of not being original. Kaufman has brought us Being John Malkovich, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. His last film, Synecdoche, New York was one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. For his next film, Frank of Francis, Kaufman has lined up Steve Carrell, Jack Black, Nicolas Cage and Kevin Kline. Frank or Francis has been described as a satirical semi-musical that features (among other things) Kevin Kline as an animatronic head designed to come up with lucrative ideas completely devoid of artistic value. Now, The Playlist has now provided a description of the film based on the review of a script:
“Frank or Francis,” in our estimation, feels like a deliciously good and contemptuous (though self-aware) screed/send-up of the film industry, not only, the graffiti-with-punctuation bloggers, but the entire machine: fatuous filmmakers, vapid PR people, self-absorbed writers, blowhard actors, and last but not least it serves up a jiujitsu-like takedown on the ego-driven, vacuous meat-parade that is the Academy Awards. No stone is left unturned nor is there much of any kind of hero in the story as everyone is as equally moronic and narcissistic as the other. Still, as Kaufman denotes, it also says a lot of things about society, culture, human nature (and race) and human behavior—albeit some of it in his patently strange and sometimes baffling way.
