Multiple awards and an Oscar nomination only scratch the surface of what you need to know about Charlie Kaufman’s new movie Anomalisa.

When the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich scribe wrote the radio play more than a decade ago, he never intended for it to be for the big screen.

Kaufman told us: “I was writing these stage radio plays and I was trying to work out a way to use these three actors, for economic reasons.”

Then five years ago, a comedy writer called Dino Stamatopoulos, who had seen the play and had worked with Kaufman asked if his animation studio could put it on the screen.

Kaufman - who had not made a movie since 2008’s commercially unsuccessful Synecdoche, New York - joined up with stop-motion expert Duke Johnson as co-director.

Kaufman said: “I had never met Duke before and now we’re like brothers, or uncle and nephew.

He added: “I did have some concerns about giving up the thing that it was written to be, which was a non-visual thing.

“But I was desperate to get movies made. I was struggling for a long time to get something made and this was another possibility.

“I told them if they could get the money they could go ahead and make it.”

Read more:

Johnson told us: “We were excited at the prospect of doing this but didn’t know how to actually do it.”

He added: “We were like ‘how are we going to get the money?’ We dipped our toe in traditional financing avenues and people were open to it, but it’s a process.

“Somebody mentioned Kickstarter was kind of a new thing at the time and we thought ‘what the hell, we’ll try it’.”

Kickstarter allowed the filmmakers to begin the project before it was picked up by London-born producer Keith Calder, who financed the rest of it.

It is an innovative way of making a movie, and one that gave the pair a chance to work unhindered by studios but, for Kaufman at least, it is not one he would repeat.

He said: “It comes with a lot of work. It comes with a lot of dealing with people. We’re still actually dealing with it all these years later. It is not the ideal way to approach a project.”

Rather than a dozen or so executives to consult with, Kaufman and Johnson found themselves doing so with 5,770 Kickstarters and it distracted from their artistic endeavour. The day before we met, Kaufman spent hours signing 450 scripts for people who have helped fund Anomalisa.

Anomalisa follows a retail expert, Michael Stone (David Thewlis) who is staying at a hotel so he can deliver a speech at a conference.

But he cannot connect with anyone. Everyone sounds the same and looks the same (and is voiced by Tom Noonan), until he meets insecure Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh) whose voice is music to his ears.

Kaufman said: “I read about this thing called the Fregoli Syndrome, which is the belief that everyone else in the world is the same person.

“I thought that would be kind of cool for a character to suffer from a metaphorical version of that.”

He added: “I thought the issue was this character couldn’t connect to people and I put him in this environment where you don’t have real connections with people, where you have fake connections that seem real – like the hotel and working with service industry people.

“It seemed interesting for me for him to have this struggle and do it in a stylised way.”

Like our What's On page on Facebook for entertainment news, interviews, reviews and features from across south London.

 

 

Though it was not envisaged to ever be visual, Johnson’s stop-motion puppetry fits it perfectly.

Johnson said: “It is a different lens through which to view the human experience. Every gesture, every nuance, every interaction is decided upon and then painstakingly articulated.”

He added: “There is something interesting in how this works out in that it wasn’t intended for this medium but it seems to fit it.

“Maybe that’s a good thing. Had we known going in, had you (Kaufman) written something for this, maybe it would have been different.”

Kaufman concurred. He said: “I think it would have been different. I think the direct and simple construction of this piece exists because it was a radio play and had to be clear in this way that was auditory.

“It isn’t the way I normally write. I usually write more convoluted stories so had I been told ‘Ok, you’re writing an animated film’, it probably would have been different.”

Anomalisa has been tremendously well received critically. It has been loved by reviewers and won prizes at film festivals all over the world, including at Venice.

But the accolades have not transferred into commercial success since its release in the States last year (Anomalisa is not out here until March 11), which has understandably disappointed Johnson and Kaufman.

Johnson said: “It is wonderful that people have responded to the film. Its critical success is extraordinary, the Oscar nomination, these are all wonderful accolades and I wish honestly that the film would do better with audiences at large. I wish it could have a broader success.”

Kaufman added: “Not that people who have seen it don’t like it but we wish more people would go to see it.”

Not even an Oscar nomination (for best animated feature, although it probably deserved nominations for screenwriting and best picture too) has got people through the doors.

Kaufman said: “They don’t seem to. Who knows what it would have been without it but certainly it has been struggling in the US.

“This has been such a rollercoaster for us because we came for nowhere and suddenly everyone is talking about it and we’re winning at festivals and getting these amazing reviews and Paramount comes and sweeps in and picks it up out of Toronto.

“Then it comes out and it is not making money, so we’re dealing with the disappointment of that.”

Certainly a part of the reason could be people’s expectations of animated films (this is definitely not for kids) and a reluctance for audiences to take a risk.

Half a million illegal downloads has no doubt harmed its performance at the box office, too.

Sadly for a movie that began with crowdfunding, it ultimately still comes down to the bottom line.

Kaufman said: “If it had made money, it would be possible or easier for us to do it again.

“If you make our movie and it comes out and does really well – and really well at our level, not at the level of Deadpool – that’s a game-changer.

“We don’t need to make that kind of money for it to be a game-changer because it didn’t cost that much to make.

“But if it is not making as much as it cost, it is not really a game-changer for anybody - for us or anyone else trying to do this sort of thing.”

Anomalisa (15) is out Friday, March 11.