The Best Explanation of Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York’s themes, ending, meaning, and real-life application

Everyone is important. 

As big and seemingly confounding as Synecdoche, New York seems, it’s actually quite simple. The broader message is that we don’t have much time and we’re prone to waste time. Caden’s life has three major components: Hazel, his play, and his relationship with himself. All three have potential that ends up down the drain. Right when he and Hazel finally get together, she passes. Right when he “finally” knows how to do the play, after years without an idea, he passes. By the time he has a better idea of himself, after his time spent as Ellen, it’s already too late to apply the knowledge in any meaningful way. Hazel, right before her death, gets at the heart of this theme. Quote: “I wish we had this when we were young. And all those years in between.” 

So Synecdoche uses Caden as an example of who not to be. A self-obsessive hypochondriac who is too busy looking through others rather than looking at them. For as much navel-gazing as he does, the breakthrough in the play finally comes when Caden’s essentially on the periphery, after yielding control to Millicent (performing as Caden). And Millicent restages the funeral of Sammy but removes Caden’s character altogether. It’s a brilliant moment because the original version of the scene (in the film, not the play (but also in the play)) had Caden come to the conclusion that, quote, “I know how to do it, now. There are nearly 13 million people in the world. I mean, can you imagine that many people? And none of those people is an extra. They’re all leads in their own stories. They have to be given their due.”

Except Caden never executed on that idea. Through him, the film tells us the idea. But through Millicent, the film shows us the idea. The pastor isn’t anyone special. Just a random character who hasn’t been built up in any meaningful way. Has no previous scenes. Has no subsequent scenes. To give such a moment to someone who is essentially an outlier would be considered “bad” screenwriting. But it works here because it proves the very point Caden had made—every person is the lead in their own story; they all have main character potential. The fact that this complete unknown can come in and deliver one of the most powerful scenes in the film…it makes you wonder what all the other characters are capable of, what the other actors are capable of, what other people outside the play, out in the world are capable of. 

Stephen King as an example 

It also gets at the importance of the author speaking through characters. Characters allow us to say something we can’t say ourselves. And each of these characters are part of the whole—the whole story, theme, and statement, the whole of the author, of the human condition. 

When Stephen King wrote The Shining, Jack Torrance allowed King to confront his own alcoholism. Wendy and Danny challenged King to reflect on the effect his actions had on his wife and children. About the book, he said (in The Stephen King Companion): Sometimes you confess. You always hide what you’re confessing to. That’s one of the reasons why you make up the story. When I wrote The Shining, for instance, the protagonist of The Shining is a man who has broken his son’s arm, who has a history of child beating, who is beaten himself. And as a young father with two children, I was horrified by my occasional feelings of real antagonism toward my children. Won’t you ever stop? Won’t you ever go to bed? And time has given me the idea that, probably, there are a lot of young fathers and young mothers, both, who feel very angry, who have angry feelings toward their children. But as somebody who has been raised with the idea that “father knows best” and Ward Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver and all this stuff, I would think to myself, “Oh, if he doesn’t shut up, if he doesn’t shut up…” So when I wrote this book, I wrote a lot of that down, and tried to get it out of my system, but it was also a confession. 

About his alcoholism, King told The Guardian, quote: …in a novel, you’re looking for something that’s really harsh. Harshly lit. For me, when I look back, the thing that I remember is being at one of my son’s Little League games with a can of beer in a paper bag, and the coach coming over to me and saying, “If that’s an alcoholic beverage, you’re going to have to leave.” That was where I said to myself, “That’s something I’ll never be able to tell anybody else. I’ll keep that one to myself.” 

The pastor

King was able to confront aspects of himself through characters who weren’t him. Caden never really attempts to do that. Which is why he struggles to find the truth of himself. It isn’t until he lets this “other version” of him take over and remove his character that the pastor delivers the speech that finally brings vitality to the play and hits upon a theme that resonates when you hear it. So much so that people witnessing it tear up and Caden himself says “amen” in response. 

Here’s the full monologue from the pastor: Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make. You can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for 20 years. And you may never, ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is. It’s what you create. And even though the world goes on, for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But, while alive you wait in vain, wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes. Or it seems to but it doesn’t really. So you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected. Something to make you feel whole. Something to make you feel loved. And the truth is, I feel so angry. And the truth is, I feel so f***ing sad. And the truth is, I’ve felt so f***ing hurt for so f***ing long. And for just as long, I’ve been pretending I’m okay just to get along. Just for—I don’t know why. Maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery. Because they have their own. Well, f*** everybody. Amen. 

That speech is from a very masculine point of view and serves as a kind of death for Caden the man. He soon transitions into his life as Ellen and gets to finally experience and understand the female perspective of life. He had told Tammy he always thought he would have been much better at life as a woman. But, as Ellen, his failures are different but the same. Unsatisfying relationships, essentially no children, and his life amounts to essentially nothing. 

Ellen

Cadens time as Ellen leads into the final speech from Millicent that parallels the pastor’s but from the female perspective: What was once before you, an exciting and mysterious future, is now behind you. Lived, understood, disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone is everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are Ellen. All her meager sadnesses are yours. All her loneliness. The gray, straw-like hair. Her red, raw hands. It’s yours. It is time for you to understand this. Walk. As the people who adore you stop adoring you, as they die, as they move on, as you shed them, as you shed your beauty, your youth, as the world forgets you, as you recognize your transience, as you begin to lose your characteristics, one by one, as you learn there is no one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving. Not coming from anyplace, not arriving anyplace, just driving, counting off time. Now, you are here. It’s 7:43. Now you are here. It’s 7:44. Now, you are…gone. 

Caden had spent so much of the movie trying to understand each and every individual. That’s why his play kept growing in scale. The more people he added, the more of the world he reflected, the more insight he thought he would gain about who people were and what made them do what they do. Which was ultimately just him trying to understand why Adele left him and his own disconnect from his daughters and Hazel and Claire. If he put them in his play, maybe he could figure out who they were, some truth he had missed in life. He made the answer complex, when, in reality, it was very simple. Everyone is everyone. To understand them, all he had to do was understand himself. Or anyone, really. That’s synecdoche—a part represents the whole. 

That idea is why we get the woman at the end. Like the pastor, she’s not really a developed character. Having Caden interact with her could seem unjustified. Why her and not Tammy? Or Millicent herself? But, like the pastor, we know this theme is “everyone’s everyone”. So even though this woman was an “extra” who played Ellen’s mom in a dream sequence, she is everyone. She’s Ellen’s mom. Caden’s mom. She’s Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive, Ariel, etc. Which is why she has a vague physical similarity to Hazel especially. 

Synecdoche and you

Ultimately, Synecdoche uses the many compilations in Caden’s life to conclude that life is simple. We die. Which is why we need to accept that fact and get busy living. Because the more you worry about what it’s all about, and the more your ego drives you, the less you’ll experience, the less you’ll accomplish, the less you’ll have been. 

Look at the dynamic between Caden and Adele. Adele shifted her priorities to joy. And her art flourished, her reputation skyrocketed, and she enjoyed what seemed to be a very satisfying time on Earth. Caden could never allow himself such pleasure. He was too obsessed with sorrow. That’s why Adele left. It’s why Hazel dated Sammy after her divorce, and why Caden never got his play out of rehearsal and in front of an audience (much less found a title). 

Don’t waste love. Don’t waste art. The house is burning, whether you see flames or not. So go be and go do. 

“But, Chris, what about this other thing?”

Pretty much every single thing that happens in Synecdoche comes back to mortality, art, ego, truth, and everyone is everyone. So if you have a question about some specific scene, it definitely falls into one of those categories and somehow ties back to the larger ideas we just discussed. You can also read the plot analysis below and find an answer. 

For example, the surreal elements are just a way to visualize a lot of existential ideas. In the first 20 minutes, Caden and Adele’s house isn’t physically on fire. Metaphorically? Raging inferno. But because Kaufman wants to ease viewers into the story he doesn’t start with those surreal aspects. Instead, he keeps events mostly grounded. Until we get to Hazel buying the house and it’s on fire. Suddenly the subtext, the metaphor, becomes quite literal and that continues for the rest of the film. 

One thing I want to note:

I didn’t really find the place for it anywhere else, so I’ll say it here. I do think Kaufman made a pretty important statement about the necessity of the female voice. Caden is the classic male figure who has all this power. And he is very disconnected from the women around him. Even when he includes them, it’s in a role that’s subservient. There’s definitely a reading of Synecdoche as making a case for equal opportunity. And saying that only when you include the female voice, in art and in our own lives, can men (and society) really begin to understand themselves, the world, etc. I would say the opposite is also true, but the legacy of patriarchy in most societies around the world means that women are inherently familiar with the male voice and perspective. Though that’s a more traditionally masculine voice that differs greatly from the more vulnerable male voice that has developed in the 21st century. 

Anyway, nuance aside, Kaufman was ahead of the curve. Thankfully, the film industry has caught up, and we’re seeing more and more opportunities for people of all genders, identities, etc. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than it was in the early 2000s. 

What happened to the rest of the world outside the warehouse?

Kaufman hints at society turning more and more dystopian. Then a whole revolution happens. Apparently war came to America and the conflict spilled into the hangar and caused nearly everyone to perish. 

That essentially shows the disconnect between Caden’s search for meaning and the rest of the world. He was so consumed with himself, his interior world, that he missed out on everything going on around him. You could also make an argument that there’s a statement being made about the artist and the world at large. Like Kaufman’s trying to say that navel-gazing art disconnects someone from important events. Or that there’s fundamentally a disconnect between the artist and the world at large. Given that Caden is essentially a negative example, you could also make an argument that Kaufman is actually saying that what Caden does is an example of art that is too self-interested, compared to art that’s part of the external world, a reaction to the external world. 

With all that said, I think—and this is more of a hunch rather than an evidenced-based conclusion—that Kaufman was making a statement about society having the same arc as an individual life. If we go back to the whole calendar metaphor, each generation goes from spring to summer to autumn to winter. Birth to death. Caden is part of a generation of people who lived and perished. The revolution that sweeps the streets is a metaphor like Hazel’s burning house. It visualizes something existential. In this case: the end of the cycle of life Caden and his peers were part of.

What’s true for Caden is true for generations is true for civilizations. Kaufman was, in the background, having civilization mirror Caden. Generations and civilizations live longer than an individual, but, nonetheless, they too are finite. Rome rises, it burns. And it rises again, in a different place, with a different name, but the same fate. As a wise woman once said, “The end is built into the beginning.”

Chris’s quick review of Synecdoche, New York

I remember the trailers for Synecdoche and being really excited to see it. Except it came out the fall of my senior year of college. I went to college in Cleveland, Ohio, so I was miserable. Had just had knee surgery to repair a torn meniscus, then would, in early November, tear my ACL. So despite my excitement, I never made it to the theater. Would eventually watch Synecdoche on blu-ray. And loved my first viewing. It was literary in a way that appealed to my pretentious taste, and I love scope and scale, so the vastness of the story, the hugeness of some of the imagery, really blew me away. 

So from 2009 to 2024, I definitely would have ranked Synecdoche as a 5-star movie. But I had only watched it once because that first watch was so, so heavy and emotional. A second viewing wasn’t something I was necessarily looking forward too. Eventually, the scale tipped. This was my second viewing. And…Synecdoche didn’t hit quite the same. Part of that is because I’ve seen so many more movies, so the novelty wasn’t quite there. And, plus, in the last 16 years, cinema has gotten even weirder. 2008 Kaufman is no longer as avant garde in 2024. Synecdoche felt a lot more straightforward and singular, rather than profound and expansive. 

That said, I can connect to the material a lot more. I was 22 on my first viewing. 37 now. More July of life than September. But I can appreciate what September means far more than I did before. And how truly existentially terrifying it is. It’s a good reminder to not be like Caden. And seize every day as much as possible. And listen and get outside yourself. That’s worthwhile. I just don’t find myself loving Synecdoche. The experience is so stressful and Caden’s such an idiot that while the movie’s saying things I think we all need to hear/be reminded of, I’d rather just watch Groundhog Day. 

Plot summary and analysis of Synecdoche, New York

Set-up

• Opening minutes. There’s a lot going on.
  • Starts with Olive singing a song about living and dying in Schenectady, New York. It sounds childish but is deeply existential. 
  • We see Caden’s head reflected in the mirror. He’s looking at himself. A mirror is almost always symbolic for self-confrontation, self-analysis, self-truth. But there’s a whole other layer when we think about the title. 
  • “Synecdoche” falls under figurative language. It’s when you use part of something to describe the whole. Example: “Those are some nice wheels!” when you’re praising someone’s car. The scale can also reverse. Like “Cleveland wins the World Series.” The use of the city actually refers to the baseball team. “Eat lead” is another kind of synecdoche, since bullets are made of lead. 
  • So when we just see Caden’s head in the mirror, it is a visual synecdoche. This image represents the film as a whole—an exploration of this one person’s psyche. Caden is also a synecdoche, as he comes to represent everyone. That’s why the title is what it is, because “Synecdoche, New York” essentially means “This place represents all places.” 
  • All this is the subtext of the dialogue we hear from the radio. A radio host talks to a professor of literature about “autumn in poetry and literature.”
    • Host: So, what about it? Why do so many people write about the fall?
    • Professor: Well, I think it’s seen as the beginning of the end, really. If the year is a life. Then September, the beginning of fall, is when the bloom is off the rose and things start to die. It’s a melancholy month and, maybe, because of that, quite beautiful. 
    • H: Is there something you might read to us?
    • P: Ah, I’d love to. Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone, will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander the boulevards up and down, restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
    • H: Goodness, that’s harsh, isn’t it?
    • P: Well, perhaps. But truthful. 
• Everything in that first 90 seconds encapsulates the movie. It’s going to explore the human condition of someone in the September of their life, the final quarter, when the leaves begin to fall from the tree. It will be harsh but truthful. 
• Next scene establishes the chaos of the home. Everything is cramped and kind of old, lived-in. The ambient noise is a lot, from street noise to radio/television to the phone ringing. Then the dialogue between Caden, Adele, and Olive. Heightens the stress levels of the viewer almost immediately. 
• Adele coughs, Caden says he struggled to get up, and then Olive has green poop. Establishes a concern over health issues. A motif throughout the movie. Gets at the idea of mortality, one of the film’s main themes.
• Caden talks about not feeling well. 
• We catch a glimpse of Sammy stalking Caden. 
• Magazine in mail Attending To Your Illness. Then a newspaper headline makes Caden think Harold Pinter died. Then he corrects himself and says Pinter won the Nobel Prize. Which is this hilarious dichotomy between defeat and victory. He died, oh wait, he won one of the most prestigious awards possible. Connection between art and death. 
• Dialogue between everyone is completely disconnected. They’re talking past each other rather than to one another. 
• Caden turns on a cartoon for Olive. But it’s about viruses. A health concern. 
• Milk is expired. Just everything is about stress and mortality. The September of life. 
• Freak accident. Sink has a pressure issue and causes the knob to fly off. Strikes Caden in the head. Water sprays everywhere. He bleeds a lot. Sense of mortality heightens. 
• Doctor thinks Caden could have something wrong with his brain. We think this might be an actual medical concern so worry for him. But it’s a joke in the movie because this is the first of many potential medical concerns that never actually end up meaning anything. Highlights that fear that something will go wrong, the haunting sense that at any second it might be our time. 
• Caden causes Olive to have an existential crisis over the fact she has veins and blood. Again, mortality fears, even at a young age.  
• Go from the doctor’s office to rehearsal for the show Caden’s directing, Death of a Salesman. Juxtaposition between mortality and art. 
• During the rehearsal a wall falls on Claire and hits her in the head. Morality and art.
• Another bit of meta dialogue as Caden talks to an actor in the play: Try to keep in mind that a young person playing Willy Loman thinks he’s only pretending to be at the end of a life full of despair. But the tragedy is that we know that you, the young actor, will end up in this very place of desolation.
  • Caden will end up in a place of desolation. 
• Caden doesn’t give any feedback to Claire. Misogyny on his part. Understands men, doesn’t understand women. Sets up the later section where he becomes Ellen, the cleaning lady. 
• Couples therapy. Adele mentions fantasizing about Caden dying and being able to start over guilt free. Ouch. Clearly their marriage isn’t good.
• Immediately go to a scene of Caden connecting with Hazel and we see how much better the energy is between them. They have genuine, aligned conversations.
  • Hazel mentions The Trial, a Kafka novel. Kafka’s stories weren’t just surreal but usually nightmares, stress fantasies about loss of agency. The Trial is one of the most famous examples. Josef K is on trial for a crime but he doesn’t know what crime. He’s supposed to appear in court on a Sunday; that’s the only information they give him. Not where or when. It’s bizarre, seemingly unfair situations like this, again and again. 
  • It foreshadows where the movie goes. Caden’s play becomes a kind of trial, and it’s also a vague kind of nightmare. Not to mention everything that happens with Adele and Olive. Straight Kafka. 
• Caden’s urine is like a dark, horrendous brown. Again, makes us think something is really wrong with him. But nothing ever materializes. 
• Adele prioritizes her work over supporting Caden’s. Seems like the real end of their relationship. It’s one thing when she doesn’t support him as a person. It’s another when she doesn’t support him as an artist. Hazel is there, though! 
• After the play, Claire seeks Caden’s approval. Flirts. 
• Hazel shoots her shot. Caden doesn’t bite. Ends up staying at the theater all night, kind of with Claire. Comes home to find Adele with her friend, Maria, having fun. 
• Tension between Caden wanting to know what Adele will think of his play versus Adele and Maria saying it doesn’t matter what others think, what matters is Caden’s artistic satisfaction. Do artists make art for themselves? Or do they make art for others? Does one matter more than the other? Are both important? Are they equally okay?

Escalation

• Hazel looks at a house for sale that’s on fire. She and the realtor treat it as completely normal. Kafkaesque moment. Derek lives in the basement.
  • Think about the opening scene, and how realistic the chaos was in Caden’s home. Kaufman started the movie in a grounded place but over the next 20 minutes kept teasing the surreal aspects of the film through subtle choices that can leave viewers slightly puzzled. Hazel going to this house is a formal announcement that the film has turned from realism to surrealism. 
  • Caden’s house was also on “fire”, we just couldn’t see the flames, but you could feel the tension in the place. Now that the realism is gone, Kaufman can represent that tension through surreal imagery. The fire in the house Hazel looks at represents everything going on in her life. Which is why we get the dialogue that she never expected to buy a house on her own. She’s in her thirties, unmarried, and can feel the pressure of her nonexistent family. Which is fine for some people. Not everyone wants marriage or children. But clearly Hazel wants something approaching that. 
  • Also comes back to that sense of “autumn”. The fire isn’t bad. Some flames, a bit of smoke. But it’s not spreading or worsening. You’re just waiting for the day it does. That’s what happens as you age, as the health issues mount. You know you’re “on fire” and that the flames will, eventually, engulf everything. You just hope it happens much, much, much later. Years down the line. Decades. 
• Play ends with the husband passing and the wife being “free”. Calls back to Adele saying she fantasized about Caden’s passing and getting to start over guilt-free.
• Important dialogue afterwards
  • Adele: Well done. It was very successful. I can’t get excited about your restaging someone else’s old play. There’s nothing personal in it. 
  • Caden: People are coming out of the theater crying. 
  • A: Great. Be a f***ing tool of suburban, blue-haired, regional-theater subscribers. But what are you leaving behind? You act as if you have forever to figure it out. 
• Immediately cuts to another cartoon for Olive, but it’s Caden as a character and a coyote-looking dog says: When you’re dead, there’s no time.
• So the first section established the haunting sense of mortality. And now it’s applying that to art. Caden has passed the time making impersonal art rather than challenging himself. Because he’s always thought he’d have more time. But it’s autumn and there isn’t much time left. So what will he do about it?
• Adele’s also aware of her limited time. And she wants away from Caden. Will go to Germany with Olive, without Caden.
  • Caden asks Adele if he’s disappointed her. She says “Everyone is disappointing, the more you know someone. It just…. This whole romantic-love thing is just a projection, anyway, right? I mean, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you. I don’t know what I”m doing. I don’t know. We’ll talk when I get back.”
    • The line about everyone being disappointing is key. Especially the qualifier of “the more you know someone.” It causes Caden to want to know everyone. Which informs the whole ethos of the play that dominates the rest of the film. 
• Commercial for Flourostatent TR. Woman in the commercial shows up later. Caden also sees himself in the commercial.
  • Thematically, Caden seeing himself is part of the “everyone is everyone”. But it’s also a commercial for a drug for chemo patients and is part of this whole subplot where Caden keeps thinking he has various medical issues. 
• On the TV is what appears to be an old Caden walking through fog or smoke.
  • Could that be the very end of the movie? Hopefully I remember to come back to this.
• Caden cleans Adele’s studio. Foreshadows him becoming “Ellen” and cleaning Adele’s apartment. Seems to be a byproduct of his loneliness. An act of service. Connection. I wonder if it also connects to some of the health stuff? Like cleaning is almost an attempt to purify the self?
• Caden’s fear of death makes him want to do something important while he still has time. 
• Montage of Caden being at various dentist appointments. Shows at least 3 months have passed. 
• Caden starts seizing. Makes it seem like this is it, all the medical issues have finally crescendoed. But then he’s fine. 
• Adele is in Elle. She is famous. Text in the magazine says it’s been six months. Line about only wanting to be around “healthy” and “joyous” people. Direct shot at Caden’s negativity. 
• Loses ability to salivate and cry. 
• Date with Hazel. She says it’s been a year. He says it’s been a week. More surrealness. But shows how disconnected from reality he’s become.
• In Hazel’s house, with the fire lol.
• They start to sleep together but Caden becomes soft. He’s not in a great place emotionally. Hazel takes it very poorly. 
• Fax from Adele mentions Olive doesn’t want Caden to read her journal. 
• Caden is a 2009 MacArthur fellow. Very prestigious. They say they hope he creates something “unflinchingly true”. Talks about it with his therapist. More theme-relevant dialogue:
  • Madeline: Do you know what you’re going to do with it?
  • Caden: Theater piece. Something big and true and tough. I can finally put my real self into something. 
  • M: What is your real self, do you think?
  • C: I don’t know yet. The MacArthur is called “the genius grant” and I wanna earn it. 
  • M: That’s wonderful. God bless. I guess you’ll have to discover your real self, right?
  • C: Yeah. I wanted to ask you, how old are kids when they start to write? 
  • M: Listen, there’s an absolutely brilliant novel written by a 4-year-old. 
  • C: Really?
  • M: Little Winky by Horace Azpiazu.  
  • C: Ah. That’s cute. 
  • M: Hardly. Little Winky is a virulent anti-Semite. The story follow his initiation into the Klan, his immersion in the pornographic snuff industry, and his ultimate degradation at the hands of a black ex-convict named Eric washington Jackson Jones Johnson—
  • C: Written by a 4-year-old?
  • M: Jefferson. 
  • C: Wow. Written by a 4-year-old?
  • M: Well, Azpiazu killed himself when he was 5. 
  • C: Why did he kill himself?
  • M: I don’t know. Why did you?
  • C: What?
  • M: I said, why would you?
  • C: Oh, I don’t know.
    • So that whole conversation gets at figuring yourself out. And putting it into art. There’s humor to be found in a 4-year-old writing something as intense as Little Winky, but it serves a purpose. An older artist like Caden still feels like he’s figuring it out. And you hear about these younger artists who achieve immense success despite being 18 or 25. They create something raw and powerful that feels beyond their age and experience. Kaufmann’s simply exaggerating that dynamic by making it a 4-year-old who writes something that’s so serious as to be comical coming from a child. 
    • And then death is a continued motif  and theme, so of course it comes up again. Trying to think why Azpiazu would unalive himself is another foreshadowing of the film’s ultimate theme of understanding human nature and each person representing everyone else (synecdoche). If Caden knows why he would do it, he can understand why Azpiazu would do it. If you know why Azpiazu would do it, then he would know why he might do it. 
• Real estate agent shows Caden a building that’s supposedly in the heart of the theater district and would be great for plays. It’s a giant, abandoned hangar. Which makes no sense for New York City in general. But less sense as a place for plays. Another bit of absurdist humor from Kaufmann. The joke about King Lear and the storm cracks me up every time. 
• Caden says theater is “the beginning of thought. It’s, uh, the truth not yet spoken. It’s what a man feels like after he’s been clocked in the jaw. It’s love in all its messiness. You know, and I want all of us, players and patrons alike, to soak in the communal bath of it, the mikvah, as the Jews call it. Because we’re all in the same water, after all. You know, soaking in our very menstrual blood and nocturnal emissions. This is what I wanna try to give people”
  • Two things. First, if you’ve been reading along, hopefully the line about the communal bath stood out to you. It’s Kauffman starting to textualize the main theme a bit more. Second, Caden’s mostly saying a bunch of nonsense that he thinks sounds smart and important. But is it true? He’ll keep redefining, over and over again, what the play is, what theater is, and thus what life is. So watch out for how this speech evolves. 
• Caden recruits Hazel as his assistant. She’s over him romantically, though. 
• Crazy watching him try to flirt as he has to swallow without saliva. 
• Caden finally cracks Olive’s diary. She was four when she started it. He sends her a pink gift because he reads she likes pink.

Pay-off: Part 1 

• Caden has gathered the first wave of performers and crew for the play. He gives a speech:
  • Caden: We’ll start by talking honestly, and out of that, a piece of theater will evolve. I’ll begin. I’ve been thinking a lot about dying lately…. Regardless of how this particular thing works itself out, I will be dying. And so will you. And so will everyone here. And that’s what I wanna explore. We’re all hurtling towards death. Yet here we are, for the moment, alive, each of us knowing we’re gonna die, each of us secretly believing we won’t. 
  • Claire: It’s brilliant. It’s everything. It’s Karamazov.
    • Again, note the community aspect. 
• Caden has a “date” with Claire. She wants to know more about her character. Caden once again struggles with giving direct feedback to a woman about her character. Claire wants to play Hazel. But the whole time Caden is kind of preoccupied with Hazel on a date in the background with Derek. 
• They attend Claire’s mom’s funeral. Claire says “I used to be a baby.” Another bit of dialogue that relates to the human condition. 
• Caden and Claire marry. 
• Rehearsal of the play. Claire is Hazel, taking a ticket. Caden stops it and says: We need to investigate. You know, to really discover the essence of each being. You know, I think I need to work with both of you separately. Davis, I’ll start with you.
  • Two things. First, the idea of discovering the essence of each being sets up Caden trying to understand everyone on an individual level. And why the play keeps gaining in scope and scale. But the result is the reversal: you don’t need to understand each individual, because everyone is everyone, everyone is human, you just need to understand one person. But we get to that much later. 
  • Second, notice that Caden, once again, gives preference to the man over the woman. 
• Caden sees an article in a magazine. “TEN YEAR OLD OLIVE WITTGART OF BERLIN IS THE FIRST CHILD IN HUMAN HISTORY WITH A FULL BODY TATTOO…”
  • He reads this just as Claire tries to talk with him about her character. He ignores how excited she is about having a breakthrough. Instead, he says he has to go find his “real daughter”. Prioritizes his old life, the life he lost, over his new life with Claire and their daughter Ariel. 
• Madeline says Caden is almost unrecognizable. She hits on him. Some text in the book seemingly matches Madeline’s thoughts and this very situation, but other text has nothing to do with the situation. Gets at some of the unreliability of Caden’s perspective.
• Narration from Olive as text from her diary but is about Germany, even though she had left the diary in New York. Similar to what was going on with Madeline’s book, where Caden hears their voice and imagine’s what they’re saying. Part of his finally having an understanding of the female perspective. But it’s crude at first (especially with Madeline). 
• As Caden talks to Maria, there’s graffiti behind him of a single face split in two. Coincidence or part of the theme of identity?  (50:25). 
• Olive’s almost over 11. So it’s been 7 years. Caden starts to attack Maria over the tattooing. Chases her. Finds a junkyard and one of his Christmas gifts is there. Puts in saline eye drops so he can cry. 
• Caden ends up back in the hangar and is playing god. He has hundreds, if not thousands of actors, each in their own microcosm. And he’s telling them their dynamics. Run into Claire and Ariel and Claire says Caden no longer lives with them. 
• Caden has more medical problems. But, again, none of them go anywhere. 
• Runs into Hazel. Married to Derek. Has three sons. Caden follows Hazel and spies on her and her family, then maybe attempts to jump off the building, but a stranger stops him. 
• Caden reads Olive’s journal and hears her talking in a German voice. 
• Caden thinks Sammy’s in the room with him as he’s sleeping with Claire. Sammy’s actually outside the window. Caden’s father passed away. It’s a quick phone call but Caden recites this horrible version of his dad’s demise, that includes his dad saying he regretted his entire life. Comically small casket, since he was “devoured” by cancer. 
• Caden’s inspired to reach out to Hazel. Asks her to tell him what to do. She says everyone has to figure out their own life. Caden apologizes and explains things about himself—he’s starting to learn more about himself and be honest in a way that he couldn’t be before.
• Poster advertises Olive as the star of a peep show performance. She’s nude. He tries to talk to her. But she doesn’t respond to his shouts. It’s a parental nightmare. 

Pay-off: Part 2

• When we pick up with him, he’s much older and has updated the play. “I won’t settle for anything less than the brutal truth. Brutal. Brutal. Each day I’ll hand you a scrap of paper. It’ll tell you what happened to you that day. You felt a lump in your breast. You looked at your wife and saw a stranger, et cetera. I’m not excusing myself either. I will have someone play me to delve into the murky, cowardly depths of my lonely, f***ed-up being. And he’ll get notes too. And those notes will correspond to the notes I truly receive every day from my god!”
  • Someone asks when they’ll get an audience. Then mentions that it’s been 17 years.  
• Hazel loses her job so asks Caden for one. She’s back in the fold. 
• Sammy finally introduces himself to Caden, wants the part of Caden in the play. Quote: I’ve been following you for 20 years. So I knew about this audition because I follow you. And I’ve learned everything about you, by following you. So hire me, and you’ll see who you truly are. Peek-a-boo. Okay. [Gets into character]. Hazel, I don’t think we need to talk to anyone else. This guy has me down. I’m gonna cast him right now. And then maybe you and I can get a drink. And we can try to figure out this thing between us. Why I cried. ‘Cause I’ve never felt about anybody the way I feel about you. And I want to f*** you, until we merge into a chimera, a mythical beast, with p**is and va**na eternally fused, two pairs of eyes that look only at each other, and lips ever touching. And only one voice that whispers to itself.
  • Caden gives him the part. 
• So now we enter the Caden and Sammy era that represents Caden seeing himself through an outside observer. 
• We see the state of New York City. A guy says it’s awful out here and people want to be inside just for safety. We hear gun fire and screams. Caden, Claire, and Ariel walk past makeshift homeless camps that line the sidewalk.  
• Caden says he may call the play Simulacrum. Claire’s only response is she doesn’t know what that means. Ariel speaks incorrectly, as if uneducated. Caden then asks about the title The Flawed Light of Love and Grief. Claire has no opinion on that either. 
• Caden asks Claire to play herself and assigns Sammy to be her husband in the show. Sammy wins her over by praising her work in another play.
  • Important line from Claire: “I loved working with so many strong female actresses.” Calls back to the many moments of Caden being unknowingly misogynistic and this dichotomy the movie has set up between Caden and women.
  • Sammy calls Adele the best living artist then says no one stares truth in the face the way she does. Then implies he had slept with Adele.
  • This whole scene has Caden and Sammy outside the window, on the stairs of the apartment’s fire escape, looking out over New York City. We hear more ammunition fired off. The burst of bombs. A giant surveillance blimp shines enormous spotlights down. Ambient sounds imply a state of civil war. 
  • Sammy gives Caden the address to Adele’s apartment and says “I want to follow you there and see how you lose even more of yourself.” 
• Caden attends Adele’s art retrospective. Paintings are nudes of Maria.
  • Someone asks him to hold the elevator and he doesn’t hit the button. 
  • Old couple asks Caden if he’s Ellen Bascomb. A bit ridiculous since Caden doesn’t look like an Ellen. But he gets the keys to go in since Ellen’s the cleaner. 
  • Really nice apartment. Finds note from Adele. Caden cleans the entire apartment. Takes him all night. 
• Claire asks him if he’s wearing lipstick. Then says he smells like he’s menstruating. First foreshadow of him connecting to his feminine side and energy. 
• Big fight with Claire. She doesn’t like Sammy. Sammy keeps speaking for Caden. Caden praises what they’re doing, specifically Sammy, though.
  • Sammy wants to bring in a Hazel. When Caden okays it, Claire leaves the hangar. 
• Caden returns to Adele’s apartment. Lies down in the body imprint on the bed. Literally occupying the same space as the woman who had been there.
  • Leaves update about his life as Caden but signs it Ellen.
• Caden gets to observe his fight with Claire through observing Sammy and Claire. Claire legitimately dumps Caden over what Sammy said because she knows Caden thought whatever Sammy said. 
• Claire’s dialogue from Needleman applies to Caden. 
• Later, as Caden observes a recreation of the scene with Claire practicing Needleman, he calls the show a lie, then says they need to wall-up the set apartment. Makes it difficult to observe as a play but more realistic. 
• Caden finds Olive’s journal and it’s her speaking as an adult: Dear diary, I’m afraid I’m gravely ill. It is perhaps times like these that one reflects on things past. An article of clothing from when I was young. A green jacket. A walk with my father. A game we once played. Pretend we’re fairies. I’m a girl fairy and my name is Lauralee. And you’re a boy fairy and your name is Teetery. Pretend when we’re fairies, we fight each other. And I say, “Stop hitting me or I”ll die.” And you hit me again, and I say: “Now I have to die.” And you say, “But I’ll miss you.” And I say, “But I have to. But I have to. And you’ll have to wait a million years to see me again. And I’ll be put in a box and all I’ll need is a tiny glass of water and lots of tiny pieces of pizza. And the box will have wings like an airplane.” And you ask, “Where will it take you?” “Home,” I say.
• He visits Olive in the hospital. She can barely speak English, since she spent her life in Germany. The flower tattoos she received as a child have become infected. The art is “dying” and so is Olive.
  • Olive believes Caden left. Caden tries to explain he didn’t and has searched for her. Olive explains she and Maria became lovers. “She introduced me to myself.” 
  • Olive says she can’t forgive Caden unless he asks for forgiveness. She believes he abandoned her to have a homosexual relationship with someone named Eric. Caden had previously denied any such homosexuality or relationship. But he “admits” to it because Olive said she doesn’t have any time left. 
  • Olive says “No,” denies the forgiveness. Then passes away. 
  • A petal falls from Olive’s tattoo. 

Pay-Off: Part 3

• Back in NYC, military vehicles move through the streets. Crazy people walk the streets. Caden cleans a public bathroom. Turns out this is actually the set. It’s mirroring the outside world.
  • Sammy’s now roaming the set and giving commands like Caden, while Caden critiques Sammy. 
  • “It is a play about dating. It’s not a play just about death. It’s about everything. Dating, birth, death, life, family—all that.”
    • Just described the theme of the movie. Notice how this latter portion of the film pivots after major encounters with Olive. First her diary as a child. Then seeing her at the peep show. And now her death. Each time, Caden returns to the play and tries to extract more truth out of it. 
  • He’s built a hanger in the hanger. Everything is a story within a story. Caden and Hazel watch Sammy and Hazel’s actor play Caden and Hazel. And then an actor playing Sammy runs up.
    • The Sammy actor says “hi” to the Hazel actor in a flirtatious way. Sammy, as Caden, then says to the Hazel actor that Sammy likes Hazel. Caden then looks at Hazel to see if that’s true. It’s that kind of mind f***. 
• Caden has a new potential title: Unknown, Unkissed, and Lost. 
• They’re going to add Adele’s apartment and cast an Ellen. Millicent Weems. She looks like Adele’s painting of Ellen. 
• Recreates Caden’s arrival at Adele’s apartment. But Caden can “hear” Adele in the apartment. Enters and it’s just a recording of Adele’s voice. The line between art and reality blurs even more, to where he can’t tell what’s real or not. 
• Caden’s mother killed in a home invasion. Caden’s father is actually at the funeral. Hilarious. 
• More line-blurring, as Caden hangs out with the actor playing Hazel because she reminds him of Hazel. But she’s actually nothing like Hazel. Meanwhile, Hazel’s out with Sammy, because Sammy reminds her of Caden. Except fun.
  • The fun line resonates with earlier in the film when Adele said she didn’t want to be around negative people anymore. Caden’s always been a bit too negative and it’s a bummer. 
• The murder scene is exactly as it had been from the home invasion. Which is such peak dark comedy. But it also relates back to this whole theme of cleaning. Caden and Adele fought, but he would clean for her. He still cleans for her. But there’s no one to clean for Caden. Can look at that both on the personal level and the societal level, especially as there’s subtext about society falling apart and becoming more dangerous, less friendly. In a functioning society, you’d hope cleaning up a scene like that would be part of the system of support for the survivors. But in this kind of hopeless world…nothing like that exists. 
• Tammy offers to sleep with Caden and he starts to cry. Just like what happened with Hazel earlier.
  • Caden: I’m very, very lonely. I don’t know what’s wrong. I just—I’m sorry. Do you understand? I mean, can you understand loneliness. 
  • Tammy: Yeah. I mean. I don’t know, I feel okay, mostly. F***ing might help. 
  • C: I’m sorry.
  • T: It’s okay, I don’t mind. Take your clothes off.
  • C: You’re very pretty. Sometimes I wish I could be pretty like that.
  • T: What, you wish you were a girl?
  • C: Sometimes I think I might have been better at it.
  • T: Interesting. It’s kind of a drag in a lot of ways. Do you like guys?
  • C: No. I only love women. 
  • T: Pretty Caden. 
  • C: Thanks, for saying that. 
  • T: Come to bed, Pretty Caden.
    • When Caden cried and was self-conscious in bed with Hazel, she shut down. Mostly because she had already invested so much time, effort, and patience into him. And she was also very lonely and suddenly very fearful things will never work with Caden. Which means she’s afraid of being alone forever. 
    • Tammy is much more confident than either of them. Kind of how Sammy is confident Caden. Tammy is confident Hazel (notice the similarity in names: Sammy/Tammy). So she can be patient with Caden and doesn’t take offense at his tears or nerves or anything. 
    • We also, finally, move deeper into Caden’s relationship with his feminine side, the part of him that had been missing for so long. 
• Caden’s being critical of Sammy. Tammy makes a suggestion for the story, which is about a fight between Caden and Hazel about Hazel and Sammy. Another instance of art and reality entwined.
  • Hazel disagrees with Tammy’s theory that Hazel, she, would respond like that. They look to Caden for an answer. 
  • Caden has to choose if he responds as the man or the director. He picks Tammy. 
• We then cut to Hazel and Caden having the exact fight.
  • Whole fight blends both their personal dynamics as well as them managing the administrative aspects of the play, like having to fire the actor who plays Derek because Hazel and Derek broke up. 
• Hazel asks if Caden cried while sleeping with Tammy. So she’s still mad about what happened maybe 20 years earlier. Caden confesses his love for her. Quote: Hazel, you’ve been a part of me forever, don’t you know that? I breathe your name in every exhalation. They kiss. And Sammy’s devastated. 
• Caden brings Hazel to a recreation of the hotel balcony she had been on, so many years earlier, with Derek and the kids. The one where Caden almost jumped. Sammy’s on the roof. Big final speech.
  • Sammy: I’ve watched you forever, Caden. But you’ve never really looked at anyone other than yourself. So watch me. Watch my heart break. Watch me jump. Watch me learn that after death there’s nothing. No more watching, there’s no more following, no love. Say goodbye to Hazel for me. And say it for yourself, too. None of us has much time. Hazel, I love you! 
  • Caden finds the body on the sidewalk, surrounded by other actors. And he yells that he didn’t jump, that a man stopped him before he could. He orders Sammy to get up. 
  • Sammy’s death represents the death of a part of Caden. This self he had been constantly observing. Sammy presents it as a challenge to see others. To finally recognize his humanity in others. What Caden had been doing by recreating the city and having so many characters was ultimately superficial. It was all action without understanding. Noise rather than music. 
• At the funeral, Caden tells Hazel: I know how to do it, now. There are nearly 13 million people in the world. I mean, can you imagine that many people? And none of those people is an extra. They’re all leads in their own stories. They have to be given their due. 
  • We cut to a new Caden actor saying the exact line we just heard, at a reproduction of the funeral. 
• Hazel: “I wish we had this when we were young. And all those years in between.”
• “The end is built into the beginning. What can you do?” Death comes. 
• New title attempt: The Obscure Moon Lighting an Obscure World
  • Gets back to the original Simulacrum title. The moon steals light from the sun. It doesn’t have its own glow. Caden’s play is to the world what the moon is to the sun. 
• Hazel and Caden finally in bed together, ready to start a life together. Strange cut. Turns out Hazel passed. EMT says it was smoke inhalation. Caden calls her voicemail and says: I know how to do the play now. It’ll all take place over the course of one day and that day will be the day before you died. It was the happiest day of my life. And I’ll be able to relive it forever. See you soon. 

Pay-off: Part 4

• Caden tells his new assistant about a new title, maybe. Infectious Diseases in Cattle. “The title means a lot of things, you’ll see. It means a lot.”
  • I assume he’s referring to people as cattle. And essentially talking about the pains and woes of the human condition but on the scale of “the herd”. 
• Caden says he needs a new Caden for his Hazel. Millicent, as Ellen, says she’d like to play Caden. She gives a speech.
  • Millicent: Caden Cotard is a man already dead. He lives in a half-world between stasis and antistasis, and time is concentrated, chronology confused. Yet up until recently, he’s strived valiantly to make sense of his situation. But, now, he’s turned to stone. 
    • Summarizes for the viewer. The acknowledgement of time being concentrated is a meta-nod to how subjective the passage of time has been in the film. Over 20 years in less than 2 years. Also tells us that part of Caden died with Hazel. That’s what Millicent meant by how he has turned to stone. 
  • She gets the part. New assistant says he saw the whole thing as much more hopeful. 
• BIG SCENE
  • Millicent, as Caden, directs another version of Sammy’s funeral. New actor playing Sammy plays Caden in the scene. And there’s a new Hazel, on top of Tammy as the original Hazel.
  • New assistant is mad that Millicent isn’t acting like Caden. But here’s the thing, she’s acting like Caden if Caden had been a woman. Caden seeing that version of himself he talked to Tammy about.
  • Under Millicent’s direction, the scene transforms. Originally, the focus was Caden. But now Caden’s out of the scene. Others are not just background actors, but important players. What Caden said to Hazel about everyone being leads in their own stories was telling. This scene with Millicent turns it into showing. 
  • Big speech from the pastor: Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make. You can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for 20 years. And you may never, ever trace it to its source. And you only get once chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is. It’s what you create. And even though the world goes on, for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But, while alive you wait in vain, wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes. Or it seems to but it doesn’t really. So you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected. Something to make you feel whole. Something to make you feel loved. And the truth is, I feel so angry. And the truth is, I feel so f***ing sad. And the truth is, I’ve felt so f***ing hurt for so f***ing long. And for just as long, I’ve been pretending I’m okay just to get along. Just for—I don’t know why. Maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery. Because they have their own. Well, f*** everybody. Amen. 
    • There’s music. Rain comes down after the “amen” and the players all open their umbrellas. Everyone watching FELT the power of the scene. That was theater. That was art. That was truth. It’s everything Caden had been searching for this entire time. And he only found it when he stopped focusing on himself. Millicent allowed someone else to speak for Caden, and its through this character Caden finally feels truth about himself. THAT’S ART. That’s what good art does. Good artists find their truth in others, because we’re all connected. That’s synecdoche. A moment in a work of art can represent the whole of our lives. 
• It’s not a surprise that following that speech Caden declares “I’m out of ideas. I’m dead.” It was an artistic breakthrough. You could argue whether it came from him since he picked Millicent and let her do her thing. Or if he feels did because she stepped in and immediately did better than him. Regardless, the result is the same. Caden’s spent. 
• Millicent offers the role of Ellen to Caden. The same way the artistic version of him became Millicent, now the real world Caden becomes Ellen. And to better understand the female perspective, he has the voice of Millicent, as Caden, explaining to him his thoughts through an earpiece.
  • When Caden, as Ellen, says “Thank you” to the old woman, per Millicent’s instructions, the woman responds with “You’re very welcome, young lady.” Just to drive the point home that Caden’s in a feminine era. 
  • Millicent in his ear becomes a way for his inner dialogue to actually become female.
• Dream of Ellen’s life. She asks her husband if everything is okay. He’s clearly unhappy. He responds with “Everything is everything.” Acknowledges the theme again. “Ellen” says “I disappointed him, and he hates me.” Caden flashes back to Adele saying “Everyone is disappointing, when you know someone.”
  • Caden’s insight into the female side of things grows. 
• Picnic from the commercial at the beginning of the movie is Ellen, as a little girl, saying she’s going to remember this moment and in 20 years be at the park with her daughter. “There was so much hope.” Ellen clearly never had a daughter.
  • It’s initially unclear if this is Millicent talking or Caden imagining a life as Ellen. We come to find out, it is, indeed, a dream of Ellen. With that information, that turns the memory of the picnic into something based on the commercial. 
• Adele passed away from lung cancer. 
• Millicent mentions ‘Now it is waiting.” All that’s ahead for Caden, for Ellen, is death.
• Outside revolution is ongoing. We hear the sounds of war. The cries for freedom. 
• Caden has to take the stairs. Shows he’s still on set. So the screams aren’t from the outer world but from inside the hangar (that’s inside the hangar?). We see corpses everywhere. 
• We’re going to write out the whole of Millicent’s narration then come back to what’s happening on screen.
  • Millicent (still as Caden): What was once before you, an exciting and mysterious future, is now behind you. Lived, understood, disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone is everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are Ellen. All her meager sadnesses are yours. All her loneliness. The gray, straw-like hair. Her red, raw hands. It’s yours. It is time for you to understand this.
  • Walk. As the people who adore you stop adoring you, as they die, as they move on, as you shed them, as you shed your beauty, your youth, as the world forgets you, as you recognize your transience, as you begin to lose your characteristics, one by one, as you learn there is no one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving. Not coming from anyplace, not arriving anyplace, just driving, counting off time. Now, you are here. It’s 7:43. Now you are here. It’s 7:44. Now, you are…gone. 
    • So at this point, the whole set is in a state of apocalypse. It’s the end of an era. Of a generation. Of the world Caden had known. He sees a body that looks like his own, or Sammys. Everything is empty. This whole vast, alive place that had been a reflection of Caden, of his world, is reduced to almost nothing. It’s not September anymore. Time has passed. The end of December is close. The death of one year that allows for the arrival of the next. 
• There’s a woman. It seems like a Hazel.
  • Caden: Where is everybody. 
  • Woman: Mostly dead. Some have left.
  • C: Would you sit with me for a moment? Because I’m very tired and lonely. I feel like I know you.
  • W: Well, I was, um, the mother in Ellen’s dream.
  • C: Yes. You seem a bit older than I remember.
  • W: That dream was quite a while ago. 
  • Millicent (in the earpiece): Apologize.
  • C: I didn’t mean to say you looked old. [After a beat. Looking at a vast cityscape that’s somehow in the hangar] There’s everyone’s dreams in all those apartments. All those thoughts, I’ll never know. That’s the truth of it. I wanted to do that picnic with my daughter. I feel like I’ve disappointed you terribly. 
  • W: Oh, no. I am so proud of you.
  • M: Ask her if you can put your head on her shoulder.
  • C: Can I lay my head on your shoulder?
  • W: Yes.
  • C: I love you. 
  • W: I love you, too. 
  • C: I know how to do this play now. I have an idea. I think…if everyone—
  • Millicent: Die.
    • The screen goes white. 
• Song lyrics over the credits:
  • I’m just a little person. One person in a sea of many little people who are not aware of me. I do my little job. And live my little life. Eat my little meals. Miss my little kid and wife. And somewhere maybe someday, maybe somewhere far away, I’ll find a second little person who will look at me and say, “I know you, you’re the one I’ve waited for. Let’s have some fun. Life is precious, every minute. And more precious with you in it. So let’s have some fun. I’m glad I found you. Like hanging round you. You’re the one I like the best.” Somewhere, maybe someday, maybe somewhere far away, somewhere, maybe someday, maybe somewhere far away, somewhere maybe someday, maybe somewhere far away, I’ll meet a second little person, and we’ll go out and play. 

Cast

• Caden Cotard – Philip Seymour Hoffman
• Adele Lack – Catherine Keener
• Olive – Sadie Goldstein
• Adult Olive – Robin Weigert
• Hazel – Samantha Morton
• Tammy – Emily Watson
• Claire Keen – Michelle Williams
• Sammy Barnathan – Tom Noonan
• Ellen Bascomb/Millicent Weems – Diane West
• Maria – Jennifer Jason Leigh 
• Written by – Charlie Kaufman
• Directed by – Charlie Kaufman