Features

Charlie Kaufman 1995

Here's Charlie Kaufman's 1995 ''buried treasure'' -- The acclaimed moviemaker first dabbled in TV with quirky sitcoms like ''Depressed Roomies''

By Timothy Gunatilaka | Dec 03, 2004

Before befuddling and enthralling filmgoers with Being John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman bided his time in the dark realm of television, working on cult sitcom Get a Life and the Jennifer Aniston-starring sketch show The Edge, which, despite limited success, helped the future Adaptation scribe land a TV development deal with Disney. The result: Depressed Roomies, an absurdist pilot involving grumpy cohabitants scheming to quiet their loud peg-legged neighbor upstairs. Only in Kaufman's brilliantly skewed worldview does dating your roommate's same-sex cousin for free carpets and viewing Sinbad as a romantic sage pass for humor. Not surprisingly, Disney deemed the script inappropriate for TV. So Kaufman went on to Being John Malkovich.Nothing depressing about that.

Originally posted Dec 03, 2004 Published in issue #795 Dec 03, 2004 Order article reprints