catherine keener

On faking music and acting real. Plus, what actors really talk about when they get together (not acting.)

Robert Downey Jr.’s rehab is complete—he’s a comic genius shackled to 12-step action movie

Opening weekend: ‘State of Play’ revives the retro romance of the crusading newspaper reporter

At the press conference after the Cannes premiere of Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman’s feature directing debut, the screenwriter who hatched Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind looked understandably nervous. From the first question, asking why on earth he put a word in his title that most American won’t be able to pronounce, never mind understand, he was on the defensive. Synecdoche, in case you slept through that English class, is a figure of speech in which a part stands for a whole. It rhymes with the New York town of Schenectady—hence play on words in the title.