After Charlie Kaufman utilized one of Eva H.D.’s poems in his 2020 feature “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” the pair hit it off. While Eva had never worked in film before, Kaufman had likewise never directed another writer’s work before. Nevertheless, the pair were kindred spirits, and set off to continue working together, and made their first short film together, “Jackals and Fireflies” in 2023. Now, they’re back with another short film making the film festival rounds, “How To Shoot a Ghost.” Set in Athens, the short follows two recently deceased people, played by Jessie Buckley and Josef Akiki, as they wander around the city, experiencing the afterlife.
“It was a little intimidating to me to take somebody else’s words and try to do them justice,” Charlie says about directing another writer’s words for the first time. “With somebody else’s work, and the work of somebody I respect as much as I respect Eva, I want to make sure that I’m getting what it is that she’s intended. And so there’s a lot of conversation between us.” “How To Shoot a Ghost” is certainly not a plot-driven film, instead it’s poetry set to motion, choosing to explore rather than explain, using Eva’s poetry as the guide.
In this exclusive interview with Next Best Picture, Kaufman and Eva describe how they made the film, what intrigued them about Athens, and what they’ve learned in their collaboration. We also asked Kaufman about those rumors swirling about a new film from him and Spike Jonze.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Daniel Howat, Next Best Picture: Charlie and Eva, “How To Shoot a Ghost” is your second short film together. What brought the two of you together to make these films?
Charlie Kaufman: Well, we met in 2017 at an arts residency called McDowell and became friends. And subsequently, I included a poem by Eva in a movie I directed called “I’m Thinking of Ending Things.” I really love Eva’s poetry. And during the pandemic, she was in Canada, recorded a poem, and her friend set it to music. She sent me the audio file, and I thought, “This could be a movie.” I was looking to do something short. So we started figuring out how to finance that. We did that, it was “Jackals and Fireflies.” That’s how it started.
In this short, you open with that beautiful Toni Morrison quote about not needing photographs or even memories. The beauty is enough. As filmmakers and writers, the art form itself thrives on the idea of capturing experiences and putting them into art. How do you absorb that Toni Morrison quote into your own experiences as artists?
Eva H.D.: Well, it’s very difficult, as you say, to square the desire to capture experience with the inevitable truth that you can’t do that. You’re going to die. You’re not taking anything with you. You’re not taking any of your shitty Instagram pictures or whatever it is-
CK: This isn’t directed at you, by the way. (Laughing)
EHD: No! General people. But you’re not either, right? One is not taking these things with them. Even though, I guess in certain cultures we line someone’s crypt or grave with favorite items, like the ancient Egyptians or whatever. You see those heartbreaking ancient tombs, or a child’s tomb with a little toy that they might need. But that’s for the living, I think, really, that is not for the dead. And no matter how glorious the work you create is or how beautiful the memory, that physical memento is not traveling with you.
So perhaps it’s interesting to question, what does? Something continues, whether it’s just recycled carbon and hydrogen or whatever. There’s something that goes on, or perhaps there’s a spiritual element that carries on. But I think it’s interesting to consider that because it’s quite horrifying.
But I love the way that you explore this idea of what we carry with us after we’re gone. Was this always intended as a short film for you, or did it start as a poem? Where did this begin for you, Eva?
EHD: I thought it would be a short. I suggested to Charlie that we make one in Athens. There was a lot more information than you see in the film, so that the actors could have something more. Like, they have real characters with backstories. There’s a lot more story, which is how it should be, so we could compress.
What was it about Athens that felt appropriately filled with ghosts?
EHD: I think Athens is a city that is full of a very interesting melange of layered history that is out of order. Some of the most ancient history is just radically on display. It’s quite in your face. The Acropolis would be an example of that. And also very recent history. So many people, for example, killed themselves during the financial crisis because that seemed to be the only option for them. And there’s no great marble monument to them. But there is a residue in the streets and in the air because these people lived here, and it killed them. The city itself and its geopolitical history killed the residents. And that’s interesting to think about in juxtaposition with the very, very ancient history that is so well documented, like Thucydides’ documentation of the plague. And to think about how we do and don’t survive the various plagues and curveballs that get thrown our way.
Well, I want to talk about how you brought that to life in this short film. Charlie, this film truly captures the feeling of wandering through a city, discovering little wonders or horrors as you move. But films often require such intense planning. So how did you capture this feeling of wandering and discovery while still shooting what you need to shoot?
CK: The way we did it in this film is the same way we did it in “Jackals and Fireflies.“ We had a first-unit cinematographer and a second-unit cinematographer —in this case, a Greek cinematographer, Yorgos Koutsouleris —who we sent off on his own to find things. We’re very interested in capturing the life of the city and street photography. And he’s from Athens. He knows the city. We told him the kind of things we were looking for, so while we were shooting the main unit with Jessie Buckley, Josef Akiki, and Michael Dymek, our first-unit cinematographer, Yorgos, was off doing other stuff, which he would bring back to us. Then later in the editing process, we had all this sort of interstitial stuff that we were able to kind of puzzle out and find, along with the archival and home movie stuff, to make this thing work as a whole, which was a fun process for us.
My goal was really to capture the city in a way that felt true. And it’s a tricky thing to do. I didn’t know Athens before this. I’d never shot a movie outside of the United States before. So, there are a lot of challenges and a lot of things I didn’t know how to do, but we’ve had really good responses from Greek people and Greek friends who feel it represents the city they know, which is heartening to me. My main worry was that I didn’t want to do the city a disservice. I don’t want to do the people a disservice. I want to approach this with some openness and humility. I don’t want to run roughshod as an American into this place that is not mine. So it was nice to hear that people responded that way.
How did you help Jessie and Josef understand the film’s tone before you went out to shoot? Obviously, they’re tremendous actors, so that goes a long way. But what sort of work was done with them before shooting? Was there much of a rehearsal process, or was there a lot of discovery in the midst of production?
CK: There was a great deal of conversation about the characters, their histories, and their backstories. There wasn’t much time for rehearsal. We shot this whole thing in six days, and the actors showed up a couple of days beforehand for fittings and other stuff. So it was on the set that we figured it out. And yes, I think they are tremendous actors, so credit where credit is due. I’m very happy to have them in the cast.
One choice you made that I found really fascinating is that we never hear dialogue spoken on screen. There’s voiceover and narration, and at the very end, we see Jessie speaking words that we can’t hear. Tell me about the decision not to have these characters speak on-screen.
CK: I mean, the thing I like about it is that they’re ghosts, and so the immateriality of them is expressed in their not speaking, but also being able to communicate with each other in some sort of nonverbal way where we can hear what they’re thinking, and they can hear what each other is thinking, but we don’t see them speaking. I think it conveys that in a movie that doesn’t use any special effects, where we’ve made them transparent or something like that. They’re just people walking. To me, it feels like an effective way to show it. And the interplay between the narration, which is Eva’s voice, and Josef and Jessie’s voices, as all being spoken by people that you don’t see speaking, feels like it’s of a piece to me.
You alluded to the editing of this short earlier. I wanted to dive in there because there is so much discovery and cross-cutting between a lot of different things in this piece, along with archival footage and home video. Tell me about the process of assembling this short.
CK: It was a great process.
EHD: It was fun!
CK: It was the two editors, Rob Frazen and Jon Daniel, and Eva and me. We would sit in the editing room and work through it, throwing things out and putting them back together, and then eventually include the archival materials that Eva had researched. It’s like putting together a puzzle, but it’s not like it’s on the box, you know what I mean? The solution to the puzzle doesn’t exist until we figure it out. And it’s a very delicate, time-consuming process. But ultimately, it was fulfilling. We would come upon something and be very excited by the juxtaposition of these images, which would lead us to other ideas.
EHD: And it was a nice combination in the editing room of people who didn’t know anything about Athens or Greek history, which would be John and Rob, and then Charlie, who had been to Athens and knew some stuff, and then I would know more. It’s interesting to see what archival footage excites in you, depending on what you know. It can create a certain feeling, but it often creates a similar feeling in people who don’t know the story. You can still get the mood.
CK: Yeah, I would say the archival footage is evocative, maybe more so the more you know, but it’s very dramaticfootage that we found and that we use.
It’s so effective at setting that mood. The tone is so clear as you’re watching this piece. You’re immersed in this world. Well, Charlie, in the past, you have had your writing directed and brought to life by other people. You’ve, of course, also directed your own work. But now you’re doing the same for Eva’s work. Did that shift your approach as a director in your short films with Eva, who’s the only other writer that you’ve directed thus far?
CK: It was a little intimidating to me to take somebody else’s words and try to do them justice. When I go into a project and it’s something that I’ve written and know what my intention is, and I also feel less of a responsibility to the work, I feel like it’s easier for me to go in there and improvise with it or make changes, because I kind of know what I’m trying to do. And if something comes up that excites me, I can just do it. With somebody else’s work, and the work of somebody I respect as much as I respect Eva, I want to make sure that I’m getting what it is that she’s intended. And so there’s a lot of conversation between us.
EHD: And the conversation is also because I don’t think it’s that important to get what I intend, right? I’m less precious about it because it’s my work. So it could take a little knocking around.
CK: But yeah, I would say that’s the difference. The two things we’ve done together have been poetic. I think if it were just like a plot-driven script that was written by somebody else, it would be easier for me. But yeah, I mean, this is delicate. I wanted to provide something analogous to the words. I wanted to do a poem in the visual language. And it was a challenge, and I appreciate that.
EHD: And it’s sort of akin to the language of dreams, you know.
CK: Which I’m always interested in.
EHD: Sometimes people, especially in North America, seem to think that regular people are divorced from poetry. But of course they’re not. They live it. They are poetry. And everybody goes to sleep and dreams and metaphor because it’s what we’re made of. So it’s a nice challenge to think about how to introduce that.
Eva, as a poet, you’re now entering the world of film. So in a similar vein, did you feel “Jackals and Fireflies“ and “How To Shoot a Ghost“ stretching you as a writer? Did you feel yourself evolving in any way?
EHD: I thought it was fun, so that’s nice. I don’t know if that counts. Maybe I did. I think it’s nice to be able to work with people. I wasn’t against that before. I just didn’t know any people who liked art. So that’s why I made poetry, because you could do it by yourself. If you then happen to know some artists, that’s nicer. Nice to play a team sport. I don’t think that counts as evolving, but I enjoyed it very much.
CK: Maybe I’m repeating myself, but just the idea of trying to take on something that I don’t know how to do and getting through it is a bit of an evolution. I feel like everything that I work on leads me to something else. If I hadn’t worked on this, I would be in a different place than I am. But that’s true of any movie that I’ve made on my own. It’s an opportunity to practice and challenge myself. And I’m grateful for that. I like the idea of doing little things and learning more about the craft of filmmaking.
Charlie, my editor, would never forgive me if I didn’t ask about the flood of reports that spread yesterday about you and Spike Jones talking about working together again. What can you tell me about all those reports flying around?
CK: I can tell you that the person who wrote it is lying. They’re doing that, I guess — I can only speculate, so I’ll lie too. They’re doing it for attention.
Eva and I were in São Paulo, giving a talk, when someone asked me if I was going to work with Spike again. I said, I told Spike that I’d like to do something with him again, which is true, and that he seemed open to it. But we have no plans there. We’re not in any talks. So there you go.
EHD: Now you have to be in talks!
CK: Now I have to, yeah.
That’s great clarity. But also, I do hope you work together again. I would love to see the two of you together again.
CK: I like working with Spike a lot, so it would be nice if it happens. But there are no plans.
Well, thank you both again for this short film. I can’t wait for more people to keep discovering it. I can’t wait to see what you both do next.
EVA: Oh, that’s so nice.
CK: Yeah, really sweet. I appreciate it.
You can follow Daniel and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars and Film on X @howatdk
