"But Charlie Kaufman, your Charlie Kaufman, wrote his best movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, with two other people." Please. He hashed out the bullet points over dinner with two of his pals. "You ever been fucked by love?" "Yup." "Tell me more. And since we're up, who feels like calamari?" That sounds an awful lot like like my standing Wednesday night wine night with the girls. You don't see me giving them any credit for the good stuff, do you? Dammit. I really am going to bed now.

So Charlie Kaufman is the best screenwriter of the 21st century, eh? Compared to whom, exactly? Not to get too nostalgic here (can a man be nostalgic for a time he wasn’t around for? My soul cries out for a dictionary.), but let’s face it; it’s not like Kaufman is competing with Paddy Chayefsky or Orson Welles or Budd Schulberg. (Writers in the Movies side dispute: Should we condemn Schulberg’s On the Waterfront script for being a defense of his naming of names during the HUAC trials, or should we just accept that human beings are fallible, dastardly, shameful, self-serving, approval-craving beasts and judge their work exclusively on its own merits? Please phrase your answer in the form of a musical number.) What I’m saying is that the competition isn’t quite what it was 30, 40, 50, or 60 years ago. Getting back to your best-21-century-screenwriter claim: Who else would be in the running? Let’s see: Wes Anderson hasn’t written a good script in nearly 10 years, not since Rushmore. Every movie he’s made since has been an elaborate but empty exercise in interior decorating, quirky emotional detachment, verbal preciousness, and soundtrack sequencing. In fact, I think the real mastermind behind those early great Anderson movies – Rushmore and Bottle Rocket – must have been Owen Wilson. I remember reading somewhere (could have been Entertainment Weekly, could have been my sister’s diary, could have been the back of a box of Golden Grahams) that though Wilson was credited as one of the writers of The Royal Tenenbaums, he actually left most of the work to Anderson. Apparently he was too busy making millions of dollars and having cocaine-fueled orgies with daughters of Middle Eastern oil barons to find the time to write. A conflict I understand only too well.

I think I’ve been fumbling a bit, trying to pinpoint exactly what my problem is with the Marx Brothers and Kaufman combined. I’m not so thick-headed as to not be swayed at least a little by your arguments, and not so humorless as to be unmoved by Groucho’s gift for the gab. He’s funny. I get it. And there’s more going on there than a bit of verbal trickery. And yet— There’s a Clifford Odets quote I used to have pinned on my wall. Odets was a “man of the people” playwright – not much read these days, but he was the inspiration for the Coen brothers’ Barton Fink. The quote (nabbed from a terrific New Yorker profile from a couple years’ back): “There are contradictory pulls—one to live with tightened discipline, sharp, hard and cold; the other to go hotly and passionately to hell as fast and as fully as possible.” Order and anarchy. Two contradictory ways of living. I think, Josh, we danced around this idea tonight, when we grabbed a drink at Rio Rita to talk shop. (In typing that, I feel almost like we’ve cheated on you, dear reader. Yup, the fight continues even when you’re not around.)

It's still not too late to purchase tickets for the Austin Film Festival annual Film & Food Gala Wednesday evening at the historic Driskill Hotel (5th & Brazos) in Downtown Austin. The best chefs from more than 20 Austin restaurants and catering companies will be serving up signature dishes, there will be delectable cocktails, plus an exciting silent auction. Tickets are $70 for festival registrants and members and $85 for the public. Proceeds from the event will benefit AFF's Young Filmmaker Program. For more information or to purchase tickets online, go to www.austinfilmfestival.com/new/film_food Wednesday evening, October 15th, 7-10pm

Don't think I didn't hear the deep sigh in your "Oh, Kim." Listen, Josh, it's not like I've closed the book on the Marxes. I had a good chuckle at your Duck Soup clip. It's just how I like the Marx Brothers – in three-minute bits. I'm all for class warfare, and gender warfare, too. I'd just rather watch Preston Sturges do it.

Oh, Kim. It’s one thing to like Funny Farm; it’s quite another not to like the Marx Brothers. That’s beyond my comprehension. I can understand going to bed early. I can see why people get married and listen to country music and vote Republican and eat vegetables and go to church. I can get my head around not smoking and not drinking and not sleeping around. I can even concede that not everyone is capable of smoking and drinking while they’re sleeping around. But I will never in a thousand years understand how someone could not love Groucho, Chico, and Harpo (Zeppo you can feel free not to love). In our dreary age of ossified political opinion, lifeless pabulum gussied up to pass for social commentary, moribund TV moralists spouting off all the time about God and country and evolution, and “humorists” who mistake cultural references for wit and impersonation for satire, we could all learn a lesson from the Marx Brothers and George S. Kaufman.

I know you're fond of sweeping declarations, ergo: Charlie Kaufman is the greatest screenwriter of the 21st century. I'm not saying his every film is perfect – I know you're just champing at the bit to get at Human Nature, and, for me, Being John Malkovich (which was '99, actually) is the one that's most distancing. But when you line them all up in a row, it's an astonishingly good and still getting better body of work: ever-inventive, challenging, heady, but also – and here's where I think you'll balk – heartfelt. Because he has such a distinctive voice, and because he wrote "himself" into a script (Adaptation), I think it's considered cool to kiss off Charlie Kaufman – as a nut, a neurotic, a scattershot talent who's all smoke and mirrors. Bah. Those "pyrotechnics" – a word he's used himself, and not necessarily as a pat on his own back – are a fundamental part of what makes a Charlie Kaufman script so very Charlie Kaufman. But the existence of pyrotechnics doesn't equal an absence of heart. At worst, those plot acrobatics are a distraction; at best, a brand-new way of seeing the world. Maybe I don't mean heart – I mean humanism. Kaufman's movies – which are Big Idea kind of movies – are all about what it means to be human, and to be human is to be self-absorbed and cowardly, to be loved not enough or not at all, to be a disappointment to yourself and to others. Not a pretty picture.

In championing Charlie Kaufman, I’m hardly defending the era in which, by dint of birth, he’s destined to labor in. I mean, if we're getting to pick here, I might sign up for George S.’s era, too – I always wanted to be a rat-a-tat-tat-talking newspaper gal à la Rosalind Russell. Great hats, too. But great hats have about as much relevance in a discussion about the merits of George as do “dick jokes” and W. with Charlie – which is to say, none at all. (And let’s not rose-color the Age of George, either – tell me you didn't cringe when that braying goblin Jimmy Durante crated Rita Hayworth in a mummy’s tomb and carted her off to Nova Scotia [whaaa?]. On second thought, screw the hats – I’ll happily stick with the aughts.) So what we’re talking about here are two screenwriters – one of whom is stylistically and staggeringly innovative and easily skips from genre, subject, and director while still maintaining his own authorial voice … and one of whom is actually only credited with one original work written for the screen (Night at the Opera). Now you’ve repeatedly assured me that even though others were called in to adapt Kaufman’s source plays – and, oh, yeah, Kaufman himself had a collaborator on most of those plays – the adaptations are faithful representations of his work. And that’s fine. I’ll take your word for it. Regardless, the roots are showing: In each one of the adaptations I’ve seen, they’ve felt largely stagebound – overlong, hyper-verbal, and aesthetically underwhelming. What happens in a movie outside of the dialogue is just as significant a part of the screenwriter’s work, and nothing in a George Kaufman picture comes close to the vision of a Charlie Kaufman one. And it doesn't matter if it's Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry or George Clooney in the director's seat – when you're watching a movie written by Charlie Kaufman, you know it. For all my grumbling, I really do like George. He’s a terrific writer (“you have the touch of a love-starved cobra”) and an ace at corralling chaos. But there’s a casual cruelty in his writing that doesn’t jibe at all with all your Saint Georgedness – and I find that cruelty far more off-putting than the supposedly clever and cold Charlie Kaufman. But more about that later. I might as well as fess up to this now, since you'll out me anyway – and do you see how I’m going to bury this after the jump? Crafty, no? ...

Hey gang. Sorry for going silent – Josh and I had a press screening this morning. But hold tight: I'll be chiming in soon, and I've got a lot to say. Starting with, Josh, did you seriously just dangle the Greatest Generation argument in your defense? (Rolls eyes dramatically.) Back in a flash.