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.

Oh NO! The ladies have left the building… The aGLIFF building. Programming Director Lisa Kasalek and Festival Director Ajae Clearway have both moved on to greener pastures, this even after they were recently named Gay Place Crush of the Week!?! Kasalek left to pursue personal projects and Clearway is now a staff member at the prestigious 1080. This is worrying, the fact that I'm a nervous nelly notwithstanding. Under Kasalek and Clearway aGLIFF chose to explore a more expansive and meaningful festival program. This past year's aGLIFF gave viewers films in which the gay characters loved, suffered, and made morally ambiguous decisions like the rest of us. There were also transgender oriented films (the number of transgendered films will only grow in years to come). I know that sex sells, and that it's easier to market Naked Boys Singing to a randy group of gay men. But let's hope that their departure doesn't signal a reactionary step backwards for aGLIFF. At this point in the festival's life, everything is on the line. Building an audience for a film festival chock full of internationally acclaimed films doesn't happen over the course of a year, or even a few years, it happens gradually. Dear aGLIFF: Don't hedge your bets with gay fluff, continue to build the internationally acclaimed LGBTQ film festival Austin deserves!

Glad to hear you’re starting to feel your fighting spirit coming back, Kim. I knew all along that it would only take your reading a few of my mean-spirited, antagonizing, disrespectful, misogynistic, hate-filled, spot-on, totally correct, elegantly worded, brilliantly argued entries before you were overcome with the desire to punch back. I look forward to a solid four days of reading slanderous comments about my family and my religion. Now, on to day two. For the next 24 hours, Kim and I will be arguing the relative virtues of the great old-school playwright and screenwriter George S. Kaufman (You Can’t Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner, A Night at the Opera) vs. those of the decidedly new-school screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the soon-to-play-at-the-Austin-Film-Festival Synecdoche, NY). I will be defending George; Kim will fight for Charlie. I will stand on the side of the Greatest Generation; Kim will slouch to wallow in the mire of our own. I will argue the virtues of a time defined by self-sacrifice, high wit, narrative sophistication, and Franklin D. Roosevelt; Kim will try her best to defend a time defined by dick jokes, methamphetamine use, global terrorism, and George W. Bush. So, since you’re in a fighting mood, Kim, I believe I’ll come out swinging: The films of Charlie Kaufman are willfully obtuse, painfully clever exercises in narrative incomprehensibility, designed to confuse viewers with flashy intellectual pyrotechnics and time-bending trickery in order to distract them from the fact that his world is a cold, cerebral place where characters aren’t humans but rather pieces in an elaborate puzzle no one can understand. George S. Kaufman, on the other hand, is the warmest, most human of comedy writers, constructing dialogue and scenarios that manage to speak to both the best and worst tendencies of the human species (well, maybe not the absolute worst; you’d be hard-pressed to find drug-abuse or child-molestation subplots in Animal Crackers) while never shying away from the philosophy that stories are, first and foremost, designed to entertain. They are rapid-fire, quick-witted trifles on the surface, but they’re filled with social concern and moral ambivalence for those who choose to look deeper. In other words, they are perfect for the pictures.