Best-known as a screenwriter for all of his career, Synecdoche, New York marks the first time that Charlie Kaufman directed a film (and in this case, a film that he also wrote). But Kaufman became involved as the director of the film after Spike Jonze, who later became a producer on the film, decided to direct 2009's Where the Wild Things Are instead of Synecdoche.
Incidentally, it was Sony Pictures Classics which approached Kaufman and Jonze to create a horror film. In a departure from many film arrangements, the two didn't have to pitch the distributor a script which had already been written. To that end, they had a fair amount of time to craft the film from the ground up. The result, to say the least, was incredibly unique and interesting.
Kaufman and Jonze eschewed traditional horror tropes and instead crafted a film about the things they found most frightening: death, Simulacrum, and mental illness and delusion, to name a few. But it was Kaufman, who ultimately directed the film, who influenced its story and themes the most. For example, during press for the film, Kaufman recalled a time when he and a few other people were scouting locations for the film and became stuck in an elevator. They eventually escaped, but Kaufman had a recurring dream in which he was trapped in an elevator. As such, he structured the film like a dream.
