anna Hanks from Austin, Texas, USA · CC BY 2.0

Kaufman's screenplays for Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind reshaped what a mainstream film script could do with surrealism and self-reference, work that earned him an Academy Award and a reputation, per Roger Ebert, for having written "the best movie of the decade" in Synecdoche, New York, which he also directed. Three of his scripts made the Writers Guild of America's list of the 101 greatest screenplays ever written.