Acclaimed screenplay writer Charlie Kaufman makes his directorial debut with Synecdoche, New York. In the film, Academy award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman plays theater director Caden Cotard, who views his life in Schenectady, New York as nothing more than bleak. His wife Adele (Catherine Keener) has left for Berlin to pursue her painting career, and she has taken their young daughter Olive along for the ride. A new relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel (Samantha Morton) has prematurely run aground. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his body's autonomic functions. Worried about the transience of his life, he moves his theater company to a warehouse in New York City. There, he directs his actors in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a growing mockup of the city outside. We recently met up with both writer/director Charlie Kaufman and his leading lady Catherine Keener for an insightful chat about the film. To watch our exclusive interview with the duo, click on the video clip below:

You can visit Synecdoche, New York when it is released countrywide on October 24th, 2008.