The latest from Charlie Kaufman - writer of Adaptation, Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, taking the director's chair for the first time himself here - was a big favorite of both Kurt and Michael at the Toronto International Film Festival and one that we've been anxiously awaiting for a good long while now. Well, the wait just got a whole lot harder with the arrival of a theatrical trailer to give a substantial taste of what's in store. Oh, Charlie, you tease ... a taste isn't enough, I want the whole thing now ...

Theater director Caden Cotard is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful theatrical run in his hometown of Schenectady, New York, Caden decides to trade in the suburban spectators and local theater for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway. Awarded a “Genius” grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan’s theater district. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mockup of the city outside.

As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden’s own life veers wildly off the tracks. The shadow of his ex-wife Adele, a celebrated painter who left him years ago for Germany’s art scene, sneers at him from every corner. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele’s friend, Maria. Caden is helplessly driving his marriage to actress Claire into the ground while neglecting his second daughter. Sammy Barnathan, the actor Caden hires to play himself within the play, is a bit too perfect for the part, and makes it difficult for Caden to revive his relationship with the alluringly candid box office girl, Hazel. Meanwhile, his therapist, Madeline Gravis, is better at plugging her best-seller than counseling him. And a mysterious condition begins systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one.