Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a tortured and conflicted theatre director in Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, the Oscar-winning actor who stars in Charlie Kaufman's new film about life, death and art, is amused by the extreme reactions Kaufman is generating with Synecdoche, New York.

"People ask me: 'Is this the weirdest movie you've made?' I say: 'No! Twister is, you know what I mean?' "

Hoffman bursts out laughing, his eyes crinkling, his ample belly shaking, like Santa Claus having a good time at Christmas. "It's not knock on Twister," Hoffman says about his 1996 thriller, "but it is a weird movie! They're chasing tornados around!"

Synecdoche, New York -- despite its odd title and the strange things that happen, including a house that burns for years while people live in it -- is just really a slice of life, Hoffman says. "I think he's just showing how surreal and crazy it really is."

Kaufman is the visionary screenwriter who created Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Synecdoche, New York, with Hoffman playing a theatre director whose new production takes decades to develop while it expands into a gigantic madhouse and never gets finished, is Kaufman's directorial debut.

He took over after his friend Spike Jonze, who originally was going to direct, first wanted to do Where the Wild Things Are. Kaufman did not want to wait so he asked to direct Synecdoche himself. Jonze then served as Kaufman's producer.

Kaufman, who has been Oscar-nominated three times and won for Eternal Sunshine, is not as strange as he may seem, according to Hoffman.

"He really is, with a lot of imagination and creativity and talent, just trying to tell the truth to the best of his ability. So the more I'm around Charlie, the more I understand about him, although it is hard to understand anybody, really, that well. But I started taking him at his word. He isn't trying to screw things up or make them weird just for the sake of making them weird. He really is trying to make things as honest as possible."

Even the burning house has an explanation, Hoffman says. It is what Hoffman's character imagines when he visits the woman who lives there.

"That is his life. That is what is happening to him. That is how he see it. He sees her house burning. He thinks of her house as this really awful place to live and he can't stop thinking about it like that. So you see her house burning and you think: 'Why is her house burning down?' Well, that's just his or her view of it."

It is that kind of acceptance of the surreal that inspired Kaufman to cast Hoffman in the first place. "I can't think of anybody else," Kaufman says of Hoffman as the tortured and conflicted theatre director Caden Cotard, a mad genius. "It's the person for this role for me."

But Kaufman did not write it for Hoffman. Nor did he write for cast members Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton or Jennifer Jason Leigh.

"It's a dangerous practice," Kaufman says of screenwriters creating roles for specific actors, "because you're limiting your characters based on what you know about someone's past performances. I think the actors should come to the character."

In Hoffman's case, he came to the character with passion and an open mind. The 41-year-old actor is still musing about the elusive and ambiguous meaning of the film, which made its controversial world premiere at Cannes and then hit the filmfest circuit, including in Toronto in September.

"It just keeps ringing more and more true to me, this movie," Hoffman says. "Everything the film does is just kind of right on. All the things it brings up, all the things he's going through, if you just look at it face value -- the story it's really telling -- it is quite illuminating and quite revealing.

"And therefore it's really sad. It's sad that we die and we don't finish. The finish is just your life ending. Whether that's what Charlie wants to say or not, that's what I took away."

The word for it is exotic

What's in a name? In the case of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, there is mystery and a touch of whimsy.

The word synecdoche is a figure of speech in which the whole is represented by a part. An example, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, would be the phrase "fifty sail" to represent 50 ships. Or "boards" to represent a theatre stage.

Kaufman, a native New Yorker, is also having fun with the New York town of Schenectady, where the story is set and where part of the film was shot. Just don't ask for an explanation. "I hate to kind of interpret the movie," Kaufman says. "It's not something that I want to do."

But he does admit to being playful with character names. "You know, I usually give women in my scripts names that I'm attracted to, that are kind of cool. And the men always have names like Joel or Craig. But I decided this time I was going to give the man an exotic name. So I went through a baby book and found this name I'd never heard before."

The protagonist, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is named Caden Cotard. "Apparently, it's become a very popular name in the four years since I wrote (the script), so I feel kind of embarrassed by it," Kaufman says with a smile.

Meanwhile, one of the main female characters is named Hazel. "I just love the name Hazel," Kaufman says of Samantha Morton's character. A costume designer for the Monty Python group was also named Hazel, Kaufman remembers, so it is a sly tribute to her.

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