Metafiction - Film and Television

Film and Television

• Charlie Kaufman is a screenwriter who often uses this narrative technique. In the film Adaptation., his character Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) tortuously attempts to write a screenplay adapted from the book The Orchid Thief, only to come to understand that such an adaptation is impossible. Many plot devices used throughout the film are uttered by Kaufman as he develops a screenplay, and the screenplay, which eventually results in Adaptation itself. A similar device is used in Kaufman's film Synecdoche, New York. In the film, stage director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) endeavors to create a vast theatrical project about the world around him, with actors playing himself and everyone in his life. Thus the film Synecdoche, New York, a portrayal of the narrative of Caden's life, tells the story of a portrayal of the narrative of Caden's life.
• Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is a 2006 British comedy directed by Michael Winterbottom. It is a film-within-a-film based on a book-within-a-book, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It features actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves as egotistical actors during the making of a screen adaptation of Laurence Sterne's 18th century novel Tristram Shandy, which is a fictional account of the narrator's attempt at writing an autobiography. Gillian Anderson and Keeley Hawes also play themselves in addition to their Tristram Shandy roles.
• Some episodes of the later series from the fictional Star Trek universe use the holodeck (or its Ferengi equivalent, a "holosuite") to tell a "story-within-a-story", while the Deep Space Nine episode Far Beyond the Stars tells a similar story without such a high-tech plot device, as basically a work of metafiction, using the DS9 regular characters to tell a mid-20th century story, set in a science fiction publishing house in New York City.
• A film in which a character reads a fictional story (e.g. The Princess Bride, Disney Channel's Life is Ruff, Bedtime Stories).
• A film or television show in which a character begins humming, whistling, or listening to (on a radio, etc.), the show or film's theme song (e.g. the final scene of "Homer's Triple Bypass", from The Simpsons; when Sam Carter hums the theme from Stargate SG-1 during the episode "Chimera"; the second Collector from Demon Knight; when Mr. Incredible whistles theme music from The Incredibles; when all the characters in the film Magnolia begin to sing the background music - "Wise Up" by Aimee Mann; in Almost Famous, when one character begins to sing the background music - "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John - and all of the other characters around him immediately pick it up and sing along as well; the moments when Sam Lowry of Brazil hums/listens to/sings the film's self-titled theme song; when Daryl Van Horne whistles theme music from The Witches of Eastwick; in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone when Rubeus Hagrid is briefly heard playing the main theme on a recorder); when Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson (as B.A. Baracus) hums the A-Team theme in the trailer for the A-Team movie (2010).
• Directly referencing another work that internally references the first work. (e.g. "Weird Al" Yankovic appearing on The Simpsons, when he himself sings songs that reference The Simpsons).
• Characters who do things because those actions are what they would expect from characters in a story. (e.g. Scream, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Last Unicorn, The Long Goodbye).
• Characters who express awareness that they are in a work of fiction (e.g. Stranger Than Fiction, The Great Good Thing, Puckoon, Spaceballs, the Marvel Comics character Deadpool, Illuminatus!, Uso Justo, 1/0. Bob and George), the play and movie Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
• Characters in a film or a television series who mention and/or refer to the actors or actresses that portray themselves (e.g. Beatrice "Betty" Pengson from I Love Betty La Fea; Bea Alonzo, who played the role of the protagonist, also played herself as an Ecomoda model; coincidentally in the show, Betty wants to meet Bea Alonzo in person, an act of self-reference. Julia Roberts from Ocean's Twelve who played the role of Tess disguises herself to look like Julia Roberts. The other characters ironically realize that she is in disguise.)
• A real pre-existing piece of fiction X, being used within a new piece of fiction Y, to lend an air of authenticity to fiction Y, e.g. A Nightmare on Elm Street is discussed extensively in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, while actors from the former star as "themselves" or Scream 3 and Scream 4, where characters discuss and know of films that are about the previous films' events; likewise are The 1001 Nights put to use within If on a winter's night a traveler.
• A story where the author is not a character, but interacts with the characters. (e.g. She-Hulk, Animal Man, Betty Boop, Daffy Duck in Duck Amuck, Breakfast of Champions, Excel Saga television shows).
• A story where the narrator is a character in the story, and interacts with himself as a different character (e.g. The Emperor's New Groove).
• A story within which that story (or a story based on it) is a work of fiction (e.g. Stargate SG-1's "Wormhole X-Treme!" or Supernatural's Supernatural novels.)
• Acknowledging the tropes of the Horror genre (e.g. Funny Games).
• The acclaimed TV sitcom Arrested Development is widely recognised as a seminal work of televised metafiction - it not only is framed like a reality television show (when in fact it is anything but), but also is highly self-reflexive and intertextual. Examples of this include the series' tendencies to refer to its own struggle for ratings, its competition from Sex and the City and the fact that the second season was cut from 22 to 18 episodes.
• The Cabin in the Woods, a 2012 horror movie written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard was critically lauded for its metafictional elements.