Philip Seymour Hoffman's Mind-Bending Trip

Oct. 23, 2008 &#151 -- How do you persuade an Academy Award winner to star in a mind bender of a movie named after a figure of speech -- especially one that makes you immediately reach for your dictionary?

It helps when you're Charlie Kaufman, the groundbreaking screenwriter of "Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

"Charlie is an amazing talent. The films he's written and been a part of [have] changed things," Philip Seymour Hoffman said in an interview for ABC News Now's "Popcorn With Peter Travers."

Hoffman stars in "Synecdoche, New York," written and directed by Kaufman.

Synecdoche means "a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part" and is also a play on Schenectady, N.Y., where part of the story takes place. It sounds complicated and Hoffman, after he read the script, thought it would be impossible, which naturally made him agree to do it.

The main motivation was that "the script would endlessly spark conversations. We would trail off into conversations about our lives. He [Kaufman] is in his late 40s, I'm entering my 40s and time is moving faster," Hoffman said.

They talked about their children and Hoffman, who is expecting his third child any day now with his partner Mimi O'Donnell, believes that as a parent "the idea and definition of heartbreak changes and takes on a different meaning. You're heartbroken every day because you have never felt you could love like that."

Hoffman plays theater director Caden Cotard. His wife Adele (Catherine Keener) has left him to pursue her painting in Berlin, taking young daughter Olive (Sadie Goldstein) with her.

After receiving a grant, Cotard assembles a cast into a warehouse in New York City to create a brutally honest work, which grows bigger and bigger. Cotard, according to Hoffman, is an aging man "who's trying to do the best he can, trying to do something special, trying to get back his wife who left him and make his daughter love him again."