Now, the Marquis de Sade's getting the Kaufman treatment in "Quills." Geoffrey Rush is Sade as rock star, prancing about his cell in the mental asylum at Charenton like an 18th century version of Mick Jagger. This literary mad hatter goes head-to-head with Michael Caine's malevolent, black-clad, prude turned torturer Dr. Royer-Collard, and in the resulting conflagration Kate Winslet's starstruck washerwoman, Madeleine, and Joaquin Phoenix's sympathetic, tormented Abbé Coulmier, the liberal, do-gooding director of Charenton, are torn asunder.

This is literature at its most dangerous and depraved. Instead of the watered-down product of modern-day pedagogues who play artist in their university cubbyholes, we get the real thing -- the Father of Sadism, imprisoned for the product of his scandalous pen and willing to defy despotism to the death. Forevermore, Rush's Sade will be the model for the more outrageous class of aspiring scribblers. And for this we owe Kaufman and screenwriter Doug Wright (whose play is the basis for the film) a debt of thanks.

I talked with Kaufman as he sat sipping a glass of ginger ale, dressed in black, his gray-trimmed, hawklike countenance reminding me so much of "L.A. Confidential" director Curtis Hanson that I'd assume the two were brothers if I didn't know better.

You seem attracted to stories about and by writers. Why?

I really don't know. I read, therefore I'm interested in writers. The truth is, I'm drawn to all kinds of things. I was drawn to this because I thought it was a terrific story when it was sent to me. I liked the sort of game that was at the heart of it -- the game of expression and repression of expression, heightened expression countered by heightened repression and so on. And I liked this extreme character of de Sade. I guess I'm attracted to extremes because I think they help you define the center. Joaquin is the center of the piece, and he's defined by the extremes on both sides of him.

It just seemed to me to be a great story, set back in its time but something that seemed to have relevance for our time. Now that the film is coming out, it looks like we're back in another time where repression of expression is all the rage.

That theme of repression and control seems to be of great concern to you.

It does concern me. Certainly "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is all about trying to force writers to say certain things, about that totalitarian mentality. In our case, if we were doing the Humpty Dumpty story, that totalitarian mentality would want you to say, "And all the king's horses and all the king's men miraculously, through cooperation and solidarity, put Humpty back together again." The very people who were railing against communism in a way want to create the same kind of bland society, but based on capitalism. The danger is not so much in the economic structure of a society but in its intellectual structure.

Is there something in your experience, other than being an artist, that has given free expression such significance for you?

There are many ways into that question, and I don't know that it's so psychological. We have a thing in the Declaration of Independence -- the "pursuit of happiness," it's called. It's not saying we're entitled to happiness but, rather, its pursuit. And it should be great fun along the way. To me, thoughts are fun and art is fun. The strength of our society should not be idle entertainments but the joy of pursuing ideas. Certainly it becomes clear after a while that happiness is not just having money. You can have a lot of unhappiness by not having money, but the reverse is no guarantee of happiness.

I don't know if I can give you any deep neurotic reason for wanting to pursue these things. In some ways, "Quills" is about a writer, but in some ways it's even more about the Abbé Coulmier, the character played by Joaquin Phoenix, a liberal guy trying to create sanity in the asylum through painting, music and all forms of art.

The Marquis is in a sense sitting on one shoulder, goading him on, irrepressible. He's the force of art whispering in his ear. In the other ear is Michael Caine as Dr. Royer-Collard, who is in some ways the force of this primitive science, "the doctor" sent in by the state, or Napoleon, to repress the Marquis.

Joaquin, the central spirit, represents us. He's trying to drive his vehicle down the road, and sitting in the rearview mirror behind him is the ever-voluptuous Kate Winslet. It's a tale of a man caught in the middle, and his obsessive relationship is with the Marquis, which is one of the great romances of the movie.

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