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Adaptation.: The Shooting Script
"One of the most talked about scripts of the year, Adaptation is the story of an orchid collector (Chris Cooper), a journalist (Meryl Streep, as author Susan Orlean), and the screenwriter (Charlie Kaufman, played by Nicolas Cage) who, in adapting Orlean's bestselling book The Orchid Thief writes himself and his twin brother (also played by Cage) into the movie." "In the foreword, written exclusively for this Newmarket edition, Orlean reveals her own struggle to tell the story of the orchid, and her delight that "strangely, marvelously, hilariously, Kaufman's screenplay has ended up not being a literal adaptation of my book, but a spiritual one."" Kaufman and Jonze take readers behind the scenes of Adaptation and their other films to speak about how they collaborate, where truth and fiction diverge, the challenges of balancing various storylines, why they do not like to comment on the meaning of their work, and Kaufman's approach to writing.
148 pages, Paperback
First published November 21, 2000
3 people are currently reading
429 people want to read
About the author
Charlie Kaufman
23 books886 followersCharles Stuart Kaufman is an American playwright, film producer, theater and film director, and an Academy Award, BAFTA, and Independent Spirit Award-winning screenwriter. Often regarded as one of the finest screenwriters of the 21st century, his work explores themes of death, insecurity, the artistic process, and the passage of time.
In 2003, Kaufman was listed at #100 on Premiere's annual "Power 100" list. He was also identified by Time Magazine in 2004 as one of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood.
In 2003, Kaufman was listed at #100 on Premiere's annual "Power 100" list. He was also identified by Time Magazine in 2004 as one of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
November 13, 2011
Josh Rohrmayer was enduring a powerful, multi-day, disruption (i.e. full stop cessation) of the ability to sleep when he called himself on the phone. He was under an assault of rapidly forming ideas about things to write about. One trail of mental associations led to something he could write about the screenplay of one of his favorite films{1} of all time. He thought about the idea of Charlie Kaufman being one of his heroes. He fell into a tangential reverie about his heroes more generally… Since he was driving and not thinking clearly enough to pull over and jot down some of these ideas on paper, he had an immediately-acknowledged-as-hilarious-/-ridiculous idea to leave an audible note-to-self on his voicemail. He wasn’t even sure if this was possible but he dialed his own cell phone number anyway and exactly nothing happened. He then checked his voicemail and discovered a function which would allow him to create a message and then send it to the voicemail of whichever number he entered thereafter. This could work.
____________________________________________
{1} It's a "film" when taken "seriously" and a "movie" when not. This is the reflexive speech pattern of the wrinkled high brow. The rarely spoken code of the arthouse set.
____________________________________________
He immediately chuckled at the situation at the outset of recording the message. He commented on the weirdness of it. He spoke slowly, in detached monotone that degraded each word and rough idea being formed in his mouth and barely drooled out toward the intended goal post of his future ear. The idea of describing this bizarre event within the review of a film that may just be the most meta-fied, self-referential thing ever committed to celluloid struck him suddenly then as an obvious adding of even more egregious layers of meta-referentiality, especially considering that within the film are scenes of the screenwriter of the film listening to his own self-denigrating and manically scatterbrained ideas played back to him as aural notes-to-self, scenes which Josh had just instinctively quoted verbatim to his voicemail/future self as things to remember to mention in his review as being brilliant and hilarious aspects of the most densely meta-layered thing in the whole cotton pickin' postmodern world, all of which then, of course, would be commented upon further in the way he's doing...right...now. The strata of self-reference and meta-metaness bludgeoned his sleepless brain into a submission that put the whole thing on hold, especially because several other potentially not-awful ideas for book reviews and short fictions were hovering in an intra-copulating swarm that threatened to congeal into one big ol' paralytic monster of indistinguishable ideas—dumbly hulking above, terrifyingly useless. Basically, he needed some shut eye in a real bad way.
I adore the films of Charlie Kaufman. All of them. Intensely. There are so many great things to say about each one, and Adaptation stands out as probably the finest, most fully realized one of all. If I may (and I may) insert an inevitable, can’t-be-helped, DFW reference: this film bears some important similarity to the epic, struggle-with-the-self-and-against-postmodernism, 140 page grand finale of a story in the Girl with Curious Hair collection called "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way" in the sense that they both ratchet up the so-called postmodern techniques in a seriously self-critical manner, a fun-to-poke-at-the-self kind of way, and in a way that shows affection and appreciation for those techniques but only when they are used to reach the emotionally gratifying ends that art has functioned to meet probably since the first cave painting or fireside drum circle. They both pile on the techniques of meta-narratives and the like as both an indictment of and tribute to them.
One gets the sense that Kaufman really did go through a lot of what is portrayed by Nic Cage (in his greatest role/s to date). It would make perfect sense really. He’s trying to escape being pigeon-holed as the wacky, off-beat, pomo surrealist du jour of Hollywood after the much deserved success of Being John Malkovich. He's attempting to write a straightforward story that he simply summarizes throughout the film—after exhaling what sounds like air-as-frustration—as simply being "about flowers." This proves to be a difficult task for him. He tries to insert the entire history of life on Earth into the script at one point{2}, only to quickly find himself slumped over, defeated and depressed, listening to his previously recorded self ferally shouting at his present self though the handheld tape recorder about single cell organisms and "worker monkeys" and "simple monkeys", etc.
____________________________________________
{2} Which, of course, is actually done in a beautiful time-lapse montage sequence early on in the film.
____________________________________________
Then he breaks the, I dunno, the 800th wall or so and initiates an infinite regress into the self, by writing himself into the malformed and barely begun script as the struggling screenwriter who's writing himself into his malformed and barely begun script—all of which he's later shown to be listening to the recorded audio-notes of, and then consequently once again slumped in defeat, sweat-sheened, and disgusted with himself.
KAUFMAN
I'm insane. I'm Ourobouros.
DONALD
I don't know what that word means.
KAUFMAN
I've written myself into my screenplay.
It's eating itself. I'm eating myself.
DONALD
Oh. That's kinda weird, huh?
KAUFMAN
It's self-indulgent. It's narcissistic.
It's solipsistic. It's pathetic. I'm
pathetic. I'm fat and pathetic.
Theses are the scenes that flashed into Josh's mind during that idea-assault on his morning drive home from work. He'd been thinking about how he really, really wanted to avoid the somewhat alluring and repulsive trap of writing too autobiographically in the short fiction collection that he'd been putting together as a portfolio for graduate school applications. The line "I have no understanding of anything outside of my own panic and self-loathing and pathetic little existence. It's like the only thing I'm actually qualified to write about is myself and my own self..." popped into his head and kicked off the whole previously mentioned "trail of mental associations" leading to the accidentally and perfectly meta-fying phone call to the self.
One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Charlie's defiant will has been ground down and he's attending a screenwriting seminar that his twin brother Donald{3} has been cultishly touting throughout the film, which heretofore had only resulted in Donald being chastised by the high art renegade, King Shit of Pomo Fuck Mountain (i.e. Charlie), because such seminars are deemed to be plebeian, creatively suffocating, shallow, commercially objectified and determined, etc.
____________________________________________
{3} Donald does not exist outside of the logic of this film, however, "he" received actual screen writing credit on the Adaptation script, which went on to be nominated for a Academy Award and as such I recall getting a real kick out of seeing both Charlie's and Donald's names being announced as nominees during the big, televised, Hollywood ceremony.
____________________________________________
In the lecture hall at the seminar, McKee, the charismatic leader of these seminars, is speaking in the background behind Kaufman’s voiceover narration of his massively self-loathing thoughts which gut him as a pathetic sellout for attending the seminar, and just as he’s about to exit the hall in a huff of self-chastisement, McKee’s voice breaks through to the foreground, stopping both the neurotic voiceover and Kaufman’s attempted exit in their tracks with a booming "AND GOD HELP YOU IF YOU USE VOICEOVER IN YOUR WORK, MY FRIENDS. GOD HELP YOU. THAT’S FLACCID, SLOPPY WRITING. ANY IDIOT CAN WRITE A VOICEOVER NARRATION TO EXPLAIN THE THOUGHTS OF A CHARACTER." It’s a hilarious moment among many that then segues into the following exchange between Kaufman and McKee when Kaufman decides to ask a question:
KAUFMAN
Sir, what if a writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens, where people don't change, they don't have any epiphanies. They struggle and are frustrated and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world —
MCKEE
The real world?
KAUFMAN
Yes, sir.
MCKEE
The real fucking world? First of all, you write a screenplay without Conflict or Crisis, you'll bore your audience to tears. Secondly: nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day! There's genocide, war, corruption! Every fucking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else! Every fucking day someone somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else! People find love! People lose it! For Christ's sake! A child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church! Someone goes hungry! Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman! If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know CRAP about life! And WHY THE FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!
KAUFMAN
Okay, thanks.
Early in the film there’s a scene where Kaufman is meeting with a film executive to talk about adapting the book "about flowers" in which Kaufman, in a nervously sweating fashion, begins to stutter off all the Hollywood clichés he wants to avoid putting into the script, and each and every one will eventually come to pass as this excellent, must-watch, three minute condensed version of the film shows perfectly.
By the latter end of the film it seems that Donald Kaufman has basically taken the reins on the script as McKee’s demanded "Crisis" and "Conflict" begin to erupt all over the screen. Yes, the dreaded Hollywood clichés that Kaufman disparages early on begin to crop up, but this is the truly brilliant and redemptive thing about the film: they work and work very well, both as they are supposed to traditionally, as entertaining and emotionally effective turns of the screenplay and camera, and as hilariously self-aware insertions, with a wink and nod to the audience and to itself, all brilliantly wrangled together and structured with technical prowess. Team Donald and Team Charlie are reconciled both symbolically as screenwriting techniques and overarching philosophies about art, and within the narrative of the film itself as the twins begin to fight less and even share moments of brotherly love.
One such moment is a prime example of the power of this dual-leveled reconciliation in which the brothers are hiding for their very lives in a Floridian swamp from the murderous intentions of John Laroche, the new orchid-poaching secret-paramour of the New Yorker columnist, Susan Orlean, who is also the author of the very book "about flowers" that is supposed to have been adapted throughout the film this entire time. Susan has insisted that they must be killed because they've discovered things about her that she can’t allow to see the light of day. The Kaufman twins are hunkered down there and they have a teary-eyed, sentimentality-fest that peaks when Donald sagely says "You're not what you love, but what loves you", which, to be honest, I’m still not sure I even really understand, but the moment—as it is simultaneously funny, and cleverly, self-referentially connected to Charlie's anti-Hollywood rant early on in the film—with the soundtrack swelling and the display of brotherly love within the crumbling edifice of their cynical rivalry—has actually brought real tears out of my eyes. More than once.
Or when Susan Orlean wails melodramatically about wanting to be a baby again, wanting to start her life over ("before it got all fucked up!") and to be carried out differently. Or when she waxes philosophical about the importance of being fascinated by the world or being able to narrow one's focus in order to find passion and eschew existential malaise—these moments all hit me in a direct and serious way through all of the the sly winking and nudging. This also happens as John Laroche's many horrible, real life tragedies are revealed throughout the film, or when he hits upon genuinely wise notions about life within his goofy flurries of egomaniacal eccentricity. And there are many more gemlike moments of real human joy and sorrow nestled throughout the meta-tastic hall of mirrors of the screenplay upon book upon screenplay embedded within a screenplay competing with a fictional screenplay, etc, all reflecting both real life figures (McKee, Orlean, Laroche, Charlie Kaufman) and symbolic fictional figures (both Donald and, to some weird, self-parodic extent, "Charlie Kaufman"), and all bending in upon itself and back out again at a rapid, fluctuating clip, brilliant and heartfelt all the way through.
LAROCHE
You know why I like plants?
ORLEAN
Nuh uh.
LAROCHE
Because they're so mutable.
Adaptation is a profound process.
Means you figure out how to thrive
in the world.
ORLEAN
[pause] Yeah but it's easier for plants.
I mean they have no memory. They just move on
to whatever's next. With a person though,
adapting almost shameful. It's like running away.
This film, like other great works of meta-art, does a heroically wonderful job of using the potentially trapping and self-defeating tools of The Pomo Bag o' Tricks in order to lead the way out of these trappings and pitfalls. The film houses many deeply sincere moments of the kind of real human drama that McKee passionately bellows about, roaring it into the bones of the neurotic, high brow screenwriter who afterwords tells the traditionalist McKee, while now begging him for screenplay advice, that "what you said this morning shook me to the bone. What you said was bigger than my screenwriting choices. It's about my choices as a human being." Some of these sincere and "Hollywood-style" moments I think are clearly meant to be attributed to "Donald Kaufman" but the thing is that there is no Donald Kaufman to pin them on out of fear of being seen as a sap and/or a hack writer. He's a representation of a part of Charlie (as is the very Nic Cage-as-Charlie representation itself) that wrestles within a single mind (both within the film and always hovering over it from outside, hunched over the keyboard), the part that intuitively understands the deeper purposes of art: to connect with people, to communicate important ideas and emotions as well as to simply entertain. And Charlie is still right to understand that art is also there to dazzle with intricate structures and Big Ideas, but as McKee says to him during their version of a heart-to-heart at a bar after the day's lectures have wound down, "You must go back and put in the drama." Charlie Kaufman reconciles these competing artistic drives, both from within and from outside of the film itself, while simultaneously exploring them in a truly amazing way that both fucks the mind right proper while never forgetting to sincerely and compassionately tug at the heart.
____________________________________________
Postscript: This is an increasingly well-worn theme of mine in my book reviews and in my general explanations about what I’m drawn to and bowled over by in artistic and intellectual endeavors, which can be cut down to size as: head 'n' heart are equally important. As it gets repeated more and more my gut-reaction is to yawn a vicious, dismissive, self-aware yawn at it, but then I regroup and convince myself that it's an important theme to keep alive and to keep continuously refining and proliferating it in a world that, in many cultural sectors, is increasingly inward-turning, self-referencing, meta-this-and-that-ing, and saturated with multiple mutating subspecies of irony, from the well-crafted and virtuous to the cheaply and easily inherited and detached and self-subsuming. The latter forms are often encouraged by the powerful twin-spectres of corporatism and consumer culture, which utilize the "we don't really mean what we say" aspect of irony in order to hawk goods and services by ironically poking fun at them while still ultimately endorsing them and carrying out the very ills they've just self-awarely pretended to deflate. We've really got to stay on our toes when so many cynical reflexes of detachment are more and more available to common disposal.
____________________________________________
{1} It's a "film" when taken "seriously" and a "movie" when not. This is the reflexive speech pattern of the wrinkled high brow. The rarely spoken code of the arthouse set.
____________________________________________
He immediately chuckled at the situation at the outset of recording the message. He commented on the weirdness of it. He spoke slowly, in detached monotone that degraded each word and rough idea being formed in his mouth and barely drooled out toward the intended goal post of his future ear. The idea of describing this bizarre event within the review of a film that may just be the most meta-fied, self-referential thing ever committed to celluloid struck him suddenly then as an obvious adding of even more egregious layers of meta-referentiality, especially considering that within the film are scenes of the screenwriter of the film listening to his own self-denigrating and manically scatterbrained ideas played back to him as aural notes-to-self, scenes which Josh had just instinctively quoted verbatim to his voicemail/future self as things to remember to mention in his review as being brilliant and hilarious aspects of the most densely meta-layered thing in the whole cotton pickin' postmodern world, all of which then, of course, would be commented upon further in the way he's doing...right...now. The strata of self-reference and meta-metaness bludgeoned his sleepless brain into a submission that put the whole thing on hold, especially because several other potentially not-awful ideas for book reviews and short fictions were hovering in an intra-copulating swarm that threatened to congeal into one big ol' paralytic monster of indistinguishable ideas—dumbly hulking above, terrifyingly useless. Basically, he needed some shut eye in a real bad way.
I adore the films of Charlie Kaufman. All of them. Intensely. There are so many great things to say about each one, and Adaptation stands out as probably the finest, most fully realized one of all. If I may (and I may) insert an inevitable, can’t-be-helped, DFW reference: this film bears some important similarity to the epic, struggle-with-the-self-and-against-postmodernism, 140 page grand finale of a story in the Girl with Curious Hair collection called "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way" in the sense that they both ratchet up the so-called postmodern techniques in a seriously self-critical manner, a fun-to-poke-at-the-self kind of way, and in a way that shows affection and appreciation for those techniques but only when they are used to reach the emotionally gratifying ends that art has functioned to meet probably since the first cave painting or fireside drum circle. They both pile on the techniques of meta-narratives and the like as both an indictment of and tribute to them.
One gets the sense that Kaufman really did go through a lot of what is portrayed by Nic Cage (in his greatest role/s to date). It would make perfect sense really. He’s trying to escape being pigeon-holed as the wacky, off-beat, pomo surrealist du jour of Hollywood after the much deserved success of Being John Malkovich. He's attempting to write a straightforward story that he simply summarizes throughout the film—after exhaling what sounds like air-as-frustration—as simply being "about flowers." This proves to be a difficult task for him. He tries to insert the entire history of life on Earth into the script at one point{2}, only to quickly find himself slumped over, defeated and depressed, listening to his previously recorded self ferally shouting at his present self though the handheld tape recorder about single cell organisms and "worker monkeys" and "simple monkeys", etc.
____________________________________________
{2} Which, of course, is actually done in a beautiful time-lapse montage sequence early on in the film.
____________________________________________
Then he breaks the, I dunno, the 800th wall or so and initiates an infinite regress into the self, by writing himself into the malformed and barely begun script as the struggling screenwriter who's writing himself into his malformed and barely begun script—all of which he's later shown to be listening to the recorded audio-notes of, and then consequently once again slumped in defeat, sweat-sheened, and disgusted with himself.
KAUFMAN
I'm insane. I'm Ourobouros.
DONALD
I don't know what that word means.
KAUFMAN
I've written myself into my screenplay.
It's eating itself. I'm eating myself.
DONALD
Oh. That's kinda weird, huh?
KAUFMAN
It's self-indulgent. It's narcissistic.
It's solipsistic. It's pathetic. I'm
pathetic. I'm fat and pathetic.
Theses are the scenes that flashed into Josh's mind during that idea-assault on his morning drive home from work. He'd been thinking about how he really, really wanted to avoid the somewhat alluring and repulsive trap of writing too autobiographically in the short fiction collection that he'd been putting together as a portfolio for graduate school applications. The line "I have no understanding of anything outside of my own panic and self-loathing and pathetic little existence. It's like the only thing I'm actually qualified to write about is myself and my own self..." popped into his head and kicked off the whole previously mentioned "trail of mental associations" leading to the accidentally and perfectly meta-fying phone call to the self.
One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Charlie's defiant will has been ground down and he's attending a screenwriting seminar that his twin brother Donald{3} has been cultishly touting throughout the film, which heretofore had only resulted in Donald being chastised by the high art renegade, King Shit of Pomo Fuck Mountain (i.e. Charlie), because such seminars are deemed to be plebeian, creatively suffocating, shallow, commercially objectified and determined, etc.
____________________________________________
{3} Donald does not exist outside of the logic of this film, however, "he" received actual screen writing credit on the Adaptation script, which went on to be nominated for a Academy Award and as such I recall getting a real kick out of seeing both Charlie's and Donald's names being announced as nominees during the big, televised, Hollywood ceremony.
____________________________________________
In the lecture hall at the seminar, McKee, the charismatic leader of these seminars, is speaking in the background behind Kaufman’s voiceover narration of his massively self-loathing thoughts which gut him as a pathetic sellout for attending the seminar, and just as he’s about to exit the hall in a huff of self-chastisement, McKee’s voice breaks through to the foreground, stopping both the neurotic voiceover and Kaufman’s attempted exit in their tracks with a booming "AND GOD HELP YOU IF YOU USE VOICEOVER IN YOUR WORK, MY FRIENDS. GOD HELP YOU. THAT’S FLACCID, SLOPPY WRITING. ANY IDIOT CAN WRITE A VOICEOVER NARRATION TO EXPLAIN THE THOUGHTS OF A CHARACTER." It’s a hilarious moment among many that then segues into the following exchange between Kaufman and McKee when Kaufman decides to ask a question:
KAUFMAN
Sir, what if a writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens, where people don't change, they don't have any epiphanies. They struggle and are frustrated and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world —
MCKEE
The real world?
KAUFMAN
Yes, sir.
MCKEE
The real fucking world? First of all, you write a screenplay without Conflict or Crisis, you'll bore your audience to tears. Secondly: nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day! There's genocide, war, corruption! Every fucking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else! Every fucking day someone somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else! People find love! People lose it! For Christ's sake! A child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church! Someone goes hungry! Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman! If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know CRAP about life! And WHY THE FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!
KAUFMAN
Okay, thanks.
Early in the film there’s a scene where Kaufman is meeting with a film executive to talk about adapting the book "about flowers" in which Kaufman, in a nervously sweating fashion, begins to stutter off all the Hollywood clichés he wants to avoid putting into the script, and each and every one will eventually come to pass as this excellent, must-watch, three minute condensed version of the film shows perfectly.
By the latter end of the film it seems that Donald Kaufman has basically taken the reins on the script as McKee’s demanded "Crisis" and "Conflict" begin to erupt all over the screen. Yes, the dreaded Hollywood clichés that Kaufman disparages early on begin to crop up, but this is the truly brilliant and redemptive thing about the film: they work and work very well, both as they are supposed to traditionally, as entertaining and emotionally effective turns of the screenplay and camera, and as hilariously self-aware insertions, with a wink and nod to the audience and to itself, all brilliantly wrangled together and structured with technical prowess. Team Donald and Team Charlie are reconciled both symbolically as screenwriting techniques and overarching philosophies about art, and within the narrative of the film itself as the twins begin to fight less and even share moments of brotherly love.
One such moment is a prime example of the power of this dual-leveled reconciliation in which the brothers are hiding for their very lives in a Floridian swamp from the murderous intentions of John Laroche, the new orchid-poaching secret-paramour of the New Yorker columnist, Susan Orlean, who is also the author of the very book "about flowers" that is supposed to have been adapted throughout the film this entire time. Susan has insisted that they must be killed because they've discovered things about her that she can’t allow to see the light of day. The Kaufman twins are hunkered down there and they have a teary-eyed, sentimentality-fest that peaks when Donald sagely says "You're not what you love, but what loves you", which, to be honest, I’m still not sure I even really understand, but the moment—as it is simultaneously funny, and cleverly, self-referentially connected to Charlie's anti-Hollywood rant early on in the film—with the soundtrack swelling and the display of brotherly love within the crumbling edifice of their cynical rivalry—has actually brought real tears out of my eyes. More than once.
Or when Susan Orlean wails melodramatically about wanting to be a baby again, wanting to start her life over ("before it got all fucked up!") and to be carried out differently. Or when she waxes philosophical about the importance of being fascinated by the world or being able to narrow one's focus in order to find passion and eschew existential malaise—these moments all hit me in a direct and serious way through all of the the sly winking and nudging. This also happens as John Laroche's many horrible, real life tragedies are revealed throughout the film, or when he hits upon genuinely wise notions about life within his goofy flurries of egomaniacal eccentricity. And there are many more gemlike moments of real human joy and sorrow nestled throughout the meta-tastic hall of mirrors of the screenplay upon book upon screenplay embedded within a screenplay competing with a fictional screenplay, etc, all reflecting both real life figures (McKee, Orlean, Laroche, Charlie Kaufman) and symbolic fictional figures (both Donald and, to some weird, self-parodic extent, "Charlie Kaufman"), and all bending in upon itself and back out again at a rapid, fluctuating clip, brilliant and heartfelt all the way through.
LAROCHE
You know why I like plants?
ORLEAN
Nuh uh.
LAROCHE
Because they're so mutable.
Adaptation is a profound process.
Means you figure out how to thrive
in the world.
ORLEAN
[pause] Yeah but it's easier for plants.
I mean they have no memory. They just move on
to whatever's next. With a person though,
adapting almost shameful. It's like running away.
This film, like other great works of meta-art, does a heroically wonderful job of using the potentially trapping and self-defeating tools of The Pomo Bag o' Tricks in order to lead the way out of these trappings and pitfalls. The film houses many deeply sincere moments of the kind of real human drama that McKee passionately bellows about, roaring it into the bones of the neurotic, high brow screenwriter who afterwords tells the traditionalist McKee, while now begging him for screenplay advice, that "what you said this morning shook me to the bone. What you said was bigger than my screenwriting choices. It's about my choices as a human being." Some of these sincere and "Hollywood-style" moments I think are clearly meant to be attributed to "Donald Kaufman" but the thing is that there is no Donald Kaufman to pin them on out of fear of being seen as a sap and/or a hack writer. He's a representation of a part of Charlie (as is the very Nic Cage-as-Charlie representation itself) that wrestles within a single mind (both within the film and always hovering over it from outside, hunched over the keyboard), the part that intuitively understands the deeper purposes of art: to connect with people, to communicate important ideas and emotions as well as to simply entertain. And Charlie is still right to understand that art is also there to dazzle with intricate structures and Big Ideas, but as McKee says to him during their version of a heart-to-heart at a bar after the day's lectures have wound down, "You must go back and put in the drama." Charlie Kaufman reconciles these competing artistic drives, both from within and from outside of the film itself, while simultaneously exploring them in a truly amazing way that both fucks the mind right proper while never forgetting to sincerely and compassionately tug at the heart.
____________________________________________
Postscript: This is an increasingly well-worn theme of mine in my book reviews and in my general explanations about what I’m drawn to and bowled over by in artistic and intellectual endeavors, which can be cut down to size as: head 'n' heart are equally important. As it gets repeated more and more my gut-reaction is to yawn a vicious, dismissive, self-aware yawn at it, but then I regroup and convince myself that it's an important theme to keep alive and to keep continuously refining and proliferating it in a world that, in many cultural sectors, is increasingly inward-turning, self-referencing, meta-this-and-that-ing, and saturated with multiple mutating subspecies of irony, from the well-crafted and virtuous to the cheaply and easily inherited and detached and self-subsuming. The latter forms are often encouraged by the powerful twin-spectres of corporatism and consumer culture, which utilize the "we don't really mean what we say" aspect of irony in order to hawk goods and services by ironically poking fun at them while still ultimately endorsing them and carrying out the very ills they've just self-awarely pretended to deflate. We've really got to stay on our toes when so many cynical reflexes of detachment are more and more available to common disposal.
January 30, 2019
Absolutely brilliant!
To think all these ideas were meant to be digested at the pace of a film--I might even have preferred the experience of reading the script!
An unbelievably dense mix. Its scope is insane.
In general, I've always loved that maximalist technique of taking a single word, exploring all of its meanings and letting them play with one another (used to great effect in Infinite Jest or Dead Stars by Bruce Wagner)
Oh, it's relevant to something I was writing is why I read this in case you were wondering cheers :)
To think all these ideas were meant to be digested at the pace of a film--I might even have preferred the experience of reading the script!
An unbelievably dense mix. Its scope is insane.
In general, I've always loved that maximalist technique of taking a single word, exploring all of its meanings and letting them play with one another (used to great effect in Infinite Jest or Dead Stars by Bruce Wagner)
Oh, it's relevant to something I was writing is why I read this in case you were wondering cheers :)
July 1, 2025
اقتباس (Adaptation)، نوشتهٔ چارلی کافمن، نه یک فیلمنامهٔ معمولیست، نه صرفاً روایتی از نویسندگی، و نه تنها اثری متافیکشنال دربارهی ساختن یک فیلم بر اساس یک کتاب. این اثر، انفجاریست از لایهها: از شکست و خلاقیت، از خودآگاهی و خودتحقیری، از رابطهی بیمار میان واقعیت و بازنمایی، از نوشتن و ناتوانی از نوشتن. «اقتباس» یعنی زیستن در جهان خودت و دیدن اینکه چطور هر چیزی که لمسش میکنی، از دست میرود؛ چون نمیخواهی دروغ بگویی، اما حقیقت هم از تو فرار میکند.
چارلی کافمن، با نبوغی که به جنون پهلو میزند، داستان تلاش خودش برای نوشتن فیلمنامهای بر اساس کتاب مستند «دزد ارکیده» (اثر سوزان اورلئان) را به فیلمنامهی فیلم بدل میکند. اما بهجای اقتباس ساده از محتوای کتاب، خودش را – با تمام وسواسها، اضطرابها، تنهایی و ذهن فلجشدهاش – وارد روایت میکند. کافمن، با خلق کاراکتری از خودش (با بازی نیکلاس کیج در نقش چارلی و برادر خیالیاش دونالد)، دیواری را که بین نویسنده و اثر وجود دارد، فرو میریزد.
فیلمنامهٔ اقتباس دربارهی کسیست که نمیتواند فیلمنامهای بنویسد. این طنز تلخ، ستون مرکزی روایت است. چارلی، درگیر کشمکشی درونیست: چگونه میتوان دربارهٔ گلها نوشت بدون اینکه کلیشهای شد؟ چگونه میتوان به حقیقت وفادار ماند، وقتی بازار فقط به دنبال اکشن، تعلیق، سکس و رستگاریست؟ در سوی مقابل، دونالد – برادر سادهدل، بیعمق و موفق – همان فیلمنامهنویس پاپیست که چارلی از او بیزار است، اما رفتهرفته به او نیاز پیدا میکند. این تقابل، تنشی فلسفی را به قلب روایت میکشد: وفاداری به حقیقت؟ یا تسلیم در برابر فرم؟
اقتباس به طرز شگفتانگیزی از میانهی فیلم، خودش را نابود میکند؛ و همانطور که چارلی درمانده میشود، روایت به سمت یک پایان هالیوودی پیش میرود، پر از درگیری، اسلحه، مرگ، فلاشبک و حتی تمساح. این پارودیِ نفسگیر از سینمای جریان اصلی، در دل خود نقدیست بر سانتیمانتالیسم تحمیلی، پایانهای سرهمبندیشده، و فرمولهای نخنما.
نیکلاس کیج، در یکی از بهترین بازیهای زندگیاش، دو نسخه از کافمن را اجرا میکند: چارلی مضطرب، افسرده و ذهنفرسا؛ و دونالد سرزنده، ساده، و بینیاز از تأمل. تضادشان خندهدار است، اما خندهای تلخ، چون میدانیم که چارلی، در تمام طول روایت، دارد درون خودش میجنگد. مریل استریپ در نقش سوزان اورلئان، و کریس کوپر در نقش جان لاروش – دزد عجیب ارکیده – هر دو بازیهایی ارائه میدهند که مرز واقعیت و خیال را نابود میکند.
این فیلم، و فیلمنامهاش، دربارهٔ خود فرایند نوشتن است؛ یا بهتر است بگوییم دربارهٔ ناتوانی از نوشتن. دربارهٔ هنرمندیست که در جهانی پر از استانداردهای خفهکننده، سعی میکند چیزی واقعی بگوید، اما مدام در تلهٔ خودش گرفتار میشود. در دنیای اقتباس، واقعیت کافی نیست، و دروغ هم تحملناپذیر است.
در پایان، اقتباس به چیزی بسیار فراتر از روایت دربارهٔ نوشتن تبدیل میشود: یک اعتراف عریان از انسانیست که در برابر حقیقت، کمدی، هالیوود، عشق، طبیعت، خودویرانگری، و برادر خیالیاش زانو زده، و میگوید:
> «نمیدانم چطور باید ادامه داد. ولی باید... باید ادامه داد.»
و این، شاید صادقانهترین جملهایست که دربارهٔ نوشتن، خلق، و زندگی میتوان گفت.
چارلی کافمن، با نبوغی که به جنون پهلو میزند، داستان تلاش خودش برای نوشتن فیلمنامهای بر اساس کتاب مستند «دزد ارکیده» (اثر سوزان اورلئان) را به فیلمنامهی فیلم بدل میکند. اما بهجای اقتباس ساده از محتوای کتاب، خودش را – با تمام وسواسها، اضطرابها، تنهایی و ذهن فلجشدهاش – وارد روایت میکند. کافمن، با خلق کاراکتری از خودش (با بازی نیکلاس کیج در نقش چارلی و برادر خیالیاش دونالد)، دیواری را که بین نویسنده و اثر وجود دارد، فرو میریزد.
فیلمنامهٔ اقتباس دربارهی کسیست که نمیتواند فیلمنامهای بنویسد. این طنز تلخ، ستون مرکزی روایت است. چارلی، درگیر کشمکشی درونیست: چگونه میتوان دربارهٔ گلها نوشت بدون اینکه کلیشهای شد؟ چگونه میتوان به حقیقت وفادار ماند، وقتی بازار فقط به دنبال اکشن، تعلیق، سکس و رستگاریست؟ در سوی مقابل، دونالد – برادر سادهدل، بیعمق و موفق – همان فیلمنامهنویس پاپیست که چارلی از او بیزار است، اما رفتهرفته به او نیاز پیدا میکند. این تقابل، تنشی فلسفی را به قلب روایت میکشد: وفاداری به حقیقت؟ یا تسلیم در برابر فرم؟
اقتباس به طرز شگفتانگیزی از میانهی فیلم، خودش را نابود میکند؛ و همانطور که چارلی درمانده میشود، روایت به سمت یک پایان هالیوودی پیش میرود، پر از درگیری، اسلحه، مرگ، فلاشبک و حتی تمساح. این پارودیِ نفسگیر از سینمای جریان اصلی، در دل خود نقدیست بر سانتیمانتالیسم تحمیلی، پایانهای سرهمبندیشده، و فرمولهای نخنما.
نیکلاس کیج، در یکی از بهترین بازیهای زندگیاش، دو نسخه از کافمن را اجرا میکند: چارلی مضطرب، افسرده و ذهنفرسا؛ و دونالد سرزنده، ساده، و بینیاز از تأمل. تضادشان خندهدار است، اما خندهای تلخ، چون میدانیم که چارلی، در تمام طول روایت، دارد درون خودش میجنگد. مریل استریپ در نقش سوزان اورلئان، و کریس کوپر در نقش جان لاروش – دزد عجیب ارکیده – هر دو بازیهایی ارائه میدهند که مرز واقعیت و خیال را نابود میکند.
این فیلم، و فیلمنامهاش، دربارهٔ خود فرایند نوشتن است؛ یا بهتر است بگوییم دربارهٔ ناتوانی از نوشتن. دربارهٔ هنرمندیست که در جهانی پر از استانداردهای خفهکننده، سعی میکند چیزی واقعی بگوید، اما مدام در تلهٔ خودش گرفتار میشود. در دنیای اقتباس، واقعیت کافی نیست، و دروغ هم تحملناپذیر است.
در پایان، اقتباس به چیزی بسیار فراتر از روایت دربارهٔ نوشتن تبدیل میشود: یک اعتراف عریان از انسانیست که در برابر حقیقت، کمدی، هالیوود، عشق، طبیعت، خودویرانگری، و برادر خیالیاش زانو زده، و میگوید:
> «نمیدانم چطور باید ادامه داد. ولی باید... باید ادامه داد.»
و این، شاید صادقانهترین جملهایست که دربارهٔ نوشتن، خلق، و زندگی میتوان گفت.
February 22, 2017
Charlie Kaufman’s metafictional film Adaptation may lose a few people in it’s funhouse but those who put in a little effort will get their just reward.
Our protagonist, a representation of the writer, demonstrates that he knows the principles of good screenwriting. He is award winning and has a concrete and inspirational starting point, Susan Orlean’s successful novel The Orchid Thief. To do the book justice he believes he must reject Hollywood clichés; besides, merely adapting the book to survive professionally would deny him artistic satisfaction.
In the opening scenes the terms are drawn up. First Kaufman must establish “theme””. He will not be resorting to drugs, sex, guns or car chases. He intends to write a movie that is truly original; “that’s never been done before”. His intention is to deconstruct the process of screenwriting by establishing the rules and then proceeding to break them. This is the thread that must be grasped to make your way through the labyrinth that follows. To underscore this point the twist is revealed by Kaufman at the beginning of the movie. It is a metanarrative nesting doll of sorts: The story of Orlean and the Orchid hunter, John Laroche contrary to Kaufman’s assertions will be the story of “an alienated journalist [who] writes about [a] passionate backwoods guy and teaches her to love”; and the story of Charlie Kaufman is the story of an alienated scriptwriter who writes about an alienated journalist, [who] writes about [a] passionate backwoods guy, and in the process teaches the screenwriter to love himself.
But - a writer’s first obstacle is to start and Charlie is his own worst enemy, which is ironic as the movie has already begun. Not only is Kaufman self-conscious of his need for self-aggrandisement but he is also self-conscious of his own intellectual masturbation. What could be more appropriate then than writing yourself into your own movie twice? Perhaps visiting the set of your own movie in your own movie? There’s more to this… but I digress. Kaufman’s fictitious twin Donald (who is also credited as a writer of Adaptation) functions as Kaufman’s alter-ego and foil for him to duel with regarding screenwriting theory. We feel Charlie’s frustration that as much as he flouts the rules, the principles that underlie a successful script remain and even more worryingly the question remains: has it all been done before?
Kaufman deftly builds on the orchid as a metaphor for the acts of creation and desire; something worth dying for, endlessly varied and fascinating - A red headed waitress or the writing of a worthy script [insert image of blooming orchid in time lapse here]. Meanwhile back at the swamp Orlean and Laroche provide contrast of their own. Orlean longs, as Charlie does, to experience Laroche’s passion; she strives to understand it. She worries, as Charlie does, that she doesn’t have it in her to want something in this way. It is excruciatingly ironic that at its core the act of writing is the desire to know and to create but fundamentally, words are not action.
Also ironic is that a movie that is merely about flowers would be missing the point entirely. This is “sprawling New Yorker shit”. Orlean’s swamp is a ghost swamp and therefore Kaufman is free to write about it however he likes. “Truth” is a construct anyway, so Kaufman must navigate the swamp of his own creativity to find it and then find a way out.
Apparently the way out is simple: to wow us.
Kaufman isn’t done though, he holds up a mirror and provides the outline of what has actually already occurred - it turns out that despite everything perhaps he has not been as subversive as we have been led to believe. Although Charlie struggled to begin, Kaufman established his themes quickly. Orlean and her orchids contributed substantively but the introduction of Donald provided the necessary conflict (and relationship gold). Now the deadline imposed by Charlie’s agent looms. The stakes are clear: the literary bar is high, long-term loneliness is probable and a significant amount of money will be lost if Charlie fails to evolve and deliver. We are finally at the end of a long first act, at a crisis point and pivot, punctuated by the enlisting of Donald to help write Charlie’s screenplay. It is apparent that a classic three-act structure underpins this movie after all so why not use to all the devices that have been rejected. The only caveat: that it needs to be believable.
Given Kaufman’s highbrow promises it’s morally reprehensible. Or is it?
Some reviewers have satirised themselves by accusing Kaufman of selling out by delivering a fantastical ending. But it is with deep irony that Kaufman is pursued in the swamp by his characters, bleeding for his art. This is only the second act. It is meant as a cautionary tale as to what happens when you give ‘em what they want, which is where the swamp ape/alligator comes in. Kaufman would rather shoot himself than write industry serving crap and does. It is this ultimate crisis point which delivers Charlie insight and brings us neatly to the film’s resolution. All that’s left is for Kaufman to please himself and write the script his way and, in my opinion this he delivers, as an awesome third act; it’s evolutionary.
Our protagonist, a representation of the writer, demonstrates that he knows the principles of good screenwriting. He is award winning and has a concrete and inspirational starting point, Susan Orlean’s successful novel The Orchid Thief. To do the book justice he believes he must reject Hollywood clichés; besides, merely adapting the book to survive professionally would deny him artistic satisfaction.
In the opening scenes the terms are drawn up. First Kaufman must establish “theme””. He will not be resorting to drugs, sex, guns or car chases. He intends to write a movie that is truly original; “that’s never been done before”. His intention is to deconstruct the process of screenwriting by establishing the rules and then proceeding to break them. This is the thread that must be grasped to make your way through the labyrinth that follows. To underscore this point the twist is revealed by Kaufman at the beginning of the movie. It is a metanarrative nesting doll of sorts: The story of Orlean and the Orchid hunter, John Laroche contrary to Kaufman’s assertions will be the story of “an alienated journalist [who] writes about [a] passionate backwoods guy and teaches her to love”; and the story of Charlie Kaufman is the story of an alienated scriptwriter who writes about an alienated journalist, [who] writes about [a] passionate backwoods guy, and in the process teaches the screenwriter to love himself.
But - a writer’s first obstacle is to start and Charlie is his own worst enemy, which is ironic as the movie has already begun. Not only is Kaufman self-conscious of his need for self-aggrandisement but he is also self-conscious of his own intellectual masturbation. What could be more appropriate then than writing yourself into your own movie twice? Perhaps visiting the set of your own movie in your own movie? There’s more to this… but I digress. Kaufman’s fictitious twin Donald (who is also credited as a writer of Adaptation) functions as Kaufman’s alter-ego and foil for him to duel with regarding screenwriting theory. We feel Charlie’s frustration that as much as he flouts the rules, the principles that underlie a successful script remain and even more worryingly the question remains: has it all been done before?
Kaufman deftly builds on the orchid as a metaphor for the acts of creation and desire; something worth dying for, endlessly varied and fascinating - A red headed waitress or the writing of a worthy script [insert image of blooming orchid in time lapse here]. Meanwhile back at the swamp Orlean and Laroche provide contrast of their own. Orlean longs, as Charlie does, to experience Laroche’s passion; she strives to understand it. She worries, as Charlie does, that she doesn’t have it in her to want something in this way. It is excruciatingly ironic that at its core the act of writing is the desire to know and to create but fundamentally, words are not action.
Also ironic is that a movie that is merely about flowers would be missing the point entirely. This is “sprawling New Yorker shit”. Orlean’s swamp is a ghost swamp and therefore Kaufman is free to write about it however he likes. “Truth” is a construct anyway, so Kaufman must navigate the swamp of his own creativity to find it and then find a way out.
Apparently the way out is simple: to wow us.
Kaufman isn’t done though, he holds up a mirror and provides the outline of what has actually already occurred - it turns out that despite everything perhaps he has not been as subversive as we have been led to believe. Although Charlie struggled to begin, Kaufman established his themes quickly. Orlean and her orchids contributed substantively but the introduction of Donald provided the necessary conflict (and relationship gold). Now the deadline imposed by Charlie’s agent looms. The stakes are clear: the literary bar is high, long-term loneliness is probable and a significant amount of money will be lost if Charlie fails to evolve and deliver. We are finally at the end of a long first act, at a crisis point and pivot, punctuated by the enlisting of Donald to help write Charlie’s screenplay. It is apparent that a classic three-act structure underpins this movie after all so why not use to all the devices that have been rejected. The only caveat: that it needs to be believable.
Given Kaufman’s highbrow promises it’s morally reprehensible. Or is it?
Some reviewers have satirised themselves by accusing Kaufman of selling out by delivering a fantastical ending. But it is with deep irony that Kaufman is pursued in the swamp by his characters, bleeding for his art. This is only the second act. It is meant as a cautionary tale as to what happens when you give ‘em what they want, which is where the swamp ape/alligator comes in. Kaufman would rather shoot himself than write industry serving crap and does. It is this ultimate crisis point which delivers Charlie insight and brings us neatly to the film’s resolution. All that’s left is for Kaufman to please himself and write the script his way and, in my opinion this he delivers, as an awesome third act; it’s evolutionary.
August 17, 2016
This book was a set reading for my course.
Like Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay, this book is a great resource for anyone interested in screenwriting. It includes an interview with Kaufman and Spike (writer and director) along with a collection of other bits and pieces. Their discussion of perceived thematic ideas and symbolism is very interesting. The screenplay itself is well written and humorous to read. It is one of the rare cases where satire of Hollywood conventions is successful. I really enjoyed how Kaufman was able to blur the line between fiction and reality.
Like Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay, this book is a great resource for anyone interested in screenwriting. It includes an interview with Kaufman and Spike (writer and director) along with a collection of other bits and pieces. Their discussion of perceived thematic ideas and symbolism is very interesting. The screenplay itself is well written and humorous to read. It is one of the rare cases where satire of Hollywood conventions is successful. I really enjoyed how Kaufman was able to blur the line between fiction and reality.
September 18, 2024
My wife bought this for me ages ago, rightly guessing that a screenplay about writing a screenplay, and about writing a book, would be my cup of tea. (I'm taking this opportunity to suggest that if Microsoft Word suggests a phrase, like "my cup of tea," then it's probably a cliché.) I poked around in it usefully when it was new, but never got around to a cover-to-cover treatment.
Having finally done that, I'm again glad I did. I will be using several bits of it for teaching.
First bit I'll use is from Susan Orlean's Foreword, where she admits to not really understanding the structure, shape and purpose of the book she was working on for much of two and a half years:
....It would be easier to write a genre book--a murder story, a memoir, a crime tale--anything with a conventional narrative arc that followed logical and predictable steps towards climax. Why didn't I do that kind of book? Was it too late to scrap this orchid folly and do something more normal? Every time I was asked what I was working on, I said, "It's a book about this guy . . . . he stole some orchids . . . . but it's about . . . . I can't really exactly say."
and I'll be quoting that to the pantsers and experimenters to settle their anxieties. Writing is often an exercise in figuring out what you're doing. Some of the best work comes that way.
I note that she admired his adaptation of The Orchid Thief, because it wasn't a literal adaptation, but it was a spiritual one.
Second bit is using this as an example of a technique I advise any time a writer sees an obvious criticism coming: insert the criticism in the work, to inoculate the piece against it, and signal to the reader that you know, you know, but we're doing this anyway. In this case Kaufman is violating some of the "rules" taught by Robert McKee, so he makes McKee one of the characters, includes a scene from a McKee workshop, has a fictitious brother following those rules and selling big-time...
Third bit is a quote from the dual interview with Kaufman and Spike Jonze that's part of the end material here. (And the whole interview is relevant to anyone doing creative art.) As part of an answer to a group of questions that are all really "What keeps you writing?", Kaufman said, "I try to write in the midst of confusion and be strong enough to stay there, rather than swim to the shore of some kind of conclusion, because I think that's how I live my life and to me there's value in that."
McKee, bless his heart, is given the last word, trying to historically contextualize and categorize both The Orchid Thief and Kaufman's work. He does an excellent job, and a sympathetic job, and that is a life lesson, too.
Oh, I'll be picking out some Kaufman quotes from the screenplay itself, where he's doing the internal struggles that most writers will recognize.
So, yeah, if I'm going to steal that much, I'd better give the thing five stars.
Recommended, and the word grimace appears nowhere in the text.
Having finally done that, I'm again glad I did. I will be using several bits of it for teaching.
First bit I'll use is from Susan Orlean's Foreword, where she admits to not really understanding the structure, shape and purpose of the book she was working on for much of two and a half years:
....It would be easier to write a genre book--a murder story, a memoir, a crime tale--anything with a conventional narrative arc that followed logical and predictable steps towards climax. Why didn't I do that kind of book? Was it too late to scrap this orchid folly and do something more normal? Every time I was asked what I was working on, I said, "It's a book about this guy . . . . he stole some orchids . . . . but it's about . . . . I can't really exactly say."
and I'll be quoting that to the pantsers and experimenters to settle their anxieties. Writing is often an exercise in figuring out what you're doing. Some of the best work comes that way.
I note that she admired his adaptation of The Orchid Thief, because it wasn't a literal adaptation, but it was a spiritual one.
Second bit is using this as an example of a technique I advise any time a writer sees an obvious criticism coming: insert the criticism in the work, to inoculate the piece against it, and signal to the reader that you know, you know, but we're doing this anyway. In this case Kaufman is violating some of the "rules" taught by Robert McKee, so he makes McKee one of the characters, includes a scene from a McKee workshop, has a fictitious brother following those rules and selling big-time...
Third bit is a quote from the dual interview with Kaufman and Spike Jonze that's part of the end material here. (And the whole interview is relevant to anyone doing creative art.) As part of an answer to a group of questions that are all really "What keeps you writing?", Kaufman said, "I try to write in the midst of confusion and be strong enough to stay there, rather than swim to the shore of some kind of conclusion, because I think that's how I live my life and to me there's value in that."
McKee, bless his heart, is given the last word, trying to historically contextualize and categorize both The Orchid Thief and Kaufman's work. He does an excellent job, and a sympathetic job, and that is a life lesson, too.
Oh, I'll be picking out some Kaufman quotes from the screenplay itself, where he's doing the internal struggles that most writers will recognize.
So, yeah, if I'm going to steal that much, I'd better give the thing five stars.
Recommended, and the word grimace appears nowhere in the text.
February 8, 2011
'Adaptation.' must be my favourite movie. (And this with me being a huge Pink Floyd fan, and incredibly moved by 'The Wall') Credited to Charlie and Donald Kaufman, meant as an adaptation of an actual book (which I will definitely read when I find it), it tells the story of a screenwriter trying to adapt a book, ending up writing about himself adapting a book. At a first watch, it could be as confusing as it sounds. Be assured, though, that you'll find it strangely compelling. Of course, nobody believes me when I try to convince them so. I think it might be impossible to see it before it had hung like a spiderweb on your computer for months. It happened to me, it happened to my friends. Isn't it amazing? Its genius starts a long way ahead of its opening sequence. It somehow projects the aura of an incredibly dull movie. Which is exactly what Charlie believes his life and work are.
I love Charlie Kaufman's struggle with life, his searching for a definition of himself and his art. Watching him getting so lost that he can't figure out who he's fighting against and who's keeping him sane. And I enjoy this so much not only because I can relate to this situation, but because it's portrayed brilliantly. I can't get enough of listening to each line, following each actor's gestures closely. 'Adaptation.' is exactly what cinema could be - a work of art that uses the immense power of imagery, movement, and sound to create something so complete that a book, or a painting, or a song could never match the experience. It doesn't happen much in this thing represented by the horrible word 'industry'. Clearly because art doesn't sell too well. But also because of screen-writing seminars meant to teach that a story is enough, that making the crappiest movie on Earth and giving it a nice twist at the end makes it brilliant, that 'thou shalt not use voice-over', or whichever technique, just because it's not friendly to those who have sat down in front of their screens to eat sunflower seeds and stuff their mouths with hot dogs (- N. Haitov). Still, there's much to be learned from opinions that sound conformist and trivial. Kaufman (the actual one) respects that and says it out loud. And then uses every last one of those Hollywood no-nos anyway. I love him for that.
I can talk about this movie for another hour or so, so I think I will put an end here, saying a bit about the script I read. (not actually the shooting script, but I couldn't find the original on GoodReads) It was refreshing, being able to delve into this movie again without knowing the next line by heart. Some new humour, just as cool as the old one. Some perfect lines that have stayed the same until the very end, and some comparatively worse ones that were changed by the end. Being able to see this work in progress was exhilarating.
... Aaaand quotes.
MARGARET God, they're such beautiful flowers. And so sexy. Y'know? (whispering) Did you know that orchid means -- Testicle.
KAUFMAN I just read that.
MARGARET (shrieks with delight) Testicle! Can you believe it!
Margaret giggles happily. Kaufman giggles weirdly.
MARGARET I swear, it'd be fucking great for someone to have the testicles to make that book into a movie, man. Instead of this bullshit all the time. Something not about sex and violence and car chases and love stories, people learning profound lessons. Jesus, isn't nature enough?
KAUFMAN ...plus I love the idea of learning all about orchids. I really admire those guys who know everything about ants or fungus or whatever. I'd like to be more like that. See, I tend to write self-involved, self-loathing... even masturbatory stuff.
I love Charlie Kaufman's struggle with life, his searching for a definition of himself and his art. Watching him getting so lost that he can't figure out who he's fighting against and who's keeping him sane. And I enjoy this so much not only because I can relate to this situation, but because it's portrayed brilliantly. I can't get enough of listening to each line, following each actor's gestures closely. 'Adaptation.' is exactly what cinema could be - a work of art that uses the immense power of imagery, movement, and sound to create something so complete that a book, or a painting, or a song could never match the experience. It doesn't happen much in this thing represented by the horrible word 'industry'. Clearly because art doesn't sell too well. But also because of screen-writing seminars meant to teach that a story is enough, that making the crappiest movie on Earth and giving it a nice twist at the end makes it brilliant, that 'thou shalt not use voice-over', or whichever technique, just because it's not friendly to those who have sat down in front of their screens to eat sunflower seeds and stuff their mouths with hot dogs (- N. Haitov). Still, there's much to be learned from opinions that sound conformist and trivial. Kaufman (the actual one) respects that and says it out loud. And then uses every last one of those Hollywood no-nos anyway. I love him for that.
I can talk about this movie for another hour or so, so I think I will put an end here, saying a bit about the script I read. (not actually the shooting script, but I couldn't find the original on GoodReads) It was refreshing, being able to delve into this movie again without knowing the next line by heart. Some new humour, just as cool as the old one. Some perfect lines that have stayed the same until the very end, and some comparatively worse ones that were changed by the end. Being able to see this work in progress was exhilarating.
... Aaaand quotes.
MARGARET God, they're such beautiful flowers. And so sexy. Y'know? (whispering) Did you know that orchid means -- Testicle.
KAUFMAN I just read that.
MARGARET (shrieks with delight) Testicle! Can you believe it!
Margaret giggles happily. Kaufman giggles weirdly.
MARGARET I swear, it'd be fucking great for someone to have the testicles to make that book into a movie, man. Instead of this bullshit all the time. Something not about sex and violence and car chases and love stories, people learning profound lessons. Jesus, isn't nature enough?
KAUFMAN ...plus I love the idea of learning all about orchids. I really admire those guys who know everything about ants or fungus or whatever. I'd like to be more like that. See, I tend to write self-involved, self-loathing... even masturbatory stuff.
June 24, 2015
Amazing, inventive script. A model for how to create a story within a story. Lively, well-drawn characters. Hilarious use of action to skewer action films. Not as subtle as Woody Allen, but who is? Absolutely recommended.
December 6, 2019
Probably shaped me more than I know. Saw it when Blockbuster was still around. Got it on VHS. Or maybe it was DVD. I think I completely misunderstood the film seeing it--I guess I was in 9th grade--and it's interesting that over the years I've sought to really finally kill it through studying it and overthinking it and seeing examples and counterexamples to metafiction or metanarrative and just the simple fact of writing yourself into a piece of work. The voice-over in particular stuck out to me as a high schooler with anxiety and felt like I had a stream of thoughts like Kaufman's Kaufman. I don't want to blast and babble too much about it because I used to be one of those IF YOU DO NOT LIKE CHARLIE KAUFMAN YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND CINEMA blowhards. What I mean there's a very real critique of his work being self-absorbed or like experimental heterosexual white guy stuff. A benevolent sexism and misogyny. I could go on but I'm trying to think of the things that I liked about reading it. I guess you get to see what Robert McKee has to think--he wrote a little thing about it. There's an interview with Spike Jones and Charlie Kaufman by Robert Feld. They seem to disdain any kind of analysis. It's weird to listen to them piss and moan. But entertaining and most of the time pleasant. Kaufman has a book coming out next year called Antkind about a failed film critic so that should be exciting to read and also the opposite of what I'm doing here. I'm not sure he'll be a great novelist. I mean to read The Orchid Thief in tandem with this but unfortunately I've been quite sick and have been picking up most things with dialogue and short lengths. I just woke up from a bad dream so now I'm writing a lot. I say see the movie three or four times and then get the screenplay to see where Kaufman risks his art and whether you agree with decisions he's made. I mean it can feel like a meta joke or a fatalistic stance or just really browbeating humanity in a mean-spirited way. And he obviously sort of his the misogynist tendency of literally describing women as objects of beauty and then characterizing them from there. It's problem. Probably at the time I would just say 'he's thinking real thoughts!' but now it just seems like he's not allowing the agency of his non-male characters. It's nearly twenty years old so I'm not surprised some descriptions make you cringe. A lot of the movie is about fantasy so obviously it's not gratuitous but there's a lingering question of why it is necessary to show his desperation so much, to make him so squirmy when it comes to these things. I'm not downplaying depression or self-loathing or anxiety--it's a real thing! And in the film Cage pulls it off. I just sometimes wonder if I've drifted from Kaufman because I got tired of the same "I'm a misunderstood artist who hates himself" narrative coming from him. It's been done. You have to be in the right mood for it. Having said all that, it's a good screenplay, a good script, a good movie, and you should try Kaufman out for a ride. I recommend this and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Synecdoche, NY, Being John Malkovich, Anomalisa and Human Nature. If only to study his technique of building a world from a character and never letting up on structure--that is, it's never confusing and he manages to make it accessible.
Boy, I hope I get over this flu. It's always a nightmare when you dream about people dying. Sinus is the worst!
Boy, I hope I get over this flu. It's always a nightmare when you dream about people dying. Sinus is the worst!
June 16, 2021
The quality of Kaufman's brilliant screenplay goes without saying, however I don't think this is actually the shooting script. Based off of how close this follows to the film, line for line, cut for cut, I think this is a transcribed version of the exact movie in screenplay format. I was hoping to see the differences between the script and film and as far as I could tell there were none.
February 13, 2025
Charlie Kaufman is one of my favorite screenwriters. I've seen Adaptation several times, and this script matches the film closely. It's interesting to see what was on the written page, and how those words eventually translated to the footage shot and edited for the cinema. I'd recommend this book for anyone interested in writing, or those looking for an engaging story told in a unique way. A+
October 25, 2017
I've never seen this film, so the screenplay was totally spoiler free. Gotta say, it's pretty crazy pants- but it's certainly an interesting way to look at the screenwriting process.
Read
September 13, 2019i luv it
January 2, 2020
Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant.
July 10, 2020
An outstanding achievement of achieving nothing. A screenplay with experimental approach. It doesn't everything that a screenplay shouldn't
September 6, 2020
There are two Nicolas Cages
September 12, 2020
deus. ex. croc-ina
September 15, 2021
Outstanding script.
December 20, 2021
So good, so funny, so clever, and probably the best —or at least, most relevant to me—thing I’ve read about the writing process.
January 19, 2023
2.5 stars;
i’m so done w it.
i’m so done w it.
May 8, 2010
INT. AN APARTMENT, BRENT SIMON'S ROOM - NIGHT
Brent Simon, from his chair by his computer desk, walks over to his bookshelf and picks out his next book of choice to read, 'Adaptation: The Shooting Script' by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. He walks with it in hand back to his computer desk and sits down in the chair. He lays it on top of the desk, by the computer's mouse and clicks on his web browser, Mozilla Firefox, in the quick launch section. A pop up appears with two red circles with X's in them. A tiny one is positioned at the top of the pop up, followed by a C:\Users\... A bigger one appears in the middle part of the pop up and states, "Windows cannot find 'C:\Users\...' Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again." Below that lies the 'OK' button to click on. Brent clicks on the 'OK' button and the pop up disappears, bringing up the Firefox web browser. He types in the URL, 'goodreads.com', and hits the enter key on his keyboard. The web page appears and he logs in. He finds the book he had just chosen from his shelf in the 'to-read' section of his profile page. He changes the status of the book to 'currently-reading'. He then clicks on the 'X' button positioned on the upper right hand corner of the web browser. It disappears. He then gets up from the chair, picks the book up & exits his room to the bathroom.
INT. BATHROOM - NIGHT
Brent, now sitting on the toilet, opens the book in front of him and begins to flip through the pages. He reaches the 'CONTENTS' page of the book, and observes that it contains: 1) A forward by author of 'The Orchid Thief', in which this screenplay is based on, Susan Orlean, 2) The Shooting Script, 3) Black & White stills from the movie, 4) A Q&A with Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze (the director of the movie) by Rob Feld, 5) Critical Commentary by Robert McKee, 6) Cast and Crew Credits & 7) An About the Filmmakers section. What Brent finds as he reads this book, this screenplay, is a read that will totally allow himself to be immersed into the lives of all these interesting people & characters. About the difficulty in adapting a book about flowers into a movie interesting enough to become watchable & the passion one could find themselves in, if they truly loved something such as flowers as much as these characters seamed to love them. As Brent nears the end of the book, a couple of quotes from the screenplay stand out to him and he decides to memorize & cherish them. Here are the quotes:
ORLEAN (VOICE OVER)
(staring at reflection)
I wanted to want something as much as people wanted these plants. But it isn't part of my constitution. I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I want to know what it feels like to care about something so passionately.
(later in the screenplay)
DONALD
I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
KAUFMAN
But she thought you were pathetic.
DONALD
That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.
INT. BRENT'S ROOM. NIGHT.
Brent is laying in bed, finishing up the last page of the book. After he finishes, he looks up from the book, closes it, and stares ahead with a slight smile on his face. He is in a positive mood and has just read, in his opinion, one of the best screenplays ever written.
BRENT
Thank you Charlie Kaufman.
Brent Simon, from his chair by his computer desk, walks over to his bookshelf and picks out his next book of choice to read, 'Adaptation: The Shooting Script' by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. He walks with it in hand back to his computer desk and sits down in the chair. He lays it on top of the desk, by the computer's mouse and clicks on his web browser, Mozilla Firefox, in the quick launch section. A pop up appears with two red circles with X's in them. A tiny one is positioned at the top of the pop up, followed by a C:\Users\... A bigger one appears in the middle part of the pop up and states, "Windows cannot find 'C:\Users\...' Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again." Below that lies the 'OK' button to click on. Brent clicks on the 'OK' button and the pop up disappears, bringing up the Firefox web browser. He types in the URL, 'goodreads.com', and hits the enter key on his keyboard. The web page appears and he logs in. He finds the book he had just chosen from his shelf in the 'to-read' section of his profile page. He changes the status of the book to 'currently-reading'. He then clicks on the 'X' button positioned on the upper right hand corner of the web browser. It disappears. He then gets up from the chair, picks the book up & exits his room to the bathroom.
INT. BATHROOM - NIGHT
Brent, now sitting on the toilet, opens the book in front of him and begins to flip through the pages. He reaches the 'CONTENTS' page of the book, and observes that it contains: 1) A forward by author of 'The Orchid Thief', in which this screenplay is based on, Susan Orlean, 2) The Shooting Script, 3) Black & White stills from the movie, 4) A Q&A with Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze (the director of the movie) by Rob Feld, 5) Critical Commentary by Robert McKee, 6) Cast and Crew Credits & 7) An About the Filmmakers section. What Brent finds as he reads this book, this screenplay, is a read that will totally allow himself to be immersed into the lives of all these interesting people & characters. About the difficulty in adapting a book about flowers into a movie interesting enough to become watchable & the passion one could find themselves in, if they truly loved something such as flowers as much as these characters seamed to love them. As Brent nears the end of the book, a couple of quotes from the screenplay stand out to him and he decides to memorize & cherish them. Here are the quotes:
ORLEAN (VOICE OVER)
(staring at reflection)
I wanted to want something as much as people wanted these plants. But it isn't part of my constitution. I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I want to know what it feels like to care about something so passionately.
(later in the screenplay)
DONALD
I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
KAUFMAN
But she thought you were pathetic.
DONALD
That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.
INT. BRENT'S ROOM. NIGHT.
Brent is laying in bed, finishing up the last page of the book. After he finishes, he looks up from the book, closes it, and stares ahead with a slight smile on his face. He is in a positive mood and has just read, in his opinion, one of the best screenplays ever written.
BRENT
Thank you Charlie Kaufman.
April 15, 2011
Adaptation is not my favorite film to watch in the Charlie Kaufman canon, but the script is an enjoyable read. Its construction and streaming flow are masterful. This book also includes an interview of both Kaufman and director Spike Jonze that more insightful and forthright than any other I have read or seen with the subjects.
August 29, 2008
Crazy and completely existential. I can't believe someone can defy all the rules and still get away with it beautifully. I am in awe. I will watch the film now and see how it translates to the page...
January 11, 2015
Good, but not my favourite. Liked reading the script and watching the movie againbecause it made the story much more clear. The stage directions were interesting because everything was plotted out and then acted out.
September 1, 2007
liked the film
i think charlie kauffman is a smart funny fellow
new market shooting script series are easier to read than some other script books
i think charlie kauffman is a smart funny fellow
new market shooting script series are easier to read than some other script books
Read
August 7, 2008در صورت تمایل، جهت مشخصات فیلمی که بر اساس این کتاب ساخته شده است؛ میتوانید از لینک زیر استفاده بفرمایید
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268126
Read
October 26, 2008I parodied this in my novel Uncorrected Proof (see http://elephantearspress.com/uncorrec... )
January 18, 2013
"Find an ending, but don't cheat, and don't you dare bring in a deus ex machina."
October 16, 2007
It actually gets better as you read the screenplay.
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