They digress big time: The evolution of Adaptation

By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post

Nicolas Cage plays twin brothers trying to make an impossible movie out of a book about an orchid poacher. Columbia Pictures

Written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze — the same team that dazzled audiences in 1999 with the smart head trip "Being John Malkovich" — it stars Nicolas Cage as both Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother, Donald.

The movie traces Charlie Kaufman's efforts to adapt a book into a movie; he tries to create art while his brother is attending screenwriting seminars on how to create formulaic Hollywood blockbusters.

"Adaptation" intercuts scenes from Kaufman's tortured creative life with scenes from the movie he's writing, creating a movie-within-a-movie.

Cage, as Kaufman, narrates the film in a flat ostinato of writerly self-flagellation.

"I am old. I am fat. I am bald," he says as the movie opens.

"Adaptation" might be the most vivid depiction onscreen of the fear, vanity and crippling self-doubt that plague almost every writer.

Based on Susan Orlean's 1998 book "The Orchid Thief," the film is a trippy, densely layered exercise in Hollywood satire, metaphysical meditation and old-fashioned yarn spinning. And for all the liberties it takes with its themes, it hews surprisingly closely to Orlean's book.

"The Orchid Thief" tells the true story of John Laroche, a rakish renaissance man who made his living stealing rare orchids from the Fakahatchee Strand, a swamp in southwestern Florida. Orlean's often digressive account, which started life as a lengthy New Yorker article, goes into great detail about Florida history, Darwin's theory of evolution and the obsession that orchids have inspired over centuries of cultivation and collection.

In adapting "The Orchid Thief," Kaufman quickly discovered that Laroche, his flowers, the Fakahatchee and Orlean's own reflective sensibility wouldn't fit neatly into a conventional three-act narrative.

He wrote. He rewrote. He started over. He panicked.

Finally, Kaufman shared his anxieties with Jonze, "Malkovich's" director.

" 'I can't do this anymore' — I said a lot during those days," says Kaufman.

Kaufman eventually hit on the idea to write a movie about a screenwriter writing a movie, specifically an adaptation of an unadaptable book.

It would be a movie about writer's block, about self-hatred and how messed up Hollywood is. It would be about Charlie and a twin, who may or may not be fictional. It would be about evolution and fate and passion.

It would go from present to past, from California to New York to Florida, from Aristotle to Hegel to Darwin to Kaufman's agent, Marty. It would include great chunks of Orlean's book. It would have a completely insane third act that would turn conventional narrative on its tiny, perfect ear. It would be a movie about flowers.

Kaufman wrote that movie. And then something really crazy happened. Kaufman delivered his script, a total departure from what the producers wanted, a thoroughly self-indulgent, self-referential, out-there digression-within-a-digression, and Columbia Pictures gave it the go-ahead.

Orlean really isn't a character in "The Orchid Thief." But in addition to being Kaufman's story, "Adaptation" is very much the story of Orlean, played by Meryl Streep — how she found Laroche (Chris Cooper), and how he showed her a world completely alien to the hermetic sophistication of New York literary circles.

Oh, and the movie also has her embarking on an affair with Laroche, leaving her husband, doing drugs and taking to a life of pornography and crime.

"I just said, 'It's pretty insane and pretty wild and that's fine, but just change my name,' " Orlean recalls of her reaction after first reading the script. "And they were very straightforward and said, 'You know, Charlie Kaufman's using his name, and look at how he exposes himself in the movie, look how brave he's being.'

"I don't remember how I came around to agreeing. I think the sense of adventure kind of got to me.

"There were moments along the way where I thought, 'Have I made a huge mistake by letting myself be a part of this, or would it be a huge mistake not to, and not to have this adventure?' "

Jonze and Kaufman resemble two kids who are slightly bemused at having arrived at this particular juncture, shyly looking at each other for cues. Jonze speaks in fits and starts of a movie shot in a mere 2 1/2 months that took more than 10 months to edit. "There were moments when we were like, 'Oh, great, this is working! This is getting better!' " he says. "And then other moments where we were like, 'Holy (expletive), this is never going to work. This is totally not connecting.' "

Cage had to record a different narration for each new version. "It was like tailoring a suit for a year," he recalls. "But I had a feeling it would be something that would have to be amorphous and grow and switch and change. Because the movie, in my opinion, really flows like water."

Cage took a pay cut to star in "Adaptation," in part for the opportunity to play twins, "which for me was something I thought I could learn from and tune my instrument, if you will."

Using an earpiece to listen to dialogue he'd already recorded as Charlie, and a tennis ball to mark where he'd stood as that character, Cage would enter the persona of Charlie's brother, Donald, while keeping in mind what he had just said and done as Charlie.

It was an exhausting psychic and technical exercise for Cage, who likens the process to playing drums: "You have the snare drum and the bass drum and the cymbal, and everything's going at one time."

The result is a turn on a par with his portrayal of a suicidal alcoholic in "Leaving Las Vegas," with half the self-loathing and none of the booze.

"I don't know if I'm ever going to play twins again," he says wearily. "I think I've done that. I've learned what I needed to learn."

He pauses. "But I might play half of somebody," he says sardonically.

Kaufman and Jonze laugh, as if they know exactly the guys to write and direct.