Being John Malkovich was such a brilliant film I saw it two days in a row. So there was some excitement in me to see Adaptation. Not surprisingly, however, Adaptation is a completely different animal. And my personal jury is out on this film.

I fought dozing off in the middle of the movie, when Charlie Kaufman delved deeper and deeper into his own inability to write the very screenplay I was watching. I was a tad repulsed by the masturbation scenes and felt more than once that Kaufman's script was a similar exercise in self-gratification. But by the end I was rather hooked as I slowly started to understand the subtlety of what Kaufman might be up to.

On the surface, the story is three different ideas woven into one serious jumble. The title gives us a clue. Adaptation is about a screenwriter hired to adapt the nonfiction book The Orchard Thief into a film. Adaptation is also about the author, Susan Orlean, who, while writing the orchid thief as an article for the New Yorker magazine became obsessed with obsession. And Adaptation is about Floridian John Laroche who is the orchid thief. But more than these three itemizable themes, Adaptation is a philosophical consideration of the very art of adapting anything for the big screen.

To make the point, Charlie Kaufman uses his twin brother, Donald. Charlie is a purist and something of a geek. Donald looks identical to Charlie--both roles are played by Nicholas Cage--and yet is nothing like him. Donald pens the kind of crap Hollywood loves, cashes his million-dollar check, and moves on. Meanwhile, Charlie struggles with how to make a book about orchids, a book without a plot, without action, sex, car chases or drama, into something that will hold its audience's attention.

The result is really quite hysterical, but it took me a long time to come to that conclusion. I am loath to give away more of the plot, I might have divulged too much already. Adaptation is definitely a movie that will sell coffee. I could spend hours discussing it and coming to understand it and likely find significance where none was intended.

In 1994, I headed down to Florida to investigate the story of John Laroche, an eccentric plant dealer who had been arrested along with a crew of Seminoles for poaching rare orchids out of the a South Florida swamp. I never imagined that I would end up spending the next two years shadowing Laroche and exploring the odd, passionate world of orchid fanatics. I certainly never imagined that I would willingly hike through the swamps of South Florida - but that's what writing a book does to you. I found myself as passionate about the project as the orchid fanatics were about their flowers, and that is ultimately what the book is about.


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