*** Official "ADAPTATION" Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Alan Kurland]

I laughed as well. Spoilers ahead!

Another thought - I felt that at the end the 2 sides of Kaufman (Charlie and Donald) needed to come together to be a whole person.To do this, one of the separate personalities had to go (get killed off) (it reminded me of needing to get rid of the evil Kirk to make Kirk whole again in that episode of the original star trek)

How to get rid of him? By a very "Donald" like far fetched ending - a normally passive Larouch tries to kill him, then you think he's ok by getting only wounded in the arm, when out of nowhere, a head on accident on a very desolate back road, he's ejected and killed.

Then Charlie feels "whole" - he finishes the screenplay, makes up with Amelia, and you feel positive about his future, a more confident, less conflicted self.

 

[Everlasting Gobstopper]

Anyone else think that "Donald" comes out of Charlie's writing "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," a much more mainstream movie, rather than his "art" flicks? Just a thought...

 

[LennyP]

I just finaly saw this movie, what a great, quirky, original yet familiar dramedy. It surprises you all the time. Plus you get to see some "behind the scenes" stuff on the sets of Being John Malkovich with that movie cast's cameos
Written in part by Donald Kaufman, Charlie's twin brother, and is dedicated to him

 

[Lee J. Buividas]

Saw this movie yesterday and is so far one of my favorites of 2003. Quirky cool characters just like the theater I saw it in. I should of known when I bought the tickets the girl says this movie is playing in one of our small theaters is that OK. I said sure never having been these small theaters before I should known by the tone of her voice this small theater was not any small theater but almost as weird as "Being John Malkovich" the floor sloped back down from the screen (opposite of a normal theater)so when you were sitting you kind of felt you were lying down looking up at the screen. Very strange. Also the rear ceiling inn the back was very very low. Several of the people watching the movie (mother daughter) were also strange talking too loud about nonsense when finally a college kid told them to shut the f88k up. If that were not enough two very big husband and wife team shows up half way through the film with enough food to feed a army. If their loud chomping did not drive you nuts the ruffling of all their food bags would. Finally the college kid could not take it anymore and jumped up and shouted "half the people in this theater are crazier and nuttier then the people in this film. I had a good laugh over that one. The mother daughter left as did the very big people when the kid shouted at them. Strangest movie going experience I have ever had and that was not even the half of it. ha ha ha

Lee J. Buividas

BTW excellent movie !!!!!

 

[Ted Todorov]

I certainly greatly enjoyed Adaptation but found that two of its main themes -- writer's block and deconstruction/reconstruction were handled better elsewhere.
In the case of writers block: Spalding Gray's Monster in a Box monologue. Deconstruction/reconstruction (of a Hollywood movie): Unforgiven. Anyway, after Being John Malkovitch my expectations were impossibly high. Quentin & Damin's comments do speak for me as well.
My favorite scene: the screen-writing seminar -- too funny.
Does anyone know how Susan Orlean & John Laroche reacted to the film? Any interviews on-line? Those two are seriously good sports.
It also amazes me that the screenwriters guild allowed the Donald credit: they've been known to bar credits for any number of flesh and blood writers who worked on various screenplays...
Ted

 

[Ted Todorov]

I should add that this was my second filmgoing experience in a month (the other being Solaris) where there was a complete disconnect between 90% of the audience and what was on screen.
Hollywood's marketers are capable of inducing a decent number of "mainstream" filmgoers to see art films, which Adaptation & Solaris certainly are. Seeing those films in their company though is downright weird -- it's as if they're all watching an entirely different movie from you.
(I saw both films at the AMC 25 on 42nd St., which is an excellent theater and plays plenty of subtitled or otherwise arty stuff along with Star Wars AOTC).
Ted

 

[Damin J Toell]

Quote:

That's where I saw Adaptation., and I felt a similar reaction (or lack thereof) from the audience. It seemed like they took the story (at face value) as one about a screenwriter who, to overcome writer's block, gets involved with his subject and adventure ensues. A pretty interesting reaction for a midtown Manhattan crowd.
DJ

 

[Derek Miner]

I was able to attend a screening of Adaptation last night with my roommate and a mutual friend. Even though there were free passes given out, there were plenty of empty seats in the theater. Ah well, not everyone is going to get this one...

Three perspectives emerged afterwards. I had known about the false Donald Kaufman for a while, and I was highly amused by the film's blatant hints to this fact. My roommate wasn't sure at the end and asked me if Donald was real. The mutual friend took much of the movie at face value, Donald and all. She was quite distressed to learn that Donald didn't exist, as it completely negated her interpretation of the film. I further suggested the possibility of the *only* real character in the whole movie being Charlie, with everything else arranged and filtered through him.

My roommate suggested he enjoyed the movie because he could relate to having a brother with bad ideas. But how to reconcile a story where the character you relate to *accepts* the bad ideas?

I liked the film, but I thought that there was a clarity missing that would have unified the story a little better. I was totally entranced by a few segments of the first and second acts. Orlean's admitting that she was searching for something to be passionate about had a nice ring of truth to it. I also loved the scene where Orlean's waxing poetic over different orchids dovetailed into Charlie waxing poetic over different women. These seemed to introduce themes that were going to inform the rest of the film, but the third act seemed to make them red herrings.

I read Dave Poland's comments on the film as referenced earlier in this thread, and I am very interested in his interpretation. I think there's a connectivity that might emerge for me upon further viewings. Part of me fears that not enough clues were left for us to follow the filmmakers all the way to the intended reading, however.

Perhaps discussion will pick up on this one, with it expanding to more theaters today. I look forward to wading around in this one for a while.

 

[Alex Spindler]

Man, I just plain loved this film. I can't think of any time I felt more engaged in a film from a storytelling standpoint. All the while my mind was reeling about the conceptualization of the film I was seeing. "The Orchid Thief" is a real book, so was Charlie really commissioned to write a screenplay about it? Did he consider writing himself into the story before or after he had the story? With the exception of the dramatic ending, everything in there could be autobiographical (with the exception of the brother).
I'm going to have to let my brain continue digesting the scenes and performances some more before writing a review, but I think this was an exceptional followup to Being John Malkovich.

 

[Damin J Toell]

"The Orchid Thief" is a real book, so was Charlie really commissioned to write a screenplay about it? Did he consider writing himself into the story before or after he had the story?

I, too, wonder if the book gave Kaufman the impetus to write this script, or if Kaufman already had this script concept in place and was simply looking for a book that could be used for it.

DJ

 

[Quentin]

Charlie was really commissioned to write an adaptation of "The Orchid Thief". Imagine the surprise of the producers when he handed them a script with a different title and a co-writer with the same name!

But, he lucked out...they liked what they read, and we lucked out because we get to watch this fascinating film.

 

[Derek Miner]

There is an interview with Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze in the previous (not current) issue of Creative Screenwriting which talks about the genesis of Adaptation. It's the one with Bill Condon on the cover. I read the article at least a month before seeing the film, so I had a little bit of foreknowledge of the idea. However, as anyone who has seen the Being John Malkovich DVD could tell you, Kaufman and Jonze are not ones to give away all their secrets.

 

[Nick C.]

Then Charlie feels "whole" - he finishes the screenplay, makes up with Amelia, and you feel positive about his future, a more confident, less conflicted self

This makes sense, but it seemed a bit forced, especially compared to the cleverness of the rest of the film. Perhaps, albeit Donald's dead, his screenplay had extended to the end of the film with this traditional, happy ending. It felt like a deux ex machina, in that Amelia hadn't been seen for a long period of the film, not to mention she has a love interest presently, and yet Charlie is able to suddenly go up to her, kiss, and recoup the failed relationship.

Then again...if it was Donald's ending, it would've violated McKee's warning to Charlie at the bar about never employing a deux ex machina

 

[Russell B]

I saw this tonight. Although Cage and Cooper were great in the movie overall it just didn't do much for me as i thought it was boring.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Then again...if it was Donald's ending, it would've violated McKee's warning to Charlie at the bar about never employing a deux ex machina

That rule had already been violated other times (e.g., the truck in the swamp). Charlie can't even follow McKee's advice.

DJ

 

[Vickie_M]

I found a short but interesting interview with Susan Orlean, talking about Adaptation. She liked it! I especially loved this quote:

SUSAN ORLEAN: Oh no, I felt the complete opposite. I think my book is a character in the movie, which to me is far more thrilling than if the book simply dissolved and became just source material. Instead, it's the protagonist in many ways in the movie. The physical entity of the book itself is there, which is very thrilling. I think it's beyond my wildest fantasy of my work being treated as something. It feels far more respectful and attentive to the work than I would ever have expected.

Here's the whole interview.

 

[Lee J. Buividas]

Vickie_M That quote from SUSAN ORLEAN says it aLL. "The book itself is a character in the movie." That is exactly what I thought when I saw this movie. Some of you all are trying to go to, what does not exist in this movie. Making it much more complex then what it is.

I really enjoyed this movie simply for what it is.

Lee J. Buividas

 

[Karl F]

Okay -- here's a philisophical puzzler I'm trying to work out. Bear with me.

Spoiler warning...

I'm thinking that most films exist in two or three "worlds," depending on whether they're based on fact. A fictional film exists in two -- the "real world," where Bruce Willis is an actor who plays the role of John McLane in a movie called "Die Hard," and the "movie world," where John McClane is a living, breathing human who actually did all those things. A movie based on fact also has a "movie/real" world; for example, in the "Catch Me If You Can" "movie/real" world, Frank Abagnale looks exactly like Leonardo and every event in the movie should be taken as fact -- it actually happened, here, in the real world. It may as well be a documentary.

Okay. "Adaptation." In the "real world," Charlie Kaufman is real; Donald Kaufman is not. Nicholas Cage is an actor playing the role of both Kaufmans. In the "movie world," Donald Kaufman exists but is killed. Nicholas Cage does not exist, as far as we know; we are looking at the actual Charlie Kaufman and the actual Donald Kaufman. In the "movie/real" world, Donald Kaufman also exists but is killed. The movie is dedicated to his memory, so we are meant to take that as fact. In this world, we are looking at a movie that is an exact re-creation. The Kaufmans look exactly like Nicholas Cage.

Now -- the movie credits the screenplay as being written by Charlie Kaufman AND Donald Kaufman. Since the last third of the movie is "written" by Donald -- including his own death -- I posit a FOURTH world, which I'll call the "real/movie" world. In THIS world, Donald also exists -- but does NOT die. Since he wrote his own death, that's impossible. Donald simply chose to write himself out of the script, to add more excitement. (The dedication just a gag [or Donald died of unrelated causes after the movie was written].) In the "real/movie" world, Nicholas Cage is an actor playing a role -- same as in the "real" world. In fact, the only difference between this and the "real" world is that, in the "real/movie" world, Donald Kaufman does exist -- but, unlike the "movie" world and the "movie/real" world, he does not look like Nicholas Cage, but, rather, he looks like whatever his twin, Charlie, looks like in the "real" world.

In this "real/movie" world, the whole last third of the film is fictional, having no basis in fact. The first two thirds are a true representation of Charlie's struggles to adapt the book; the final third is where the script was taken over -- and completely written -- by Donald. This does not happen in any of the other worlds; in the "real" world, Donald does not exist, and in the other two worlds, Donald is killed.

Well. I'm not sure if I'm peeling away layers or just confusing myself. What do you think? Am I making any sense at all? In the "real/movie" world, is Donald alive or dead?

--K

P.S. Finally, is the "real/movie" world the same world where Spinal Tap is an actual band?

 

[Seth Paxton]

Add me to the list of people that loved the film. And I think much of the audience I saw it with last week loved it too, or at least "got it".

The minute that Donald is called in to help I think most of the audience knew what was coming, or at least wasn't surprised when it did. We all laughed quite a bit even when it wasn't "funny" in a literal sense. Every action piece and bit of cliched filmmaking brought laughs from the audience, I was almost crying on the aligator attack.

To me that is the genius of Kaufman's effort. Their is nothing funny about such an attack generally speaking, and the film certain doesn't play it comically. The laughter comes from being suddenly in on the joke, knowing that we are suddenly seeing hack writing pushing it's way in.

Of course Kaufman established the writer's direct influence over the film he is starring in earlier on when Charlie recites scenes we have just witnessed.

My only problem with the film is that the nature of the device is still the device. In making fun of hack writing, the film still is falling back on it to move along (at least a little bit). But there is simply no other way to do it IMO. I wouldn't change it in the least.


I also thought that the intention of the last act is to not be ALL Donald, only Donald helping Charlie. Clearly Charlie is still doing some of the writing since he writes the final scene (which is what the scene is about of course). So I think the "good" dialog that comes out of Donald comes from Charlie, but it's Donald's lame plot devices that allow Charlie to move past his writer's block and explore the personal feelings towards his brother and/or about life by seeing it from his brother's view.


As for the Orchid Thief story, I think Kaufman actually does bring that to it's honest thematic resolution earlier in the film when Streep realizes that the reality of her dreams is nothing in comparison to the imagination of what they will be. Her disillusionment with her concept of some perfect ideal seems to be what Kaufman has extracted from her book, and perhaps is what he really got from the actual book.

It's just that in doing so he also obviously found another more personal avenue he wanted to explore, one that I think actually ties in exactly with the theme he has pulled from the book. He is facing his own disillusionment of some ideal form of writing, of his own snobbish ideals of what makes him a good writer and what makes more practical, outgoing people (like his brother) buffoons. In the end he seems to find that his own ivory tower of self-indulgent snobbery is just as false as Orlean's ideas about the beauty of orchids and the beautiful genius of Laroche.

They were better as a concept than the reality of them actually is. In the end she loses her fascination with them when faced with the reality (either his getting them lost rather than being some great, white flower hunter, or in finding the flower and seeing it as "just a flower"). And in the end Kaufman is willing to let the "hack" side of the world in to help him, both in writing and emotionally.

 

[Seth Paxton]

And, yes, I would agree that it's Donald's idea to write himself out with a death scene that just happened to include "Happy Together" which he wanted (or did) use for his own script earlier in the film.