Classic Flicks: Adaptation presents hidden comedic gem

By Joseph Allencherril     1/13/11 6:00pm

Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter of Adaptation (2002), is one member of the sparse crowd of directors and screenwriters who force you to rethink the limits of the human imagination. Kaufman bends genres, characters and minds in his best films, which include Being John Malkovich (1999), Human Nature (2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and Synecdoche, New York (2008). All are among the most complex, comedic and confounding films in recent history. These films are not to be pigeonholed into categories like "dramedy" or "romantic comedy" - it is better to posit that they merely exist in time, space and film.In Adaptation, Kaufman blends fiction with reality, writing himself (or rather, a version of himself) into the screenplay. Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage, Leaving Las Vegas) is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles who, during the filming of Being John Malkovich, is hired to write a screenplay based on the book The Orchid Thief. Living with Charlie is his fictional twin brother Donald (also Cage), a less talented writer than his brother. But the "genius" - as Donald calls Charlie - finds directly adapting the boring book on orchids to be an astonishingly Herculean task; in an effort to break through his severe writer's block, Charlie even attends one of screenwriter Robert McKee's famous seminars.

Seeing Kaufman struggle makes this film appealing to creatively exhausted writers everywhere.

Until I watched Adaptation, I thought that just one dull, monotonous character existed in Cage's acting repertoire. But he plays the Kaufman twins so adroitly that one can even distinguish the mannerisms of each twin. As a knowing wink to the audience from Kaufman, Donald Kaufman is credited as a co-writer of the film with Charlie.

---

---

In the film, The New Yorker journalist Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep, Sophie's Choice) travels to Florida to write a story on orchid thief John Laroche (Chris Cooper, American Beauty). But their relationship evolves from formal to romantic. The interweaving tales of Kaufman and Orlean form the backbone of Adaptation, resulting in a meditation on creativity and love.

The central characters in Adaptation are based on real people, but in name alone. Orlean really published The Orchid Thief in 1998. (Orlean still writes a column on "People, Places, and Things" for The New Yorker). However, the reality of the names is where Kaufman's faithfulness to reality ends; the events and emotions each character feels are all completely invented.

An idiosyncratic vein of comedy runs through all of Kaufman's works. Embrace Adaptation if you find yourself laughing at the wrong moments during movies and television shows, for it is not wrong to laugh during any moment of this film. Everything is funny. All of Kaufman's great films are characterized by this creative thinking. Kaufman is not known for penning box office smash hits; a majority of the public is unsympathetic to his eccentric brand of story-telling. The audience that gives his films the attention they merit is unfortunately tiny.

Alas, even film geniuses can be misunderstood. For example, Synecdoche, New York was neither a blockbuster (it gathered $4 million on a $20 million budget) nor a popular critic's darling. Adaptation was a moderate success at the box office, but of all of Kaufman's films, it blends humor, narrative and intricacy in a way that is off-putting to neither the lowliest of audiences nor the haughtiest of critics.

Random Oscar trivia: When the Kaufman "brothers" were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Donald became the first fictitious nominee not to be a cover for a real person. (In the past, fictitious people, like Ian McLellan Hunter (Roman Holiday), have won the Academy Award in lieu of politically blacklisted nominees).

Joseph Allencherril is a Will Rice College sophomore. Classic Flicks is a column reexamining and rediscovering the best that cinema has to offer.

---