SPOILERS! You've been warned.
Adaptation (2002)
Rated 14a
Last seen: March 2005
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper
Directed by:Spike Jonze
CHARACTERS
Charlie Kaufman - Our main character. He is a screenplay writer experiencing writer's block. He's fat, balding, depressed and has limited social skills.
Donald Kaufman - Charlie's twin brother. He also aspires to be a screenplay writer. He is the exact opposite of Charlie. He lives his life with foolish abandon. Gets thrown out a car.
Susan Orlean - A writer who wrote The Orchid Theif. Falls in love with John.
John Laroche - A plant dealer who lost his wife and family. Finds and clones rare orchids. The Orchid Theif is based on him. Gets killed by an alligator.
Robert McKee - Famous screenplay novelist whom Donald admires. Gives Charlie advice.
PLOT
The movie begins with the sequence of life before the world came to be how it is known now. Well, that's the story of how Charlie Kaufman came to be...
Charlie Kaufman is a screenplay writer who after the success of his screenplay, "Being John Malkovich" has had writer's block. He's assigned with the task of adapting the novel, "Adaptation" into a movie. This is a task he finds extremely difficult, especially when he starts to fall in love with the author, Susan Orlean.
To make matters worse for Charlie, his brother, Donald is aspiring to be a screenplay writer as well. The ease of his writing and perpostorousness of he's script has Charlie even more agitated. Especially when his brother has success.
The movie takes us back to a three years earlier, when Susan Orlean started writing "The Orchid Theif". She meets John Laroche and at first, she thinks he is white trash. He steals rare orchids from lagoons to clone them. He is missing his front 2 teeth and harbours some unknown mysterious pain. The more she gets to know John, the more of a sensitive soul she begins to see. Later, John tells her the story of how he got into an accident driving out the front of his driveway and how his parent (parents-in-law?) got killed and how he lost his 2 front teeth and never got them replaced as a reminder of the incident.
Susan expresses an interest in finding the Ghost Orchid, one of the rarest and most beautiful orchids, with John. When they find it, she is dissapointed. It's only a flower. That's all it is. She realizes at this point how sad her life really is. John tells her about the process in which they take the center out of the Ghost Orchid to make drugs. He offers Susan some. When Susan snorts it, she feels better than she has ever. She begins having an affair with John.
Back in the present day, Charlie begins to show signs of insanity as his obsession for adapting an unadaptable book in a screenplay mounts. He seeks help from Donald's idol, Robert McKee. Robert gives him some very valuable advice. I don't remember what it was. It was important to the plot...I think. Well, in any case, Charlie figures out that Susan is just a fraud in that she projects herself as being a successful writer who is happily married, when really she is a drug addict who is having an affair with John.
Charlie and Donald decide to go out and meet John and Susan. Charlie accidentaly stumbles upon Susan and John's grow op of Ghost Orchid drugs. Susan decides that Charlie has seen too much and that they have to kill him.
A chase ensues in which Donald flies out of the car and dies when John's truck hits Charlie's car. John gets killed by an alligator when he and Susan corner Charlie in the swamp.
The movie ends with Charlie driving off while "So Happy Togehter" by The Turtles plays in the background.
FAVORITE SCENE
Susan getting high off of Ghost Orchid and phoning John.
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