Don't Make a Scene: Adaptation.

The Story: When looking at Adaptation. recently to re-post a review from a few years ago, I was struck by the weird nature of it (although given how Hollywood "changes" the facts—even in moves with the slug-line "Based on a True Story"—I shouldn't have been). The people in the story are real people—writers Charlie Kaufman and Susan Orlean, orchid fancier John Laroche—they exist, they knew the movie was being made (although when Orlean read the screenplay, she was "horrified" and, at first blush, wanted to shut it down). But, the story, "based on real events" was fictitious.

All except for the part that Charlie Kaufman had no idea how he was going to write a screenplay based on Orlean's book. The screenplay became less about the events of "The Orchid Thief" and more about the struggle to adapt it for the screen. A lot of the people are real. Kaufman's twin brother, Donald, is not, but presents a foil for Charlie to talk about his struggles. The real Kaufman even put "Donald" as one of the screenplay's authors and dedicated it to him.

Then, there's Robert McKee. He's real. Very real. Real enough to suggest Brian Cox play him in the film (over, reportedly, Michael Caine, Albert Finney, or Christopher Plummer). McKee has done well with himself with his lectures and seminars in the burgeoning market of potential screenplay authors and serves a need for those who are stymied by being too close to their subject: he provides perspective. It might seem a slight thing, but that can often solve the problem authors have to "crack"—if not their story-problems—their own myopia to it. For someone mentally spinning in a hamster cage, that provides possibilities and freedom; sometimes you can't get from "A" to "B" without taking a 90° jag along the way. You can only stare at a blank page or a white screen for so long before getting up and leaving it is the best strategy.

I just like the scene because movie-Kaufman has a very specific problem and movie-McKee is such a generalist that he doesn't address it and movie-Kaufman is so meek that he still gives him an perfunctory "Okay...thanks" for something that dismisses his issue with an over-arching rant.

What's also funny—and somewhat the point of what McKee does—is that he does provide the answer to his riddle, which solves the problem and provides the screenplay for the very movie the audience is watching, as unconventional as the solution is. Mind-bending, it is. Revelatory, too, on so many levels.

The Set-Up: Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage) has a conflict: he has been hired to make a screenplay of Susan Orlean's book, "The Orchid Thief" and he can't do it. He can't even get started. His goal is "to make a simple movie about flowers" but the facts that made up the book are just not compelling for a movie, or the kind of metaphysical things he writes. His brother Donald (Nicholas Cage) doesn't help. He doesn't know what to do. In desperation, he attends one of Robert McKee's "Story" seminars, and during the Q and A, gets up the courage to ask about his very specific problem in a lecture about story-telling.

Yeah. You...

190 INT. AUDITORIUM - MORNING 190 

Kaufman, bleary-eyed, sits in the back. McKee paces. 
MCKEE Anyone else? 

Kaufman timidly raises his hand. 

MCKEE (cont'd) Yes? 

KAUFMAN Sir. What if a writer is attempting to create * a story where nothing much happens, where people don't change, they don't have any epiphanies. 

KAUFMAN They struggle and are frustrated and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world -- 

MCKEE The real world? 

KAUFMAN Yes.

MCKEE The real fucking world?

MCKEE First of all, (sighs) if you write a... 

MCKEE ...screenplay without conflict or crisis, you'll bore your audience to tears. Secondly: 

MCKEE Nothing happens in the world? 

MCKEE Are you out of your fucking mind? 

MCKEE People are murdered every day! There's genocide and war and corruption! Every fucking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else! 

MCKEE Every fucking day someone somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else! 

MCKEE People find love! People lose it, for Christ's sake! A child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church! 

MCKEE Someone goes hungry! Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman! 

MCKEE If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know much about life! 

MCKEE And why the fuck are you taking up my precious two hours with your movie? 

MCKEE I don't have any use for it! 

MCKEE I don't have any bloody use for it! 

KAUFMAN Okay, thanks.

Adaptation.

Words by Charlie Kaufman (and Donald Kaufman)

Pictures by Lance Acord and Spike Jonez

Adaptation. is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Image Entertainment and Shout! Factory