Narrative Theory and ADAPTATION.

by Jason Mittell, 2017

Focusing this course and website on films and television about films and television emerged from a book project about the film Adaptation. I present an excerpt from the book here to stand alongside my students’ writing; to read more, check out the entire book: Jason Mittell, Narrative Theory and Adaptation. (Bloomsbury, 2017).

It can be hard to know how to approach a film like Adaptation. as a film scholar.[footnote]Throughout this book and essay, I refer to Adaptation. with the included period in its title. While this is unusual and looks a bit odd, it is the official title of the film as it appears in the credits. See Jeff Scheible, Digital Shift: The Cultural Logic of Punctuation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), for an interpretation of the meanings of the film’s titular period.[/footnote] Do we try to chronicle its production and reception history, placing it into larger contexts of film and culture? Do we interpret what it says about themes like creativity, commerce, passion, and storytelling? Do we hold up a succession of theoretical lenses to explore how it looks through various analytical prisms? There is no singular correct way to open a discussion of a film, especially one as layered and complex as Adaptation., but a typical way to launch a work of criticism is to offer a brief plot summary to remind viewers what the film is about, assuming that anyone reading this chapter has seen the film at least once. But within the context of narrative theory, what do we mean by “a plot summary”?Typically, such a summary offers an overview of the film’s key narrative events, outlining its story. For Adaptation., we might say that the film is about a Hollywood screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, struggling to write an adaptation of a nonfiction book that does not seem to have a real plot, and his relationship with his twin brother Donald, who proves to be a more productive and commercially successful screenwriter. But Adaptation. is also about the story conveyed in the source material: New Yorker reporter Susan Orlean discovering and writing about the story of John Laroche, an eccentric horticulturalist arrested for stealing orchids from protected Florida wetlands. However, as both of these plots suggest, Adaptation. tells the story of storytelling itself, suggesting that as much as we might expect a summary of its story, we also need a summary of its narrative discourse. The film takes us inside the thoughts of both Charlie Kaufman and Susan Orlean to dramatize how their writing processes make them reflect on their own passions and obsessions, ranging widely across times and settings to explore these themes with great reflexivity and structural complexity. Additionally and importantly, the film’s final act seems quite inconsistent with its first seventy-five minutes in terms of both story and discourse, becoming far more conventional and almost clichéd in its storytelling, suggesting that it either fails as a film or requires some critical reflection to make sense of its narrative choices. Clearly a “summary” is a difficult place to start with Adaptation.

Thus for the purposes of this book, I will take a lesson from the study of narrative comprehension, starting the analysis by walking through the film’s opening moments to see how it communicates its own approach to meaning-making. As discussed in the previous chapter, the beginning of a film frequently teaches us how to watch it by establishing its norms, expectations, and modes of engagement. So let’s start at the beginning of Adaptation. to see what we can learn about the film and its approach to narrative.

Before the beginning: Adaptation.’s intertexts

Of course, every film has already started before the movie begins. We rarely start watching a film with no knowledge about it, as we bring preconceptions and assumptions forged by paratexts and related contexts. Adaptation. is particularly rich with intertextual links, many of which are made explicit within the film’s storytelling and might have been known by its original audience in 2002. The most central intertext is Susan Orlean’s 1999 nonfiction book The Orchid Thief, from which Adaptation. is adapted, and before that Orlean’s 1995 New Yorker essay “Orchid Fever,” which provided the foundation of her book.[footnote]Susan Orlean, “Orchid Fever,” The New Yorker, January 23, 1995; Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief (New York: Random House, 1998).[/footnote] I will discuss Orlean’s writings in much more detail below in terms of its vital function as source material, but they seem less important in setting expectations for most viewers— while the book was certainly a success and The New Yorker has broad circulation among an educated readership, it is hard to gauge how much The Orchid Thief functioned as a framing intertext for viewers coming to see Adaptation. The film was not promoted as connected to The Orchid Thief, unlike most adaptations that tout the name recognition of their original sources; given its different name, it seems unlikely that many viewers going to the film would know much about the book that was not highlighted in the trailer or poster. Both given the book’s status as meditative nonfiction and its lack of hype, it’s doubtful that viewers were particularly motivated to seek out the film version of The Orchid Thief, even if they had read the book. Thus it would seem fair to say that Orlean’s work is more important to most viewers through its dramatization in the film, rather than establishing expectations before watching Adaptation.

The film’s poster and trailer highlight a different intertext more centrally: the film Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999). Most of Adaptation.’s posters mention this film, and the trailer includes the caption, “From The Academy Award Nominated Creators of Being John Malkovich,” clearly calling attention to the previous collaboration between director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman as an important intertext. Malkovich, released in 1999, was the feature film debut for both Jonze, a prominent music video director, and Kaufman, who had written for a number of television comedies throughout the 1990s. The film was a critical darling, celebrated for its compelling execution of a bizarre and enigmatic premise: a puppeteer discovers a portal into the brain of the award-winning actor John Malkovich. While there are few explicit parallels between Malkovich and Adaptation. in terms of genre, style, or source material, certainly the earlier film cues viewers to expect that Adaptation. will break conventions and seem quite atypical compared to most Hollywood movies—whether a viewer had seen the earlier film, the general awareness about it in 2002 would help cue expectations toward the odd and unconventional. The intertext of Malkovich proves to be more directly important within Adaptation.’s story as well, as much of the action takes place while Being John Malkovich is being filmed, and we see the character of Charlie Kaufman on the film set with cameos from its actors. Thus not only does Malkovich help establish viewer expectations as to what type of film they might get with Adaptation., it also serves as an internal reference to understand the film’s story and characters.

Although we can never account for the wide range of all possible intertextual connections that viewers might encounter prior to watching a film, it is useful to consider three specific types of paratexts as likely reference points for new viewers: a film’s trailer, poster, and DVD cover. As Jonathan Gray has argued, such promotional paratexts are essential entry points for viewers, framing expectations, establishing genres and norms, promoting particular interpretations, and otherwise establishing essential contexts for comprehending a film.[footnote]See Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (New York: New York University Press, 2010).[/footnote] Unlike many blockbusters with a complex array of different promotional paratexts, Adaptation.’s American release featured just one trailer and a single poster design with only slight variations when adapted for home video release, making it fairly straightforward to consider how most viewers might find their first viewing framed by promotional materials.

The poster for Adaptation. highlights the pedigree of Being John Malkovich, while leaving The Orchid Thief only in the small print of credits.

The poster and DVD cover both feature an image of an orchid in a broken flower pot laying on its side, with Nicolas Cage’s partial face appearing on the pot. Graphically, the image seems to tell us little directly about the film, aside from perhaps that Cage will portray a character who is broken in some way, and that flowers or plants might connect to the narrative or character. The text on the poster foregrounds the talent involved in the film, with the names of three stars, Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper, prominently displayed above the film’s title, all of which use a font reminiscent of a manual typewriter. The other prominent credits read, “Directed by Spike Jonze” and “Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman,” distinguished from the standard list of credits at the poster’s bottom that appear on nearly all American film posters. It is not surprising that the actors’ names are so prominent, as stars are a major way of promoting a film, and both Cage and Streep were well known at the time as quality actors with major awards and a strong reputation for quality performances (if a bit eclectic, in Cage’s case); Cooper was less prominent in 2002, although his star was rising after a prominent role in 1999’s award-winning American Beauty (Sam Mendes). Having such established actors whose names connote quality and prestige help signal that Adaptation. will be a creatively distinct film, rather than more conventional Hollywood fare.

The poster’s most unusual feature is how it highlights the director and screenwriters equally—it is incredibly rare to promote screenwriters for a film by name, unless it is an individual writer-director such as David Lynch, or based on the screenwriter’s prominent novel, as with John Irving’s The Cider House Rules (Lasse Hallström, 1999). Adaptation.’s promotion is even more unusual, given that Jonze and Charlie Kaufman had each only had one produced film credit by 2002, and Donald Kaufman (for reasons that will be discussed below) had no credits whatsoever. Additionally, it is also odd that neither The Orchid Thief nor Susan Orlean were promoted on the poster, as she was certainly a more well-known name than Kaufman. The choice to give prominence to the screenwriters over the source material is a conscious framing that significantly shapes how we regard Adaptation.

Adaptation.‘s trailer is much more conventional than the film it promotes.

The trailer is more complicated than the poster, but it also directs our attention in similar directions. It’s a fairly conventional trailer for an unconventional film, highlighting its stars and presenting a rapid succession of quick moments of humor and drama, and uses an overused popular song, “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie, that has nothing to do with the film. One notable exception to its conventionality is that it lacks the voice-over narration typical of trailers, choosing instead to use on-screen text to contextualize the film clips, providing a subtle reinforcement of the importance of the written word in this film about writing. This on-screen text consists of five sets of phrases, connected with ellipses:

“Charlie Kaufman Writes The Way He Lives . . . With Great Difficulty.”
“His Twin Brother Donald Lives The Way He Writes . . . With Foolish Abandon.”
“Susan Writes About Life. . . But Can’t Live It.”
“John’s Life Is A Book . . . Waiting To Be Adapted.”
“One Story. . . Four Lives . . . A Million Ways It Can End.”

What is most significant about these statements is how they focus viewer attention onto the four characters more than any clear narrative events or plot, highlighting three of their roles as writers seemingly working to adapt John’s life. The trailer clearly signals that the film will be focused on the process of writing and adapting a book to film, a subject that seems far from compelling for a movie with major Hollywood stars—in fact a notable moment in the trailer is when Cage exclaims the line, “The book has no story!”

One of the goals of a trailer is to provide an advance framework for understanding the film; for Adaptation., the trailer emphasizes characters over plot, and writing over dramatic action, helping to direct our attention and manage our expectations for what the experience of watching the film might be. The trailer sets our expectations in another important way, by shifting its approach significantly around 2⁄3 through its short running time. Charlie despairingly says the line, “I’ve written myself into my screenplay,” to which Donald responds, “That’s kind of weird.” The trailer’s tone shifts at that moment, as Charlie’s dialogue emphasizes all of the “Hollywood things” that he doesn’t want to include, like drugs, sex, and car chases, while the quick succession of images portray those very elements as they appear in Adaptation. By highlighting these elements, most of which come from Adaptation.’s final act, the trailer prepares us for the film’s highly reflexive tone and mirrors its final shift from an unconventional meditation on passion and writing, to an action-driven tale of obsession, romance, and self-discovery. Thus while the trailer feels far more conventional than the film it is promoting, in many ways it sets the stage quite effectively for the unique narrative experience of watching Adaptation.

Teaching us how to watch Adapation.

We cannot predict what variety of intertexts and contextual knowledge any viewer might bring to a film, but for the purposes of narrative analysis, we can assume that a viewer starts watching a movie from the beginning. The opening scenes of a film work to orient viewers in their comprehension process, situate the film’s genre and relevant reference points, establish the main characters, and signal its intrinsic storytelling norms. The first fourteen minutes of Adaptation. accomplish many of these goals, and provide a vital roadmap for the entire film.

After the opening logo of Columbia Pictures, a voice emerges over a black screen:

Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head? Maybe if I were happier, my hair wouldn’t be falling out. Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. . . . I’m a walking cliché. I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked. There’s something wrong. A bump. The dentist called again. I’m way overdue.

This monologue continues in a similar vein for a full ninety-eight seconds, over a black screen as the film’s credits roll subtly in a small white font at the bottom of the frame. The deadpan voice, which many viewers would certainly recognize as belonging to Nicolas Cage, continues to offer a stream of consciousness litany of self-loathing gripes and worries, with occasional attempts to think positively (“I need to read more, improve myself. What if I learned Russian or something?”) and make excuses for what seems to be depression (“Maybe it’s my brain chemistry”). What’s notable is how little information this opening monologue actually provides to novice viewers: we get none of the typical expository indications about who the character is, what he is doing (aside from being a screenwriter), what situation he is in, or how this might incite a plot for a Hollywood film. After this opening segment, we know almost nothing about the film, what it is about, or even who this person is beyond his own self-loathing. Instead we are left asking questions about both what we have just heard and what it foretells for the film we have just started viewing.

Such a digressive, uninformative, and low-energy opening monologue over a black screen is not how films are supposed to open. Looking at practical theory highlights how unconventional and downright wrong this choice is—Blake Snyder sums up the conventional importance of such openings by writing, “The very first impression of what a movie is—its tone, its mood, the type and scope of the film—are all found in the opening image.”[footnote]Blake Snyder, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need (Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2005), 72.[/footnote] Based on these criteria, Adaptation.’s opening image is a complete failure, telling us nothing about the narrative scope of the film, and setting a tone and mood that hardly makes viewers want to keep watching. But the opening does tell us quite a bit about the film’s approach to storytelling itself. It highlights that Adaptation. is willing to aggressively break convention and risk alienating viewers. It alerts us that the film will embrace subjectivity and reflexivity through the intrinsic norm of voice-over narration. And it reveals that even though it will present the subjective perspective of the protagonist (who is soon revealed to be the film’s writer himself), it will not take that perspective too seriously, as the tone of Cage’s performance and the monologue’s hyperdigressive writing style call attention to how ridiculous the character’s neurotic perspective truly is. Additionally, the one truly essential bit of story information that is revealed during this sequence is buried within the roll of the credits: the screenplay for the film we are watching was written by both Charlie and Donald Kaufman, a crucial fact whose importance will only be revealed nearly two hours later. Thus while this opening tells us little about story, it reveals more about narrative discourse and tone, suggesting that the relationship between story and discourse will be important for understanding Adaptation.

The black screen disappears abruptly, replaced by another unconventional sequence: shaky low-quality video footage pans across a film set, as a voice cuts through the murmur by loudly commanding, “Shut up!” twice, a juxtaposition that might be seen as a direct response to the opening monologue. An on-screen caption situates us as, “On the set of ‘Being John Malkovich,’ Summer 1998,” establishing this intertextual relationship that the poster and trailer had already emphasized. A further caption reveals that the speaker is “John Malkovich, Actor,” as he is instructing his fellow actors how to play the scene. The behind-the-scenes footage continues to reveal other hard-working crew members via captions, including “Thomas Smith, First Assistant Director,” and “Lance Acord, Cinematographer” (both of whom play themselves and serve the same roles in the production of Adaptation. itself). The footage then cuts to a character played by Nicolas Cage awkwardly standing in the wings observing the action, captioned as “Charlie Kaufman, Screenwriter.” The offscreen voice of Thomas Smith addresses him: “You, you’re in the eyeline. Can you please get off the stage?” which Charlie obeys by awkwardly walking out the stage door. The next shot cuts to outside the set as Charlie exits the door, with a notable transition from handheld low-quality video to a stable and well-composed film image that typifies the rest of the movie; as Charlie ambles away from the door, his voice-over narration shares his thoughts: “What am I doing here? Why did I bother to come here today? Nobody even seemed to know my name. I’ve been on this planet for 40 years and I’m no closer to understanding a single thing. Why am I here? How did I get here?”

Nicolas Cage’s first onscreen appearance as Charlie Kaufman sets the behind-the-scene stage as well as portraying him in an unflattering and marginalized light.

Even though Charlie’s voice-over poses many new questions, this sequence actually does provide some key answers. In terms of story information, we learn that our narrating protagonist is Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich and co-writer of Adaptation. itself.[footnote]In discussing the overlapping characters and writers in this book, I will refer to the real-life individuals by their last names (Kaufman, Orlean), and their fictionalized characters by first names (Charlie, Susan). Since Donald Kaufman has no real-life counterpart, he will only be referenced as Donald.[/footnote] This is a huge revelation, as it locates Adaptation. within a very small category of films where its screenwriter is an explicit on-screen character (rather than a veiled stand-in for the creator). There are similar films that are adaptations of published memoirs or autobiographies, such as Eat Pray Love (Ryan Murphy, 2010) or American Sniper (Clint Eastwood, 2014), where the book’s author is the main character but it has been adapted by other screenwriters, a function somewhat similar to Susan Orlean in Adaptation. There are some memoirs written directly for the screen, such as Antwone Fisher (Denzel Washington, 2002) or A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (Dito Montiel, 2006), where an actor plays the screenwriter at an earlier part in his life. Other more experimental films incorporate the writing process into such dramatizations, such as Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991), which fictionalizes the writing of the novel upon which it is based, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam, 1998), which extends the hallucinatory first-person journalism of Hunter S. Thompson into the realm of the impossible. Films like Adaptation., where the screenwriter character is portrayed at the same point in their lives as they wrote this screenplay, are highly unconventional and rare—My Dinner with Andre (Louis Malle, 1981) dramatizes a conversation between two men who play versions of themselves, with Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn serving as both screenwriters and performers. Some films embrace high levels of reflexivity by making the screenwriter a character and highlighting the process of filmmaking itself, as with New Nightmare (Wes Craven, 1994), The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse (Steve Bendelack, 2005), and This is the End (Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, 2013). All of these examples suggest that by Charlie Kaufman serving as both protagonist and screenwriter, Adaptation. is connected to both the realm of nonfiction and highly reflexive approaches to filmmaking. This sequence draws both of these connections: introducing Charlie through pseudo-documentary footage with real people playing themselves situates it within the realm of nonfiction, while commencing the narrative on a film set highlights its reflexive approach.

In terms of storytelling strategies, this segment confirms that voice-over narration will be an ongoing intrinsic norm, offering us deep access to Charlie’s thoughts and suggesting that the film’s narrative will be highly aligned with this character. Because Charlie’s voice-over is so self-deprecating and seemingly honest, we can assume it is both reliable (at least toward what he thinks and feels, if not how others perceive him) and communicative—he seems not to hold back from us viewers, and thus this reinforces our tight alignment to Charlie after only three minutes of the film. Additionally, the use of on-screen captions to identify the place and people suggests that the film itself will use reflexive devices to communicate information, rather than adhering to norms of realism that typify much conventional cinema. The mixture of the opening black screen, the handheld pseudo-documentary footage, and conventional filmmaking all suggest that Adaptation. will violate conventions and make unusual stylistic and storytelling choices to convey its ideas and narrative.

This willingness to break convention becomes even clearer in the next segment, as the film answers Charlie’s question, “How did I get here?” in a most unusual fashion: cutting to a shot of molten lava, with a caption reading, “Hollywood, CA, Four Billion And Forty Years Earlier.” The images begin to speed through a synopsis of evolution over the next minute, from single-cell organisms to plants to dinosaurs to mammals to a final shot of a baby being born, concluding with a close-up of Charlie sitting in a restaurant. This flashback sequence does little to advance the narrative, as Charlie’s evolutionary backstory is not particularly useful information, but it reinforces the film’s unconventional storytelling strategies, employing footage more suited to a nature documentary to suggest that it will embrace any style or tone to serve the purpose of a joke. Beyond just a joke, however, the evolution sequence introduces a larger thread of dramatizing natural history that will recur throughout the film to illustrate sequences from Orlean’s book—later in the film, we see Charlie brainstorm this sequence with the intent to “tie all of history together” on-screen. Additionally, the sequence portrays Charlie’s inability to think beyond himself, neurotically imagining that all of Earth’s evolutionary history has culminated in his own self-loathing. Thus even an unconventional flashback sequence that plays as a joke still reinforces Adaptation.’s themes and character elements.

Four minutes into the film, and we have yet to see anything resembling conventional film storytelling—the closest we have got to a narrative event is Charlie being asked to leave the set of Being John Malkovich, although that moment functions more as character development than progressing the story. The next scene in the restaurant is both the film’s most conventional sequence thus far, and its most important for the story, functioning as what practical screenwriting theory terms the “inciting incident.” However, as inciting incidents go, it is far from dramatic: Charlie discusses possibly writing a screenplay adaptation of The Orchid Thief with a Hollywood executive, Valerie (played by Tilda Swinton). Like the moments that precede it, this scene also emphasizes character over plot, starting with Charlie’s voice-over lamentation over how much he is sweating. Valerie breaks through his voice-over by saying, “We think you’re great.” Such an affirmation counters our immersion in Charlie’s self-loathing thoughts, suggesting that his imagination of his own image and worth differs greatly from how other characters see him. This is the first of many moments that raise the possibility that Charlie is an unreliable narrator, filtering our experience through his own tortured artistry and insecurities, rather than presenting an objective take on the events. Although his narration is not framed as a deceptive trick, we learn to distrust Charlie’s sense of himself and remember that his subjectivity might suffer from self- deception.

Charlie Kaufman sweats profusely as he meets with Valerie to discuss his adaptation of The Orchid Thief.

Once Valerie interrupts the narration, the rest of the scene plays out quite conventionally, presented as a typical shot/reverse-shot dialogue sequence; however, the content of the dialogue is quite important for establishing the film’s relationship between story and discourse. In a discussion of how he might adapt the book, Charlie highlights his appreciation of the book as, “great sprawling New Yorker stuff, and I’d want to remain true to that. . . . I’d want to let the movie exist, rather than be artificially plot driven.” Valerie responds that she is “not exactly sure what that means,” but attentive viewers do: it is like the first few minutes of Adaptation., where introducing character subjectivity and allowing for sprawling digressions into natural history trumps any desire for efficient storytelling with a clear chain of narrative events. Coupled with the opening credit that the film is “Based on the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean,” this scene suggests the highly unusual possibility that Adaptation. will simultaneously function as an adaptation of Orlean’s book and dramatize the process of that adaptation itself. Thus we are taught to regard all of the discussions about cinematic storytelling and screenwriting as potential commentary on the film we are watching, deepening the role of reflexivity as a crucial intrinsic norm.

As Charlie and Valerie further discuss the potential adaptation, they outline two crucial poles of film storytelling that structure our comprehension of Adaptation. Charlie indignantly asserts his vision of creating “a movie about flowers” that rejects a host of Hollywood conventions:

I just don’t want to ruin it by making it a Hollywood thing. You know? Like an orchid heist movie or something, or, changing the orchids into poppies and turn it into a movie about drug running, you know? . . . I don’t want to cram in sex or guns or car chases. You know? Or characters learning profound life lessons. Or growing, or coming to like each other, or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. I mean, the book isn’t like that, and life isn’t like that. It just isn’t. I feel very strongly about this.

Charlie’s passionate list of things to avoid seemingly runs counter to Valerie’s brief mentions of what she values about the book—“Laroche is a fun character, isn’t he?”—and how she imagines the film’s plot might be changed—“I guess we thought that maybe Susan Orlean and Laroche could fall in love” (5). Thus these dual poles, between “a Hollywood thing,” emphasizing fun characters and imposed romance plots, and “sprawling New Yorker stuff” about flowers and real life, define Charlie’s goal as Adaptation.’s protagonist, setting the plot in motion as he seeks to adapt The Orchid Thief in a way true to his vision and resisting the pull of mainstream convention. Additionally, this dichotomy structures our understanding of Adaptation.’s storytelling itself, as we recognize that the film we are watching will also be straddling these dual coasts of Hollywood formula and New York intellectualism.

The next scene introduces a new set of conventions and characters that prove vital to Adaptation.’s storytelling strategies. Cutting to an establishing shot of a New York skyscraper, with the caption, “New Yorker Magazine, Three Years Earlier,” the film opts for an East Coast sensibility, at least for the moment. We hear a voice-over narration spoken by Meryl Streep: “John Laroche is a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouch-shouldered, and sharply handsome, in spite of the fact that he is missing all his front teeth.” This line is also the opening sentence of both Susan Orlean’s 1995 New Yorker story and The Orchid Thief, offering a strong contrast in tone and timbre from Charlie’s previous narration: while Charlie speaks only about himself in self-deprecating terms, Susan provides vivid descriptions of somebody else, making the narration more broad and inclusive. Films rarely include multiple voice-over narrators, but Adaptation. justifies this norm visually by cutting to images of Streep as Orlean typing in her office surrounded by research materials on orchids, suggesting that we are hearing her writing her book, a common convention for conveying the written word on film. Susan continues in voice-over to convey that two years earlier, she went to Florida to report on a story about an orchid theft from a state preserve, introducing Laroche’s story that she recounts in both her article and book. This brief sequence follows from the previous scene by establishing some of the ways that Adaptation. will function as an adaptation of The Orchid Thief: it will include Orlean’s direct language via voice-over, and portray Orlean herself as a character writing her book, seemingly paralleling Charlie’s own writing process. Six minutes into the film and we have established two main characters with parallel goals: writing their accounts of John Laroche in two different media.

Adaptation. uses captions to help orient viewers in space and time.

As Susan’s voice-over finishes, we cut to a new outdoors scene with another caption, “State Road 29, Florida, Two Years Earlier.” We see a white van turn off the road, cutting into the van’s interior to reveal a mess of garbage and gardening junk while the driver listens to the audio book version of The Writings of Charles Darwin discussing natural selection. This scene lasts for three and a half minutes, following numerous cinematic conventions for the first time: no voice-over, frequent ellipses to compress hours of action into a minute of screen time, and the presence of a background musical score to heighten the mood. The action of the scene directly dramatizes what Susan’s voice-over described: “A white man and three Seminole men [were] arrested with rare orchids they’d stolen out of a place called the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve,” The scene introduces Chris Cooper’s John Laroche as a main character, and sets in motion the legal storyline concerning his use of Seminoles as a legal cover to enable him to steal protected plants. This scene demonstrates one way that Adaptation. will adapt Orlean’s book: direct dramatization of the events she describes via conventional narrative filmmaking. If the film were a more conventional adaptation, this might well be the opening scene, putting the plot into motion via the inciting incident of Laroche’s theft and arrest; in fact, such a possibility is explored a few minutes later in the film, as we see Charlie writing the first words of his script (and hear him narrating them): “We open on State Road 29. A battered white van speeds along making a sharp skidding right into the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. The driver of the van is a skinny man with no front teeth. This is John Laroche.” Instead of following this conventional dramatic opening, Charlie eventually revises his approach to a more radically reflexive mode; after such revisions, these sequences function as an embedded storytelling frame, dramatizing Susan’s accounts of Laroche within the film’s portrayal of her writing process.

This scene creates some temporal complexity by adding a third storyline in a third timeline: the real Laroche was arrested on December 21, 1993, with Orlean arriving to report on the case days later. Susan writing her book in New York presumably starts in late 1994, as the New Yorker article was published in January 1995 and her book was originally published in January 1999. Charlie’s process of adaptation starts in summer of 1998, per the earlier caption, although this requires some dramatic license since The Orchid Thief would not have been released yet—the actual Kaufman began adapting the book based on prepublication galleys, while the fictional Charlie references a published hardcover copy throughout the film. Adaptation. uses captions to keep us temporally oriented, using relational phrasings like “Two Years Earlier” to help viewers track the chronology. This intrinsic norm suggests that even within such a complex and non-obvious film, some narrative elements must be presented as clearly as possible to maximize comprehension, as the filmmakers prioritize which facets should maximize clarity and which should allow for ambiguity.

The next scene cuts to Charlie entering the front door of his home, without any caption to reorient us in time and place— since captions have already established the three threads of Florida in 1993, New York in 1995, and Hollywood in 1998 (as well as four billion and forty years earlier), the film asks viewers to remember these separate story threads, using captions only occasionally as a reminder or to introduce new historical moments. As Charlie enters, an offscreen voice calls out, “Charles, is that you?” A perceptive viewer will recognize that voice as Nicolas Cage, creating a moment of confusing character recognition: why is Charlie’s voice offscreen while we see him on-screen? We get our answer as Charlie climbs the stairs to reveal another character played by Cage lying on the floor in the hallway. As their dialogue proceeds for the next two minutes, we learn that this is Donald Kaufman, and he is staying with his brother while unemployed. Donald reveals that he wants to be a screenwriter as well, and he plans to take a screenwriting seminar from Robert McKee. Charlie argues with Donald’s Hollywood-centered approach to screenwriting (“Donald, don’t say ‘industry’”), and contends that “screenwriting seminars are bullshit,” prompting a debate over whether films should follow principles, even when they are about flowers; as Charlie says, “Nobody’s ever done a movie about flowers before. So there are no guidelines.” Their conversation revisits the two poles established in the restaurant scene, with Donald representing Hollywood conventions while Charlie struggles to break new ground: “Writing is a journey into the unknown. It’s not building one of your model airplanes!”, contrasting the act of artistic exploration with a craft approach to story construction.

This scene is crucial to both the thematic considerations of art versus craft, and the film’s approach to character. In introducing Adaptation.’s fourth main character, the film must grapple with the challenge of recognizing the difference between two characters played by the same actor, an issue that does not matter for written narratives that can easily just signal character names. Much of this differentiation stems from Cage’s performance, giving Donald a much more energetic and upbeat demeanor to contrast with Charlie’s slouching physicality and droopy voice. Costuming is also key, establishing a pattern where Charlie nearly always wears a schlumpy outfit of an unbuttoned plaid flannel shirt over a plain T-shirt, while Donald wears more put-together button-down shirts or sweaters. Most importantly going forward, the film never attempts to confuse viewers about which brother is on-screen, as other characters can easily distinguish between them, with dialogue and contexts always orienting us to recognize the correct character. Like with its orienting captions, Adaptation. avoids creating unnecessary confusion by relying upon convention and clarity except for when ambiguity is actually the goal. Instead, the pairing of Charlie and Donald works via contrast rather than confusion, presenting them with the parallel goals of writing a screenplay but dramatizing drastically different approaches and outcomes in their storylines.

In introducing Donald, the film reveals its first major fictional character, although it makes no overt acknowledgment of the difference between characters based on real people (Charlie, Susan, John), and those who were created for the film (Donald, Valerie). In fact, the earliest mention of Donald suggests that he is a real person: the opening credits notably read, “Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman,” a claim that, as discussed later, is essential for understanding the entire film. A first-time viewer would have little reason to doubt Donald’s status as real, as credited screenwriters must be real people—Kaufman had to specially petition the Writer’s Guild to allow Donald to be given credit. Thus in its function as a nonfiction adaptation, Adaptation. generally presents itself as a true story, leading viewers to assume that new characters are based on real people. This scene also indirectly introduces two new characters who will appear later: screenwriting guru Robert McKee, as referenced by Donald’s dialogue, and violinist Amelia Kavan, whose picture from a newspaper cutout Charlie longingly admires while lying in bed. Again, there are no markers to suggest that McKee is based on a real person and Amelia is a character wholly invented for the film, continuing the default assumption that Adaptation. is presenting a dramatic version of real people and events, rather than a fictionalization.

The next scene concludes what I would call the film’s opening section by introducing one last important storyline. Charlie sits on a floor with Amelia (played by Cara Seymour), awkwardly withdrawn from the social action of a party; we hear Charlie’s voice-over again, obsessing over how to behave with her. The resulting dialogue reveals that they have been friends for eight months, that Amelia regards him as a problem to be solved (“We’re gonna solve the whole Charlie Kaufman mess once and for all”), and that she views his acceptance of “the orchid script” as a step forward: “I think it will be good for you to get out of your head. I think it’ll ground you to think about the bigger picture, about nature and stuff.” While nothing is overtly spoken, it is clearly implied that Charlie and Amelia have the potential for a romantic relationship, if only he would initiate things. The scene establishes an additional goal for Charlie, creating parallel romantic and professional plots for the protagonist that are quite common for Hollywood films; Amelia’s attention to Charlie’s career links the two goals, suggesting if he succeeds in writing the script, he might win her love. This parallelism is reinforced by having both Amelia and Valerie played by British actresses of comparable age and appearance, highlighting how each goal strives to please one of a pair of similar women.

By the film’s fourteen-minute mark, we have learned a great deal about both Adaptation.’s story and its storytelling, teaching us how to watch the film going forward. The film’s protagonist Charlie has two central goals—writing and romance—with two secondary characters paired to each goal. The film’s two other writers, Susan and Donald, also are portrayed as striving to write their respective projects, each with contrasting approaches to Charlie. John Laroche is introduced as the subject of Susan and Charlie’s writing, not as a character with his own overt goals—the film’s plot is not about Laroche’s trial and crime, but rather about how two writers try to capture and dramatize those events. The film is framed as both nonfiction, portraying real people and events, and reflexive metafiction, portraying and reflecting on the act of its own creation. Its approach to storytelling is introduced as at once experimental and unconventional, using highly subjective narration, embedded story layers, and digressive flashbacks, and traditional in its efforts to orient viewers via temporal captions and clearly differentiated characters. The thematic contrast between writing as creative original exploration and expertly crafted entertainment is embodied in the film’s style itself, as it offers both experimentation and convention within its opening minutes, alerting viewers to pay close attention to how Adaptation. tells its story as a clue to understand it.

To read more about Adaptation. and its relationship to narrative theory, check out the entire book: Jason Mittell, Narrative Theory and Adaptation. (Bloomsbury, 2017).

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