Adaptation

The Shooting Script of the new movie by the team that made Being John writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze – starring Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep Adaptation concerns Laroche, an eccentric collector of rare orchids (played by Chris Cooper), a journalist called Susan Orlean (played by Meryl Streep) who’s writing his story and a screenwriter called Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage), who, in adapting the resultant book, writes himself into the movie…OK? Off-the-wall it may be, but Adaptation really is an adaptation – of a book called The Orchid Thief, which tells of a scheme hatched up by a Florida orchid hunter to use Seminole indians to lift the extremely rare ‘ghost orchid’ from protected swampland, clone it and sell it to orchid fans all over the world. As with Being John Malkovich, this new film is shot through with Charlie Kaufman’s bizarre imagination, most notably the way he folds his own adventures into the story that he himself is trying to adapt, much as John Malkovich entered his own portal in the earlier film. A Columbia Pictures film, Adaptation also stars Catherine Keener (from Being John Malkovich) and the British actress Tilda Swinton. This new title in the NHB Shooting Scripts series includes the complete screenplay, an introduction by Charlie Kaufman, stills and credits.