Analytic Review of the source material behind ADAPTATION
          Adaptation is seemingly a movie about a writer attempting to be truly original. Charlie Kaufman, a man accustomed to writing original material for TV and film such as âThe Dana Carvey Showâ and Being John Malkovich, was hired to adapt Susan Orleanâs book The Orchid Thief. That event actually happened, making Adaptation a fictionalized autobiographical account. Uniquely, both the movie and the book are adaptations: the book is an adaptation of Orleanâs own essay âOrchid Feverâ written for The New Yorker Magazine, which she elongated into a novel. Orleanâs struggles were written into the movie and interwoven into Kaufmanâs personal story. Some critics have frowned on the film calling it ânarcissisticâ or âself-indulgentâ since Kaufmanâs task was to adapt the novel and instead he wrote about his struggles in the adaptation process. But Kaufmanâs final product is uniquely relevant to the original work âOrchid Feverâ, and its adaptation into a novel, proving it to be a soaringly successful adaptation.Â
Structure and use become important tools for Kaufman in his approach. The titles of Orleanâs two works explain a lot in this regard: The Orchid Thief is about a woman who is covering a story about orchids when she meets an expert who happens to steal and replant orchids, a man named John Laroche, who is also prevalent in the short story and movie (Chris Cooper won an Academy Award for his portrayal of John Laroche in the film), but the title âOrchid Feverâ tells us the story is about orchids and what draws people passionately to them. The movie, therefore, is about a man (Kaufman) paralleling his experience of attempting to adapt a story about flowers to the original work about a woman (Orlean) attempting to discover what makes orchids interesting enough for a man to devote his life to them. Therefore, through orchids, both writersâ research leads to an emotional journey about the discovery and interpretation of passion. So while Kaufman is technically trying to adapt The Orchid Thief he disregards convention and time to actually line the structure of his movie up with the original source material.
Susan Orlean wrote âOrchid Feverâ for the New Yorker while she was employed as a staff columnist. The story is about her research of a renegade plant dealer (Laroche) after he was caught and tried by the state of Florida for stealing ghost orchids in an attempt to clone them. A long-time horticulturist, Laroche focused on the ghost because it is possibly the rarest form of orchid and arguably the most stunning, though it can be in bloom for as little as a week or two before cocooning back into itsâ home state that can be as thin as linguini (Orlean). It is native to Cuba and southwest Florida in the Fakahatchee Strand, grows on rough-barked trees such as pop ash, pond apple, or cypress trees, can have up to 12 blooms, and requires the Giant Sphynx Moth for pollination because it is the only insect with a 4-5 inch-long proboscis (âGhost Orchidâ). Laroche wanted to examine exotic plants and flowers, especially the ghost due to its rarity and exotic beauty, so he convinced Buxter Baxley, the head of the Hollywood, Florida Seminole Tribeâs planning and development, to work together and set up a nursery. A studier of Native American Law, Laroche discovered former cases involving Seminole rights that lead to laws and treaties that he believed exempt the tribe from Floridaâs rules and regulations regarding endangered species (Orlean). For the removal of any plant form from the Fakahatchee one had to be extremely cautious. For instance, ghost orchids were an endangered flower so their removal was especially well-protected.  Although Orlean describes the ghost as the only orchid in the Fakahatchee that is pretty, her piece is an attempt to understand what would make a person risk so much just to work with one specific flower. Kaufman would take that idea and interpret the essay not as a man loving flowers but a woman trying to understand why a man loves flowers, an easier jumping point for his screenplay.
 Orleanâs essay, while staying particularly contained, is an intimate attempt at a biography with regards to her research on the orchid. She lays out the reasons why one should be drawn to an orchid in an attempt for her readers to understand and almost envy Laroche even though he is an atypical person. She wants us to admire Laroche the way she does even though she doesnât know why. Laroche has focused his passions on many things throughout his life yet he is captured in this essay seeking one of the rarest flower breeds in the world, and although it is certainly unconventional, Orlean parallels the understanding of orchids to understanding Laroche. There are nearly 20,000 species of orchids and each one has an insect that pollinates it; they are not asexual. Orlean says that orchids, unlike other flowers, drive people crazy.   Orchids have lips that attract their insect and have a quality to them that attract the pollinator and despite the multitude of species of orchids only the right insect can pollinate. The filaments and anthers are fused into one long column attached to the middle of the flower. Around the hook-shaped column is a sticky pocket which is linked using tubes to the ovaries and represents the female part of the flower. The stigma, as itâs called, has three lobes that act like wings. At the tip of the column is an anther cap that remains shut but opens as the insect backs away in order for pollination to occur. When an insect backs out the anther cap slowly shoots open and the viscidium springs out and sticks to the pollinator, ensuring that pollination is complete. This glue-like action cradles the insect and makes sure the pollinia it released are attached in the right place before the pollinator can fly off with that flowerâs pollen to be dispensed on the next flower (Cullina 103-105). Orlean discovers in her text that the journey of the orchid is near the same as the journey of humans. Orlean states, âTo desire orchids is to have a desire that can never be fully requited (Orlean).â Orlean means that to try to understand human behavior is the same as trying to understand nature, and that simply cannot be accomplished using the limiting medium of words. It just is; it exists. What draws us passionately to things, flowers, circumstances, or other people in our lives is not unlike what draws the insect to its flower and what draws nature in full cycle, but itâs synthesis exists without words.
Kaufman realized early on that there canât possibly be a way to express Orleanâs discovered concept using film. To degrade nature to a visual display is even more degrading than submitting to clichĂŠ Hollywood adaptation strategies such as point-of-departure or concentration methods, or any fidelity comparison. What he chooses to do instead is take a similar journey into the unknown with his screenplay that Orlean took in writing her story. Kaufman reformulates the idea of content matching form by his creation and description of his similar journey. âThe Orchid Thief is, after all, a work of journalism â going by the evidence of the passages included within the film it's essentially the story of its own creationâ (Rapfogel). Kaufman reformulates the idea of content matching form by his creation and description of his similar journey. He interpolates himself and his journey into film writing because the story is not about plot or the material world, but rather circumstance and journey in an attempt to realize understanding, and that principal justifies Kaufmanâs use of himself in this movie. Then Kaufman furthers his justification by adding a character in the screenplay named Robert McKee. McKee is a consultant for aspiring screen writers giving lectors on the subject. In the actual Kaufmanâs attempt to foil at conventions he has McKee mention, âAn artist should never call attention to himself,â yet, âIn Adaptation a whole gallery of artists call attention to themselvesâ (2). Again paralleling to Orlean and her search for understanding Laroche it is truly evident that Orlean calls attention to herself in her essay. Her opinion is filtered throughout this âbiographyâ about another person to the extent that it is difficult to read the story and miss Orleanâs opinion: âLaroche grew up in Miami. He says he was a weird kid. This is not hard to believeâ (Orlean). Also in regards to his court appearance: âLaroche did not dress for the occasionâ (Orlean). Kaufmanâs use of McKee proves that convention has to be put aside in this case while maintaining honesty in combining his story with hers. McKee can describe catharsis and displaying human emotion but he canât exactly explain why catharsis and human emotion exist in the first place. He could try, perhaps, but nature takes its course regardless, and that is what Orlean is attempting to find and Kaufman recognizes.    Â
An issue paralleling the two focal points of the movie, Orlean and Kaufman, is struggle. In her essay Orlean is stuck at the end of her adventure because she has never seen an orchid, and how can we understand the things we donât know to be true? She describes the circumstance saying,âThese ghost orchids were not blooming, so I went back out the next day and walked for hours to try to find one that was more than a green strap on a tree. I saw some roots, but it seemed as if the moment of their bloom had passedâ (Orlean). Orlean is seeking information from a subject that is near impossible to understand. With regards to truth and the words of David L. Smith, Orlean comes to realize what Kaufman then fights for the majority of the movie: âTo imposing a conventional formula on the world is to falsify itâ (Smith 6). Orlean wants to write a story but flowers have no story, they just exist. Kaufman wants to adapt a story about flowers but words, dialogue, mise-en-scene, etc destroy the beauty and intrigue of flowers. Although Michael Spadaro may argue that a person is a story, Smith argues, using Lynn Hirschberg of the New York Timeâs idea, that through Kaufman, âInching toward some post-ironic point of observationâ (3), disregarding wit, charm, and clever appeal, we find how a writerâs initial goal can survive his/her failed attempts to be true, and through Orleanâs struggle Kaufman relates his own, and both instances paint a grand picture of how the world exists with or without our intrusion.
In pouring into Orleanâs work Kaufman also picked up on another significant aspect of her piece: immediacy. Orleanâs work is a non-fiction work of journalism, certainly not a conventional story. It is not crafted to achieve an overall âgoalâ using a literary arc or even a summation of somebodyâs life work as typical biographies do. Orlean runs on moment-by-moment prose trying the aforementioned methods of describing somebody in an attempt to uncover the passion imbedded in a man to obsess over another living thing that, to her, no words could fully describe, and through this journey of her words she realizes her own personal journey, similar to the shape of the orchidâs, is incomplete. Her desperation, though downplayed as much as possible preventing excessive emotional depth, is still all-too apparent as she loses track of any and all timeline in her writing, formulating paragraphs that precede the next with less and less relevance. Smith takes this knowledge and supports Kaufmanâs adaptation approach to have his own journey thrive on the present. His monologues spur all over the place but only while alone whereas he remains contained in public, similar to Orlean, they maintain no climax or resolution. Furthermore, to ensure that Kaufman himself will fail yet let his intentions thrive, his use of immediacy in the film causes him to dispense all literary history. He attempts to find answers for his translation immediately and sporadically without assistance through research, but in truth it is so very contradictory to want answers and yet ignore all questions asked and perhaps ascertained by others in the past. This stumbling block allows Kaufman to get stuck the way Orlean got stuck, once again matching form with content.
 While Kaufman hated Hollywood clichĂŠs he added a significant one into his screenplay: romance. As yet established, Orlean is attempting to understand passion in her short story. She tries to describe Laroche as a man hungry for information so that she can find what drives a person to extremes. Kaufman, in paralleling to Orleanâs quest for passion, writes in a storyline with a character named Valerie Thomas who works for Columbia pictures and hires Charlie to write the screenplay. Although sub-textually there is romantic tension prevalent in their relationship, it never takes off because Kaufman is proving you canât win without compromise: in Hollywood minor characters compromise to the leading characters, but in real life it takes a sacrifice from both people. Smith says of Kaufmanâs use of Valerie Thomas to parallel back to Orlean that they both decided to, âMake up for something lacking in themselves by getting close to an imagined âotherââ (Smith 8). But like Smith points out, both fail but fail successfully. As the character Susan Orlean mentions in the film, flowers donât have feelings, their lives happen the way they happen and thatâs that. There is no analysis in nature it just all seems to work out one way or another. Kaufman cannot make flowers real, they just are; they exist, and, âIt seems calculated to produce effects rather than encouraging thought or feelingâ (Rapfogel). No use of words can describe the inevitable passion imbedded in any living thing. Orleans with Laroche, not so much orchids, and Kaufman with Orlean, not so much the adaptation, both people are aware of the impossibilities of their attempts to intensify their lives through the understanding of another. Using Valerie Thomas Kaufman shows us that he is not attempting to be a pessimist for he does, in fact, seek to have passion in his life. He simply goes on Orleanâs journey but instead he allows himself to compromise.Â
The film makes obvious that compromise and adapting to nature by beginning and ending with the life cycle of plants shadowing over the Hollywood, CA in like a time lapse, and also by Kaufmanâs realization that he doesnât need to keep writing about the lack of truth in the world.  Kaufman finally decides to break his prose and depart from Orleanâs journey. Orlean ends her story inconclusively. She states in her final paragraph that orchids are slow to grow and slow to die, then says it is impossible to know which will survive, then ends with Laroche saying she should have gone exploring the Fakahatchee with him (Orlean). Kaufman discovers 5/6 of the way through the movie that his screenplay cannot finish under those circumstances, so he adapts using the energy that inspired the story to inspire the mutation of his movie. In an attempt to understand Orleanâs passion in uncovering Larocheâs passion, Kaufman adds a sex scene with the other two on drugs, then their attempt to kill him so he can never reveal their involvement in his film. This change in technique from symbiotic prose relating to Orleanâs journey to Hollywood narration uses little imagination, as if all that Orlean transcribed had been said, so now it was time to compromise and move on. Finding passion and paralleling orchids lead to inconclusiveness and we realize that doing away with conventions only added to more struggle and no resolution. So Kaufmanâs compromise is a way to show exactly how effective a person can be when they lie to tell the truth. âCharlie comes to reconcile his own attitude towards movies with his brother's â he learns how to stop worrying and love to compromiseâ (Rapfogel). While heâs leaving Orleanâs style in this final segment and abandoning his technique that drove his screenplay, his mutation proves that prose exists in nature and no climax or resolution on any earthly level can affect its course, just as Orlean discovered.
Though Adaptation may have been received as self-indulgent because Charlie Kaufman wrote himself into his own screenplay, his adaptation from the original source, âOrchid Feverâ which was later adapted into a novel entitled The Orchid Thief, both written by Susan Orlean, stays true to Orleanâs work. Kaufman saw that Orleanâs essay was a prose the lined up her own experience making sense out of John Larocheâs work with orchids, and so he paralleled his story via screenplay attempting to understand why Orlean obsessed over making flowers a worthy subject-matter for Laroche to study. Through her conclusion Orlean discovers that it is impossible to understand why nature exists in the manner it does; it just does. The only way to understand it is to feel it, and that doesnât even captivate the complexities that arise when involving breeds, species, or behavior. Kaufman realizes in his screenplay that making sense out of Orleanâs mission would be as difficult as her mission itself, so he concludes that one must compromise in order to feel satisfied with the lack of truth and understanding that exists. Only then can we look beyond.
Cullina, William. Understanding Orchids. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.Â
Ghost Orchid: Dendrophylax lindenii, or Polyrrhiza lindenii. <http://www.corkscrew.audubon.org/Wildlife/GhostOrchid.html>
Orlean, Susan. âOrchid Fever.â The New Yorker 23 Jan 1995. <http://www.susanorlean.com/articles/orchid_fever.html>
Rapfogel, Jared. Adaptation: How to Stop Worrying and Love to Compromise. 01/2003. <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/24/adaptation.html>
Smith, David L. âThe Implicit Soul of Charlie Kaufmanâs Adaptationâ. Project Muse: Scholarly Journals Online. Central Michigan U, 2-12 <http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_and_literature/v030/30.2smith.pdf>
Stam, Robert & Alessandra Raenga. Literature and Film: A Guide fo the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005.
