Adaptation.

We watched Adaptation. (2002) as a class on February 10^th.

The third act of Adaptation. raises some fascinating questions—first and foremost of which is, “Just what exactly is going on?”

It is certainly a valid question. About two-thirds of the way through the movie, Charlie Kauffman asks Donald, “How would you end the screenplay?” I believe that the last third of the film is Donald’s response to Charlie—this is the ending he would write. The jarring tonal shift that follows is impossible to miss. The film is no longer a leisurely-paced comedy driven by the quirky neurosis of our hero; instead it becomes something of a crime-thriller actioner, riddled with clichés, complete with car chases and horrific deaths.  

Why, then, is this the version of the film Charlie ultimately settles upon? He has made it quite clear that he wants a highly original film, cliché-free, and “true” to the author’s book. We have discussed the various ways a film can be “true” or “faithful” to its source in class—by retaining the themes, the characters, or through an “equivalence of meaning”—but Charlie takes it to a new level. He venerates the book and its author, Susan Orlean, for whom he has clearly developed a kind of infatuation. He desperately fears disappointing her by producing something that he does not love as much as the book. When Charlie complains that the book has no story, he is told, “Well make one up.” Out of respect to the author, however, he refuses to do so.

What Charlie fails to realize, however, is that the book is already an adaptation—an adaptation of the real life story of Laroche. Orlean struggles to capture the essence of Laroche faithfully. She is noticeably troubled when her dinner party guests misinterpret her portrayal of Laroche, finding Laroche’s idiosyncrasies laughably backward. The passion Orlean sees in him and respects him for is something she cannot seem to replicate in a way that her readers will understand. Susan Orlean is to Charlie as Laroche is to Orlean; both authors feel such a deep respect for their sources that they cannot bear to do them injustice.

The next question then is this: can you still be respectful of the source material if you change it? A large portion of the film focuses on Charlie’s abysmal failure to adapt the book without “changing it.” The film never really answers the question of respect, but it does seem to suggest that adaptation without change is impossible. As Robert Stam points out in his article “Beyond Fidelity,” a book is strictly a verbal medium, whereas film has many tracks—sound, light, both written and spoken word—making adaptation, in the most literal sense, impossible (76). Having read the article “Orchid Fever,” Charlie’s problem is clear: there is simply not enough story or plot to make an interesting movie. Susan Orlean herself described the book as “particularly unsuited” to adaptation (see second clip). Though he strives to make a movie that resembles “real life”—without drama or life lessons—his script just is not working out. Perhaps one difference between the mediums of film and the written word is that film requires more drama and plot than the latter does, particularly in the case of non-fiction. Would a movie without a conflict or crisis even be worth seeing? McKee believes it would be uninteresting, boring, and a waste of everyone’s time (see clip).  A film without such structure would not be a film, just a series of images or scenes without anything to hold them together or propel it forward. Charlie mistakes structure for cliché, and as a result, cannot create a screenplay worth filming.

After the film ended, I found myself wondering how else the film could have ended. I came up with nothing. The real Charlie Kauffman must have had a similar thought—and that, I believe, is the reason the film has the ending that it does. At some point, he realized that his struggles to adapt such a challenging source made a better story than the source itself. In an interview concerning Adaptation., Susan Orlean said, “I don’t see how you could have made a conventional film from the book…I felt that it was truer to the book than a conventional film could have been.”

Interview with Susan Orlean about Adaptation

Perhaps by giving us a “Hollywood” ending, Kauffman is addresses the whole reason we like to see such endings—sometimes, they just make for a more satisfying movie.

What do you think? How would you have ended the film if you were adapting The Orchid Thief? How would you have added drama and conflict to the plot without devising a (highly fictionalized) new ending?

Corrigan, Timothy. Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012. Print.