Adaptation (2002) or, Charlie Kaufman's Fictional Life

8/19/2013

Adaptation (2002) or, Charlie Kaufman's Fictional Life

♥♥♥♥♥

Nicholas Cage's head is turned into a broken pot for an orchid flower on this wonderful poster for Spike Jonze's Adaptation

This movie will especially appeal to writers and/or filmmakers, but it will most likely also delight any all all open, intelligent, creative minds.

Famed screenwriter Charlie Kaufman finds it very difficult if not impossible to adapt Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief for the big screen, which he has been hired to do. He spars with his conversely extroverted twin brother Donald Kaufman for advice and finally decides that he has to visit Orlean.

Adaptation is unusual and a meta-film because it is in fact written by Charlie Kaufman (Anomalisa (2015)), who wrote the film like this precisely because he found the task of adapting Susan Orlean's (Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend (2011)) 1998 non-fiction novel The Orchid Thief impossible. So the story is partly autobiographical. It is also an inventive work of fiction; among other things the twin brother character Donald is a creation for the film, just as the dramatic developments involving Orlean and the orchid thief are fantasy.
Of course Adaptation is in a way a very narcissistic story, but it is written with such rare wit and writer's insight, and acted so marvelously, - with stellar performances from Nicolas Cage (8mm (1999)), Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia! (2008)) and an Oscar-winning Chris Cooper (Miami Vice (1988), TV-series) among others, - that it achieves true greatness. Marylander master filmmaker Spike Jonze's (Being John Malkovich (1999)) direction of the film, which is only his second, is creative and refreshing, and the 'evolution of life' sequence (by Digital Domain) in the beginning is something that most people who've seen Adaptation also remember from it.
Adaptation is concept-oriented, post-modernist, interested in existentialism and very funny. Brian Cox's (L.I.E. (2001)) part as real-life script guru Robert McKee is especially humorous. Adaptation is the epitome of a must-see.

Related posts:

Spike Jonze: The day after ... The Oscars 2014
Being John Malkovich (1999) - Jonze, Kaufman and Malkovich's great triumph (also with Kaufman on script)

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 19 mil. $
Box office: 32.8 mil. $
= Big flop (returned 1.72 times its cost)
[Adaptation premiered 3 December (Los Angeles, California) and runs 114 minutes. Adapting the story was an idea already in 1994, when the story Orlean's book is based on played out. Fox 2000 bought the film rights in 1997, before the book was published. Kaufman showed Jonze the script around the time of Being John Malkovich's release, 1999. Cage was paid 5 mil. $ for his performance, and Streep was very interested in playing Orleans, accepting a pay cut to make it happen. McKee suggested Cox to portray himself. Filming took place in California, including Los Angeles, from March - June 2001. The film opened #22 to a 384k $ first weekend in 7 theaters (a solid 54k $ average) in North America, where it peaked at #12 and in 672 theaters (different weeks) and grossed 22.4 mil. $ (68.3 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Australia with 1.1 mil. $ (3.4 %) and the UK with 0.9 mil. $ (2.7 %). The film was nominated for 4 Oscars: winning for Best Supporting Actor (Cooper); Best Actor (Cage) was lost to Adrien Brody for The Pianist; Supporting Actress (Streep) was lost to Catherine Zeta-Jones for Chicago, and Adapted Screenplay was lost to Ronald Harwood for The Pianist. The film also won 2/6 Golden Globe nominations, 1/4 BAFTAs noms, won AFI's Movie of the Year award, the Berlin International Film Festival's silver prize, 3 National Board of Review awards and scores of other awards and honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch higher than this one. Jonze returned with 18 video, TV and short projects, before he returned to cinemas with family masterpiece Where the Wild Things Are (2009). Cage returned in Matchstick Men (2003); Streep in The Hours (2002); and Cooper in My House in Umbria (2003, TV movie) and theatrically in Seabiscuit (2003). Adaptation is certified fresh at 91 % with a 8.18/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Adaptation?

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

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8/19/2013

Adaptation (2002) or, Charlie Kaufman's Fictional Life

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