Adaptation

Something of a shrinking violet, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is struggling to adapt Susan Orlean’s non-fiction book The Orchid Thief into a movie. But he loves the book too much, and it’s only when he writes himself into the script that the words start to grow. Even then, there’s no third act. According to screenwriting guru Robert McKee (who also figures in the film, played by Brian Cox), this is “your basic education plot, crisscrossed with a disillusionment plot, but in the broad category of autobiography.” The Hollywood-insider jibes cut all the more deeply for the fact that Kaufman obviously feels split about his own gifts and motivations (hence the inspired invention of his crass commercial “twin”, Donald, gratefully seized on by the exuberant Cage).

This screening is in our latest Film Studies series on literary Adaptations, led by Patricia Gruben, who will give a 15-minute introduction.

Patricia Gruben is a filmmaker and former associate professor of film at Simon Fraser University, as well as founder and long-time director of Praxis Centre for Screenwriters (now the Screenwriters Lab at the Whistler Film Festival.) Her films have been screened at TIFF, VIFF, Sundance and the New York Film Festival, and her writing on film has appeared in international academic and popular journals. Her latest film was Heart of Gold.

What a bewilderingly brilliant and entertaining movie this is.

Roger Ebert

A funny, complex take on the idea of storytelling, the tyranny of three-act narrative and how the movies absorb literary properties.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Adaptation’s success in engaging the audience in the travails of creating a screenplay is extraordinary.

J Hoberman, Village Voice