Between the credits

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Shortly after writing an article about the stories of John Grisham, and their parallels in the real world, I saw Adaptation (2002). Penned by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze, this film takes Grisham's realistic fiction one step further into what feels more like 'real fiction'. Throughout the movie I found myself wondering, 'How much of this is true?'

Most viewers sit down to watch a film with the expectation that what they are seeing is not real. It may be based on real events, and to that end might be called true. Certainly, it is generally accepted that the titles and credits are factual, rather than fictitious or indeed, part of the story itself.

Kaufman and Jonze confound this expectation. The titles announce that the story you are about to watch was written by Charlie and Donald Kaufman. (Since when did this screenwriter have a twin brother who writes too?) It is soon revealed that this is actually a film about Charlie Kaufman and his experience of transforming Susan Orlean's book, The Orchid Thief, into a screenplay. Kaufman began work on the screenplay whilst his last collaboration with Jonze, Being John Malkovich (1999), was in production. Bizarrely, we see Kaufman on set with Spike Jonze, along with actors John Cusack, Catherine Keener and John Malkovich himself.

Nicolas Cage plays the parts of Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother. Donald is expressed as an impulsive extrovert, a kind of alter-ego to Charlie's quiet, self-deprecating character who is incapable of action. Kaufman uses Donald as a device for spicing up his actual adaptation of Orlean's book. The twins share a house and a common goal - Donald is also determined to write a good screenplay, willing to resort to formulaic structures and action in order to produce a hit. Charlie, on the other hand, never wants to depart from the truth in order to please Hollywood executives. He says, 'I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases . . . or characters learning profound life lessons, or growing or coming to like each other, or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that. It just isn't. I feel very strongly about this.'

The tag line for the film sums up the lives of the four key characters: 'Charlie Kaufman writes the way he lives . . . with great difficulty. His twin brother Donald lives the way he writes . . . with foolish abandon. Susan writes about life . . . but can't live it. John's life is a book . . . waiting to be adapted. One story . . . Four lives . . . A million ways it can end.'

Knowing that Donald Kaufman is not a real person begs the question, for those who, like me, know no better: are Susan Orlean and John Laroche inventions too? In fact, Susan Orlean really is a journalist for The New Yorker magazine. In 1995 she wrote a feature about a man called John Laroche who was prosecuted for stealing ghost orchids from a nature reserve in Florida. The article was optioned for a film adaptation from the forthcoming book - enter Charlie Kaufman. Evidently the truth of the matter, as the film describes, is that Kaufman genuinely stuggled with his adaptation. We can only assume that the solution we're offered did actually pop into Kaufman's head one day - that the film should be about him, the writer . . . a subject that flows easily onto the page.

As the time comes to draw the screenplay to a close, Charlie finds the right ending elusive. In sheer desperation, he invites his brother to comment on what he has written so far. Donald's sense for the dramatic homes in on the relationship between Orlean and Laroche. He is convinced that there is something there worth investigating.

With a skilful change of gear, Kaufman demonstrates his point perfectly. Charlie's life suddenly takes on the pretensions of a Hollywood action flick. The pace quickens and the sensation of wanting to know what will happen next finally kicks in. The plot thickens.

Of course, this is also the point of departure for truth, as far as Orlean and Laroche are concerned. In allowing their names to be attached to Kaufman's screenplay, they took a huge risk. Susan Orlean was far from disappointed with the intriguing result: 'I think my book is a character in the movie, which to me is far more thrilling than if the book simply dissolved and became just source material. Instead, it's the protagonist in many ways in the movie. The physical entity of the book itself is there, which is very thrilling. I think it's beyond my wildest fantasy of my work being treated as something. It feels far more respectful and attentive to the work than I would ever have expected.' romanticmovies.about.com

This film is an interesting challenge to the viewer. As the ending turned to the dreaded Hollywood clichés, I became aware of feeling comfortable again, at home in the emotional quarry where feelings are blasted out and exploited. This is what we readily pay money to experience. The sensation did not last long. Kaufman is a fine purveyor of stories that creep through your mind, long after the credits roll - even fake ones.

The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean, is published by Random House (1999).

Read Susan Orlean's original article at www.susanorlean.com/articles/orchid_fever.html

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