Adaptation. (2002) *****

Some books are easier than others to adapt to the screen. Susan Orlean's “The Orchid Thief” is a sprawling, ruminative meditation on life, flowers, and a Florida horticulturist named John Laroche. Laroche is a toothless plant-poacher with an endless willingness to expound on his philosophy of life. He's a great interview subject for a New Yorker journalist like Orlean, and he's the kind of singular character who belongs in a movie. If Laroche is movie-ready, however, Orlean's book is not. A genius was needed to mold “The Orchid Thief” into a screenplay, so the movie studio turned to the genius behind “Being John Malkovich,” screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.

As the story goes, even Kaufman developed writer's block in the face of “The Orchid Thief.” Out of ideas, he finally decided to write a movie about his own writer's block. “Adaptation.” is the story of fat, balding screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage), a guy so awkward that he can't even use his status as a working screenwriter to hit on a waitress. In Hollywood! This is a guy who could fall into a barrel of tits and come out sucking his own thumb! Kaufman, stuck in his own head, awkwardly lurks on the set of “Being John Malkovich” while struggling to come up with a way to faithfully adapt “The Orchid Thief”. Meanwhile, his (fictional) twin brother, Donald (also Cage), successfully loafs through life, sleeping in Charlie's spare room, hitting on makeup girls, and annoying Charlie by embarking on his own screenwriting project.

Charlie becomes enamored of orchids and develops a crush on Susan Orlean, but his screenplay is still nothing more than the tale of a New York reporter interviewing an eccentric horticulturist. He needs something exciting, some kind of story arc, some kind of drama, but there's nothing in the book that provides that. Then Charlie and Donnie start to suspect that there is something Orlean isn't telling us, that she discovered more than a story idea down in Florida. They set out to find out what she is hiding, and the story takes a wild turn.

At one point, Kaufman describes himself as a snake swallowing its own tale, and that's exactly what his narrative does for a while. The on-screen Kaufman starts to write his own writer's block into his script, then he writes about himself writing his writer's block into the script. The decision to investigate Orlean is what breaks Charlie out of this dead-end cycle, and astute viewers will recognize this as the point where Charlie gives up on being faithful to the book and begins to employ serious artistic license.

Charlie gets an assist from a screenwriting seminar by Robert McKee (played brilliantly by Brian Cox). The real-life McKee is a creative-writing professor and author of the unofficial “screenwriter's bible.” The on-screen McKee tells Charlie, “The last act makes a film. Wow them in the end, and you've got a hit.” By the time Charlie is done, a story that wasn't supposed to have sex, guns, car chases, or characters “learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end” winds up having all of those things.

Directed by Spike Jones, “Adaptation.” is meta, funny, sexy, and mind-blowingly brilliant. And it wows us in the end.

5 stars out of 5