Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

Orlean drives past the preserve sign and continues her catalogue of the swamp’s hazards.

Scene 103 of 202 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Orlean

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 52 min into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 103

Unable to find a conventional story in The Orchid Thief, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman turns his own crisis into an increasingly self-referential adaptation.

Scenes 1–9
Charlie inhabits an isolated, self-condemning world while Orlean’s book supplies a distant model of obsession.
Scenes 10–88
Charlie wants to write honestly and make flowers matter, while also longing to be desired and understood.
Scene 89
Charlie commits to entering the Fakahatchee himself, making research a risky attempt to find the story.
Just before
Scene 100
Charlie watches an attractive rental-car clerk, then turns back to his map.
Scene 101
Orlean describes the heat, water, insects, snakes, and animals of the Fakahatchee.
Scene 102
A frightened sailor cries in a lonely swamp after the terrain overwhelms him.
Scene 103
This scene

103EXT. STATE ROAD 29 - EARLY MORNING

Orlean drives onto the dirt road past the Fakahatchee sign and talks to us.

ORLEAN

The swampy part of the Fakahatchee is hot

and wet and buggy and full of cottonmouth

snakes and diamond back rattlers and...