Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

Charlie drives the same route as Orlean lists the dangerous animals he expects to encounter.

Scene 104 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 104

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 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
Orlean drives past the preserve sign and continues her catalogue of the swamp’s hazards.
Scene 104
This scene

104INT. RENTAL CAR - MORNING

Kaufman drives down the same road surrounded by swamp.

ORLEAN (V.O.)

... alligators and snapping turtles and

poisonous plants and wild hogs and...