Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

Mike Owen leads Charlie through a cool, dry swamp and gives a wandering lesson on its ecosystem.

Scene 106 of 202 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Mike Owen
Kaufman

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 52 min into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 106

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.
Scenes 89–105
He leaves his familiar writing room and goes to Florida to search for the story firsthand.
Just before
Scene 103
Orlean drives past the preserve sign and continues her catalogue of the swamp’s hazards.
Scene 104
Charlie drives the same route as Orlean lists the dangerous animals he expects to encounter.
Scene 105
At the ranger shack, Mike Owen mistakes Charlie for Orlean before Charlie admits who he is.
Scene 106
This scene

106EXT. SWAMP - MORNING

The sky is overcast. Mike Owen leads Kaufman through a cool swamp, which is completely dry. The two men walk easily on peaty ground. Kaufman, slathered with sun screen and covered head to foot in unnecessary protective clothing, tries to be interested in Owen's lecture.

MIKE OWEN

So the whole ecosystem is six thousand

years old. Five to six thousand years

old. About that. Five or six.

KAUFMAN

Okay.

MIKE OWEN

Now the Fakahatchee is the largest of all

the cyrpess strands, probably in the

world. I don't know of any cypress

strand bigger. It's about twenty miles

long, or nineteen, nineteen to twenty,

nineteen... and right here it's about

five miles wide, four and a half, five.

So, again, it's twenty miles long, three

to five miles wide. And over here --