Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

Charlie drives past familiar chain stores and stops outside a Florida California Pizza Kitchen.

Scene 112 of 202 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 56 min into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 112

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 109
Charlie asks Owen about the Swamp Ape and is rebuked for needing a legend to make nature interesting.
Scene 110
Orlean calls Laroche from her hotel and says she found only bare roots, not the ghost orchid.
Scene 111
Orlean writes that the ghost orchid resembles wonderful things that remain imagined and out of reach.
Scene 112
This scene

112INT. RENTAL CAR - EVENING

Kaufman drives down a Florida strip-malled highway. He passes a Barnes and Noble, a Burger King, a Starbucks. He parks in front of a California Pizza Kitchen.