Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

Orlean sees Laroche represented as a mannequin in a Florida-history display and asks about a Wallace Stevens quotation.

Scene 140 of 202 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Motes
Orlean

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 1:13 into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 140

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.
Scenes 106–126
The swamp is ordinary, Orlean’s research fails, and Charlie experiments with increasingly personal versions of the book.
Scene 127
Orlean’s imagined portrait tells Charlie to focus on what he cares about, and he turns his own life into the screenplay.
Just before
Scene 137
Charlie types a screenplay opening that turns his own self-loathing into narration.
Scene 138
Charlie tells Jerry that his script’s truth comes from his own experience, then resists the deadline.
Scene 139
Orlean narrates the real date and scale of Laroche’s orchid theft through archival footage.
Scene 140
This scene

140INT. MIAMI CONVENTION CENTER - DAY

It's an enormous hall filled with people setting up elaborate displays. Martin Motes and his assistant work on the Laroche display. Orlean watches them. Motes looks up.

MOTES

You've been checking out the displays?

ORLEAN

Yeah.

MOTES

It's the Miami centennial, we're supposed

to illustrate something about Florida

history.

ORLEAN

Right. Now Laroche is part of Florida

history. As a mannequin.

MOTES

It's a world of words to the end of

it./In which nothing solid is its solid

self. You'll have to forgive me, I'm a

reformed poetry professor.

Orlean is moved by the quote.

ORLEAN

Who is that?

MOTES

Wallace Stevens.