Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

Orlean drives through Florida’s unstable edge between expanding development and disappearing wilderness.

Scene 24 of 202 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act one

Orlean

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 14 min into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 24

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.
Scene 10
Valerie and Margaret give Charlie the assignment to adapt The Orchid Thief.
Just before
Scene 21
Orlean recounts Endres’s death by shooting during an orchid hunt.
Scene 22
Orlean describes Margary’s murder and reflects that Laroche loved the peril as much as the flowers.
Scene 23
Laroche argues with Tony that Seminole rights and conservation law complicate the arrest.
Scene 24
This scene

24INT. RENTAL CAR - DAY

We watch Orlean as she drives out of the Miami Airport parking lot, onto the freeway, past congestion and billboards. Her mournful face glows beautifully, dramatically with golden sunlight. She talks to us.

ORLEAN

Nothing in Florida seems hard or

permanent. The developed places are just

little clearings in the jungle, but the

jungle is unstoppably fertile, everything

is always growing or expanding. At the

same time, the wilderness disappears

before your eyes.

Orlean gets quiet. Her eyes tear.