Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

Orlean drives through Florida and describes its mix of wildness and development.

Scene 32 of 202 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act one

Orlean

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 19 min into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 32

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 29
Young Laroche lists turtle species at dinner while his mother listens and encourages his obsession.
Scene 30
Rangers catalogue Laroche’s stolen plants as he proudly explains the rare ghost orchid.
Scene 31
Charlie and Donald trade insults about their bodies and writing while reading different books on orchids and story.
Scene 32
This scene

32INT. RENTAL CAR - DAY

Orlean drives on State Road 29, past prefab housing, into swampland. She talks to us.

ORLEAN

Florida is a landscape of transition and

mutation, a hybrid of unruliness and

orderliness, nature and artifice.

She brushes a wisp of hair from her face and tucks it behind her small, pretty ear. We linger on the ear, which grows pink with sunlight. Orlean catches us and smiles shyly.