Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

Charlie drafts a van opening for the screenplay but cannot yet shape the book.

Scene 33 of 202 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act one

Kaufman

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 20 min into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 33

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 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
Orlean drives through Florida and describes its mix of wildness and development.
Scene 33
This scene

33INT. EMPTY BEDROOM - DAY

Kaufman traces a stubby, nail-bitten finger along State Road 29 along a Florida road map. He turns to his typewriter, and types in a clumsy hunt-and-peck style.

KAUFMAN (V.O.)

We open on State Road 29. A lonely

stretch of road cutting through untamed

swampland. Suddenly a beat-up white van

barrels around a curve. It's driver: a

skinny man with no front teeth...