Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

Orlean looks down at the Florida swamp as a surveyor’s field notes begin her account.

Scene 96 of 202 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Orlean

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 50 min into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 96

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.
Scene 89
Charlie commits to entering the Fakahatchee himself, making research a risky attempt to find the story.
Just before
Scene 93
Charlie imagines a loving stewardess at home, who greets him as her partner.
Scene 94
Charlie masturbates in the airplane bathroom and returns to his seat.
Scene 95
The stewardesses ignore Charlie after he leaves the bathroom, and he suspects they are laughing at him.
Scene 96
This scene

96INT. AIRPLANE - MORNING

Orlean watches the hundreds of square miles of black, wet Florida swampland pass by below.

ORLEAN (V.O.)

An early surveyor made this entry in his

field notes...