Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

A surveyor describes a pond crowded with alligators.

Scene 97 of 202 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Surveyor

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 51 min into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 97

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 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
Orlean looks down at the Florida swamp as a surveyor’s field notes begin her account.
Scene 97
This scene

97EXT. SWAMP - DAY

SUBTITLE: FAKAHATCHEE, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER

A surveyor scribbles in a notebook. The pond is alive with alligators.

SURVEYOR (V.O.)

A pond surrounded by bay and cypress

swamp, impracticable. Full of monstrous

alligators, counted fifty and stopped.