Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

Orlean lies awake in a hotel as narration warns how dry grass can ignite in the swamp.

Scene 98 of 202 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Orlean

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 51 min into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 98

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 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
A surveyor describes a pond crowded with alligators.
Scene 98
This scene

98INT. HOTEL - NIGHT

Orlean lies in bed, wide awake and anxious.

ORLEAN (V.O.)

Whatever isn't wet in the Fakahatchee is

blasted. The grass gets so dry that the

friction from a car can set it on fire,

and the burning grass can engulf the car

in flames. A 1940's botanist noted: