Adaptation · written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman · 2002

A botanist’s report about squirrels gives way to a car catching fire in a dry field.

Scene 99 of 202 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Botanist

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 51 min into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 99

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 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
Orlean lies awake in a hotel as narration warns how dry grass can ignite in the swamp.
Scene 99
This scene

99EXT. PRAIRIE - DAY

A botanist, in a hot, arid field, writes in a notebook.

BOTANIST (V.O.)

Most impressed by the area's variety of

squirrels...

A car drives by on the dirt road. It begins smoking. The driver jumps out of the car just as it bursts into flames.

BOTANIST (cont'd)

... and charred automobiles.

We pull back to see the area filled with abandoned, burned-up old cars.