Film Forum

U.S., 2002
Directed by Spike Jonze
Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman
With Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Brian Cox  
WINNER Academy Awards® – Best Supporting Actor, 2003
Approx. 114 min. DCP.

“Begins with the crisis of a screenwriter — Charlie Kaufman himself (Nicolas Cage), who has been hired to adapt the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep). Kaufman, as he's portrayed in the movie, is a self-doubting wreck at forty — a sweaty man with thinning hair who wears a flannel shirt in Los Angeles. Charlie's problem is serious. Susan Orlean's book, which grew out of an article published in 1995, chronicling her adventures among the orchid lovers of Florida, is 'great sprawling New Yorker stuff.' That is, it's a nightmare — observant and ruminative but lacking the kind of clear arc that can be easily shovelled into a movie. 'Let it exist!' Charlie shouts, in celebration of the book's special tone. It is one of the many hortatory messages he delivers to himself or to his glib brother Donald (Cage again), also a screenwriter, who moves in with Charlie and whose brain, in a mockery of Charlie's troubles, is teeming with trashy but highly producible movie ideas... The story, when Charlie is able to tell parts of it (we see what he writes), has the allure of oddity. Orlean spent a lot of time over a two-year period hanging out with one John Laroche (Chris Cooper), a man who was arrested while stealing a rare orchid from a Florida wilderness preserve. Laroche's scheme was to hide behind a group of Seminole cronies, who are exempt from Florida's endangered-species law. If he had got away with the theft, he was going to clone and mass-produce the orchid and make a killing...” – David Denby, The New Yorker

Presented with support from the Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film

Reviews

“A funny, complex take on the idea of storytelling.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“Subversive, inventive, and daring. Charlie Kaufman is a genius.”
– Nev Pierce, BBC

“Leaves you breathless with curiosity.”
– Roger Ebert