|
Adaptation
|
Movie
| Book
| Author
| Director
& cast
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Book: The Orchid Thief (1998)
Movie: Adaptation (2002)
Premise
movie:
"Nicolas Cage is Charlie Kaufman, a confused L.A.
screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, sexual
frustration, self-loathing--and by the screenwriting ambitions of his
freeloading twin brother Donald (also Nicolas Cage). While struggling
to adapt The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep), Kaufman's
life spins from pathetic to bizarre. The lives of Kaufman, Orlean and
John Laroche (Chris Cooper), the orchid poacher and the subject of
Orlean's book, become strangely intertwined as each one's search for
passion collides with the others'. Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and
Donald Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze."
from:
http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/
adaptation-superbit/synopsis.html
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Premise
book:
"Orchidelirium is the name the Victorians gave to the
flower madness that is for botanical collectors the equivalent of gold
fever. Wealthy orchid fanatics of that era sent explorers (heavily
armed, more to protect themselves against other orchid seekers than
against hostile natives or wild animals) to unmapped territories in
search of new varieties of Cattleya and
Paphiopedilum. As knowledge of the family Orchidaceae grew to encompass the currently more than
60,000 species and over 100,000 hybrids, orchidelirium might have been
expected to go the way of Dutch tulip mania. Yet, as journalist Susan
Orlean found out, there still exists a vein of orchid madness strong
enough to inspire larceny among collectors.
The Orchid Thief centers on south Florida and John
Laroche, a quixotic, charismatic schemer once convicted of attempting to take
endangered orchids from the Fakahatchee swamp, a state preserve.
Laroche, a horticultural consultant who once ran an extensive nursery
for the Seminole tribe, dreams of making a fortune for the Seminoles
and himself by cloning the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza
lindenii. Laroche sums up the obsession that drives him and so many others: I
really have to watch myself, especially around plants. Even now, just
being here, I still get that collector feeling. You know what I mean.
I'll see something and then suddenly I get that feeling. It's like I
can't just have something--I have to have it and learn about it and
grow it and sell it and master it and have a million of it.
Even Orlean--so leery of orchid fever that she immediately gives away
any plant that's pressed upon her by the growers in
Laroche's circle--develops a desire to see a ghost orchid blooming and makes
several ultimately unsuccessful treks into the
Fakahatchee. Filled with Palm Beach socialites, Native Americans, English peers,
smugglers, and naturalists as improbably colorful as the tropical
blossoms that inspire them, this is a lyrical, funny, addictively
entertaining read."
from:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/044900371X/
103-3903718-5325403
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Author:
Susan
Orlean: "What can I tell you? I am the product of a
happy and relatively uneventful childhood in Cleveland, Ohio (back
when the Indians were still a lousy team, and before they became a
really good team and then again became a somewhat lousy team, although
I have hope again...) This was followed by a happy and relatively
squandered college career at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
(back when Ann Arbor hosted a Hash Bash every spring). I studied
literature and history and always dreamed of being a writer, but had
no idea of how you went about being a writer - or at least the kind of
writer I wanted to be: someone who wrote long stories about
interesting things, rather than news stories about short-lived events.
There is no guidebook to becoming that kind of writer, so I assumed
I'd end up doing something practical like going to law school, much as
the thought of it made me cringe. After college, I moved to Portland,
Oregon (back when Portland was
cappucino-free) to kill some time before the inevitable trek to law school - and amazingly enough I
lucked into a writing job at a tiny now-defunct monthly magazine. That
led to a job at an alternative newsweekly in Portland where I wrote
music reviews and feature pieces. While I was in Portland, Mt. St.
Helens erupted; I started writing for Rolling Stone and the Village
Voice; I learned to cross-country ski; I failed to learn how to cook.
I moved to Boston in 1982 (back before they built the Ted Williams
Tunnel and long before the Red Sox reversed the curse). I wrote for
the Boston Phoenix and the Boston Globe, and started work on my first
book Saturday Night. Four years later I moved to New York. After
moving to New York, I learned how to snowboard; wrote The Orchid
Thief; became a staff writer at The New Yorker; got married; got a
Welsh Springer Spaniel; learned how to order take-out food. These days
I do some lecturing and some teaching, but most of the time I'm
writing pieces for The New Yorker and occasionally for other
magazines, and working on books. I've just started a new book - a
biography of dog star Rin Tin Tin, which I hope will be done
sometime in the next year or two (sooner, I wish, but I've got a lot of work to
do on it). Right now I'm spending most of my time back in Boston and
less time in Manhattan, although we do hope to be back there full-time
in a year or so. I'm also spending every minute I can up in Columbia
County, New York, where we have a house on a hill with a view of a
valley and lots of goats and cows as neighbors. "
from:
http://www.susanorlean.com/about/index.html
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Director:
Spike Jonze
Cast:
Nicolas Cage (Charlie/Donald Kaufman), Susan Orlean
(Meryl Streep), Chris Cooper (John Laroche), Cara Seymour (Amelia
Kavan), Tilda Swinton (Valerie Thomas), Ron Livingston (Marty Bowen) and
others.
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