History Film / Adaptation

* StylisticSuck: Donald's cliched thriller. Also, [[spoiler:the entire final act; Charlie finally allows Donald to assist with the ''Orchid Thief'' script he's writing, thereby altering their own reality in the process.]]

* PolarOppositeTwins: Donald and Charlie Kaufman

* FanService: It's surprisingly abundant. There is a lot of toplessness (some of it coming from {{Meryl Streep}} of all people)

* TheCameo: JohnMalkovich appears as himself on the set of ''BeingJohnMalkovich'' (Kaufman's previous movie where Malkovich played himself), along with several other cast members.

* GeniusDitz: LaRoche.

* ChekhovsGun [[spoiler: The montage at the beginning showed two alligators in the swamp where Laroche is stealing orchids with the natives which could be taken as a ChekhovsGun. They would later show up in the climax to save Charlie and Donald from Laroche.]]

Screenwriter Creator/CharlieKaufman, fresh off the success of ''BeingJohnMalkovich'', had a problem. He'd been hired to adapt the Susan Orlean book ''The Orchid Thief'', about her experiences with rare flower hunter John Laroche, into a film, only to find out it had no real story and was mostly about flowers. Going out of his mind with writer's block, he eventually went off the deep end and wrote a screenplay beginning with:

* DeusExMachina: Charlie and Donald are saved from Orlean and Laroche by [[spoiler: alligators appearing and attacking Laroche]].
** Also a late hung ChekhovsGun as just before the third act where everything gets weird Charlie is told by screenwriting guru Robert [=McKee=] that DeusExMachina is lazy writing.
*** [[spoiler: The montage at the beginning showed two alligators in the swamp where Laroche is stealing orchids with the natives which could be taken as a ChekhovsGun.]]

* ActingForTwo: NicolasCage plays Charlie and his twin brother Donald.

* CreatorBreakdown: Charlie goes through this, ultimately writing himself into the story.

* {{Defictionalization}}: There exists a movie called ''[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486028/ Thr3e]]'' that has a remarkably similar premise to Donald Kaufman's (fictional) script "The Three". (There's no chase scene with a horse and a motorcycle, though.) Amazingly enough, though, its similarity was entirely coincidental.
** It's not all that surprising when you think of how bland and cliche Donald's story was, [[StylisticSuck which the film was entirely aware of]]. Of course there would be several psychological thrillers using the same or very similar concept without the writers even having heard of ''Adaptation''.
** ''{{Identity}}'' has an extremely similar twist to ''The Three'', with the added bonus that it has multiple serial killers, multiple cops, and multiple damsels in distress all running concurrently and on different levels of reality.

* FlipFlopOfGod: God in this case being Charlie, who says he'll never [[spoiler:pack his screenplays with sex, drugs and violence]]...but just look at the third act of the film.

* TalkingToHimself: Nicolas Cage as Charlie and Donald Kaufman.

* SelfInsertFic: Done professionally

This only begins to touch upon the {{postmodern}} head trip that is ''Adaptation''. This film functions both as a surprisingly effective film version of Orlean's book, with MerylStreep as Orlean and Chris Cooper as Laroche (for which he won the 2002 Best Supporting Actor Oscar), retaining as much as possible the botanical and historical treatises on orchids; and as a layered deconstruction of the creative process, with neurotic intellectual Charlie (NicolasCage) and his tortured quest to write a movie where nothing happens, "like in real life", conflicting with his free-spirited twin Donald (oh yeah, Charlie Kaufman gave himself a twin brother [[ActingForTwo also played by]] NicolasCage) who has written a trashy thriller full of car chases and murders - the exact kind of movie Charlie hates. But it's also increasingly the movie he's in after a meeting with screenwriting mentor [[Literature/{{Story}} Robert [=McKee=]]] inspires him to move the story steadily further away from reality.

** It's not all that surprising when you think of how bland and cliche Donald's story was, which the film was entirely aware of. Of course there would be several psychological thrillers using the same or very similar concept without the writers even having heard of ''Adaptation''.

* {{Defictionalization}}: There exists a movie called ''[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486028/ Thr3e]]'' that has a remarkably similar premise to Donald Kaufman's (fictional) script "The Three". (There's no chase scene with a horse and a motorcycle, though.) Amazingly enough, though, its similarity was entirely coincidental.

[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/adaptation.jpg]][[caption-width-right:350:Yes, the screenplay for this film is co-credited to a fictional character in the movie. A good warning for what is about to come...]]

This only begins to touch upon the {{postmodern}} head trip that is ''Adaptation''. This film functions both as a surprisingly effective film version of Orlean's book, with MerylStreep as Orlean and Chris Cooper in an Oscar-winning performance as Laroche, retaining as much as possible the botanical and historical treatises on orchids; and as a layered deconstruction of the creative process, with neurotic intellectual Charlie (NicolasCage) and his tortured quest to write a movie where nothing happens, "like in real life", conflicting with his free-spirited twin Donald (oh yeah, Charlie Kaufman gave himself a twin brother [[ActingForTwo also played by]] NicolasCage) who has written a trashy thriller full of car chases and murders - the exact kind of movie Charlie hates. But it's also increasingly the movie he's in after a meeting with screenwriting mentor [[Literature/{{Story}} Robert [=McKee=]]] inspires him to move the story steadily further away from reality.

* EvilTwin: Well, not actually "evil"; Donald writes LowestCommonDenominator screenplays, while Charlie wants to make TrueArt.

* DeusExMachina: Charlie and Donald are saved from Orlean and Laroche by [[spoiler: alligators appearing and attacking Laroche]]. Justified in that the end of the movie is probably meant to correspond to Donald's cliched ending to the screenplay.

* CreditsGag: "Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman." [[spoiler: The film is [[InMemoriam dedicated to Donald's memory]] as well.]] The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, so Donald is possibly the only fictional characters to receive any real-life awards nomination. (Donald's "picture" on the Oscarcast was a picture of Charlie reversed.)

This only begins to touch upon the {{postmodern}} head trip that is ''{{Adaptation}}''. This film functions both as a surprisingly effective film version of Orlean's book, with MerylStreep as Orlean and Chris Cooper in an Oscar-winning performance as Laroche, retaining as much as possible the botanical and historical treatises on orchids; and as a layered deconstruction of the creative process, with neurotic intellectual Charlie (NicolasCage) and his tortured quest to write a movie where nothing happens, "like in real life", conflicting with his free-spirited twin Donald (oh yeah, Charlie Kaufman gave himself a twin brother [[ActingForTwo also played by]] NicolasCage) who has written a trashy thriller full of car chases and murders - the exact kind of movie Charlie hates. But it's also increasingly the movie he's in after a meeting with screenwriting mentor [[Literature/{{Story}} Robert [=McKee=]]] inspires him to move the story steadily further away from reality.

Screenwriter CharlieKaufman, fresh off the success of ''BeingJohnMalkovich'', had a problem. He'd been hired to adapt the Susan Orlean book ''The Orchid Thief'', about her experiences with rare flower hunter John Laroche, into a film, only to find out it had no real story and was mostly about flowers. Going out of his mind with writer's block, he eventually went off the deep end and wrote a screenplay beginning with:

--> Screenwriter CharlieKaufman, fresh off the success of ''BeingJohnMalkovich'', has a problem...

[[redirect:{{Adaptation}}]]

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