The Best Movies About Movies (part 2 of 5)

In my last entry in this series (see below), I discussed Boogie Nights, the story of a porn star's rise and fall.

For entry number 2 (making it, confusingly, fourth place in the rankings), we have something completely different: a movie about the fucked-up process of writing a movie, rather than about what that fucked-up process does to your personality over the long term.

Adaptation

Talking about the plot of Adaptation and the story of how Adaptation got made is sort of a strange exercise, since it's, you know, exactly the same story.

For example:

Adaptation (the story) begins when Charlie Kaufman (the screenwriter) gets a commission to adapt Susan Orlean's book The Orchid Thief into a movie. He struggles neurotically for a while, going through intense periods of self loathing, before finally figuring out how to end it.

Adaptation (the movie) begins when Charlie Kaufman gets a commission to adapt Susan Orlean's book The Orchid Thief into a movie. He struggles neurotically for a while, going through....

You get the idea. The plot of the movie isn't just like the story of it's making. It is the story of it's making. Kaufman received the commission to write the screenplay in 1994 and struggled for years to adapt it into a movie (the movie was finally released in 2002).

He tried at first to write a straight adaptation, but eventually he realized he had failed (in his defense, stealing orchids is a fairly fucking boring idea for a movie), so he decided to write a movie about a guy named Charlie Kaufman trying to adapt a book about stealing orchids into a movie.

Kaufman's explanation?

"I thought it was interesting because that's what I was thinking about. I find I write best when I write what I'm thinking about. What I was thinking about was that I was completely unable to write this script."

Uh, okay.

Now if it sounds like I'm being pithy about the movie, well, that's because this is as loony an idea for a movie as has ever been attempted (including this, which is saying something).

All of this makes it even more remarkable that Adaptation is even watchable, much less a great movie. I mean, can you imagine a less cinematic image than of a man staring at a computer (or typewriter), wracked with self-loathing and indecision?

We can't either.

But somehow Adaptation makes it work, and it's an interesting exercise itself to try and figure out how it does that.

Part of it, I think, is that we respond to the sheer audacity of the concept. Adaptation is one of a kind, and watching it navigating the minefield of it's own making has a kind of thrill. We sort of keep expecting it to go awry, and then finally at the end, when it does (on purpose!), there's a kind of delight in it.

Second is that the movie is just so goddamn well written. Kaufman writes a version of himself who tries so hard but is yet so pitiful and socially inept as to come completely around and be likeable again.

VALERIE (movie producer): Laroche is a fun character, isn't he?

Kaufman nods, flipping through the book, stalling. There's a smiling author photo of Susan Orlean on the inside back cover.

KAUFMAN: And Orlean makes orchids so fascinating. Plus her musings on Florida, orchid hunting. Great, sprawling New Yorker stuff. I'd want to remain true to that, let the movie exist rather than be artificially plot driven.

VALERIE: Okay, great, great. I guess I'm not exactly sure what that means.

KAUFMAN: Oh. Well... I'm not sure exactly yet either. So... y'know, it's...

VALERIE: Oh. Okay. Great. So, um, what --

KAUFMAN: It's just, I don't want to compromise by making it a Hollywood product. An orchid heist movie. Or changing the orchids into poppies and turning it into a movie about drug running. Y'know?

VALERIE: Oh, of course. We agree. Definitely.

KAUFMAN: Or cramming in sex, or car chases, or guns. Or characters learning profound life lessons. Or characters growing or characters changing or characters learning to like each other or characters overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end. Y'know? Movie shit.

Kaufman is sweating like crazy now. Valerie is quiet for a moment.

VALERIE: See, we thought maybe Susan Orlean and Laroche could fall in love during the course of --

KAUFMAN: Alienated journalist writes about passionate backwoods guy and he teaches her to love. I mean, it didn't happen. It wouldn't happen. It's Hollywood.

When you watch the movie again you end up laughing at this scene, because of course all of the "Hollywood shit" Kaufman hates in this scene ends up in the movie.

The question you end up asking yourself after you've seen the movie a few times is this:

Is the character of Donald Kaufman (Charlie's invented by-the-numbers screenwriter brother) and the intentionally cliched ending intended completely as a commentary on trumped up action and cliched endings in general, or did the real Kaufman just find he was completely unable to make a watchable movie out of the material, and designed the meta-movie device and the ending because there was no actual way to end the movie?

I mean, there's a bit of difference between that ending being a thought out, intentional critique of the movie business, and Kaufman coming to the conclusion there's no other goddamn way to end the movie, so here's something that might knock down a few buildings.

Frankly, I've seen the movie a few times, and I still don't know. While writing this blog entry, I did some reading to try and find out, but I could never find a statement that cleared it up. All Kaufman seems willing to say is that he tried adapting the book straight and what became the final draft evolved from months and years of writers block about how to do it.

But despite not having a clear answer, just the fact that Adaptation poses the question is enough to rank it with the best movies about movies ever made. I mean, how many movies give you the opportunity to consider such a freaky thing... or any of the other fascinating questions the movie poses (for instance: is Robert McKee -- featured in the scene below -- really that big of an asshole?)

Probably.

And beyond all of that, when you're sitting there watching it, the movie just works, despite being strung together out of what seems to be little bits of duct tape, laughing and shrugging all the way down to the last frame.

What a movie!