Charlie Kaufman's Angels: Adaptation
With 2002’s “Adaptation”, Charlie Kaufman ventures deeper into the mind one of cinema’s most tortured artists - himself.
Anyone who has experienced the limitless creative ingenuity that Charlie Kaufman’s “Adaptation” has to offer, must remember the initial dizzying spin down the script’s rabbit hole. This 4th film would also feature the fiery return of Kaufman’s collaborator Spike Jonze, fresh off producing “Jackass: The Movie”. Although “Adaptation” was his second directorial effort, the director’s style proved to once again mesh perfectly with Kaufman’s vision (a real change from the George Clooney drama bubbling during “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”.) With its dual fisted performance by Cage; its swampy depiction of writers block; and its inevitable shift into madness; “Adaptation” crafted a maze for an audience hungry for more Kaufman. He was not about to let them walk out without something to chew on.
From Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks) to “The Holy Mountain” (Alejandro Jodorowsky), metafiction is not something new to cinema. With “Adaptation”, Kaufman takes meta conventions, and injects himself into the narrative in the form of Nicholas Cage. Deeply rooted in Kaufman’s writers block, insecurities, and fatigue, “Adaptation” is wrapped around twin brothers Charlie and Donald Kaufman (Nic Cage). Charlie is a writer who can’t write, and Donald is a “writer” who can. Charlie, after his big success in writing “Being John Malkovich”, is commissioned to write an adaptation of “The Orchid Thief”, a novel written by New Yorker writer Susan Orlean (Meryl Steep). In terms of Charlie’s strategy for adapting the book, he wants to “let the movie exist, rather than let it be artificial.” Whatever that means, he doesn’t even know. The assignment is a task that proves impossible for a fat, bald, repulsive, old (his words not mine) writer such as Charlie. However, once Donald, a sucker for a good thriller, begins to interject himself into the project, the action lines begin to ramp up to a genre warping, snake infested, glass shattering conclusion.
After a summary like that, it’s no surprise that “Adaptation” is one of Kaufman’s most personal works. At times, the digs and jabs that Kaufman inflicts on himself throughout the script feel almost like a self-flagellation. Of course, the Donald’s character, who doesn’t exist beyond the page (but is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on the film), provides that much needed optimism and chutzpah that Charlie lacks. It is a genius move by the writer to addresses Donald’s creation (or lack there of) in the brutal manner that he does.
Kaufman approaches the other aspects of the film with the same razor sharp blending of the reality and fiction. In “Adaptation”, Kaufman not only decides to wrestle with his demons, but to invent other monsters on top of that. And because the film is based more on Kaufman’s experience in attempting to adapt the unadaptable, it becomes an allegory of the sacrifices a writer has to make in order to move forward within “the industry”. Charlie is to Donald as Kaufman is to his pride. It’s a killer analogy, but an inevitable one.
Rising above its comments on the creative process and Kaufman’s personal relationship with Hollywood, “Adaptation” at its core is a meditation on the inevitability of life. Though it is the story most closest to Kaufman on an objective basis, the bigger cloud of existential dread still hovers throughout the film. His main character lays it out very clearly in the beginning of the film:
I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know... or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end, you know. I mean... The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that. You know, it just isn't. And... I feel very strongly about this.
As viewers of the film know, and to-be-watchers would soon find out, Charlie’s desires for his story are easier said than done. During a heated question and answer and an eventual nightcap with renowned author and maniac, Robert McKee, the older writer explains the problem with Charlie’s approach. The things he wants to avoid are a part of life itself, and at the end of the day Hollywood will play itself. After all, picture the film Charlie describes, and look at the film before us.
There is one more fascinating aspect of the film that I’d like to call attention to. Of the seven works preceding Charlie Kaufman’s upcoming “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”, “Adaptation” is the film that seems to mark a shift in the narrative surrounding the writer’s career. Since the film’s release, there has been a translucent idea that criticism and other articles concerning Kaufman must be approached with the same irony and internal difficulty as in one of his scripts.
You can catch this notion in something like Jon Mooallem’s New York Times profile, where in his blurb he asks, “How do you write about Hollywood’s most self-referential screenwriter at a destabilizing moment in history?”. It’s also present in David Erlich’s review of Kaufman’s new novel, “Antkind”, as well as video essays like Lessons From the Screenplay’s take on “Adaptation”. And with his upcoming resurgence this year, it’s a sure bet that think pieces will be spreading like wildfire. I should know. I’m one of the people doing them. That being said, the thinking that a Kaufman piece should be crafted as reflexive as he does his films does was not born from the get-go. For as cerebral as “Being John Malkovich” is; as inquisitive as “Human Nature” gets; as personal as “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” becomes; the unspoken discourse on how to talk about Kaufman’s work starts at “Adaptation”. Plainly put, once you go meta, you can’t go back.
And as he typed out the final paragraph of his article on “Adaptation”, Miko would take a sip of his tea and— just kidding.