Adaptation (2002) quotes
Director
Spike Jonze.
Cast
Nicolas Cage.
Meryl Streep.
Chris Cooper.
A lovelorn screenwriter becomes desperate as he tries and fails to adapt ‘The Orchid Thief’ by Susan Orlean for the screen.
There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window. You were talking to Sarah Marsh.
– Charlie Kaufman
Oh, God. I was so in love with her.
– Donald Kaufman
I know. And you were flirting with her. And she was being really sweet to you.
– Charlie Kaufman
I remember that.
– Donald Kaufman
Then, when you walked away, she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. And it was like they were laughing at *me*. You didn’t know at all. You seemed so happy.
– Charlie Kaufman
I knew. I heard them.
– Donald Kaufman
How come you looked so happy?
– Charlie Kaufman
I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn’t have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
– Donald Kaufman
But she thought you were pathetic.
– Charlie Kaufman
That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That’s what I decided a long time ago.
– Donald Kaufman
Point is, what’s so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. There’s a certain orchid look exactly like a certain insect so the insect is drawn to this flower, its double, its soul mate, and wants nothing more than to make love to it. And after the insect flies off, spots another soul-mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance the world lives? But it does. By simply doing what they’re designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense they show us how to live – how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can’t let anything get in your way.
– John Laroche
Then one morning, I woke up and said, “Fuck fish.” I renounce fish, I will never set foot in that ocean again. That’s how much “fuck fish.” That was 17 years ago and I have never stuck so much as a toe in that ocean. And I love the ocean.
– John Laroche
But why?
– Susan Orlean
Done with fish.
– John Laroche
Do you ever get lonely sometimes, Johnny?
– Susan Orlean
Well, I was a weird kid. Nobody liked me. But I had this idea. If I waited long enough, someone would come around and just, you know… understand me. Like my mom, except someone else. She’d look at me and quietly say: “Yes.” Just like that. And I wouldn’t be alone anymore.
– John Laroche
Sir, what if the writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens? Where people don’t change, they don’t have any epiphanies, they struggle and are frustrated and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world.
– Charlie Kaufman
The real world?
– Robert McKee
Yes, sir.
– Charlie Kaufman
The real fucking world. First of all, you write a screenplay without conflict or crisis you’ll bore your audience to tears. Secondly, nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There’s genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save somebody else. Every fucking day someone somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ sake a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church! Someone goes hungry, somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can’t find that stuff in life, then you my friend don’t know crap about life! And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don’t have any use for it! I don’t have any bloody use for it!
– Robert McKee
Okay, thanks.
– Charlie Kaufman
It’s over. Everything’s over. I did everything wrong. I want my life back. I want it back before everything got fucked up. I want to be a baby again. I want to be new. I WANT TO BE NEW.
– Susan Orlean
You know why I like plants?
– John Laroche
Nuh uh.
– Susan Orlean
Because they’re so mutable. Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world.
– John Laroche
Yeah but it’s easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. They just move on to whatever’s next. With a person though, adapting almost shameful. It’s like running away.
– Susan Orlean
What I came to understand is that change is not a choice. Not for a species of plant, and not for me.
– Susan Orlean
I’m putting in a chase sequence. So the killer flees on horseback with the girl, the cop’s after them on a motorcycle and it’s like a battle between motors and horses, like technology vs. horse.
– Donald Kaufman
And they’re still all one person, right?
– Charlie Kaufman
There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.
– Susan Orlean
Sometimes bad things happen and darkness descends.
– John Laroche
I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.
– Susan Orlean
To begin… To begin… How to start? I’m hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That’s a good muffin.
– Charlie Kaufman
I have to go right home. I know how to finish the script now. It ends with Kaufman driving home after his lunch with Amelia, thinking he knows how to finish the script. Shit, that’s voice-over. McKee would not approve. How else can I show his thoughts? I don’t know. Oh, who cares what McKee says? It feels right. Conclusive. I wonder who’s gonna play me. Someone not too fat. I liked that Gerard Depardieu, but can he not do the accent? Anyway, it’s done. And that’s something. So: “Kaufman drives off from his encounter with Amelia, filled for the first time with hope.” I like this. This is good.
– Charlie Kaufman
Okay, well here’s the twist. We find out that, that the killer really suffers from multiple personality disorder, right? See, he’s actually really the cop and the girl. All of them are him. Isn’t that fucked up?
– Donald Kaufman
I’m the guy you yelled at this morning.
– Charlie Kaufman
I need more.
– Robert McKee
I’ve written myself into my screenplay.
– Charlie Kaufman
That’s kind of weird, huh?
– Donald Kaufman
You and I share the same DNA. Is there anything more lonely than that?
– Charlie Kaufman
One has eyes that contain the sadness of the world
– Charlie Kaufman
Look, I’ll tell you a story, all right? I once feel deeply, you know, profoundly in love with tropical fish. Had 60 goddamn fish tanks in my house. I skin dived to find just the right ones. Anisotremus virginicus, Holdacanthus ciliaris, Chaetodon capistratus. You name it. Then one day I say, “fuck fish”. I renounce fish. I vow never to set foot in that ocean again. That’s how much “fuck fish”.
– John Laroche
It’s like a brain factory in here.
– Caroline Cunningham