Blog #1: Adaptation

Before watching the film "Adaptation", I could assume that the film was going to be about adapting a novel into a screenplay. Not only is our class based on film adaptations but also hence the title of the film gives off the impression. A lot of material is introduced early in “Adaptation” such as the plot, characters, and the conflicts that I think set the mood early for the film. The opening monologue scene immediately reveals the main character, Charlie Kaufman, speaking in first person where we can observe that he thinks to himself in a nervous manner. We can also quickly tell that Charlie goes through out this film beating himself up with social issues, poor self esteem, and writers block as he struggles to adapt the book “The Orchid Thief” into a screenplay. Not only does he struggle with all of this but he is also troubled by the fact that his twin brother, who we don’t even know if he’s actually a real person or not, who finds more success when writing screenplays. Now with all of this said, we start to observe the whole process of what a screenwriter may go through to adapt books into films. Even though this film was a little extreme at times, we could observe that Charlie first began making a great effort to create a screenplay that was true to the book. But as the film goes on, Charlie then later has to resort to changing his own material to fit the studio’s desires. This part of Charlie’s writing process could possibly explain why some real life screenplay adaptations are not so true to the book due to studio’s needs and desires. This change of writing method obviously made Charlie’s job a lot easier due to the studio's opinion along with needing to meet deadlines. Towards the end the film we get a better understanding on how to define the meaning of the word adaptation. Even though adaptation is know as the process of adapting something, I think "Adaptation" adapts the basic meaning. I came to a conclusion that everything and everyone in this film ended up somewhat adapting their own selves. Towards the end of the film, Charlie, Susan Orlean, and John Laroche all adapted majorly in some way. But as all the main characters began to adapt themselves, the overall screenplay that started the whole thing was adapted which is most important.


This is the first scene when I noticed that Charlie was adapting his ways of writing the screenplay. He never believed in attending brainstorm seminars before his twin brother (or his self conscious) convinced him too.

 

This is one of the scenes that really expressed Charlie's trouble with his self esteem. As fate threw Charlie into a perfect situation to pitch his elevator pitch to the woman he wanted to meet, Susan Orlean, he was too nervous to take advantage of the opportunity.