Scene Selection — Geoff Carter: Kaufman hits the deck in ‘Adaptation’

Friday, June 13, 2003 | 9:49 a.m.

Geoff Carter is a Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer. Reach him at carter@pre2k.com.

I've never met the man, but I'd be willing to bet that Charlie Kaufman plays a mean game of poker. This is a man who made an entire movie about John Malkovich without really revealing anything of the actor's personal life, who got John Cusack to utter the deathless phrase, "Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate."

Who knows what he's holding?

The writer of "Being John Malkovich" ostensibly shows his cards in "Adaptation" (Columbia/Tristar DVD, $26.95), but once again he spins a fiction around the subject that's so elaborate you have no choice but to believe in it for the duration of the film. His cards have no suits -- just the same pattern on both sides -- but he bluffs you out anyway.

Nicolas Cage plays Kaufman as an overweight, balding, skittish misanthrope. He can't talk to women; he can't talk to colleagues; he can barely talk to himself.

But he can write, and his screenplay for "Malkovich" wins him the chance to adapt "The Orchid Thief," a slice-of-life novel by New Yorker columnist Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep).

"I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases or characters learning profound life lessons," Kaufman says. "The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that."

He sets out to write a movie "just about flowers," but is soon stuck fast. While Orleans' character study of orchid poacher John Laroche (Chris Cooper) is a solid one, there isn't enough Laroche to fill a movie.

Charlie sinks into a depression while his twin brother, the smooth-talking Donald (Cage again), writes his own formulaic screenplay almost without effort, and almost immediately sells it through Charlie's own agent.

Here's where things get sticky: The real Kaufman doesn't have a brother named Donald, despite the fact that Donald is credited as co-writer of "Adaptation." Unlike "Malkovich," the mind-warp of "Adaptation" doesn't stay on the screen -- it wrenches itself off and goes to work on you.

The DVD has scant few extras and doesn't need any. Director Spike Jonze makes such solid choices that you understand exactly where he's coming from; a commentary track would be superfluous.

Besides, I don't want to believe that "Adaptation" was a movie. It's more fun to believe that Kaufman pulled off some sort of global hypnosis that only makes us think he wrote a movie about himself.

After two funny, delirious hours in Kaufman's world, you're hardly sure if anything really happened at all. Kaufman telegraphs every single plot turn, yet the ending is surprising and not a little touching, with a profound life lesson despite the author's efforts to the contrary.

At least one puppeteer found work in this down economy. With "Adaptation," Kaufman twists our strings hard, and it's a good feeling.