Word: kaufmans
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ADAPTATION. At its core, Adaptation is an analysis of the intellectual diseases that plague every writer, from editorial pressure to sibling rivalry to unrequited love. But its narrative edges make it a unique experience. Nicolas Cage plays writer Charlie Kaufman (the real-life writer of the film), who becomes consumed by his assignment to adapt Susan Orlean’s meditative nonfiction novel The Orchid Thief and his own personal eccentricities. Like Kaufman and director Spike Jonze’s previous film Being John Malkovich, several plots overlap and intertwine with surprising dramatic twists, creating a frustrating, complex film that...
Perhaps the most truthful way to express that moral confusion is with a lie, a notion Kaufman explores not only in this script, which he wrote in 1997, but also in Adaptation. Kaufman has never met Barris and says he doesn't know if the CIA stories are true. "The first thing everybody asked me was, 'Is this true?'" Kaufman says. "That question interests me, whether in fiction or nonfiction." For the CIA's part, the only comment spokesman Paul Nowack would make was, "It's ridiculous. It's absolutely not true...
...swelling numbers, actors are moving to the director's chair. This season has "films by" George Clooney (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind), Denzel Washington (Antwone Fisher) and Nicolas Cage (Sonny). "Directing wasn't something I was eyeballing," says Clooney, who stepped in mostly because he wanted to see Charlie Kaufman's script made into a film. Now, he says, "I'm into it. I like...
Confessions has a pretty high exasperation quotient--partly built in (a practical joke is also an endurance test) and partly from its being at the tired end of a line of movies about weird or failed show-biz types (Ed Wood, Larry Flynt, Andy Kaufman, Bob Crane). But Clooney turns out to have a flair, puckish and audacious, for his new job. Learning from working with Steven Soderbergh and the Coen brothers and from watching the '70s thrillers of Alan J. Pakula (Klute, The Parallax View), Clooney figured out how to turn images and performances into menace and sizzle...
...called on some of his Ocean's Eleven acting pals to guest-star in his shell game: Julia Roberts as a femme fatale, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon as losing contestants on The Dating Game. The director also played Barris' mysterious (i.e., imaginary) CIA contact, spitting out some choice Kaufman dialogue and giving the film even more star heft...