Adaptation.

Spike Jonze’s film came out of a real dead end. Charlie Kaufman was hired to adapt Susan Orlean’s book about orchid hunting, could not do it, and wrote the failure itself into the script. The screenplay is credited to Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. Donald does not exist; he is a twin the film invented. The Academy still printed both names in the adapted screenplay list at the 2003 ceremony, which put a person who was never born on an Oscar ballot. The film took four nominations and won one, Chris Cooper for actor in a supporting role. Nicolas Cage was up for leading actor and Meryl Streep for supporting actress. It appears nowhere in the best picture or directing lists. Robert McKee is a working screenwriting teacher, and he himself suggested Brian Cox for the part that plays him. Orlean answered with a flat no before agreeing. Cage played both brothers and called it the hardest thing he had ever done. A good fit if you will read the last half hour, where the film dutifully supplies every item the lecture prescribed, as the joke rather than a collapse. Not for viewers drawn by the orchid book; that material is abandoned outright once the chase begins.