Book Vs. Film: The Orchid Thief / Adaptation

Continuing in the grand stylings of The Onion AV Club (as previously seen here):

SPOILER WARNING: Book Vs. Film is a column comparing books to the film adaptations they spawn, often discussing them on a plot-point-by-plot-point basis. This column is meant largely for people who’ve already been through one version, and want to know how the other compares. As a result, major, specific spoilers for both versions abound, often including dissection of how they end. Proceed with appropriate caution.

This summer I read The Dangerous World of Butterflies, and the book's promotional material all drew strong ties to Susan Orlean's book The Orchid Thief. When I ran across the book at a rummage sale, I thought I'd read it for comparison, and I'd already seen Adaptation., the award-winning film based on the book. I didn't get to read Thief until later in the summer, and it became my 'in-between' book, reading in short bursts between starting other books, so I only finished it recently.

Susan Orlean, staff writer for The New Yorker, starts her book with a description of her titular Orchid Thief, horticulturalist and jack-of-all-trades John Laroche: tall, thin, slouching, handsome, and toothless. Unlike Butterflies, whose chapters bounce from one place to ahoter, Orlean focuses her book around Laroche and his Florida stomping grounds, rather than all things orchidy, so while they both have a foothold on endangered beauty twisted for man's enjoyment, Orlean find a unified theme by sticking to Laroche and his schemes. She first meets Laroche at his trial for orchid poaching, which he defends by having the Seminole Indians, who retain rights to the wildlife in the Fakahatchee swamps, do the actual poaching, hopefully protected by the shield of their legal status. As the book progresses, Orlean delves deeper into Laroche's psyche, unraveling what makes him tick.

In fact, there is one character in the book who appears far, far more than John Laroche. Author Susan Orlean, whether you're counting words or measuring influence, is the star of the book. Laroche comes and goes, his presence and absence each as startling as he is disinterested in the whole story, but Susan Orlean is present throughout. The "new journalism" style of George Plimpton and Hunter Thompson relied heavily on the writer's experience — whether truthful or not, provided the essence remained true — to tell the story. Under New Journalism, the writer wasn't content to research and report, printing interviews in the third person. The writer doesn't just compile statistics and anecdotes of gang culture, they live as a gang member for a month. Orlean doesn't immerse herself to that extent, but when Laroche is at an orchid show, she is there with him, he is speaking to her and she is responding, written in a very fictional style. I also don't doubt Orlean actually did everything in the book, and that personal experience is what makes the book so engaging; the woman at the rummage sale didn't take note of any of the other books I bought, but singled this one out to let me know how good it is: as a book about poaching endangered species, it would barely have resonated with readers as a dry treatise of statistics and third-person description of events. It also smoothly moves in and out of the two styles, adopting a more straightforward journalistic tone when covering the failed Florida swampland developments or the history of orchid collecting.

Laroche's scheme which ends up with him in court, identifying himself as 'the smartest man he knows', is a plan to breed a hardy strain of the Ghost Orchid, a rare and elusive strain of the infinitely-varied orchid line. The plant rarely blooms and is extremely picky in seed germination, which makes them extraordinarily rare and desirable to the obsessed collectors. Laroche intends to breed them, harden them up, and then there won't be a reason to poach them, so everybody wins. Orlean spends the entire book in search of the ghost orchid, including venturing into the dark swamp itself, and ends the book not ever having encountered one. The book is a lesson in desire and passion, both largely unrequited, and the drive in people's hearts to try and satiate those primal drives.

The Orchid Thief ends on that note: Laroche has utterly and completely moved on, opening an online porn business and getting rid of the entirety of his flora projects, while Orlean returns to New York without having attained anything but the heartbreak of missing out on what she never had the chance to experience. This is deeply layered in more than just flower collecting, pressing the orchids between pages in a book of human experience.

To begin...how to start.

I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think.

But I should write something first and reward myself with coffee.

Coffee and a muffin. — Charlie, Adaptation.

It is a very good book, which explains Charlie Kaufman's initial urges to do the story right in his adapted screenplay. The film Adaptation., in turn, presses the book The Orchid Thief between the pages of a screenwriter's notebook. The film points out, very early on, that Orlean's The Orchid Thief lacks the cohesive storyline and logical progression that a movie requires. Film producer Valerie Thomas suggests that Kaufman add a love story, with Orlean and Laroche falling for each other. Kaufman discounts that immediately, saying he doesn't want to add anything artificial to the story to make it fit Hollywood conventions. His adaptation would be true to the book without artificiality.

His twin brother, Donald Kaufman, is the sort of hack writer that Charlie sincerely does not want to become. The two are, clearly, two parts of a Fight Club mirror here, with the antisocial and awkward Charlie needing to learn something about himself from the embodiment of his suppressed self, manifest as Donald. Charlie can't bring himself to start a relationship with the attractive women he meets, while Donald has no problem with the ladies. Donald is social and tells bad jokes; Charlie can barely bring himself to speak in groups. Donald, much to Charlie's chagrin, is writing a formulaic and absurd thriller screenplay where all of the characters are really the same person. It, of course, sells for big bucks, while Charlie struggles to pull his Sisyphean task together.

While The Orchid Thief wraps a book about Florida orchids in the perspective of Orlean's experiences writing the book, Adaptation. is Kaufman's experiences writing the film. Kaufman expertly draws on that theme, making his film about a screenwriter writing about book about a woman writing about writing about an orchid thief. Meta and recursion are where Kaufman (the real one) excels, and the film doesn't miss a beat. Amazingly, much of Kaufman's script is word-for-word from Thief, focusing on the Orlean-Laroche interactions. He covers the high points of the book during his struggles, and by the time he has exhausted the prime thematic elements of The Orchid Thief, his fictional alter-ego has also spent his time learning how to give the book that necessary story arc: add in guns, murder, drugs, sex, car crashes, animal attacks, and a life-changing epiphany. Nicholas Cage plays both Charlie and Donald, and he has a love scene with nearly every woman in the film: Judy Greer, Tilda Swinton, Maggie Gyllenthal, and Meryl Streep. Charlie Kaufman must really owe Cage for something. Every single one, however, is fantasy in Charlie's head, either directly or through Donald, and as the movie moves along, the fantasies appear less in Charlie's head and become more 'real' to the film. The movie finally gives up on the reality of the book at the point where Kaufman gives in and attends a Robert McKee seminar, sending the film spiraling off into absurdity more likely coming from the pen of Donald Kaufman. As the movie draws to a close, Donald dies, but not before giving Charlie his epiphany, appropriate to the book: to love something is a personal thing, and the views of others, even the one loved, is irrelevant. In those last moments of the film, Charlie takes on Donald's characteristics and moves forward, completing his screenplay, admitting his love to a woman, and driving off into the sunset the way any good film should end.

As an adaptation, Adaptation. isn't a very good conversion of the book; I'm sure the film left some of Orlean's fans a bit stumped. But, as the new Where the Wild Things Are film and The Iron Giant have proven, a film adaptation that maximizes the film medium while playing to the original work's strengths is the ideal combination. Kaufman's Adaptation. stands well on its own, even if The Orchid Thief didn't exist, but the grounding in reality forces the viewer to know that nearly every person in the movie is a real person somewhere, but their puppet strings moved by Kaufman, restraining himself at first in deference to verisimilitude, but tugging strings more and more as he needs to make the story happen.

Book Or Film? In this case, the book and the film proceeded down two different paths, which happened to cross one another a curiously large amount of times. Adaptation. is a film of a struggling writer, The Orchid Thief is a book on orchid obsession, and the distinct merits of each are widely separated. Both should be experienced, but with the understanding that there's not a 1-for-1 correlation; I saw the film first and didn't feel I missed anything, although reading the book first does give the film viewing some greater insight.

Book vs Film: Immortality Inc / Freejack

In the grand stylings of The Onion AV Club, I'll try this format out:

SPOILER WARNING: Book Vs. Film is a column comparing books to the film adaptations they spawn, often discussing them on a plot-point-by-plot-point basis. This column is meant largely for people who’ve already been through one version, and want to know how the other compares. As a result, major, specific spoilers for both versions abound, often including dissection of how they end. Proceed with appropriate caution.

Going back to my single-dad days, I'd drop my daughter off at her mom's, and then either hit Blockbuster or Best Buy and get a movie. Didn't really matter what kind, as long as it could sustain a couple dollars worth of entertainment; once I turned to the internet for advice and was recommended Secretary, an awesome selection which I never would have known to choose on my own. I, on the other hand, would pick things like Freejack, which I knew pretty much solely on the fact that its soundtrack had both Ministry and Jesus Jones. As far as sci-fi movies go, it's pretty standard 1992 — through the mid-90s, filmmakers were able to toss some pretty big-named actors into some pretty lame movies. Some was genuinely crap, like Lawnmower Man, Alien3, Robocop 2 and 3, and Johnny Mnemonic, but others are arguably pretty lame movies that were made better by the skills of the performers, like Total Recall, Demolition Man, Strange Days, and Terminator 2. Just look at Freejack's case: on IMDB, the first four performers are Emilio Estevez, Mick Jagger, Rene Russo, and Anthony Hopkins; not a slouch among them, and there's at least another half-dozen recognizeable names and character actors rounding out the main cast.

The story, however, is far from a four-star treatment. Emilio Estevez plays a young, attractive racecar driver in love, who flies out of control and crashes to his death. The crash, however, becomes an instantaneous example of a shell-game: in the far-flung year of 2009 — holy crap, that's now! — scientists teleported the just-about-to-be-dead Estevez and left an empty Formula 1 in his place. Something goes awry, largely from participating in time-folding in a bad part of town, and Estevez wakes up in the future and escapes. The premise of Estevez's rescue was that, since he was about to die anyway, nobody should let a good body go to waste. In 2009, science had perfected storing and transferring minds, and Estevez's body was intended to be occupied by a rich, nearly-dead man played by Anthony Hopkins. On the run in a not-so-distant future, Estevez is pursued by Hopkins' henchmen so they can recapture the 'freejack,' an occurrence that must be so common in the future that society already has a name for it. Everybody knows what a freejack is, and the reactions range from interest in claiming the bounty to cheering Estevez on for sticking it to the man.

The film progresses as chase flick: one guy is on the run, other guys are after him. The 2009 date gives the movie a chance to be only kinda futuristic; there's just minor details that are a little off and futuristic, but otherwise the movie uses sets designed with police procedurals in mind, like gritty bars and dirty alleys. Along his escape, Estevez does what all good tossed-into-the-future characters do best: discover just how different the future is. His discoveries are rather mundane, and not unbelievable for the most part — he doesn't discover aliens living as humans, or robots running the government — which makes it more understandable when he takes it in stride. I hate movies where the main character walks around in gape-mouthed surprise at everything they see, but moves through the world like they've lived there all their lives. In the end, Estevez gets to keep his body because everyone believes that the rich Hopkins did succeed in taking over his body, he gets the girl, and everybody wins.

Immortality Inc. by Robert Scheckley is the purported source for Freejack, but the two share only the veneer of similarity. In fact, even if I read the back cover, I wouldn't have known this book was the basis for Freejack if it wasn't announced on the front cover. Immortality Inc. starts with a car crash as well, but in the year 1958, on a dark country road. Thomas Blaine doesn't escape death, though — his car hits another car, the steering wheel crushes his body, there's nothing left to save him…but he awakens in a hospital room. Body snatching and switching are a big part of the book, but in a far different way than Freejack. Blaine is brought to the future, not as a body, but as a disembodied spirit. He's an unwilling test subject: his newly dead ghost is brought through time to the year 2110 and inserted into a new body. Technology had been able to connect and disconnect bodies and spirits for decades, but to be able to bring a spirit from the past and connect it to a body in the future was a new development, and Blaine was the first successful attempt at it.

What this develops into is classic 1950s and 1960s sci-fi: using unbelievable science and technology in a way that completely questions mankind's existence; most tend to make it so convoluted and unbelievable to be almost unapproachable. This book's conceit is that the afterlife is a scientifically-measurable fact, that the eternal soul is (with exceptions) eternal and independent of the body. The body, however, is simply a combination of crysalis and tricycle, the way a soul gets through life long enough to spring into the afterlife. Shortly after his resurrection, Blaine gets the chance to witness the process that brought him back, the body-takeover of a nearly-dead corporate executive trading up to a new body, one of the few somewhat-similar events as in Freejack. Also, as in Freejack, the process goes wrong, and the wrong spirit gets to keep the body. In this case, a nearby disembodied soul grabs the body before the executive does, and runs off into the night as a zombie. The book explains that all manner of superstition and legend, from ghosts to zombies to werewolves, are due to this scientific discovery that the human soul is real.

What the book attempts to test and play with is the idea that, if the body is unnecessary in the long run, what fear of mortality is there? People commit suicide willy-nilly, others freak out and try to take as many people with as possible into the afterlife by going 'beserker' on a public street. Because not every soul is guaranteed afterlife, the Hereafter Corporation provides 'afterlife insurance', a process by which every person can make it into heaven without dissolving into oblivion, provided they can pay the price. When the Blaine project gets nixed because of the possible illegality of his time travel, Blaine is sent out into this world of 2110, and nearly ends up dead at every turn.

This does, however, put Blaine in the position of fearing for his life, with everyone around him wondering why. The book doesn't give a nice tidy answer for either opinion on death, which may be more realistic overall, but makes for tough reading; it's hard to really understand why anybody does anything, whether the over-the-top suicides of the rich or the people fearing beserkers on the streets of New York, except possibly that people just do what people do.

This ambiguity about the questions it asks is the book's weakest part, because Blaine is horribly unprepared for the world of 2110 but everybody else moves along without him affecting them at all. Nobody is surprised that he's from the past; nobody is concerned about his physical wellbeing or opinions, and few people are interested in helping him except for the two people most involved in his original death. His function as narrator barely requires his participation in the events of the book, except to format exposition as conversations. Lots of science fiction of that mid-20th century period, even the very good stuff, relies heavily on the deep explanation of Man's direction in the universe, which is helpful sometimes, but can be overpowering. It's also ripe for loose ends: there's no actual proof of an afterlife, just that ghosts can survive a while outside of their bodies, which still means the possibility of permanent mortality; much of Blaine's troubles could have been solved by swapping bodies (a common, if difficult and expensive, prospect) at more than one point in the novel; and despite omniscience being part of the benefit of post-death ghostdom, the police and others are largely unable to predict or observe forthcoming problems. It's science fiction, so the conceit should be taken with a grain of salt and run under its own rules, which isn't too hard to do with this book despite the big jumps of logic it attempts.

As with Freejack, when you strip away the high-level assets, the story is a pretty plain mystery-adventure. Blaine manages to survive various learning experiences, and by the end everything is tidied up and tied in a little bundle: the mysterious stranger who had pursued Blaine throughout the book turns out to be the man in the other car that Blaine inadvertently killed; various enemies and pursuers are shaken or get their own desserts; Marie Thorne, the woman with a heart of ice that could only be melted by the love of a man from the 20th century, is revealed to be not just his savior, but the one who caused Blaine's adventure; and Blaine, recognizing a Man's value in the universe, gives up his own life as a honorable gesture to make the world right. In the end, not only does Blaine sacrifice his own life, Thorne sacrifices hers as a redemption for her sins, choosing to spend the rest of her afterlife with Blaine than to live with her guilt. A slightly more satirical writer, like Vonnegut, could have twisted these average aspects of 1950s literature within the contexts of the valuelessness of the human body, make it a wry commentary on man's existence rather than a plot-moving mechanism by which the main character gets from place to place in the book. Sheckley's ideas are interesting and ambitious, but the book doesn't quite reach the pinnacle it aspires to reach. As a tight adventure-mystery, Immortality Inc. is a capable, servicable novel, provided the reader doesn't look too deeply into the deep concepts skirted by the protagonists.

While the film doesn't have any faithfulness to the original source material, there is an underlying similarity between the two works. Both aspires to be something more than it is at the core: a pulpy, generic story wrapped in some top-notch accessories. Freejack wasn't critically acclaimed, but as far as sci-fi chase movies go, it has its entertainment value. Immortality Inc. might not have been added to the library of Great Literary Classics, but it does manage to take an Asimovian level of deep-thinking and make it a simple linear pulp story.