Adaptation

I am old. I am fat. I am bald. My toenails have turned strange. I am repulsive. How repulsive? I don’t know for I suffer from a condition called Body Dysmorphic Disorder. I am fat, but am I as fat as I think? My therapist says no, but people lie. I believe others call me Fatty behind my back. Or Fatso. Or, facetiously, Slim. But I also believe this is simply my own perverted form of self-aggrandizement, that no one really talks about me at all. Why would they? What possible interest is an old, bald, fat man to anyone? I am repulsive. I have never lived. I blame myself.

Every once and a while you watch a movie that actually blows your mind, that’s wildly creative and forces you to watch every detail in order to understand it. This weekend I found one of them, I finally rented a copy of “Adaptation” starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper.

“The movie is about Charlie Kaufman, a screenwriter who has agreed to adapt the book “The Orchid Thief” by Susan Orlean into a screenplay. He wants to make a movie that is true to itself and that isn’t filled with sex, drugs, car chases, murder, and so on. However, he is having a lot of trouble trying to make it work for a screenplay and is experiencing some serious writer’s block. It eventually gets to the point where the script he is writing is no longer about the book “The Orchid Thief,” but is now about him trying to adapt the book into a movie and what has transpired to get himself there. That is ONLY a fraction of the movie. The rest I will not divulge because there are a lot of subtle surprises and twists.” (Source: A review on the Amazon website)

I’ll leave it at that, if you haven’t watched the movie I strongly recommend you get to your local dvd store. If you have seen it and were left a little dumbfounded then read the review at CharlieKaufman.com. It helps clear up what is Kaufman’s reality and what is his fantasy.

Other movies that have been blog worthy:

• Tsotsi
• Crash