Columbia Pictures Presents
In Association with Intermedia Films
A Magnet/Clinica Estetico Production
Nicolas Cage
Meryl Streep
Chris Cooper
Tilda Swinton
Cara Seymour
Brian Cox
Judy Greer
Maggie Gyllenhaal
Ron Livingston
Jay Tavare
Running Time: 114 minutes
MONOPOLE PATHE FILMS
Neugasse 6, Postfach, 8005 Zürich
Tel. 01 277 70 83 Fax 01 277 70 89 miriam.nussbaumer@pathefilms.ch
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Casting by Justine Baddeley and Kim Davis-Wagner
Visual Effects Supervisor Gray Marshall
Costume Designer Casey Storm
Music by Carter Burwell
Editor Eric Zumbrunnen, A.C.E.
Production Designer KK Barrett
Director of Photography Lance Acord
Executive Producers Charlie Kaufman Peter Saraf
Produced by Edward Saxon Vincent Landay Jonathan Demme
Based on the book “The Orchid Thief” by Susan Orlean
Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman
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Charlie Kaufman
Valerie
Susan Orlean
John Laroche
Matthew Osceola
Russell
Randy
Ranger Tony
Donald Kaufman
Amelia
Augustus Margary
Ranger Steve Neely
Buster Baxley
Defense Attorney
Prosecutor
Orlean’s Husband
Orlean Dinner Guests
Alice the Waitress
Caroline
David
Charles Darwin
Laroche’s Dad
Laroche’s Uncle
Laroche’s Mom
Laroche’s Wife
EMT
Marty
Robert McKee
McKee Lecture Attendee
Police Officer
Kaufman’s Mother
Stand-in for Mr. Cage
Stand-in for Ms. Streep
Stand-in for Mr. Cooper
Kaufman Twins
Stunt Coordinator
Cast
( in order of appearance
)
Nicolas Cage
Tilda Swinton
Meryl Streep
Chris Cooper
Jay Tavare
G. Paul Davis
Roger Willie
Jim Beaver
Nicolas Cage
Cara Seymour
Doug Jones
Stephen Tobolowsky
Gary Farmer
Peter Jason
Gregory Itzin
Curtis Hanson
Agnes Badoo
Paul Fortune
Paul Jasmin
Lisa Love
Wendy Mogel
David O. Russell
Judy Greer
Maggie Gyllenhaal
Bob Stephenson
Bob Yerkes
Lynn Court
Roger E. Fanter
Sandra Gimpel
Caron Colvett
Larry Krask
Ron Livingston
Brian Cox
John Etter
Ray Berrios
Nancy Lenehan
Marco Kyris
Julie Janney
Jonathan Paley
Harris Mann
Marc Coppola
Dan Bradley
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From director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, the team responsible for the highly acclaimed Being John Malkovich , comes Adaptation , a wildly unconventional comedy about a writer who, out of sheer desperation, decides to insert himself into the screenplay he’s struggling to adapt. It’s a great idea, until reality and fiction begin to overlap in the most unexpected ways.
Despite the success of his first produced script, Being John Malkovich , for which he received an Academy Award® nomination for best original screenplay, Charlie
Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is plagued by insecurities, both in his career and his personal life. When he is hired to adapt The Orchid Thief, a nonfiction book about a fanatical orchid breeder, John Laroche (Chris Cooper), he is completely stumped. Though, on the surface, the book is about Laroche’s flower poaching adventures in the Florida Everglades, on another level it’s also about the desire in all of us to experience passion. This longing plagues the book’s author, Susan
Orlean (Meryl Streep) and, Charlie realizes, himself as well.
Charlie’s twin brother, Donald Kaufman (also played by Nicolas Cage), only makes things worse when he moves i n with Charlie and announces he’s going to be a screenwriter too. As Charlie battles his severe case of writer’s block, Donald cheerily types away on a script about a serial killer with multiple-personality disorder. Donald’s script immediately sells, making him the “hot” new writer in town. As if Charlie wasn’t feeling bad enough, Donald is also getting laid regularly, while Charlie can’t even get to first base.
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Then, one day, Charlie has a last ditch inspiration. He’ll use his own dilemma as a framework for the script about Laroche and Orlean. But as the words start to flow, and the story takes shape, Charlie inadvertently sets in motion a chain of events impacting on the lives of all the characters.
Columbia Pictures Presents In Association with Intermedia Films, A
Magnet/Clinica Estetico Production, Adaptation, starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl
Streep and Chris Cooper. The film is directed by Spike Jonze. The screenplay is by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. It is based on the book The Orchid
Thief, by Susan Orlean. The producers are Edward Saxon, Vincent Landay and
Jonathan Demme. The executive producers are Charlie Kaufman and Peter
Saraf. The director of photography is Lance Acord. The production designer is
KK Barrett. The film is edited by Eric Zumbrunnen, A.C.E. The visual effects supervisor is Gray Marshall. The costume designer is Casey Storm. The music is by Carter Burwell.
Adaptation is rated R for language, sexuality, some drug use and violent images.
“Adaptation is a profound process. It means you figure out how to survive in the world.”
-- John Laroche, The Orchid Thief
In 1999, just as screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s
Being John Malkovich was being brought to the screen by director Spike Jonze, he had been commissioned, by
Academy Award®-winning director/producer Jonathan Demme and his producing partner Ed Saxon, to adapt New Yorker writer Susan Orlean’s best-selling nonfiction book The Orchid Thief. The book is a widely praised tale of a journalist who discovers the roots of her own passion while chronicling the adventures of
John Laroche, a man who is obsessed with his love for rare orchids. Discursive
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and introspective, the book lacked a conventional narrative structure, which initially frustrated Kaufman. Yet, at the same time, he was intrigued by the unique nature of the source material. “I remember being cocky and thinking, yeah, I like this. I can turn this into a movie.”
However, when he was unable to conceive of a suitable way to shape the material into a narrative screenplay, his self-confidence soon turned into depression. “If it had been a spec script of my own, I might have abandoned it at a certain point,” Kaufman admits. “In this case, though, I had been hired by others. They had expect ations of me. So I had to adapt to being an adaptor.”
Throughout the torturous process, Kaufman remained steadfast in his commitment of finding a way to address the theme of passion. “Passion was something I wanted to write about, because it’s what Susan Orlean was writing about,” he says. “It was always in my head to try and capture the emptiness people feel when they don’t have passion, and the directionless longing it can cause.”
Since, by its very nature, passion requires “stepping over the edge, moving away from what feels safe and taking some kind of risk,” Kaufman reasoned, the idea of incorporating the emotional process of writing a screenplay into the script evolved. “It became a kind of metaphor for ideas feeding upon themselves and how they ev entually tie together in the end,” he says.
Kaufman shared his radical approach to adapting The Orchid Thief with Jonze.
“As I grew more and more interested in his ideas,” Jonze recalls, “Charlie grew more and more nervous that he wasn’t doing what the producers had hired him to do. I just tried to support him, but then again, unlike Charlie, I didn’t have anything to lose. It just sounded like fun to me.”
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Meanwhile, producer Ed Saxon was patiently awaiting Kaufman’s first draft. It would be six months before he received the script, entitled Adaptation.
“I was immediately suspicious,” Saxon says. “That wasn’t the title of the book we had optioned. And then it said ‘written by Charlie and Donald Kaufman.’ And I thought, ‘who is Donald Kaufman? I didn’t know he was going to be writing with a partner.’ But, once I started reading the script, it clicked. I was stunned and amazed by how intricately woven it was.”
While the script worked purely as entertainment, it also delivered on other levels, accordin g to Saxon. “ Adaptation is about art being challenging and motion pictures being challenging. It’s about how alienated people are from each other in our contemporary culture, about how hard it is to have love in your life and how hard it is to connect with people, to be honest and open. It’s a movie about being demanding of yourself and admitting to the basic human frailties and yet, being able to adapt to all the curve balls that life throws your way.”
“In Adaptation, I tried to work through some ideas. What I wanted to end up with, though, was a discussion rather than a conclusion.”
-- Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman
When Susan Orlean first heard from her agent that Hollywood was interested in
The Orchid Thief, she was a bit surprised, not to mention curious. Her book, though hailed by critics and embraced by readers, was, she admits, “layered like an onion.” It seemed to defy adaptation into a movie. “The book is a kind of soulful meditation on passion and love sickness and subcultures and belonging.
Those aren’t very typical Hollywood themes,” she says.
The screenwriter who had been hired to bring her book to the screen was Charlie
Kaufman, whose breakthrough movie, Being John Malkovich , was then in production. When Orlean heard the title and the plot line of Malkovich (it’s the tale of a struggling puppeteer who discovers a secret portal into actor John
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Malkovich’s inner mind) her immediate reaction was, “What kind of weirdo is this guy?” she admits. When she saw the finished film, she was even more perplexed. She could not imagine how he would approach something as comparatively straightforward as The Orchid Thief.
After Orlean read the script, she was almost speechless. Kaufman had taken her journey and combined it with his own, crossing the border from fact into fiction. “I thought the script was completely strange and yet, wonderful. When I read the sections about the Susan Orlean character, I was absolutely convinced that
Charlie Kaufman had indeed come to New York and secretly followed me around, studying me,” she says. “By and large the character is quite different from me. But the initial portrait of me as a writer contained certain details that were startlingly accurate. I never could figure out how he did that. But the important thing is that, in the end, this was the perfect thing to have happened to this book. It has become more of a character in the movie than the actual basis for the movie.”
“Adaptation was an opportunity to do something totally brand new, to really transform myself.
I’m playing the writer of the movie in which I’m appearing, and his brother. It’s a Cubist thing, very exciting.”
--Nicolas Cage
The concept of a screenwriter being a character in his own screenplay – or at least the screenwriter’s darkest fears about himself – presented Oscar® winner
Nicolas Cage with a unique creative opportunity. The fact that he was being asked to portray both Charlie Kaufman and his identical twin brother Donald, only doubled his pleasure. “Though they’re twins, Donald and Charlie are total opposites,” Cage explains. “Charlie hates himself. He’s morose, hypercritical and joyless. Donald feels pretty good about himself. He’s amusing, easygoing and optimistic. But the interesting thing is that Charlie is the true artist, whereas
Donald aspires to be an artist but, seems more like a commercialist.”
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Cage experimented with different techniques before deciding on how to tackle the two roles. “I approached it from the British school of acting, creating the characters externally and then working inward, rather than the Method school, in which you work from the inside out,” he explains.
The result is a seamless interplay between the two characters. “Nic moved effortlessly back and forth between the stultifying anxiety and neurosis of Charlie and the relaxed joyfulness of Donald,” says director Spike Jonze. “It was almost like a schizophrenic form of alchemy.”
As he prepared to tackle his fictional doppelganger on screen, Cage decided to spend some time with the real Charlie K aufman. “It was kind of a surreal experience. I would scrutinize him and, at the same time, he was scrutinizing me to figure out how I was going to play him,” Cage observes. “ Sometimes I’d catch him trying to fake me out. We’d go to lunch and he’d start flapping the menu around just to see if I’d pick up that mannerism and use it in the movie. Later, when he visited the set, it was mind blowing. He’d be sitting off camera watching me play him in a scene he wrote about himself
– only it wasn’t him really, but a projection of himself. Like I said, cubist.”
As he delved deeper into Kaufman’s psyche, Cage realized that, behind the facade of his dark self-image, there was an almost childlike need for absolute purity. “I discovered that Charlie was someone who is very devoted to being honest and totally naked in his art. He wants to rip the masks off himself, off everybody.”
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“I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I wanted to know what it feels like to care about something passionately…”
-- Susan Orlean, author The Orchid Thief
For the casting of Susan Orlean, Jonze imagined Meryl Streep, reasoning that it would take an actress of her talent and caliber to capture the subtleties in the script, which not only looked at the creative process of researching and writing
The Orchid Thief , but also at how Orlean’s exploration of John Laroche’s passion for orchids unleashed her own hidden passions. The more Jonze thought about
Streep, the more he realized, “it was a pipe dream,” he confesses.
But Streep responded enthusiastically to the script. “It was simply one of the best screenplays I’d ever read,” she says. “There was no other script like it. So, I had to say yes.”
Having seen Kaufman and Jonze’s previous collaboration, she was prepared for their unorthodox approach to filmmaking. “The sensibility of
Being John
Malkovich definitely resides in Adaptation,
” she adds. “It’s obvious that they both sprang from the same brain.” As for Jonze, she continues, “he was inventive, sure, unfailingly sensitive and very well prepared. I truly enjoyed making this movie – except for the parts where I was waist deep in a swamp.”
Jonze returns the compliment. “Meryl was always our first choice and even now, when I step back, I’m amazed that we got to work with her. On the set, she would just set the tone. She’d get there, and you wouldn’t even realize it, but she might be intense and serious, or playful and funny, and it would get everybody else in the mood for that particular scene.”
In preparing for the role, Streep chose to rely on Kaufman’s character, a composite of the actual New Yorker writer and his own fictional musings. “The
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first time I met Susan Orlean was at the screening of the finished film,” says
Streep. “I asked for her forgiveness and understanding for the liberties we took with her name and reputation. And she said, ‘Oh! That’s okay. I wish I were
Susan Orlean!’ I’m a great admirer of her work and I do think parts of it reside in this film, but I’m not sure I can say the same about the character bearing her name.”
For Orlean, the fact that she was going to be portrayed on screen by Meryl
Streep was “absolutely unimaginable,” she admits. Yet, it was one of those moments in life that seems almost fated. Though they were never formally introduced, Streep and Orlean had actually appeared in the same movie almost
25 years ago. “I’ve only been a movie extra once in my life and that was in The
Deer Hunter, starring Meryl Streep,” Orlean relates. “So it somehow seemed like karma that she was going to play me. To have such a great actress wanting to play a character based on you is thrilling. It gave me confidence about the outcome. Watching where she takes the character of Susan is like taking the most amazing virtual reality ride.”
“The story deals with peoples’ obsessions and perhaps the fact that some of us don’t fully realize what we want out of life, because of the restrictions we put on ourselves.”
-- Chris Cooper (John Laroche)
At the center of Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief is John Laroche, the truelife orchid hunter and his intense, almost pathological, obsession with rare species of the flower. Orlean describes the larger-thanlife man as “a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale eyed, slouch shouldered, and sharply handsome, in spite of the fact that he is missing all his front teeth.”
Actor Chris Cooper was immediately captivated. “I usually play very contained characters. This was a precious opportunity because, with Laroche, I could
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explode out there,” says Cooper. “He is a very big character who considers himself one of the smartest, most incredible, people you’ve ever met. That was very interesting and challenging, because that kind of confidence is not something that comes easily to me.”
Cooper set off on his own investigative journey through the swamps of South
Florida, immersing himself in Laroche’s obsession. He also put himself through
“orchid school,” spending weekends attending flower shows and attempting to catch a bit of the fever. Like Cage, Cooper altered his physical appearance, working with a trainer to mimic Laroche’s frenetically lean, wiry physique. “I haven’t been this weight since high school,” he laughs.
In his research, Cooper began to tap into the wellspring of Laroche’s fascination with o rchids and how it dovetailed with the film’s themes. “I became amazed at the orchid species’ ability to adapt. It’s truly amazing what, over the years, orchids have been able to do. They’ve been able to mutate in order to survive.
To imagine that a flower could take on the color and shape or stripes of a certain bee in order to attract that bee for the purposes of pollination, I mean, that’s mind boggling.”
As with his work in Being John Malkovich , production designer KK Barrett’s settings for Adaptation were constructed to reflect “what is going on in the character’s heads, their emotional state,” he says. For example, the character of
Charlie Kaufman lives in an oversized, sparsely decorated house. “The surroundings reflect Charli e’s state of mind,” Barrett explains. “He’s in his literary head all the time, and he pays little attention to what furnishings or style surround him. He’s not a social animal.”
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Though the story travels to Florida, most of the exteriors were actually shot on the west coast. Laroche’s Florida home is in the suburb of Reseda, in the San
Fernando Valley. “Florida, like California, is a fairly new world,” says Barrett.
“Much of it was built up in the ‘50s or ‘60s, so a lot of the architecture is interchangeable. The house we found was spoton identical with Laroche’s
Florida home. We only had to add a sunroom and a greenhouse.”
In decorating the interior, Barrett again reflected on Laroche’s state of mind, cramming it with items that spoke to his fanatical nature, including impressive collections of turtles and pornographic photographs. “His house is about all the phases of his obsessions, both past and present.”
By Spike Jonze’s standards the shoot was lengthy, 53 days. “The story is so sprawling and nonlinear that we had to keep changing locations and shooting in little scenes,” explains Jonze. “We rarely spent more than a few days in any one spot.”
The most time consuming scenes were those between Charlie Kaufman and his brother Donald, both played by Nicolas Cage. They entailed extensive use of green screen and other camera tricks. Jonze collaborated closely with director of photography Lance Acord, to bring visual variety and emotional resonance to these crucial scenes. “We used, pretty much, every technique that exists for shooting doubles – split frames, motion control, green screen, etcetera. It required a lot of exhausting work from Nic and the crew,” says Jonze.
Adds Cage: “I would be playing a scene as Charlie opposite Donald, who was represented by a tennis ball. Or sometimes, Spike would be there in full makeup to look like me and I’d act with him. I don’t really understand how it was all done, but it was exhausting. I’d never want to do it again,” he laughs.
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Producer Ed Saxon descr ibes Jonze’s shooting style as having all the hallmarks of a small, independent production, but with a big movie feel. “Spike combines the religious preparation of a studio film with the manic, exalted energy of an independent movie,” Saxon explains. “He photo-storyboards many of the scenes and thinks through the whole script. At the same time, he is almost psychedelically freeform and spontaneous. He brings that kind of energy to the set every day, which helps make the actors feel free and confident, and helps the cast and crew to do their best work and have a good time doing it.”
Jonze has worked with the same crew for the better part of a decade, he says.
“We have a tight sort of communal group. It’s not departmentalized with the director of photography doing his thing and the wardrobe guy doing his thing.
Everybody sort of contributes ideas to everyone else in a free-flowing way. It raises the level of the whole thing.”
“Nothing in science can account for the way people feel about orchids.
Orchids seem to drive people crazy. Those who love them, love them madly
. . . They are the sexiest flowers on earth.”
-- Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief
‘Orchid Delirium’ is the name for a widespread phenomenon also known as “flower madness” or “flower lust.” The syndrome dates back to Victorian times. Wealthy orchid fanatics in Europe, obsessed with finding ever more unusual orchids, hired heavily armed explorers to go off into the world’s most exotic, unmapped lands and bring back never before seen varieties. Today, ‘Orchid Delirium’ continues to drive men and women to near sexual passion in their search for the rarest forms of the sensuously shaped species:
* The international trade in orchids is a $10 billion a year business.
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* More than three million Americans have orchids in their home.
* Some 300,000 Americans are avid collectors of orchids.
* There are 150,000 members of the American Orchid Society.
* There are 30,000 varieties of orchids.
Among the early sym ptoms of ‘Orchid Delirium’ are a desire for something to be deeply passionate about, and an appreciation for the strange beauty, otherworldly shapes and offbeat colors of the more than 30,000 orchid varieties. It begins with the decision to own a few orchids and discover their temperamental nature, their savvy adaptation to their environment, their sublime fragility and their uncommon sensitivity, which calls for more than ordinary nurturing. Then comes collecting, at which point the syndrome becomes quite serious. Those who begin to collect can rarely stop. They might lead perfectly ordinary lives, but inside they are waiting to swoon over their next big orchid score. It is said that just viewing a friend’s orchid collection can be enough to spark the fever.
According to Susan Orlean, those who are obsessed with orchids believe it is an addiction more gripping than alcohol or drugs. In Eric Hansen’s book Orchid Fever, orchid grower Joe Kunisch says: "You can get off alcohol, drugs, women, food and cars, but once you're hooked on orchids, you're finished. You never get off orchids ... never."
Writes Orlean: “To desire orchids is to have a desire that will never be, can never be, fully requited.”
“Adaptation is a highly subjective autobiography, like Pirandello’s ‘Six
Characters in Search of an Author.’”
-- Robert McKee, screenwriting guru
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More than 50 percent of current feature length films produced for the screen and television are adaptations of other materials such as novels, plays, short stories and nonfiction journalism.
In the beginning of film history that number was closer to 100 percent. The earliest surviving American feature, a 1912 silent film, is an adaptation of
Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” In 1915, D.W. Griffith adapted the controversial novel, “The Clansmen,” into the groundbreaking, and equally controversial, motion picture Birth of a Nation .
Today, countless books are turned into movies and, in turn, movies are often turned back into books. Adaptation blurs the line, turning a nonfiction book about a larger-than-life character into a fictional adventure. Screenwriter Charlie
Kaufman gives up the endless struggle for the perfect adaptation, instead adapting the world to serve his screenplay and his passions as a writer.
NICOLAS CAGE (Charlie Kaufman/Donald Kaufman) is known as one of
Hollywood’s most versatile actors, having proven his talent in every genre, from action thrillers, to poignant dramas, to romantic comedies. His daring performance in Mike Figgis' Leaving Las Vegas garnered him an Academy
Award® for Best Actor. He also received a Golden Globe, and Best Actor awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics and the National Board of Review.
Cage’s recent roles include the moving holiday film
The Family Man , the auto theft thriller Gone in 60 Seconds and Martin Scorsese’s gritty story of urban paramedics,
Bringing Out The Dead . In 1998, Cage starred in the box office success City of
Angels, opposite Meg Ryan. He previously starred in John Woo’s critically acclaimed
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action-thriller Face/Off, with John Travolta. The role earned him numerous accolades including, the Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Best Actor and three MTV Movie
Award nominations. Cage also starred, opposite John Cusack and John Malkovich, in
Con Air and, opposite Sean Connery and Ed Harris, in the blockbuster action film The
Rock . Recently, Cage switched to producing with Shadow of the Vampire, starring
Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich.
Cage has also proven himself adept at handling romantic comedy, receiving a Golden
Globe nomination for Best Actor in the offbeat romantic comedy Moonstruck, in which he co-starred with Cher. He followed it with a second Golden Globe nomination for his comedic role in Honeymoon in Vegas. His other film credits include Guarding Tess , opposite Shirley MacLaine, the highly acclaimed film-noir Red Rock West , David
Lynch's Wild at Heart , which garnered the Palm d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film
Festival, It Could Happen to You , Barbet Schroeder's Kiss of Death, Birdy, Valley Girl, the Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona, The Cotton Club and Peggy Sue Got Married .
He most recently starred in John Woo's Windtalkers and John Madden’s Captain
Corelli's Mandolin .
Cage recently made his directorial debut with the drama Sonny.
Upcoming projects include Matchstick Men, for director Ridley Scott.
MERYL STREEP (Susan Orlean) Meryl Streep has won the Academy Award® twice, as Best Actress for
Sophie’s Choice
and as Best Supporting Actress in
Kramer Vs. Kramer . She recently received her 12 th Oscar® nomination, as Best
Actress, for her portrayal of music teacher Roberta Guaspari, in Wes Craven’s
Music Of The Heart.
Streep ’s recent roles also include an Oscar®-nominated performance in One True
Thing and the period ensemble drama Dancing at Lughnasa . She will next be seen in
Stephen Daldry’s adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours .
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A graduate of Vassar and Yale Drama School, Streep began her career onstage, appearing in seven plays during her first season in New York. She has won an Outer
Critics Circle Award, a Theater World Award, an Obie Award and received a Tony nomination. Streep made her film debut in Julia , then starred opposite Robert DeNiro in The Deer Hunter , for which she picked up her first Oscar nomination in the best supporting actress category. After supporting roles in Manhattan and The Seduction
Of Joe Tynan, she won her first Oscar® for the family drama Kramer Vs. Kramer, starring opposite Dustin Hoffman. A string of memorable films followed, including The
French Lieutenant's Woman, Sophie's Choice, Silkwood, Falling In Love, Plenty, Out
Of Africa, Heartburn and Ironweed .
Streep also starred as an A ustralian mother accused of murder in Fred Schepisi’s A
Cry in the Dark, for which she received the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film
Festival. She then changed the pace with such comedies as She-Devil, Death
Becomes Her, Defending Your Life and Postcards From The Edge.
More recently, she has starred in such diverse films as Before and After, The Bridges Of Madison County,
The River Wild, The House Of The Spirits and Marvin's Room.
Streep received an Emmy for her performance in the TV miniseries “Holocaust.” She also secured an Emmy nomination for her work in "First, Do No Harm," which she also co-produced. She is currently working on the television movie version of the Pulitzer
Prizewinning drama “Angels in America,” for director Mike Nichols and co-starring fellow Oscar® winners Al Pacino and Emma Thompson.
CHRIS COOPER (John Laroche) made his motion picture debut in John Sayles' 1987 drama Matewan . He went on to appear in the director’s sprawling urban epic City of
Hope and his Oscar®-nominated drama Lone Star , for which Cooper earned a Best
Actor nomination from the Independent Spirit Awards.
Cooper recently won accolades for his searing performance as Kevin Spacey’s neighbor in the Oscar®-winning American Beauty, and for his rousing portrayal,
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opposite Mel Gibson, in Roland Emmerich's Revolutionary War epic The Patriot . He also starred in the Farrelly Brothers’ rollicking comedy
Me, Myself and Irene, with Jim
Carrey.
Cooper’s other film credits include
October Sky, The Horse Whisperer, Great
Expectations, A Time To Kill, Money Train, Boys, Pharaoh's Army, This Boy's Life,
Guilty by Suspicion, To the Moon, Alice and A Thousand Pieces of Gold . Most recently, he appeared in The Bourne Identity and The Ring .
Cooper portrayed July Johnson in the memorable television mini-series "Lonesome
Dove." He reprised the role in the sequel "Return to Lonesome Dove." Other television credits include Horton Foote's "Alone," "One More Mountain," "Ned Blessing," "Bed of
Lies," "In Broad Daylight," "Darrow," "A Little Piece of Sunshine," "Lifestories" and
"Journey to Genius." He has also guest starred on such series as "Law and Order,"
"Miami Vice" and "The Equalizer."
Following high school, the Kansas City, Missouri native served in the U.S. Coast
Guard. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri, where he made his acting debut understudying for actor Tom Berenger. He relocated to New York and studied his craft with renowned coach Stella Adler before beginning a career that included several stage appearances on Broadway, off-Broadway and in regional theater. His theater credits include "Of the Fields Lately," "Cobb," "The Ballad of Soapy Smith," "The
Grapes of Wrath" and "Sweet Bird of Youth."
Upcoming projects for Cooper include the movie Seabiscuit and th e HBO movie “My
House in Umbria.”
TILDA SWINTON (Valerie) A native of Scotland, Tilda Swinton is best known for her galvanizing portrait of the title character in Orlando , Sally Potter’s award-winning adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel. Swinton and Potter worked for years to create the stunning role of a character who journeys across both time and gender in search of
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her destiny. The role won Swinton international accolades, including comparisons to
Greta Garbo.
Prior to Orlando, Swinton collaborated extensively with director Derek Jarman, appearing in Caravaggio, War Requiem and Edward II.
Since then, Swinton has chosen a diverse range of projects, including the experimental Conceiving Ada, the daring Female Perversions and Danny Boyle’s The Beach, with Leonardo DiCaprio.
In the process, she has emerged as one of the most talented and fascinating actresses of her generation.
Swinton most recently won accolades for her performance as an American housewife, who is willing to go to any extreme to protect her son from a murder charge, in the noir thriller The Deep End . She will next appear in the sci-fi thriller Teknolust.
Upcoming projects include, Young Adam and Thumbsucker.
MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL (Caroline) made her feature film debut in 1992, alongside Jeremy Irons and Ethan Hawke, in Waterland . It was followed by roles in A Dangerous Woman and television appearances in both “Shattered Mind” and “The Patron Saint of Liars.”
A memorable performance, as ‘Raven,’ the Satan worshipping make-up artist in
John Waters’ quirky Hollywood satire
Cecil B. Demented, led her to a co-starring role in Donnie Darko , a fantasy-thriller about disturbed adolescence. Gyllenhaal was recently seen in the dark comedy Secretary , opposite James Spader, Penny
Marshall’s Riding In Cars With Boys, with Drew Barrymore, and Miramax’s 40
Days and 40 Nights, starring Josh Hartnett. Additional film credits include
Homegrown and The Photographer . Upcoming features include John Sayles’
Casa de Los Babys and Mona Lisa Smile, starring Julia Roberts.
Also accomplished on stage, Gyllenhaal starred as ‘Alice’ in the Mark Taper
Forum’s production of Patrick Marber’s award-winning “Closer,” directed by
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Robert Egan, and prior to that, at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. She has also appeared in
“Anthony and Cleopatra,” at the Vanborough Theatre in London.
Gyllenhaal is a 1999 graduate of Columbia University, where she studied
Literature and Eastern Religion.
SPIKE JONZE (Director) Adaptation is the second feature film directed by Spike
Jonze, who made his debut with Being John Malkovich , which garnered four
Academy Award® nominations.
Prior to Being John Malkovich , Jonze was best known as an award-winning music-video, short film and commercial director. He got his start working as a photographer and co-directing (with Mark Gonzales), Blind Video Days (skate video).
His direction of the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" music-video (1994), a spoof of
1970s television cop shows, received critical praise and numerous awards. Ever since, Jonze's music-videos have regularly been nominated for MTV Video Music
Awards. He has worked with such talented artists as Bjork, The Pharcyde, Fat
Boy Slim, Daft Punk, R.E.M., Sean Lennon and Weezer.
He recently produced Human Nature , based on an original script by Charlie
Kaufman.
CHARLIE KAUFMAN (Screenplay By/Executive Producer) Charlie Kaufman previously collaborated with director Spike Jonze on Being John Malkovich , for which he received an Academy Award® nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Kaufman’s next script was
Human Nature , starring Tim Robbins, Patricia
Arquette and Rhys Ifans, directed by Michel Gondry and produced by Jonze. Due shortly from Kaufman is Confessions of A Dangerous Mind, directed by George
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Clooney. Mind is adapted from gameshow host Chuck Barris’ cult memoir about his days in the CIA. Next up for Kaufman is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind , directed by Gondry, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.
Kaufman has also written for several television series, including "The Dana Carvey
Show," "Get A Life" and "Ned and Stacey."
SUSAN ORLEAN (Based on the book by) has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She has established a reputation for her own mesmerizing take on literary journalism in a wide ranging series of profiles and portraits. Her articles have also appeared in Outside, Rolling Stone, Vogue and Esquire. In 1990, she published her first book, the critically acclaimed Saturday Night, which was named a New York
Times Notable Book. She most recently published a collection of her writings, The
Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People.
Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, brought her to the bestseller lists. Ostensibly the tale of a
Florida orchid poacher, Orlean’s adventurous and erudite journey through the swamps became a riveting look at the nature of obsession and the lengths people will go to in the name of passion.
EDWARD SAXON (Producer) Saxon won an Academy Award® for Best Picture in 1991 for The Silence of the Lambs . The films he has produced have won seven Academy Awards® and received 16 nominations in various categories, as well as recognition from a variety of festivals and critics groups, including Berlin,
Deauville, San Sebastian, and The New York Film Critics Circle.
He has produced feature films, television films, music-videos and musical soundtracks. As a partner of director Jonathan Demme, Saxon produced the features Something Wild, Married to the Mob, The Silence of the Lamb,
Philadelphia, Beloved and most recently, The Truth About Charlie, starring Mark
Wahlberg, Thandie Newton and Tim Robbins. Saxon's other producing credits
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include Miami Blues ,
Devil in a Blue Dress, Ulee’s Gold, The Opportunists, That
Thing You Do!
and the omnibus feature, “Subway Stories,” for HBO. He is currently in pre-production on a new film version of Around the World in Eighty
Days, starring Jackie Chan.
Saxon’s documentary credits include
Cousin Bobby (which premiered at the
Cannes Film Festival in1992) and the Academy Award®-nominated Mandela . A graduate of USC’s Peter Stark Motion Picture producing program, Saxon lives in
New York City with his wife, the artist Kirsten Coyne, and their two daughters.
VINCENT LANDAY (Producer) previously produced the Academy Award®winning Being John Malkovich , in collaboration with director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Landay has a long-lived relationship with Jonze, having teamed with him on numerous music videos for such as artists as Fatboy
Slim, Bjork, R.E.M. and the Chemical Brothers, among others, as well as acclaimed commercials for Coca-
Cola, Nike and Levi’s.
After starting out on the hit television series "Moonlighting,” he went on to work in the music video industry, supervising the post-production and visual effects of more than 150 music videos for artists such as Madonna, The Rolling Stones,
Prince, Paul McCartney and David Bowie. He also supervised the postproduction of John Dahl's noir thriller Red Rock West ; and of commercials for companies such as Nike, Budweiser, AT&T, Goodyear and Fuji. Prior to beginning his association with Jonze, Landay worked with such directors as
David Fincher, Michael Bay, James Foley, Roman Coppola and David Lynch.
Landay's shorter productions with Jonze have been honored by a variety of honors, including the MTV Video Music Awards, the Music Video Producers'
Association and the Clio Awards, as well as at New York's Museum of Modern
Art and the Cannes International Advertising Film Festival. Their projects also received Grammy and Emmy Award nominations. Their short film, How They Get
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There , had its world premiere at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, before continuing on to other select film festivals, including those in Edinburgh, Los
Angeles, and Tokyo. The following year their documentary short, Amarillo By
Morning, also had its world premiere at Sundance.
JONATHAN DEMME (Producer) has directed 17 films including Beloved, The
Silence of the Lambs ( for which he won an Academy Award®), Philadelphia ,
Married to the Mob , Something Wild , Swimming to Cambodia and Melvin and
Howard , for which he was named Best Director by the New York Film Critics. He most recently directed The Truth About Charlie, starring Mark Wahlberg.
In addition, Demme has been involved in the production and presentation of various films with other directors at the helm. He was part of the production team on Miami Blues (directed by George Armitage), Devil in a Blue Dress (directed by
Carl Franklin), That Thing You Do!
(directed by Tom Hanks), The Opportunists
(directed by Myles Connell), Household Saints (directed by Nancy Savoca),
Ulee’s Gold
(directed by Victor Nunez), A Domestic Dilemma (directed by Kristi
Zea) and “Subway Stories” (various directors) for HBO.
Last year, Demme had the honor of presenting Gillo Pontecor vo’s 1956 film
The
Wide Blue Road, in its long overdue American premiere. In all, Demme’s films have been nominated for 20 Academy Awards®.
The Silence of the Lambs received five Academy Awards® including, Best Picture, Best Director and Best
Actress. Two of his films have won screenplay Oscars®,
Melvin and Howard
(Best Original Screenplay, 1980) and The Silence of the Lambs (Best Screenplay
Adaptation, 1991). In addition, two of the Best Actor awards during the 1990s went to performers in Demme’s films, Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the
Lambs (1991) and Tom Hanks in Philadelphia (1993).
A strong advocate of human rights, Demme has produced and directed several documentaries about the plight of Haitians, including the acclaimed Haiti: Dreams
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of Democracy, Haiti: Killing the Dream , Tonbe Leve (Fall Down, Get Up) and
Courage and Pain . In addition, Demme directed the documentary Cousin Bobby.
He produced the Academy Award®-nominated biography
Mandela, as well as
The Uttmost, One Foot on a Banana Peel, the Other Foot in the Grave and Into the Rope!
Demme is also producing a documentary on the life of Beah Richards, along with Lisa Gay Hamilton, who will make her directorial debut. He is currently directing The Agronomist, a documentary about a Haitian radio journalist, Jean
Dominique, who was assassinated on the steps of his radio station.
Demme has also directed two feature length musical performance films, the
Robyn Hitchcock performance movie Storefront Hitchcock (1998) and the Talking
Heads’ concert film Stop Making Sense (1984), which was awarded Best
Documentary of 1985 by the National Society of Film Critics. He has directed music-videos for The Neville Brothers, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Suzanne
Vega, Les Frères Parent, KRS-One, UB40, Chrissie Hynde, New Order, Fine
Young Cannibals and the Feelies, among others. He also produced “Konbit,” an album of Haitian music, for A&M Records.
PETER SARAF (Executive Producer) began his film career in 1992 when he began working with Jonathan Demme and Edward Saxon. He has since produced numerous projects and is now a principal partner at Magnet
Entertainment. Saraf’s producing credits include the multiple award-winning
Ulee’s Gold
, directed by Victor Nunez, starring Peter Fonda (Best Actor Academy
Award® nomination) and the independent feature
The Opportunists , starring
Christopher Walken.
Saraf has produced several documentaries including Mandela, Father of a
Nation, Courage and Pain , and One Foot on a Banana Peel, the Other Foot in the Grave , a portrait of the AIDS crisis. He is currently producing The
Agronomist , a documentary about the slain Haitian journalist Jean Dominique.
Combining his passion for music with his film career, Saraf has been prolific in
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the area of filmed music, producing such projec ts as “The Complex Sessions” with Neil Young and Crazy Horse, several music videos with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and the concert feature film Storefront Hitchcock , featuring Robyn Hitchcock. Along with David Byrne, he remixed and re-mastered the 10 th anniversary re-release edition of the seminal Talking Heads concert film
Stop Making Sense. Saraf is a founding member of the advisory board of the
Woodstock Film Festival, which is dedicated to celebrating the intersection of film and music.
LANCE ACORD (Director of Photography) was raised in Northern California. He studied photography and filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. After graduation, he began his professional career working with acclaimed photographer/filmmaker Bruce Weber. They have collaborated on several documentaries, commercials and music-videos.
Over the next ten years, Acord’s talent led him to the top of the commercial and music-video industries. He has teamed up with such innovative directors as Spike
Jonze, Stephane Sednaoui, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Mark Romanek, Peter
Care and Michel Gondry, to name a few.
Combining the stylistic cinematographic technique he used in his commercials and music-videos with the subtle, yet detailed, craft of narrative filmmaking, Lance crossed over to feature films. He made an auspicious debut with the strikingly visual Buffalo 66 and went on to shoot Spike Jonze’s
Being John Malkovich . Other notable credits include The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, starring Kieran Culkin, Jena Malone, Jodie
Foster and Vincent D’Onofrio.
KK BARRETT (Production Designer) has had a long association with Spike Jonze. He previously designed Being John Malkovich and Human Nature . He is currently working on Lost in Translation, with Sofia Coppola, in Tokyo. He first worked with Jonze on two
Silver Clio Award-winning commercials, one for Nissan ("Lazy Boy Chair") and the
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other for Sprite ("Sun Fizz"). He also designed a popular commercial for Levi's
("Hospital [Tainted Love]") and many music videos.
Barrett has twice been honored with the MTV Video Music Award for Best Art
Direction. The first was for The Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight" (1996). The second was for Beck's "New Pollution" (1997).
Barrett's extensive commercials credits include spots for The Gap, Levis, Volvo,
Budweiser, Hewlett Packard and Mercedes-Benz. He has worked with such directors as Simon West, Herb Ritts, Dayton-Faris and Daniel Kleinman and on music-videos for such artists as The Chemical Brothers ("Let Forever Be") and
The Red Hot Chili Peppers ("By the Way").
ERIC ZUMBRUNNEN, A.C.E. (Editor) has worked with Spike Jonze for the last eight years. His work on Being John Malkovich was nominated for a BAFTA award and honored with the American Cinema Editors award for Best Edited
Feature Film (comedy or musical). In addition to the short films How They Get
There, Amarillo by Morning, Lick the Star and The Date , he has also edited numerous commercials and music-videos. He has won two MTV Video awards for Best Editing, for Weezer's "Buddy Holly" and Fat Boy Slim's "Weapon of
Choice.”
GRAY MARSHALL (Visual Effects Supervisor) is a partner in the visual effects house Gray Matter FX, which he co-founded in 1997, with Margaux Mackay. He has worked as visual effects supervisor on such films as Being John Malkovich and Fight Club
, and on such commercials as Sun Microsystems’ “The Doty” and
Nike’s “Morning After” spots. Most recently he created effects for Cats & Dogs and Simone .
Marshall began his career as an assistant cameraman and motion control operator on motion pictures and television series. He joined Boss Films in 1993,
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to make moving images digitally. He later took his talents to Digital Domain, where he was assistant digital effects supervisor on True Lies and Sgt. Bilko , and night compositing supervisor on Apollo 13 . After heading the pre-visualization team on The Fifth Element , Gray was visual and digital effects supervisor on spots for Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Packard Bell.
CARTER BURWELL (Composer) is a veteran of New York's downtown art music scene. Following his first film score, for the 1984 feature Blood Simple , he quickly became a composer in demand, scoring such films as Psycho III, Raising
Arizona, Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink .
His credits continued in the '90s with a wide variety of films including Doc
Hollywood, Storyville, Waterland, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, This Boy's Life,
Kalifornia, Wayne's World 2, The Hudsucker Proxy, Airheads, It Could Happen
To You, Rob Roy, as well as Fear, Joe's Apartment, The Chamber, Fargo, The
Spanish Prisoner, The Jackal, Conspiracy Theory, The Big Lebowski, Gods and
Monsters, Velvet Goldmine and The Hi-Lo Country .
Most recently Burwell has composed scores for Mystery, Alaska, The Corruptor,
The General's Daughter, Being John Malkovich, Three Kings, What Planet Are
You From?, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, A
Knight’s Tale, The Man Who Wasn’t There, The Rookie and Simone.
CASEY STORM (Costume Designer) made his feature film debut with Being John
Malkovich. He previously worked with Spike Jonze on more than a dozen commercials, including the Silver Clio Award-winning spots for Nissan ("Lazy Boy
Chair") and Sprite ("Sun Fizz"), and several music-videos, including Bjork's "It's Oh So
Quiet" and Weezer's "Buddy Holly."
In addition, Storm has worked on commercials, for a wide variety of products, with such directors as David Kellogg, David Dobkin, and Larry Clark. His many music-video
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credits include spots for such artists as Beck ("Where It's At"), Coolio ("Gangsta's
Paradise") and Beastie Boys ("Sabotage").
“Academy Award®” and ‘Oscar®’ are the registered trademarks and service marks of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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