The script I'm starting, it's about flowers. No one's ever done a movie about flowers before. So there are no guidelines...
What about "Flowers for Algernon"?
Well, that's not about flowers. And it's not a movie.
Ok, I'm sorry, I never saw it.
Played by Cara Seymour 
Adaptation. (2002) · 35 quotes
Adaptation. (2002) · 35 quotes
2nd most-quoted character in Adaptation. (2002): in 12 of its 35 quotes
Most scenes with: Charlie Kaufman (8), Donald Kaufman (4), Robert McKee (4)
I love you too, you know.
Scenes with Amelia Kavan
11 scenesListen, I need a cool way to kill people. Don't worry, for my script.
I don't know that kind of stuff.
Oh, come on, man, please? You're the genius.
Here you go. The killer's a literature professor. He cuts off little chunks from his victims' bodies until they die. He calls himself "the deconstructionist".
I'm putting in a chase sequence. So the killer flees on horseback with the girl, the cop's after them on a motorcycle and it's like a battle between motors and horses, like technology vs. horse.
And they're still all one person, right?
[voiceover]
I'm pathetic, I'm a loser. I have failed, I am panicked. I've sold out, I am worthless, I... What the **** am I doing here? What the **** am I doing here? ****. It is my weakness, my ultimate lack of conviction that brings me here. Easy answers used to shortcut yourself to success. And here I am because my jump into the abysmal well - isn't that just a risk one takes when attempting something new? I should leave here right now. I'll start over. I need to face this project head on and...
...and God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.
I'm pitching my script today.
Please don't say pitch.
[At a seminar, Charlie Kaufman has asked McKee for advice on his new screenplay in which 'nothing much happens']
Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your **** mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every **** day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every **** day, someone, somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life. And why the **** are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it. I don't have any bloody use for it.
Ok, thank you.
Then one morning, I woke up and said, "**** fish." I renounce fish, I will never set foot in that ocean again. And there hasn't been a time where I have stuck so much as a toe back in that ocean.
But why?
Done with fish.
You know why I like plants?
Nuh uh.
Because they're so mutable. Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world.
[pause]
Yeah but it's easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. They just move on to whatever's next. With a person though, adapting almost shameful. It's like running away.
Darling, I don't know what's come over you.
You came all over me.
My goodness.
Mr. McKee! I'm the guy you yelled at today.
I need more.
...But a little fantastic and fleeting and out of reach.
Then what happens?
That's the end of the book. I wanted to present it simply without big character arcs or sensationalizing the story. I wanted to show flowers as God's miracles. I wanted to show that Orlean never saw the blooming ghost orchid. It was about disappointment.
