'K. Few things: 1) What you call "camera" is typically called "cinematography." "camera work" is generally the purvey of 1st Camera (if it's a single camera shoot) or 1st and 2nd camera (if there are 2 cameras, etc) as well as 2nd unit 1st camera (if there's a 2nd unit, and there almost always is on anything with people whose names you recognize in it). The gestalt of "things that appear on screen" is the work of the Director of Photography, or DP. He's in charge of all things related to the camera, how it moves, what it passes over, and what lights all those things. 2) "blocking" is an interim direction that you, as an audience member, do not see. Once it's in the camera, it all rolls into "framing." 3) I have not seen ADAPTATION, nor will I. I hated the fuck out of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and hated the fuck out of ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND even more. That said, I read the draft of ADAPTATION that got the movie launched. It cemented my hatred of Charlie Kaufman more than anything else, I think, because he turned his own self-referential laziness into parody and got an Oscar nom for it. So here's the thing about ADAPTATION. It is an exercise in duality, not so much a parody or satire as a schizoaffective exploration of the medium of film presented as humor and wit. - The Orchid Thief is a real book. I haven't read it, but I read the article in the New Yorker it was based on and I was fascinated. It's an incredibly interesting tale if you're the sort of person who reads articles in the New Yorker - but a movie based on The Orchid Thief would be a lot like a movie based on Guns, Germs & Steel. Nonetheless, Johnathan Demme optioned the movie rights in 1994. - Charlie Kaufman does not have a brother, twin or otherwise. Donald represents his duality of purpose - Charlie is trying to adapt an unadaptable book and fighting terrible, pussilanimous struggles to do it; Donald is Shane Black (who is an asshole). - Brian Cox plays Robert McKee, one of the guru-est gurus in writing. I have not attended his lectures; a friend did and noted that John Cleese was in his class. Me? I read Story and thought it was 70% obvious truths, 10% insight and 20% bullshit. That said, Kaufman's inclusion of McKee is about as inside baseball as you can get in the world of movies-about-movies. It's even worse than when they mention Nikki Finke in Entourage. - The ending is Kaufman's way of saying "truth and purity die in Hollywood" as the only two real people in the film (besides himself) are killed in a cavalier and off-handed way... after all attempts to adapt the book into something reasonable have been wholly abandoned. Donny's approach has won; Kaufman pierces the veil in order to reveal his fever dream about being incapable of adapting an unadaptable book. He's cribbing heavily from the ending of Takashi Miike's *Dead or Alive* (watch to the end) in which a difficult and intractable situation is resolved through sheer farce. Actually, now that I think about it, he's cribbing from the end of Monty Python's Holy Grail but watch the Miike anyway 'cuz it's awesome. So. The audience for ADAPTATION are all those WGA-w choads who are members of the Academy but haven't worked in a long time. That's why it got nominated. Kudos to you for sitting through it; I fucking hate the man.
1. Ah neat.
2. Also neat. The director's lab I'm in at the moment is for the stage, not for the screen, so improperly used terms are because I'm not in film skill. Hey, if I use enough wrong stuff and you keep commenting, I might never need to. I'll print out a kleinbl00 diploma. It'll help my employment opportunities exactly like a regular diploma. 3. So I have to admit an embarrassing secret. I've never actually seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Steve Carrel or Being John Malkovich. Period. There are actually a whole bunch of movies that I haven't seen, mainly because I really started getting in to film only maybe 4-5 years ago at this point. Part of the reason I review so many films a week is because I've got some catching up to do. I also have to admit a equally embarrassing secret. I subscribe to the "Death of the Author" mindset. Once a work leaves the author's hands, it is the audiences to interpret, based on the event presented in the work. I don't mean that everyone's interpretation of a work is valid, but if the interpretation can be defended by aspects of the work reasonably well, then its valid, and if the author meant differently, well they can suck it. First thing I didn't do was view this film as a parody. I have no clue what it would be parodying. I guess itself? The process of script writing? Okay? I don't know almost anything about how to write a script, but I know vaguely how to write and how frustrating that is, so if the movie was trying to tell me about how awful writing a script is then it's going to fall on the ears of a person who doesn't even know the language. I don't know the first thing about writing a script. I can write a poem. Or an article. Scripts? Fuck that. Maybe I enjoyed the movie because I didn't know a great deal about the process going on behind it, so I just got to watch it as a movie about writing. Writing I can understand, art I can understand. The sheer number of writers I am friends with, combined with my passing interest gives me a bit more of an insight in to that world. As a movie about writing in general, its actually pretty good at capturing how frustrating it can be to realize what you have inside your head on a page. Problem is, if Kaufman intended the movie to be viewed differently, then I do have to look at it from that perspective. As a movie about duality in script writing, it's kind of trite. Writing a script will twist your original vision? That's been done. A lot. We get that Hollywood is corrupting. We got it in 2002. We've known that for ages. That kind of shit was in Citizen Kane its nothing revolutionary. I am also glad I didn't know how seriously people took this movie, because that changes how I view it immensely. This movie is not Oscar-nomination material. Well, okay, it is, but only because movies-about-movies tend to get in to the Oscars alot because of self-congratulatory bullshit. See Argo. The wit and humor in the script is cute. Its small self-referential stuff that makes me chuckle a little bit. It is not mind blowing quality and its certainly nothing amazingly clever or insightful. It is a slightly above average intelligence movie. It is not Brief Interviews with Hideous Men or anything similarly cerebral. If Charlie Kaufman thought he was being really clever or original with his jokes, then I am very sorry for him, because he wasn't. He was just being above-average. Taken as itself, just a movie about Nicolas Cage trying to adapt a script, then the above-average intelligence is fine. Its still clever enough that I can enjoy it. Its just a shame that Charlie Kaufman adds so much backstory to the whole thing that it sort of ruins an otherwise perfectly acceptable movie. Also, yes. Dead or Alive has a fantastic ending.
I won't criticise you for liking a Charlie Kaufman film. Lots of people do. I enjoy these reviews, which is why I add to them - this one included. Adaptation, to me, is a giant missed opportunity. I see Kaufman the way I see Crichton - a guy with clever ideas who sucks so hard at characters and humanity that you're better off not reading or watching.
I not a Kauffman slappy (for example, Synecdoche was one of the most torturous movies I've ever sat through), but I do love Adaptation. I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that the ending is "Kaufman's way of saying 'truth and purity die in Hollywood'". (Maybe the original script was changed for the movie). But in the movie (spoiler, so for anyone who's interested, don't read on), Donny and John LaRoche both die, LaRoche by an alligator attack. Earlier in the film, McKee chastises Kauffman to not ever under any circumstances use deus ex machina as an ending, which obviously having an alligator pop out of nowhere is an extreme example of deus ex machina (even, as you point out, absolutely ridiculous like Monty Python). Kauffman systematically violates every one of McKee's "rules" except for his central tenet that characters have to change, or else what's the point of even having characters? Donny dies, and Charley is finally able to get over himself and confess his love for Amelia. I don't know anything about insider stuff, or any of that, but to me, it's just a really interesting and beautiful story about the struggle to find beauty, love and passion in a world that doesn't always reward those things.