HOTHOUSE.('Adaptation')(Movie Review)

From 1995, "Orchid Fever," by Susan Orlean

"Adaptation," the new experimental comedy by the team of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman ("Being John Malkovich"), begins with the crisis of a screenwriter--the crisis of Charlie Kaufman himself (Nicolas Cage), who has been hired to adapt the book "The Orchid Thief," by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep), a staff writer for The New Yorker. Kaufman, as he's portrayed in the movie, is a self-doubting wreck at forty--a sweaty man with thinning hair who wears a flannel shirt in Los Angeles. Charlie's problem is serious. Susan Orlean's book, which grew out of an article published in 1995, chronicling her adventures among the orchid ...