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CHARLIE KAUFMAN:
“If it had been a spec script of my own, I might have abandoned it at a certain point. In this case, though, I had been hired by others. They had expectations of me. So I had to adapt to being an adaptor.”
NICOLAS CAGE (Charlie/Donald Kaufman):
“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. Though they are twins, Donald and Charlie are total opposites. Charlie hates himself. He’s morose, hypercritical and joyless. Donald feels pretty good about himself. He’s amusing, easygoing and optimistic.”
Writer SUSAN ORLEAN on the first time she realized she was in the screenplay:
“The very first page I saw Charlie Kaufman had the first line of dialogue, and I thought, ‘Isn’t that the name of the screenwriter?’ Then I just started flipping through it and I saw my name, Orlean, Orlean, Orlean. I thought, ‘I don’t want to be a character in a movie.’ I felt funny, here I am [in the movie] using drugs and having sex with my subjects. But I felt this was a very adventurous, exciting effort to do something really special, and I wanted to help that happen.”
MERYL STREEP (Susan Orlean):
“I met Susan at the first screening of the movie. I didn’t want to meet her before; I didn’t want to be diverted by the truth. I looked at Nic, and I met Charlie, and I thought, ‘Okay, this is not a documentary!’ [At the screening] I recognized Susan right away, and I said, ‘I apologize in advance.’ She was very forgiving about it!”
CHRIS COOPER (John Laroche):
“I usually play very contained characters. This was a precious opportunity because with Laroche, I could explode out there. He’s 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.”
MERYL STREEP on working with Chris Cooper:
“He is one of my favorite actors in the world. I’ve seen him in most everything he’s done and I was thrilled that it was going to be him. Laroche is a very compelling character, and the way he played him was compelling.”
NICOLAS CAGE on playing scenes with himself:
“I would be playing a scene as Charlie opposite Donald, who was represented by a tennis ball. Or sometimes, Spike [Jonze] would be there in full make-up 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.”
SUSAN ORLEAN:
“In spirit this movie is a faithful adaptation. The book uses the crime as a way of looking at issues of passion and desire and how you figure out your life, so in that way it’s very faithful – that’s the irony, of course, that it is actually an extremely faithful adaptation of what the essence of the book was for me.”
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THE CONCEPT:
