Bringing Out the Dead (Martin Scorsese, 1999)

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore, Marc Anthony, Mary Beth Hurt, Cliff Curtis, Nestor Serrano, Aida Turturro, Sonja Sohn. Screenplay: Paul Schrader, based on a novel by Joe Connelly. Cinematography: Robert Richardson. Production design: Dante Ferretti. Film editing: Thelma Schoonmaker. Music: Elmer Bernstein. 

Adaptation. (Spike Jonze, 2002)

Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep in Adaptation.

Charlie Kaufman/Donald Kaufman: Nicolas Cage
Susan Orlean: Meryl Streep
John Laroche: Chris Cooper
Valerie Thomas: Tilda Swinton
Amelia Kavan: Cara Seymour
Alice the Waitress: Judy Greer
Caroline Cunningham: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Marty Bowen: Ron Livingston
Robert McKee: Brian Cox

Director: Spike Jonze
Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman
Based on a book by Susan Orlean
Cinematography: Lance Acord
Production design: K.K. Barrett
Music: Carter Burwell

Adaptation.* is a hall of mirrors and a kind of cinematic pun, starting with the title. The word "adaptation" refers to (1) the process of transforming material from one medium to another, and (2) the evolutionary process by which an organism's particular characteristics enable it to survive. So the movie's Charlie Kaufman is adapting a nonfiction book into a screenplay, with all the "fictionalizing" that is normally involved. But he's also writing, or rather wants to write, about the way plants adapt themselves to their environment, a key subject in Susan Orlean's book The Orchid Thief. Kaufman is trying to do the honorable thing: stay as close to the original material as possible. He wants "to present it simply without big character arcs or sensationalizing the story." As a result, Charlie is blocked. Meanwhile his twin brother, Donald, is also writing a screenplay, but his is an unfettered original, a preposterous tale about a serial killer with multiple personality disorder, in which the one character is both the killer and the detective trying to capture him. To Charlie's great dismay, while he is blocked in his attempts to adapt Orlean's book, Donald's screenplay is gobbled up by the studios. And from this, Charlie learns a lesson: To adapt in the first sense of the word, you must adapt in the second sense. That is, in order to survive as a screenwriter, you have to make compromises with the source material. So, after meeting with Donald's mentor, Robert McKee, who gives seminars on how to write a screenplay, Charlie gives in and takes McKee's advice: "The last act makes a film. Wow them in the end and you've got a hit." So in the last act of Adaptation, which is a film about a screenwriter blocked by his attempt to stay true to Orlean's book about a quirky naturalist in search of rare orchids, he forgoes his efforts at integrity and turns it into a crowd-pleasing story full of sex and drugs and violence. The real Charlie Kaufman doesn't have a twin brother, but he invented one for the screenplay, partly to provide a character who serves as a motivating force for his fictionalizing of Orlean's book. And he gives the moral of the film to Orlean and her orchid thief, John Laroche. The latter says, "Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world." To which Orlean replies, "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's almost shameful. It's like running away." Adaptation is a movie about thriver's guilt.

*The period is part of the title, both in the onscreen credits and on the poster for the film. But from now on I'm going to ignore it whenever it results in overpunctuation.

Raising Arizona (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 1987)

Raising Arizona was the Coen brothers' second movie, and they never made another quite as broadly comic as this one. Even The Big Lebowski (1998) and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) seem restrained in comparison. I found that it took a little getting used to on this viewing: Everyone in it (including the baby) is a caricature, a live-action version of a Warner Bros. cartoon character. Maybe I reacted this way because I recently saw Holly Hunter in the deadly serious role of Ada in The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) and had forgotten what a gifted farceuse she could be when she sets her tight little mouth in that determined line and barrels ahead. Nicolas Cage was still in that goofy hangdog persona he used in Peggy Sue Got Married (Francis Ford Coppola, 1986) and only began to grow out of the next year in Moonstruck (Norman Jewison, 1987). But the real surprise for me was Frances McDormand, going completely over the top as Dot, the scatterbrained mother of the most odious bunch of brats ever seen on film. She was at the beginning of her career as a serious actress and would follow up Raising Arizona with her first Oscar nomination for Mississippi Burning (Alan Parker, 1988), so seeing her go all loosey-goosey in this film was a revelation. It's by no means among my favorite Coen brothers movies, and watching it in the company of their best -- among which I'd put Fargo (1996), No Country for Old Men (2007), and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) -- would probably show up some of its flaws, but why would you want to do that? Sometimes silly fun is enough. At only a touch over an hour and a half, Raising Arizona doesn't hang around long enough to wear out its welcome.