Via Autoblog via The Sun: “Nicolas Cage is suing his former manager Samuel Levin for $20 million for gross negligence of his finances and for lining his own pockets at the actor’s expense. Cage is moving to sue the former manager due to the actor’s sudden cash crunch, which includes a boat load of debt and over $7 million in back taxes. But Levin has a story of his own to tell, and it involves excess on a scale that we can hardly imagine. According to Levin, the actor purchased a scad of really expensive stuff. Like a $7.5 million island in the Bahamas, 15 mansions, four yachts, a Gulfstream, 47 pieces of art and even nine Rolls-Royce Phantoms.”

Wendy asked me out on a movie date. We both wanted to see Adaptation. We are both writerly and were intrigued by the premise. The premise is that screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is being eaten alive by self-loathing and the challenge of adapting an esoteric book about orchid poaching into a film. A film script, of course, that needs — according to Charlie — to be utterly original.

Charlie and his twin brother are played brilliantly and with absurd camp by Nicolas Cage. Cage is utterly convincing as a neurotic perfectionist egoist, which Charlie most certainly is. His self-loathing comes more from self-adoration and the belief in his potential and genius than it is from true self-hatred.

The best way to encapsulate this film, which is a psychological farce — a Postmodern ‘Waiting for Godot,’ is to expand on the comment Charlie’s alter-ego, his fantasy twin, made while hiding from murderous Orchid poachers, Orlean and Laroche, “When I Love I choose to love and own that love; I don’t require that the person I love loves me back.” Charlie will not love unless adored first. This injection of naive truth spotlights Charlie’s complete inability to Love because his entire inability to take any risks, to make any fantasies realities — his complete impotence in fact — hinges on his complete self love and autoerotic belief in his own genius which cannot at any point me mortally wounded by any different opinion.

It’s obvious to me — maybe because I suffer from mild Charlie-ness — that in a perfect world, all this self loathing is a secret desire to be constantly adored, constantly admired. Charlie’s only fearless hunger is that his ego be constantly fed without ever having to ask; and, its a bottomless pit. And I for one appreciated the writerliness, the cleverness, of the movie. Cleverness like this, as seen recently in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers and in this film, generally comes from people who consider their existence as precious and desirable as the Holy Grail. One must work through the pits and traps, must really want — to hunger for.

The writer and the characters insist that we work aggressively through all their chaff and smokescreens. Because their (his) ego insists that his genius is obviously worth all that energy. Like the alligator-infested swamp one must become lost in, must suffer through, must rally against, must really want, in which we find the Ghost orchid — both otherworldly and also an elixir allowing insight — we also find all the other aliases for Charlie Kaufman.

In this film, Charlie Kaufman is his twin, is John Laroche, the Ghost Orchid, and the drug itself. Its all about Charlie Kaufman. Don’t believe a work he says. He’s a shameless southern bell who spends the entire movie fishing for compliments, compliments he will no doubt receive in at least a couple Oscars, to be sure.

Do I recommend this film? Most certainly. This man is a master at his game and his game is basic psych. Charlie Kaufman invites us to look at his reflection in the water; Charlie Kaufman invites us to ignore the man on the bank of the pool — he is absurd — but only at the gorgeous soul resplendent in the mercurial waters of the pool.