Just for Nancy, this week's Melancholic Moment is brought to you by Dylan Thomas. Now when you read this it is important to imagine Rodney Dangerfield is reciting it:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Well, I finally watched a movie that wasn't stupid. Bizarre, yes, but not stupid. It took me a couple of hours after watching Adaptation to decide whether I liked it or not. Ultimately, I did.

What is it about? Well, let's see. There's this screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage), who has been assigned to adapt the book the Orchid Thief into a screenplay, but he's discovered that it's pretty much unadaptable. He himself, is a neurotic mess; he is overweight, balding, and terribly shy. He lives with his twin brother, Donald (Cage again), who is nothing like him personality-wise. As he wrestles with the book, trying to find a way to portray it on the screen, his leech of a brother decides he's going to write a screenplay, too. His novel idea is to write a screenplay about a serial killer, sort of a Silence of the Lambs meets Psycho.

The book Charlie's trying to adapt is about literally an orchid thief, John Larouche (the always watchable Chris Cooper) who hunts for rare orchids in the swamps of Florida along with a group of Seminole Indians. When they get caught, Larouche's whole defense is because the Seminoles were picking the flowers it is legal, even though the swamp - I mean wetlands - is a protected wildlife preserve. The book's author, Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep, whom I have slowly forgiven for Sophie's Choice, an unbelievably pointless and depressing movie), interviews Larouche for a New Yorker piece, and slowly discovers a fascinating man who at first glance comes across as a wierd redneck.

Charlie's social life (which essentially is reduced to conjugal relations with his hand) is a mess; his agent (the always watchable and cute as a button Ron Livingston) is on his back about getting the book adapted, and his brother's trite script gets sold for a cool million. His brother swears by this guy who holds these 3-day scriptwriting seminars (the always watchable Brian Cox - yes, I was delighted with the supporting cast of this movie!) so Charlie, desperate, attends one even though he initially tells his brother those kind of seminars are ripoffs.

Charlie to this point has been resisting the standard Hollywood fare. He wants to be honest to the book, and not sensationalize it at all. After some conversations with the scriptwriting guru the movie gets really wierd.

And I won't describe the third act just in case you might want to watch. What is really mindnumbing about this movie is this: Charlie Kaufman is a real screenwriter. He's famous for writing Being John Malkovich, another totally bizarre movie. We even see him on the set; being dissed and ignored by Spike Jonze and John Cusack (played by Jonze and Cusack respectively). His brother Donald doesn't exist, even though he gets screenwriting credit for this movie.

I had to check: The Orchid Thief is a real book and Susan Orlean and John Larouche are real people. I wonder what they thought about this movie.

So other than trying to sort out fact from fiction, what did I like about this movie? Well it never bored me, and I had a tough time figuring out what would happen next. I love a challenge. Plus, there's one point in the movie where Charlie and Donald are discussing their differences (in a swamp - don't ask). Charlie is reminding Donald of a time where he was talking to a girl in school. Donald smiled, and reminisced that he was madly in love with the girl. Charlie pointed out that when he walked away, the girl and some of her friends made fun of him behind his back. Donald says something to the extent that hes he knew about it, but that didn't change the fact that he was in love with her. Some people would look at what he says next as the theme of the movie: "You are what you love, not what loves you", but I liked much better what he says next: "What she felt was her business".

Kaufman kept touching on things like that, things that are essential to my philosophy. Life got much easier for me when I stopped caring about what was going on in other people's heads. That's their business.