Adaptable author

Susan Orlean is a literary journalist who expanded her New Yorker story about a man arrested for stealing rare orchids into the best-selling book “The Orchid Thief.” When “Being John Malkovich” writer Charlie Kaufman was given the job of adapting Orlean’s book, he became blocked, obsessed with Orlean and with himself, and ended up expanding and fictionalizing their lives into the script for “Adaptation.” For Orlean, it has been a truly postmodern experience.

In “Adaptation,” not only does Charlie Kaufman write himself into the script, but he writes you in as well. How has it been to have someone write about you for once?

I think it’s a good exercise, in a weird way, for a writer to have the shoe on the other foot -- it helps you begin to understand what you do for a living. And that flip is exactly what Charlie is doing with this movie. It’s this M.C. Escher continuous loop about a writer writing about writing and writing about writing about yourself.

In creating the Susan Orlean in the movie, Kaufman wrote your character as someone who erupts in a fountain of lies, philandering and violence -- and all without a clear wink to the audience that this isn’t exactly true to life. Does this concern you?

You’d be foolish not to have a little concern about that. There’s a risk, of course, because some people will see the movie and walk out convinced that every bit is meant to be docudrama. If the people who made this movie weren’t so serious about making a good movie -- if this was “Porky’s” instead -- it would have been a dangerous, crazy thing to do professionally. But to be involved in a movie like this is part of what I couldn’t resist -- the opportunity to participate in something extraordinary.

And what is that experience as a journalist? How do you feel about being widely perceived not as a New Yorker writer with a private life but as the basis for the character in “Adaptation”?

I suppose that if I wrote about Hollywood it would be different. I almost never do. And that’s part of the great joke of all of this. I’ve been a crusading voice against celebrity journalism for a really long time. But people I write about tend to be enveloped in their own subcultures, and I’m not sure they’ll know about the movie. When I met Meryl Streep [who plays Orlean], she threw her arms around me and said, “This is going to change your life a lot more than mine.” I know what she meant by that, but I’m not sure yet.

Were you happy with Streep’s portrayal?

It was such a relief when she was cast, like knowing you’re going into an operation with the chief of the Mayo Clinic -- scary and weird, but at least I knew I had the best doctor. She brought a sort of dignity to this whole strange experience. But it’s funny the things you notice -- like there’s not an article of clothing she wears in this movie that I would ever own.

Do elements of Kaufman’s script seem to understand a deeper layer of your persona than what you have revealed in your own writing? Like, how did he know that?

There were certain elements of the screenplay where it was completely unnerving. And I’ve never talked to Charlie about that. I’ve never asked how he could divine me without my ever expressing those things. Someday I’ll buy him a beer and ask him.