Adaptation

Adaptation was praised for its direction, screenplay, humor, and the performances of Cage, Cooper, and Streep. It received awards at the 75th Academy Awards, 60th Golden Globe Awards, and 56th British Academy Film Awards, with Cooper winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Kaufman winning the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. A British Film Institute poll ranked it one of the thirty best films of the 2000s. Based on writer Charlie Kaufman's struggle to adapt the best-selling book "The Orchid Thief" by Susan Orlean. Kaufman quickly got writer's block, since the book lacked the dramatic structure needed for a movie. So he decided to write a screenplay about himself struggling to write a book adaptation, exaggerating many of the story elements and characters, and making up new ones (such as a non-existent twin brother, Donald Kaufman.) Knowing that the producers would reject the idea, he did not tell them about the new direction in which he was taking the story, and simply handed in the finished script. Although this move was supported by Spike Jonze, Kaufman himself believed it would end his career, but it didn't.