Adaptation

... versus being possessed and everything.

On the sixth day, I flew back home, and I had a friend over, and I was, I was like, "Let's watch a movie," that like the day after that.

And I tried to get my DVD player to play a movie, and this was back when we had a DVD player, and it wouldn't play.

It wouldn't play the second one.

It wouldn't play like fi- four or five, six movies, something like that.

Finally, the movie Adaptation played.

I don't know if you've ever seen Adaptation.

Mm.

We wanna put it on in the fall." So that summer we were just, you know, ha- we're just shooting all the time.

And, uh, I remember that fall, it, it came out, like, I don't know, September, October, and then as that fall went on I g- I started prepping a- my n- my next movie, Adaptation, and you guys, uh, I just kinda remember from, like, being a little further away from it at that point, watching it sort of catch on fire-

Yeah

... and sort of hearing, like, yeah, yeah, Johnny Knoxville, he's gonna be on the cover of Rolling Stone, and then he's gonna, this is happening and this is happening.

But I wasn't, like, yeah, I wasn't, um, shooting.

I wasn't in the office that much.

And so I just watched over the next six months c- like, this insane h- thing happen 'cause that, the... 'Cause I went o- I was, we were shooting Adaptation, and, uh, and then the, the, it was just, like, this crazy thing where suddenly everywhere you went you were getting recognized, and it was just this whole...

It, I, I'd never seen anything like that.

Yeah.

I'm thinking of Nicolas Cage in Adaptation too.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I'm down.

Yeah.

We just recently talked about Adaptation.

That feels very much like The Three.

but he's so good.

Adaptation is one of the best movies of all time.

Right? You know why? Two Nicolas Cage.

Two Nicolas Cage.

They're joined in conversation by someone else who's worked across multiple mediums, broadcaster, writer for screen, stage, and print, Benjamin Law.

Now, the session today is called Great Adaptations.

[laughs]

And you might remember in the Oscar-winning movie Adaptation how Nicolas Cage, playing a fictional version of the film's real-life screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, is very quickly driven to a complete nervous breakdown-

The 9-11 movie?

Adaptation.

Oh, Adaptation.

I wouldn't watch that with any human beings in the room.

No shit.

Sam.

This is the same thing.

I fucked this chick after watching Adaptation, which is, like, I guess she's a big Kaufman fan or whatever.

I think that Nina Jacobson, who's the producer on that, has done a really good job of being loyal to the books, yet, like you said, but, you know, making it a movie.

I mean, the craziest adaptation is obviously Adaptation, the movie [laughs] by Charlie Kaufman.

Oh, yeah, of course.

I love that movie.

Um, and but, but he appeared at the other bookend of that cycle too when we talked about Licorice Pizza.

Um, and in this episode cycle, well, we've seen a bit of Tilda already, albeit not in a dual role when she appeared as a literary agent in Adaptation.

Yeah.

Also bookends.

I think so.

25 years in the future, and, you know, a lot happens in Tilda's career in this time.

Adaptation, which we've recently talked about, happens in that time.

The first movie that I ever saw Tilda Swinton in also happens in that time too, which is The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion-