Susan Orlean talks adaptation, John Wilson and Little Wing

Susan Orlean is perhaps best known to a large number of film buffs, less for her work than for her adaptations, namely AdaptationCharlie Kaufman's Oscar-winning 2002 film. It is one of the most unique films of the 21st century, a meta-comedy written by and about Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage in the movie). In theory, it is based on the popular 1998 non-fiction book Orléans. The orchid thief, a loosely structured investigation into the arrest of a group of flower poachers. In practice, it's an exercise in overcoming writer's block, with Kaufman mocking his own failed attempt to translate this difficult text into a coherent narrative. And, for good measure, Susan Orlean herself is a major character, played by Meryl Streep, who ends up falling in love with one of the criminals featured in her book.

It's a brilliant image, and hard to believe it has anything in common with actual reality. Orchid thief. It can also give the impression that Orléans writing resists standard narration. But more than 20 years later, another adaptation of his writings challenges this notion. Small wingnow broadcast on Paramount+, draws from Orléans 2006 New Yorker article of the same name. The way the film tells it, it's the simple story of a preteen named Kat (Brooklynn Prince) whose reluctance to leave her childhood home pushes her toward the expensive, seedy underbelly of sports. pigeon fancier. But as she searches for a valuable pigeon to make money on the resale market to help her mother pay for her house, she ends up falling in love with both the sport and the bird and is reconciled. with the many meanings of home. .

The Orleans original, Little Wing, follows many of the same beats, with slightly lower dramatic stakes. (There's no theft in her article, nor any run-ins with pigeon-loving gangsters.) But, in a recent interview with The Daily Beasts Obsessed, Orléans says she appreciates the changes, just as she appreciates the singular strangeness of Adaptation.

Below, Orléans talks about the long road that Small wing took from the page to the screen the lessons she learned writing for the indescribable television series How to do it with John Wilsonand why Adaptation is in fact a perfect adaptation of his work.

What initially interested you about this story?

I'm very interested in subcultures, and this one I didn't know existed. The more I learned, the more fascinating it became. Pigeons are really interesting, and there's a lot of really fascinating history about how they were used. And then there was this particular poignant side of this little girl [12-year-old Sedona in the article; Kat in the film] who had found solace in this sport, and now her family was moving, and she was going to have to deal with this very deep and emotional fact of these birds not being able to learn a new home, which was obviously her great worry for her- Even too.

It was almost immediate, like when you hear about a story and you think: Of course, it's a story.

How involved were you in the adaptation, including the changes made between Sedona's story and Kat's story?

The story was immediately optioned. It's one of the few stories I've written where I could immediately see it as a film, and partly because it's very visual. The birds are beautiful and the birds flying are so visual. That's part of why I still find it interesting that I've chosen a good number of stories for film, because I'm not trying to write a film, and the demands of what makes a good narrative work non- fiction are really different from those of a film. There doesn't have to be this dramatic arc that a film seems to demand.

[But getting Little Wing made] It was a real saga. I mean, the story was written 17 years ago, and [writer John Gatins] this was done in a fairly short period of time. So I saw the script at that time, and then it went into this period of extreme Hollywood turmoil, because the division of Paramount that it was cast for eventually dissolved, and there was a lot of bad will and many projects were abandoned. I stayed out of it. I just felt like, “Look, who knows what’s going to happen?

Not only have several of your own works been adapted for film despite your own surprise, but you have also previously written for television. What have you learned about the difference between narrative nonfiction and television nonfiction through your experience working on How to do it with John Wilsonwhere you were part of the writers’ room for two seasons?

Writing for this series was so unique. I don't think you can say, I wrote for How to do it with John Wilson, so now I understand the conventions of screenwriting. It blows up the whole idea of ​​how the narrative can evolve. And I think that's why he contacted me, because I think he felt that my resistance to the ordinary demands of a story inspired him a lot. I realized how he didn't feel the need to hit all the beats of a typical Hollywood story.

No way.

As someone who writes for the page, any time you write for television or film, you learn a lot about the economics of language versus writing everything on the page. You don't need to describe anything or explain how someone moved from one room to another. They just do it. It's a combination of the feeling of having your legs cut off and the feeling of great liberation.

What was it like writing for such a specific show like John Wilsonwhich is a mix of documentary and narrative non-fiction, does it actually work?

It was not easy. He had this immense resource of film that he had already captured, so we were structuring the show knowing that he had all of that. [footage]. In that sense, it was more structured in the way I write my stories, that is, I do the reporting in advance, and then I figure out what I'm going to use or not use, or how this will happen.

But there would also be these holes where we would say: We have to somehow get out of the guy with the penis extension to the guy with the rug. What could work there? And then we would think about how maybe it would be X or maybe Y. Then there would be times where [John] I'd say, “Well, I'm definitely going to travel to this convention, but who knows what I'll get!” So let's build a niche in the structure of the show where I'm going to go to the convention. It was really a challenge.

This seems particularly difficult. And thanks for referencing the episode featuring the man who tried to regrow one's foreskinit was perhaps the best.

When I saw this episode, I literally screamed, because it was so crazy. The absurdity [of John Wilson] was so amazing.

I have to thank HBO for ordering the series. It wasn't traditional in any way, and the love people had for it shows that people have an appetite for things that are unconventional. I don't give viewers or readers enough credit for this. They are interested in things that don't fit the conventional format. I mean, I hope that's the case, because that's certainly how I write.

Speaking of unconventional, it's crazy that a film as idiosyncratic as Adaptation is technically based on one of your books, The orchid thief.

In a way, this film addresses this problem absolutely head-on. I haven't written a book that had a Hollywood arc, and when it was optioned, I thought, “I have no idea how this could be made into a movie.” I wrote the book I wanted to write, which was unconventional. I can't even see what the the whole book is about [the rare orchid].

When people say that Adaptation isn't really like my book, I think, in fact, it really is. It addresses the nature of the book in a more sincere way than I expected, as it is not a conventional story.

So were you satisfied with the film version of your book?

Oh I love it. I mean, at first, when I first read the script, I was very confused. I just said to myself: what are you doing? But I love the movie. It's just one of the great films of the postmodern era, and I think it was really true to the heart of the book in a way that a conventional film wouldn't have been. It's one of those movies that people still actively watch all the time. I rarely meet anyone who hasn't seen it.

Although it is such a strange film, like most Charlie Kaufman films, its popularity really proves your hypothesis that people have more tolerance for non-traditional stories than Hollywood tends to think.

Yeah, I absolutely think that's the case. It's a tough sell, even more so in the case of film and television, because it's very expensive to produce television and films. I think you have a little more freedom publishing a book, because it's you and your laptop, and it doesn't involve banking millions of dollars on the public being able to understand what you do.

I write the stories I want to write, and I don't anticipate and wonder if this will be optional? I am not a film producer. Some of the things that are proposed are the ones that are the most difficult, and I think, Wow, it's so cool that someone is taking this quirky story and actually making a movie out of it. I'm really lucky. I've had some really nice people interested in adapting my work.

Certainly. Not many people can say that Charlie Kaufman adapted their book, especially like this!

Exactly. I was willing to go along with it, which I have to say, maybe not everyone would have been willing to go along with it. But I just thought, “This is really crazy, but let's see what happens.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.