Sometimes it is important to be male in the company of men.
Tonight was such a night. I got out, hung out, and even saw Adaptation. It was crazy and funny, but I was a little disappointed in the end. I kept waiting for the really crazy thing to happen to cinch the whole movie, to finish the buildup he was working towards. Nothing happened. It was a letdown. Mild, but a letdown never the less. What was weird about it though, is that Being John Malkovich was being shot during the movie and in one scene you actually see John Cusack joining Catherine Keener and Mary Kay Place to shoot a scene of the movie. It makes you realize that he really did have this problem adapting the book and while much of the movie is fabricated (John LaRouche is alive, and I doubt that Susan Orlean ever snorted ground orchid extract.) it did happen - sort of. The ending is disappointing because he ran out of time got frustrated and gave up.
He paints an unflattering portrait of every character in the movie. Even if his personality is a middle point between the onscreen Charlie Kaufman and his fictional twin brother Donald, he would still be a pathetic character. It would be cool if Susan Orlean really did look like Meryl Streep, but she doesn't. She is a pale thin shadow of her onscreen alter-ego. Meryl Streep (and most good Hollywood actresses her age) is just too much woman, too much muscular femininity to really be anyone else. She'll play a character onscreen and do a good job of it, but it will always be Meryl Streep shining through. People will think that the real life woman was an interesting, complex person, only to be dissappointed in the prosaic reality.
