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"Being John Malkovich" was one of my favorite movies of recent years, so I eagerly anticipated "Adaptation" from the same screenwriter and director. And I wasn't disappointed. It's original and very funny. I think it and "About a Boy" were my favorite movies of the year, not that I saw many. I was surprised to see this extraordinarily inept review in Salon.

But just for kicks, let's do something adamantly un-meta and put "Adaptation" in context -- specifically, in the context of the unusually large number of fine, or at least interesting, movies that have been adapted from books, short stories or plays this year.

Here Zacharek displays the self-congratulation she's accusing the filmmakers of, while willfully missing the point. "Adaptation" is something different from an adaptation of The Orchid Thief

The refusal of Kaufman (the real one or the meta one) to bow to stupid Hollywood standards is both a kind of withdrawal and an avowal of superiority. The unspoken message seems to be: "Leave it to hacks like David Lean and John Huston to actually do the work of bringing books to the screen." Jonze and Kaufman are too good for it, and "Adaptation" is their assertion that the most interesting movie they could possibly make is one that's all about them.

I cannot find anything in the movie that's critical of the process of adaptation or the people who do it. It affirms how difficult it is. So difficult that the fictitious Kaufman gave up at even attempting to do it straight, and we're invited to believe that that mirrors the real Kaufman's experience. (Of course, we're invited to believe a lot, and the movie doesn't give us a lot of clues as to what are the boundaries of the fiction.)

I wondered what Orlean's thoughts were on being written into the movie in that fashion. Naturally, the web made it easy to find out.

When they wanted to bring the character of Susan Orlean into the script, the whole thing "seemed completely nuts," she said. They wanted her to have a relationship with her subject. They wanted her to use drugs and try to kill people. Even if you put aside the slanderous parts, the "fantasy parts" of the movie, she said, there were still lots of questions: "Did I want that much visibility? Did I want to be any kind of character?"

She recalled, "I initially said, `Well, go ahead, but change my name.' " Then she started wondering whether she really wanted her book in a movie with someone else's name on it. The answer was no. "I can't let them change my name," she said. It helped her to see "all the other kids jumping off the cliff," she said. That is, Mr. Laroche and Mr. McKee both let their real names and life stories be used. And of course there was Charlie Kaufman, who is not only portrayed as fat, bald and horrible looking (Ms. Orlean said that he's actually "adorable, cute, small, wiry and nice looking") but also is shown masturbating his way through the movie. Finally Ms. Orlean gave in: "What the heck? It's an adventure."