The Making of "Adaptation"

"A previous passenger had abandoned a day-old copy of the Miami Herald between the evacuation-procedure card and the air-sickness bag. As I idly flipped through it, I noticed a story about a local nurseryman named John Laroche and three Seminole men who had been arrested for stealing rare orchids from a Florida swamp. It was a sliver of a story, but I was intrigued by it, by seeing the words "swamp" and "orchids" and "Seminoles" and "plant cloning" and "criminal" together in one place."

"Some stories end when they end: they're a short happy ride that feels finished and complete. But I couldn't shake the orchid story. I couldn't shake it even when Laroche told me that he had forsaken the plant world and embarked on a career in online porn. I was sure that there was a book there. I returned to Florida and kept at the story for three more years, and published it as " The Orchid Thief " in 1998."

"The producer and director Jonathan Demme had wanted to option the rights to "Orchid Fever" when it came out. I was floored. The story was so quirky and proceeded at such a poky narrative pace that I couldn't imagine it as a movie. In any event, I didn't want a movie to come out before I wrote the book, so I said I'd sell the film rights only if he would wait for that. He agreed, so I accepted his offer."

A discarded Miami Herald item described a local nurseryman, John Laroche, and three Seminole men arrested for stealing rare orchids from a Florida swamp. The finder traveled to Miami for the initial hearing and published a short piece in The New Yorker in January 1995. Persistent fascination with Laroche and the orchid theft prompted three more years of reporting and the eventual longer account published in 1998. Jonathan Demme optioned film rights early, originally intended to direct, later decided not to, and the production team continued moving toward adapting the narrative for film.

Read at The New Yorker