This film is about what the title indicates: adaptation, and not just adaptation from book to screen. Charlie is a man who is plagued with insecurity. He doesn't believe he will be able to break through the writer's block and continue to be the man that everyone in the movie business sees him as, which is one of a kind, an original. Charlie has been give a book to adapt, which he cannot find a way into. There is no story in it to him, but he's being paid to find it. In the meantime, his twin brother Donald moves in with him and begins writing screenplays himself after taking a seminar with Robert McKee on story.
Charlie must learn to adapt to Donald's constant optimism and naivete, all while suffering harshly from self punishment over his inability to write the screenplay he's been commissioned to write. Thus, the adaptation of The Orchid Thief into a screenplay becomes the adaptation of Charlie into a man capable of far more than he could have ever imagined in the face of adversity. He becomes, himself, better suited to his environment though by staying the course of who he is while shaving off the rough edges of certainty that he so desperately holds on to.
When Donald is killed it is horrific. But, it becomes a metaphor for how Charlie has adapted in order to create this screenplay. It is as if he created Donald in order to challenge himself to think more simply and live more fully, something we all can aspire towards.
