00:24Boy, I'd love to find a portal into your brain.
00:27Trust me, it's no fun.
00:30So, tell me your thoughts on this crazy little project of ours.
00:35First, I think it's a great book.
00:38La Roche is a fun character, isn't it?
00:41Absolutely.
00:42And Orlean makes orchids so fascinating.
00:45Plus, her musings on Florida and orchid poaching, Indians.
00:50It's great sprawling New Yorker stuff.
00:52And I'd want to remain true to that.
00:54I'd want to let the movie exist rather than be artificially plot-driven.
00:59Great.
01:00I guess I'm not exactly sure what that means.
01:04Oh.
01:05I'm not sure I know what that means either.
01:09I just don't want to ruin it by making a Hollywood thing.
01:13You know, like an orchid heist movie or something.
01:16Or changing the orchids into poppies and turning it into a movie about drug running, you know?
01:23Why can't there be a movie simply about flowers?
01:26I guess we thought that maybe Susan, Orlean, and La Roche could fall in love.
01:33Okay, but I'm saying it's like I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know, or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end.
01:51You know, I mean, the book isn't like that and life isn't like that.
01:56You know, it just isn't.
01:57And...
01:58You know, I feel very strongly about this.
02:04John La Roche is a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouched-shouldered, sharply handsome, despite the fact he's missing all his front teeth.
02:17I went to Florida two years ago to write a piece for The New Yorker.
02:21It was after reading a small article about a white man and three seminal men arrested with rare orchids they'd stolen out of a place called the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve.
02:35As natural selection works, solely by and for the good of the tree, all corporeal and mental endowedness will tend to progress towards perfect.
